On November 3rd, 2005 Karen Halbach called Calumet County Sheriffs Department and reported her daughter Teresa Halbach Missing and Then.....
At the start of the year 2022 I thought I would take a long and in depth look at the investigation into the disappearance of Teresa Halbach from the vantage point of all the evidence instead of using only the evidence that was presented to the media and jury. For those unfamiliar with criminal investigations and the evidence collection process-officers will "collect" lots of items, statements and perform many tests to solve a crime not all of this is presented to the jury-prosecutors pick and choose what to show and if the defense doesn't recognize the significance of other evidence items the jury will never know about their existence. This will not be a short article as this case alone spans almost seventeen years and that is without bringing up any of the issues regarding Steven Avery and the State of Wisconsin that stem from his 1985 wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration in 2003 and the fact that Steven Avery was in the midst of a civil suit against not only Manitowoc County but also the former Sheriff Tom Kocourek and the former District Attorney Denis Vogel at the time of Teresa Halbachs disappearance on October 31, 2005
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| Aerial pics of investigators working off the Avery property |
So for those of you who are still reading I recommend brewing a pot of coffee/tea, kicking off your shoes and getting comfortable as we take a look at this investigation and some very important details that prosecutors and investigators failed to include in any of the multiple explanations they have offered about the disappearance and death of twenty five year old Teresa Halbach and also why there are so many people around the world still looking for answers in a case that the state of Wisconsin swears has been closed and the right people held accountable. Let us also take a glimpse at what prosecutors and investigators are doing in the years since the convictions were secured in 2007.
Now a criminal investigation is designed and performed to determine what has happened in the commission of a crime. It is the process of collecting information and evidence to determine what happened, when and where it happened and who is criminally responsible and as a result a trial is where prosecutors put forth a case and tell the jury what the investigation has found and why the defendant should be found guilty of the crime. The purpose of a criminal trial is to ensure that an individual accused of a crime receives a “fair and impartial evaluation of the situation to determine if the person is guilty of the crime they are charged with or not.” (i.e.This is the crime that has occurred and this is the evidence that shows this person is responsible).
In this case the crime presented to the media, public and jury as what happened to Teresa Halbach is not the crime that happened-it is not even remotely close to what investigators found had happened during the investigation process undertaken into her disappearance.
The prosecution and investigators have stated from day one to the media that Teresa Halbach arrived at Steven Avery’s property around 2:30 pm on October 31st, 2005 and at that time Steven Avery assaulted her and depending on the trial either brought her into the garage and shot her multiple times including in the head with item FL and killed her, he then placed her dead in the back of her RAV drove her around the Avery Salvage Yard and through out the car pit area only to bring her body back to his property, place her RAV in the garage and burned her electronics in his burn barrel around 5pm and placed her intact body on a massive fire in his back yard next to this dog Bear and the propane tank around 6 pm and then he drove the RAV back through the Avery Salvage Yard business area, back through the car pit area and placed it next to a row of cars and disguised it as a hood/dead tree branch. Somehow during all this he also managed to drop a few drops of blood but only on the right side front area of the RAV. According to prosecutors Steven worried that someone may have a car alarm for Teresa’s car *even though Teresa didn’t have a car alarm -opened the hood without using the hood latch lever and that he disconnected BOTH battery terminals. He removed the license plates and waited until he was almost home to fold them into thirds and throw them into a broken out window of a station wagon next to the road to his house and he cleverly hid the key in his bookcase and placed the gun back above his bed after all was done. Now in Brendan Dassey’s trial the initial assault will lead to Teresa being taken into Steven Avery’s trailer against her will where she will be held for many hours and assaulted. Brendan arrived home around 3:45 pm and he will decide to ride a broken bike to the Avery/Dassey mailboxes and check the mail where he will find a piece of mail for Steven Avery. When he goes to give Steven the mail he will hear screams and when Steven answers the door he is covered in sweat and asked Brendan to join in on the fun. Brendan and Steven then will take turns assaulting Teresa and they will also give Teresa a hair cut, stab her repeatedly, punch her and slit her throat. The RAV somehow will be placed in the garage during this scenario. Much later they will carry a still alive-but bleeding and beaten Teresa Halbach out to Steven’s garage, go back for the gun and return to shoot her ten to fifteen times including once to the head resulting in item FL. They then load a now dead Teresa onto the creeper to carry and place her into the RAV. (The RAV left the garage?) Together they drive her through the Avery Salvage Yard business and car pit to the pond where they will determine it isn’t deep enough to hide her so they turn around and drive back to Steven’s property. They will take Teresa back out of the RAV and then get a golf cart and drive around and collect items to start a massive fire beside Steven’s garage and dog Bear. Once the fire is raging they will then place Teresa whole on top of the fire and then use shovels and screwdrivers to destroy her burning body into minuscule bone fragments. Once the fire is out and the body reduced to ashes Steven will dig a hole about five feet away and place most of ashes in there-except for a bucket that he walks over to his fence line and dumps on to the Radandt property. They then somehow eradicate any trace of a crime and hide the license plates, the key and finally place the gun back above Steven's bed. Now Brendan managed to do all this and be home by ten pm.
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| Pictures taken by investigators of Steven Avery property |
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| Pic of Steven Bedroom |
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| Hallway |
As absurd as these stories of the crime sound they were used by District Attorney Ken Kratz and Norm Gahn as well as Assistant Attorney General Tom Fallon in the media and more importantly in the court room to obtain convictions of first degree murder for the death of Teresa Halbach. Examination of ALL the evidence collected as well as all the police reports show not only that this is nowhere close to what happened to Teresa Halbach more importantly and concerning the above men-Gahn, Kratz and Fallon-they knew that this was not how Teresa Halbach died. Instead of telling the truth they intentionally chose to hide and ignore evidence to gain convictions of Steven and Brendan. If we can’t trust that the DA’s and Sheriffs elected to serve the citizens of their counties are telling the truth and that a trial is being held to seek justice and not a conviction why would anyone trust that anything in their criminal justice system is being done for the purpose of truth and justice?
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| Missing Person Flier |
The state of Wisconsin has stated that the investigation into Teresa Halbach’s disappearance began on November 3, 2005 when Karen Halbach called the Calumet County Sheriffs Office and filed a missing persons report concerning her 25 year old daughter Teresa Halbach who hadn’t been seen in a few days. Here is a link to the call that Calumet County stated was their first notification that Teresa was missing. https://youtu.be/Q-22Oo6-jHg this call begins the official investigation into Teresa’s disappearance. Here is a section of the first report generated regarding this investigation.
So officially Teresa is reported missing at 5 pm. Now the next sequence of events occur in a little over four hours. First let me explain the area of Calumet and Manitowoc County Wisconsin. These counties consist of a small population over miles of farmland and woods. Long stretches of roads with not a lot of commerce and most residences set back off the highway. On this first day of investigation in the first few hours-after 5 pm the time when most businesses are closing and sending home their office staff-somehow not only are Calumet county officers able to quickly determine the last day of Teresa being seen by anyone is October 31, 2005, they are also able to determine that she was in Manitowoc County when she vanished and that Steven Avery-even though the appointment for the van shoot was in his sister Barb Janda’s name-was one of the people that she met with during her appointments. Now I know Karen stated that was the last day she was seen-yet how many mom’s know everything their twenty five year old daughter is doing and more importantly what police officer automatically take the parents word without checking for themselves?
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Here is a look at the area in Manitowoc County that Teresa Halbach had appointments on October 31, 2005. There are several roads and many routes that she could have taken to these residences. Joellen Zipperer and Steven Avery were both vague on the times Teresa arrived at their homes and more importantly time change was the day prior so any estimation of time would have been off because of that as well.
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| Section Of MCSO Report |
Now in just a few hours on the first evening of investigating officers will attend several meetings, have many phone calls, visit several residences-one residence twice and for a lengthy amount of time, fliers will be distributed and the media will also be informed and begin to broadcast information about the missing persons case. The news media was posting about and discussing the disappearance by the nine o’clock hour as is seen here: https://web.archive.org/web/20120829202204/postcrescent.com/proart/99999999/apc06/1270512%3Fpagerestricted%3D1 and as a result calls and tips began to come in about vehicle and possible sightings of Teresa Halbach. The following is a summary of not only the “official narrative of events that happened November 3rd it also includes confirmed events through dispatch calls, radio transmissions and official documents received from law enforcement:
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| The research that establishes the time of Colborn's call |
There is not one police report discussing Andrew Colborn’s 9:22pm license plate call into dispatch. Colborn and Remiker write nothing about why this plate call occurred. Several questions remain about this license plate call. Where were Remiker and Colborn when Remiker tasked Colborn with “checking out those plates?” Where were these officers at 9:15 pm when Remiker is heard radioing Colborn asking if he had found out who those plates come back to yet and Colborn responded “Negative.” In what direction was Colborn driving in? Seven minutes later Colborn calls dispatch about Teresa Halbachs license plates. Where was he when he made that call? It would be beneficial to the truth to have Andrew Colborn’s cell phone records for October and November 2005.
Now both men at this time had for the last hours been tasked solely with looking for Teresa or her RAV (they were informed of the case at 6:37pm according to dispatch and radio calls) and they both had been given the ATL (attempt to locate) with Teresa’s information. So for what reason would Colborn call Teresa Halbach’s license plates in?
- Did Remiker receive a tip about a vehicle that matched the description on the missing persons flier and send Colborn to investigate?
- Was someone at the vehicle/RAV when Colborn arrived who would expect an officer to call and verify the ownership of an abandon vehicle?
- Did the color of the RAV throw Colborn off as it is much more blue than it is “dark green” as it was described in the ATL?
Again Remiker did not need Colborn to verify Teresa’s license plates if that is what this call was about. They both had the ATL with Teresa's vehicle information already and they both had the ability to radio or call dispatch to simply verify the information's accuracy. Colborn’s testimony that “I was checking my writing” excuse fails now that we have the surrounding information before and after the 9:22pm call. Colborn was completing an assignment Remiker had tasked him with- “finding out who those plates come back to and at the time the task was given neither man knew that the plates they were checking on were in fact Teresa Halbachs plates- the same woman who’s case they were both working on at that time they were instead looking for information about “THOSE plates”- license plates belonging to a yet unknown vehicle they were investigating in the case.
A logical explanation is that someone had seen a flier or newscast about Teresa Halbach being missing and the type of vehicle she drove and was calling in a potential sighting of her RAV. Remiker sent Colborn to see if it was in fact Teresa’s vehicle and we now know from Colborn's’ call that it indeed was Teresa Halbach's RAV that was found.
Maybe this call could still be “explained away” if not for these facts:
- At trial Andrew Colborn is asked about when this call occurred and he stated he thought it was on November 4th. (did he mean that he thought it was a call that would be erased from existence and never released?)
- When asked about why he made the call Colborn stated he was verifying that he had written down the correct license plate information. (Yet he and Remiker both had the ATL and other paperwork with her info by this time)
- Neither Detective Remiker or Officer Colborn mentioned anything about this in their reports or testimony and Colborn has tried his best to minimize the significance of the call not only to the public but also in conversations with superiors. Now that we have the clip of Detective Remiker asking Colborn if he had found out who the plates come back to yet- we know that this is indeed relevant to the investigation
- The next day -November 4th, 2005 Manitowoc County radio and dispatch calls are eradicated from existence for an entire twenty-four hour period.
The next calls/dispatch transmissions of Manitowoc County Sheriffs Departments available are from the morning of November 5th, 2005 and are involving Calumet County Officer Mark Wiegert and Manitowoc County Officer Dave Remiker discussing the “boss having a change of plans and that searchers are heading to the Avery Salvage Yard”.
Then there are the “typos” in the official documents for November 3rd, 2005 like the Manitowoc County Sheriffs Department report that shows the RAV was seized on 11/03, the document that shows Steven Avery is a murder suspect on 11/03 and Teresa Halbach as kidnapped-all of these things make sense if the RAV was indeed found on November 3rd, 2005 and Steven Avery was going to be the person they were going to charge with a crime against Teresa Halbach. Except for the glaring fact that the official police narrative is that the RAV will not be found for two more days…..when Pam Sturm will be given a camera, a map and a specific phone number to call and is sent to the Avery Salvage Yard.
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| MCSO Summary showing RAV seized 11/03 |
Add to that the phone call found of Wisconsin DCI S/A Deb Strauss placed to Calumet County Sheriffs office the evening of November 4th, 2005- the end of the first full day of Teresa Halbach being missing and no one yet knowing where she could be and Strauss never asked a word about Teresa at all and only wanted to help with Steven Avery. That call can be heard here https://youtu.be/e6qYV27QFHI and it is clear that there is much more going on in this investigation than prosecutors and investigators have documented in their reports and disclosed to the public. This deception will continue through out the entirety of the investigation, both of the trials and even in the post conviction phase of the case.
The evidence shows that investigators were being led by K9 tracking dogs to properties far away from Steven Avery's residence. Here is a page of one of the dog handler reports discussing this. Some of these properties were miles away from Steven Avery's property and owned by other individuals and entity's including an eighty acre piece of property owned and run by Manitowoc County. Officers would apply for search warrants with the District Attorneys help that judges would sign and allow them access to Josh Radandts eighty plus acre property that contained several quarries as well as buildings and mobile home structures. Officers set up several road blocks that did not control access to Steven Avery's trailer and property. Manitowoc County sheriffs officers would control these scenes during the searches and would allow certain agencies and specific officers there. Manitowoc county sheriffs officers would report the finding of a burial site and request and use their own private ambulance, K9 dogs tracking Teresa to this property (again not Steven Avery's property) would be stopped and barred access to these areas at the time of the excavation of the site. This investigation would run parallel to a public and media focused investigation that was simultaneously occurring on the Avery property. Aerial photography by news media and the Wisconsin State Patrol would catch glimpses of this yet officers reports mention little about this other many days long investigation. Reviewing Calumet County Sheriffs department dispatch calls and both Manitowoc and Calumet radio transmission catch random mentions of this secret alternate crime scene investigation. There are mentions of a cell phone in a burn barrel heard prior to the November 7th, 2005 discovery of burnt electronics in Steven Avery’s burn barrel. There are no police reports discussing the cell phone find in a burn barrel at the Radandt property. Officers do collect the burn barrel contents from the Radandt property.
There is also this call from Calumet County Officer Kelly Sippel to his superior officer discussing “piles of human bones found miles away from Steven Avery” https://youtu.be/NBVnXXTVOeA yet officer Sippel’s reports about his activities on November 9th, 2005 the day this call occurred mention nothing about this discovery.
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| Tag #8675 |
The next day November 10th, 2005 Calumet County Coroner Mike Klaeser visited the eighty acre property owned by Manitowoc County. He spends several hours on the property and pronounced Teresa Halbach deceased while there. No police reports discuss why Klaeser decided Teresa was deceased at that time. Prosecutors also did not have Klaeser testify at either trial.
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| Eisenberg and officers sorting multiple tarps |
Even the evidence location labels don’t help in distinguishing locations of the evidence. Not only are the tags not applied to evidence at the scene and photographs of the tagging is not done and that is crime scene evidence collection 101. When it comes to collecting any of the evidence from Steven Avery’s property everything got thrown into a trailer along with evidence from other properties and transferred from Manitowoc County all the way to Chilton, Wisconsin and there evidence was then affixed with a tag number. Lots of opportunity to reorganize the evidence so that it appeared to originate from a different location.
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| Hawkins discussing evidence collection |
Even the twenty six buckets of debris collected from the eighty acre Manitowoc County property were deceptively labeled as to where the debris originated by using different code names- examples of these are: something officers labeled as “E site locations 1-10” , then some piles are labeled with only letters such as M, N, O and then some are simply listed with GPS coordinates (some of these are not even accurate). There is little information written in reports to help get an understanding of the origin of the evidence. Someone like Dr. Leslie Eisenberg -who never even visited Manitowoc County during the investigation has no idea what and where anything is actually coming from in this investigation. The below information was written by a Wisconsin State Trooper regarding the E site locations.
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| Map showing Manitowoc County eighty acre property |
When one takes the GPS coordinates and plots them on a map it shows that the investigation and evidence retrieval focused far away from Steven Avery’s property. Most of the sites are all located on the eighty acre property owned by Manitowoc County. Many human bones with cut marks originated from these sites. More importantly and something that the prosecution never informs the media, public or jury about and for some reason Buting and Strang failed to recognize is that this property is not the property that has the quarry that is shown on the map right next to the Avery Salvage Yard and is actually much further away as you can see from the map of the area.
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| Difft maps with labels |
I highlighted a few different areas to help orient readers to illustrate just how far of a distance this evidence actually was from Steven Avery's property. At the bottom of one of the maps you can see Fisherville and Highway Q. Investigators had a road block set up here for a period of time. A road block would not restrict access to the Avery Salvage Yard. The top red arrow is pointing out Kuss Road and the bottom red arrow is showing the eighty acre property owned by Manitowoc County. The quarry property next to the Avery Salvage Yard is owned by Josh Radandt or specifically Badgerland Aggregates. The top left highlighted road is Hwy 147. To help the reader understand exactly how large an eighty acre piece of property is here are some numbers - the length of an eighty acre property site is 1.3 miles. Eighty acres is 3,484,800 square feet and roughly 80 football fields (including end zones) would fit. That is how large of a search this was just on the Manitowoc County owned land. Then add in the multiple forty acre parcels owned by the Radandts and the picture becomes clearer and one can begin to understand just how far away investigators were when collecting evidence yet labeling everything with terms like “Avery Property southwest of red trailer” or “pile M Avery property” or “E-site #? Avery property”. The maps included in the forensic mapping report prepared by the Wisconsin State Troopers do not label or specify the eighty acre Manitowoc county owned property either. This is clear deception about the investigation and the evidence. Prosecutors never mention the county owned property during either trial. Dr. Leslie Eisenberg the forensic anthropologist who was in charge of all the bone fragment labeling and sorting never visited Manitowoc County during the investigation so she was unaware of the location of any of the sites or just how far away from Steven Avery’s trailer and burn pit area many of these piles were. She relied on officers and prosecutors to truthfully inform her of the origin of the piles. Here is an imgur link to some of the photos taken of the investigation occurring on the Manitowoc County eighty acre property. https://imgur.com/gallery/ebGv980
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| Evidence tags and locations of human bones |
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| FBI Report and Eisenberg worksheet noting multiple human bones with cut marks |
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| Fassbender Report |
Official reports like this DCI report written in November of 2005 make it clear that the dismemberment is not going to be mentioned and that Teresa Halbachs body will be beat into bone fragments during the burning episode with a shovel and screwdriver.
There is no photographing and tagging of the evidence collection process at the site-well not of any of the evidence that was reportedly collected from Steven Avery’s burn pit area. There is no evidence that this event occurred and there exists multiple forms of evidence that the actual burial site and an investigation resulting in the debris bone fragment collection occurred on non adjacent properties owned by Manitowoc County and Josh Radandt. Eisenberg never visited any of the areas where evidence was collected and the Calumet County Coroner only visited the eighty acre Manitowoc County owned property. Calumet County Coroner Klaeser also did not testify at either trial.
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| Tag#8318 aka as the white box that contained human bone fragments |
This evidence tag #8318 is the box of bones that traveled all over Wisconsin and according to multiple reports contained lots of human bone fragments. This box is also labeled exhibit 385 . This white box of bones will travel from Dr Bennett who writes a report dated November 10, 2005 about an exam he did the day prior. He is specific that he does not know where the box came from and there are no evidence tag numbers noted in his report. Dr. Michael Stier who performed the autopsy or something like an autopsy also examined this "box of bones". His report also noted that the box of bones and other items he will examine were collected over several days although he lists the county of origin as Calumet county so it is clear he has no knowledge of origin of the bones either. His report is dated November 18th, 2005. There also is not one tag # mentioned in this autopsy report.
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| Bennet and Stier reports |
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| The cardboard box #8318 now empty |
Now we are in the post conviction phase of the case. There are many things that have happened since the convictions were obtained.
Here are a few regarding the bones. For a reason not disclosed at the time yet records show occurred the day after the Wisconsin Innocence Project was awarded $1 million dollars in grant funding to test evidence to help exonerate wrongfully convicted inmates investigators and District Attorneys in this case met and removed all of the human fragments in their possession and gave them to a funeral home according to reports yet evidence ledgers have no signature from the funeral home receiving the cremains.
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| CASO report |
Motions written by prosecutors over the legality of this evidence removal offer no reason for the timing of this yet the judges will add one to the record by saying the Halbachs asked for them-withoue any hearing to determine if this actually happened. No reports about a conversation with the Halbachs prior to the removal of the bones exist. Tom Fallon did not disclose the fact that all the bones were destroyed and will represent to Zellner in correspondence that they are still available although not evidentiary.
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| Fallon letter to Zellner |
Zellner will learn about this bone destruction in 2019 from researchers who received the entire CASO report even though she requested a complete and up to date report when she signed on as Steven Avery's attorney in January 2016. As shown above a 2017
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| Norm Gahn email to Fallon in 2019 |
In 2019 Gahn will write Fallon and discuss a lot of interesting things in this email. This email was regarding the video that Zellner had made showing Bobby Dassey as a viable Denny suspect. There are specific evidence tag numbers he mentions and specific places he wants to visit. Remember the prosecution's narrative (Norm Gahn and Tom Fallon along with Ken Kratz were the prosecutors in both of these cases) is that Teresa Halbach arrived at the Avery property on October 31, 2005 around 2:30 pm and she nor her RAV never left because of Steven Avery (well with Brendan Dassey's participation in one of the trials). Why is Norm wanting to now go drive around the eighty acre Manitowoc County property? Why Norm Gahn interested in evidence that was collected from other properties miles away from Steven Avery's small burn area? When searching CASO for these evidence tag #s you will see that this evidence was controlled by the Wisconsin DCI and the dates that are stated as being received by Calumet Sheriffs Officers are confusing much like everything else in this case when trying to make sense of their stated activities with the evidence collected.
This was supposed to be an investigation to find out why Teresa Halbach disappeared on October 31, 2005 and who was responsible. Almost seventeen years later and at the cost of over two million dollars to tax payers not to mention the loss of freedom of two men no one seems to honestly know what happened or who is to blame. The one thing that is certain is that even prosecutors know that Teresa Halbach left the Avery property that day.
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