“The Kelly File” host Megyn Kelly last night welcomed Ken Kratz and Dean Strang, former prosecutor and defense attorney, respectively, in the Steven Avery murder trial made infamous by Netflix docudrama “Making a Murderer.”
In recent weeks, Kratz has been an especially vocal critic of the film, which he accuses of omitting pertinent details of the trial. “You don't want to muddy up a perfectly good conspiracy movie with what actually happened,” Kratz told People last week.
Kratz guested first, telling Kelly “The most persuasive [evidence] was the DNA that was found on the hood latch of the victim’s car.”
Kratz told Kelly that further DNA found under the hood of Halbach’s car was not blood, but sweat DNA, which, Kratz claimed, refuted claims made in the documentary that Manitowoc County police planted Steven Avery’s blood in the victim’s SUV in an effort to frame Avery.
“We refuted that,” Kratz claimed before Kelly interrupted.
“These two guys were such brilliant criminals that they managed to clean up all the blood evidence from shooting [Halbach] and stabbing her,” Kelly pressed. “[P]eople don’t find that plausible.”
“She was raped and she was beaten in Steven Avery’s trailer,” Kratz said. “But she was killed in the garage. That’s where the shooting happened.”
According to Kratz, Avery’s nephew and convicted accomplice, Brendan Dassey, turned over as evidence a pair of bleach-stained jeans to prove that the two scrubbed the garage with “a good bit of bleach” following the murder.
After a commercial break, Kelly brought on Strang, whom she confessed “[seemed] like a very good lawyer to me, and did as much for this client as a lawyer could do”
Kelly first asked how Strang “explain[s] the bones being” in the fire pit behind Avery’s trailer.
“They were moved there,” Strang said. “The body was moved there. That was the stronger part of the evidence. Indeed the jury acquitted [Avery] of mutilating [Halbach’s] corpse.”
“What about the fact that she was allegedly tortured in Steven Avery’s trailer, that she was handcuffed and had leg irons put on her as the rape took place … And Steven Avery—this is not covered in the documentary but was at trial, it’s my understanding—Steven Avery bought leg irons and handcuffs three weeks before the murder?”
“None of that was evidence at Steven Avery’s trial,” Strang clarified. “You just described the prosecution’s theory at the Dassey trial a month or six weeks later.”
Responding to Kratz’s earlier sweat-evidence theory, Strang told Kelly, “There was no evidence of sweat; there was evidence of DNA transferred … The sweat idea was just Mr. Kratz’s theory and never has been anything more than that. The DNA from Steven Avery could have been transferred under that hood any number of ways.”
The documentary, Strang concluded, “was fair.”
Watch both interviews below, via Fox News:
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