IA light bulb went off, for me, during Season 2: Steve was a walking lottery ticket for the family - one that was worthless with him behind bars. I believe they knew, or suspected, almost immediately what happened, yet they had 36 million reasons to circle the wagons.
Scott, Bobby, Kayla and Brendan were all family members. They did an awful job of circling. Also Barb said Steven was guilty at some point, unless I'm mistaken.
LE may have encouraged Brendan, at some points, but the only places where I hear him saying things he's been "fed" are when he's lying about pointless details provided by the Avery's- like the headlights and tail lights.
Minor, pointless details like the supposed cause of death (gunshot), and location of the gunshot?
Seriously - is the contention that the family believes nothing happened and their genius idea is "instead of Brendan just telling the cops the truth (which is 'nothing happened'),
He said he didn't know several times and they wouldn't take that as answer. Where did you get the idea that Brendan confessing was part of some scheme to get Steven free?
let's fill his head with goofy details!" It's Seinfeldian ("yea - I like THIS idea <eye roll>!"). Where did LE feed him things like the detailed way Steve told him how he was going fill and level the burn pit?
Actually, Brendan said".................the fire...........said he was gonna bury it and start........" he trailed off and the police added the rest. And even if he did say what you said, that's not exactly a smoking gun is it?
The fires will have debris left over (like the metal from the car seat) and eventually the pit will get full. It probably makes more sense to just bury that and start a new one rather than clean out the debris.
The first suspicious thing Brendan claimed to see was "Toes" and even that was after the police suggested he saw a burning foot (twice I think) and insisted he saw burning flesh. Then they said he saw, "Toes, fingers, parts of hand and feet" and parts of the torso. Except for toes, he never said any of that.
Then they insisted he saw her head and face and his response was something like "Somewhat."
There's what the family told him to say, there's what he resisted saying for self-preservation, there's some minor things where maybe LE suggested (hood latch), and what's left is what actually happened.
This massively underplays how much information was fed to Brendan. And even then, feeding SOME information taints a whole lot of the confession, maybe all of the substantial stuff.
They used the "he knew about the hood latch" in court, so that wasn't THAT minor of a detail to the prosecution. They also mentioned that "Teresa was cooked" [Fassbender's words] in the fire pit behind the garage. They also asked if he saw anything in the fire and he said "some branches.......a cabinet and some tires....." And they again suggested Teresa's body. Is "the body was burned in the fire pit behind the garage" a minor detail? This is not rhetorical. I'm interested in an answer.
They implied many, many times that her body was in the fire well before he said anything of the sort. He even kept saying things that were in the fire after they suggested the body. He'd go back to garbage bags and paper plates and a shirt.
He talks about her being tied up with rope, so there goes any theories about novelty restraints.
Weird. Prosecutor Fallon in Dassey's trial said she was handcuffed. Go look at the trial transcripts for Brendan. Handcuffs are mentioned a lot.
He talks about her being stabbed in the back of her vehicle, which explains blood
No it doesn't. It explains the notion that there is blood in the RAV4, but it hardly explains the amount of blood and blood spatter pattern in the vehicle. Also, source for this specific claim. I'd like to see the context in which he said the stabbing thing.
(and they did do a Laurel and Hardy clean up job in the garage with gas and bleach).
Did they ever find any evidence that demonstrated that what they cleaned was blood?
He says she was shot five or ten times, all over, which could explain the errant bullet.
He said a lot of stuff that has no evidence to back it up.
Also, they killed her in the garage, and one of the bullets went through the wall and stayed in the garage?
The landlord said he fired between 2000 and 3000 .22 caliber bullets all around the property. That could also explain errant bullets.
I believe there's a mention of Steve driving her vehicle to the "pit," which is the quarry, not the burn pit, which explains the K-9 hits.
Is there anything that states the quarry was the pit, and not the burn pit on the property that was mentioned countless times? Kratz tried downplaying bone fragments found in the quarry during the trial. So the state was pretty sure the body was never there.
Something else that would explain the k-9 hits is that the prosecution's narrative is wrong.
He talks about Teresa cutting Steve's finger with her nail, which explains his blood in her vehicle.
It fits the narrative, doesn't mean it what happened. "Physically possible" and "definitely happened" are 2 different things.
LE conducted numerous searches, all with specific goals - first, see if Teresa's there, next go to collect specific items, finally an in-depth crime scene search. The bullet and key weren't "missed," they were found the first time LE did a general search.
So people who shouldn't have even been on his property were the ones to do the first general search and they find the important stuff? I fail to see how that is much better. Also, I'd like a source on exactly how thorough the first, less general searches were.
if he had cooperated and testified against Steve, he'd be home now.
Probably, but that doesn't really mean much about guilt or innocence either way.
Too bad the family thought they were one step from Easy Street.
I really cannot understand how this is supposed to work at all. Unless the family decided to lie to help Steven for money only AFTER several members of the family worked to put him away. That's really not a very good plan. Unless they came out and said this specifically, I can't really figure out how you came to that conclusion.
My main source is the interview from Feb. 27th. I come back to this several times.
Source:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5691be1b25981daa98f417c8/t/569316d25a566828b96d64f1/1452480211879/Transcript+-+February+27,+2006+(at+Mishicot+High+School).pdf
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