At the 2007 trial, the defense was asking the jury to defy logic, ignore concrete evidence, and to rely on speculation when making their decision. The laundry list of inculpatory evidence has been presented on this thread, so I would like to focus on the conspiracy narrative put forth by the defense at trial.
HALBACH'S KEY: Deputy Kucharski testified that he was sitting on Avery's bed with his feet pointing towards where the key was found. Lieutenant Lenk momentarily leaves the room, comes back, and tells Kurcharski that he sees a key on the floor. How did Lenk manage to plant that key in that location without Kurcharski noticing Lenk's alleged slight of hand? In addition, how did Lenk manage to place Avery's DNA on that key? Buting suggested that Lenk or another officer scrubbed the key with Avery's tootbrush. This red herring was an attempt to distract the jury from the prosaic argument that the last person to touch the key was the person who killed Teresa Halbach.
HALBACH'S VEHICLE: The Netflix documentary gives the impression that only one officer was in charge of protecing the scene where Halbach's vehicle was found. The fact is that 5 officers took turns watching the vehicle. They include Deputy Peter O'Conner, Sergeant Orth, Lieutenant Hermann, Detective Remiker, and Sergeant Tyson. To a man, they state that nobody entered the vehicle prior to its transport to a garage in Madison. The vehicle was locked when found by Pam Sturm and her daughter Nikole, and it remained locked until two days later when investigators opened the vehicle for forensic analysis.
The defense initimated that Avery's blood was planted in the vehicle before it was discovered on the Avery compound. The problem with that theory is that it flies in the face of their claim that the police did not murder Teresa Halbach. Buting and Strang wanted it both ways, but reality came back to bite them. The vehicle was covered in yard debris so that it wouldn't be discovered, yet wouldn't the conspirators have wanted the vehicle to be found? If you're going to pin the blame on Avery, you want that vehicle to be in plain sight, yet the car is covered and the license plates are removed.
HALBACH'S BONES: The theory put forth by the defense at trial was that Teresa was murdered and burned at an unknown location. Her bones are then broken up, placed in a burn barrel found on Janda's property, the small bones are deposited on Avery's property, the larger bones are left in the burn barrel, and that barrel is returned to Janda's property. Where to begin? Mythical conspirators somehow were able to place bones and burn Halbach's cell phone/palm pilot/digital camera in Avery's burn barrel without Avery seeing a darn thing. These conspirators also play psychic by knowing that they are going to have to consume Teresa's body in a large fire because in a few hours, Avery will be setting a large fire on his property.
These conspirators were also able to return the Janda burn barrel without Avery or any member of the Janda clan witnessing the return of this stolen item. The fact that fragments from every single bone beneath the neck were found in Avery's fire pit, indicates that this pit is where Teresa's body was burned. This rules out other potential burn sites and points the finger at Steven Avery as being the individual who placed the larger bones in his sister's burn barrel. The quarry issue was proven to be utter nonsense at trial. Dr. Eisenberg, Dr. Fairgrieve, and Les McCurdy from the FBI's DNA lab all testified that the bones found at the quarry could not be positively identified as being human.
HALBACH'S DNA ON BULLET FRAGMENT: The defense argued that since no bullet fragment with Halbach's DNA on it was found in the garage during prior searches, the fragment was planted by law enforcement. The testimony indicates that prior searches did not include the moving of items in that cluttered garage. The discovery of the bullet fragment involved an investigator moving several items and getting on his hands and knees prior to finding the bullet fragment. As is briefly shown in the NetFlix documentary, there was a 3-4 foot area in that garage that lit up like a Christmas tree when sprayed with Luminal. This test did not detect blood, but bleach.
On the day of the murders, Brenden Dassey's mother asked him why there were bleach stains on his clothing. Brenden told her he was helping his uncle clean the garage. This is just one of many examples of suspects in this case exhibiting a "consciousness of guilt." This is similar to Avery attempting to create an alibi by calling Halbach's employer at 4:35 PM and stating that Teresa had not yet arrived for her photo session. How conspirators could place Halbach's DNA on a bullet fragment that was sourced to Avery's .22 rifle is its own form of science fiction.
