"Making A Murderer," the wildly popular Netflix series that chronicles the trials of convicted murderer Steven Avery, successfully shows that Avery's case should be reopened, but there are many more pressing cases that deserve to be re-examined, says Luis Bolaños, a private investigator who consults for and can be seen on a number of network and cable true-crime programs.
"I had so many people contact me and ask me to watch the series, so I dedicated 10 hours to watch this whole thing, and my first thought was, are you crazy? This is the case that they chose to highlight? Only because we've been working these cases on a national level for 10 years, and there are so many cases like this in our nation that deserve this kind of attention more so than this case," Bolaños tells Headlines & Global News. "At the end of the series, I don't know how anyone can tell you whether Mr. Avery is guilty or not. There's just not enough there to have a definitive opinion either way. However, there is more than enough to show that he deserves another trial."
One of the most blatantly bungled aspects of the Avery case occurred when a conflict of interest was seemingly ignored, or worse, actively violated. Avery, who had done 18 years in prison for an unrelated sexual assault before he was exonerated and released, later sued Manitowoc County, Wis., and due to that civil suit, a neighboring county took over the murder case to keep parties to Avery's suit against the county from actively involving themselves in the investigation into the murder of Teresa Halbach.
But that didn't stop Manitowoc Sheriff's deputies, namely Lt. James Lenk and Sgt. Andrew Colburn, from doing just that.
"I think the biggest thing that sticks out is the lack of concern for the conflict of interest that was declared," says Bolaños. "In order for somebody to walk into the crime scene, in theory, you have to walk up to the person that is handling the clipboard that has the crime log that documents everyone coming in and coming out. So even if you're a lowly patrol offer and you're tasked with documenting who comes in and who comes out and what time, and your supervisor, your boss, your sheriff, the captain of your station, the mayor, walks up to you, they need to sign in, and there should be a list associated with that of people that are not allowed to come in. In this case, people who were not allowed to come in would be people that the department had a conflict of interest declared. Well, everybody knew that, but they were still allowed entry. Why was that allowed to happen? Was he intimidated, was he allowed to let him in? Why did a normal thing that was supposed to happen, not happen? Why were they allowed entry? I think you could find that there was some friction there. There was an understanding for them to come in."
While cases like Long's and Banks' are a much higher priority than Avery's in Bolaños' expert opinion, he thinks the "Making A Murderer" phenomenon can be a constructive one.
"The series is a very positive window into what occurs in our justice system on a daily basis, and it's going to bring clarity and hopefully transparency to future cases when it comes to our system," says the investigator. "Unless these types of things happen to someone you know, a relative, somebody you care about, you're probably going to be blind to it unless it lands right at your footstep."
