The director of a follow-up series to Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” says a Wisconsin inmate has confessed to the murder of Teresa Halbach.
Shawn Rech, director of the upcoming docuseries “Convicting a Murderer,” confirmed the news in an interview with USA TODAY.
Rech declined to name the individual as he didn’t “want to get in trouble with law enforcement.”
Rech said the inmate in question initially spoke to the film crew, in the hopes of further incriminating Steven Avery, the man made famous by the Netflix show.
Avery, 57, and Brendan Dassey, 29, are serving life sentences for the 2005 murder of Halbach in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. They maintained their innocence on “Making a Murderer.”
“We set up a prison call to challenge (the inmate) and try and debunk his statements, and rather than support his statements, he abandoned them and confessed,” Rech said.
He says production began on the follow-up series 20 months ago and the film crew has been in contact with this individual for 18 months. The confession has not been verified by law enforcement.
Rech isn’t sure the confession will hold up, and he reiterated that they are still investigating it.
“On the ‘no’ side he’s a proven liar; he himself has proven he’s a liar,” Rech said. “He’s a convicted felon. On the ‘possibly’ side, he’s a convicted murderer in the state of Wisconsin, he was free at the time of (Halbach’s) murder, so I don’t know.”
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“I probably lean toward ‘no,’ but I think it’s pretty important that it’s thoroughly investigated,” he added.
“Convicting a Murderer” is a 10-part documentary series that’s expected to come out on a to-be-determined streaming platform next year.
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