Steven Avery’s lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, filed a motion in Wisconsin on Friday supporting Avery’s innocence claims in the murder case of Teresa Halbach.
Avery is serving a life sentence for the murder of Teresa Halbach in 2005, but recent witness evidence could clear Avery’s name and link his nephew, Bobby Dassey, to the case.
Brendan Dassey, Avery's other nephew, is also serving a life sentence for the murder of Halbach.
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Teresa Halbach was last seen alive on 31 October, 2005 and her mother reported her missing on 3 November.
Halbach’s RAV-4 car was found two days later at the Avery Salvage Yard and on the 8 November bones and teeth were found in a pit.
After being wrongfully convicted and then released for sexual assault and attempted murder in a different and unrelated case, Avery was convicted for the murder of photographer Halbach in 2007.
Avery is currently incarcerated at Fox Lake Correctional Institution after being sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. His life and court cases were covered in the hit Netflix true crime documentary series Making a Murderer.
Zellner, who has been leading Avery’s fight for freedom, filed a motion stating that a tow truck driver named Thomas Buresh came forward on 10 May. Buresh said that he witnessed Bobby Dassey driving Halbach’s RAV-4 in the days after her death.
Another person was spotted in the passenger seat alongside Dassey however Buresh has claimed that the second person was not Avery.
Zellner, who is fighting to get her client a new trial, ‘believes this witness is very important in adding to the growing evidence of Bobby Dassey’s involvement in the Halbach murder,’ Patch reports.
Buresh signed an affidavit this week, swearing under oath that he is telling the truth about what he saw.
Zellner’s motion tells the Wisconsin judge handling Avery’s petition, ‘that Mr. Thomas Buresh corroborates the previously filed affidavit of Thomas Sowinski that Bobby Dassey was driving the RAV-4 vehicle of Teresa Halbach on Friday night, Nov. 4, or early Saturday morning, after her disappearance on Oct. 31, 2005.’
According to Brush’s affidavit filed on Friday (26 May), Buresh worked as a self-employed repossession agent in 2005 and on the night of Friday, 4 November, 2005 he was driving his tow truck looking to repossess a vehicle in Larrabee, Wisconsin, in the area of Highway 147 and County Road Q in the rural area of Manitowoc County. This site is in proximity to the Avery Salvage property and the Josh Radandt gravel pits.
Radandt owned the quarry located opposite the Avery family’s auto salvage yards, and it is one of three places where Halbach’s remains were found.
“I noticed a vehicle in the Park N Ride on Highways 147 and 43 that had just struck a deer and had a broken headlight. I gave the driver a roll of duct tape to repair the car,” Buresh has claimed.
He kept driving and eventually made a wrong turn which took him south on County Road Q.
"After I realized my mistake, I turned around and was heading back north," Buresh testified in his affidavit.
"As I was heading back north, I noticed a RAV4 driving south on County Road Q. The RAV4 turned left off of County Road Q after it passed me.”
Buresh was able to see the occupants in the RAV-4 because his tow truck’s bright lights beamed inside of it.
"I noticed the RAV4 because it was unusual to see any other cars out on the road at that time of night."
While incarcerated on a domestic battery charge in the Brown County Jail in November 2006, Buresh tried to tell a detective about the information he had regarding Halbach’s case ‘but was ignored’.
Topics: True Crime, US News
Gregory Robinson