Steven Avery Exonerated, Then Killer
In 1985, a Wisconsin man named Steven Avery was convicted of sexually assaulting and attempting to murder jogger Penny Beerntsen on a Lake Michigan beach, and he spent 18 years in prison before new DNA testing in 2002 proved another man, Gregory Allen, committed the crime. Avery walked free in 2003 and became a symbol of wrongful convictions after his exoneration.
In October 2005, two years after his release, photographer Teresa Halbach vanished after visiting Avery's family auto salvage yard, and investigators later found her car and burned bone fragments on the property. Avery was arrested, and in 2007, a Wisconsin jury convicted him of first-degree intentional homicide and illegal possession of a firearm in Halbach's death, sending him back to prison for life.