Making a Murderer ’s Steven Avery Tests Positive for Coronavirus: 'He Will Fully Recover'

Steven Avery, whose murder trial was made famous in the hit 2015 Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer, has contracted novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

"Steven Avery has tested positive for COVID-19, and is confined to his cell. But @SandyGreenman reports he only had short-lived symptoms & is in good spirits. 🙏🏼 for speedy recovery and quick justice #FreeStevenAvery," tweeted the former criminal defense attorney for Avery, Jerome Buting, on Tuesday.

Since then, Avery's current attorney Kathleen Zellner, who is currently trying to exonerate Avery for the 2005 murder of photographer Teresa Halbach, also confirmed his illness.

"It is true that Steven Avery has tested positive for the COVID-19 virus," Zellner wrote on Twitter, before adding that "he will fully recover."

"The bigger threat to him is whether the COA will cure the disease that caused him to be wrongfully convicted," she wrote.

Steven Avery

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In September 2019, documentary filmmakers reportedly claimed a Wisconsin inmate confessed to killing Halbach.

While the director of the upcoming documentary series Convicting a Murderer said his crew received the alleged confession during filming, Zellner said at the time that the confession she received is "worthless unless it is corroborated.”

Zellner joined Avery’s team after part 1 of Making a Murderer premiered and became a key character in part 2.

“I have one goal,” she says in part 2, “and that’s to overturn the conviction of Steven Avery.”

In Sept. 2019, Zellner and her team posted a $100,000 reward for information leading to the “arrest and conviction of the real killer of Teresa Halbach,” it said.

Morry Gash/AP Steven Avery

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Premiering in 2020, Convicting A Murderer is a 10-part series highlighting elements of the case that weren’t covered by the original series, Making a Murderer, which became a worldwide sensation when the first 10 episodes were released in December 2015, director Shawn Rech told Newsweek previously.

“I watched Making a Murderer, like tens of millions of others,” Rech said. “After watching the series I was angry with law enforcement, and even embarrassed as an American because of what appeared to have happened to Steven and Brendan. But after doing a little bit of follow-up research I learned that not only did I not have the whole story, but I was misled by the series. And I’m saying this as a fan, not as an established documentary filmmaker.”

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Viewers were drawn in by the mystery surrounding Halbach’s death – especially since she was last seen alive on Avery’s property in Wisconsin, which incited feverish debate over his guilt or innocence.

Fans of the series — which was dismissed by prosecutors and Halbach’s family as exploitative and one-sided — zeroed in on longstanding accusations of planted evidence, a coerced confession and a coverup.

There was also the fact that Avery had been wrongfully convicted of a sexual assault and attempted murder in 1985.

After he was exonerated, he was released from prison in 2003, after serving 18 years of a 20-year sentence. He filed a $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County.

He settled for a much smaller amount, but it left many wondering if he was being framed for Halbach’s murder as some sort of payback from the county.