CH115: Science of Crime

Steven Avery served as an easy scapegoat for a deputy with a personal vendetta. The Avery family, designated outsiders in their town, marked him from birth as someone who was a delinquent. This, coupled with his repeated criminal offenses such as robbery, burning his cat for which he received time, and most importantly, pulling a gun on the deputy sheriff’s wife, marked him as a target whom the sheriff’s department and general population would be extremely unsympathetic towards.

Avery appeared to be immediately implicated in the crime even when there was no evidence against him. The victim, Penny Beernsten, was instantly manipulated into believing wholeheartedly that Avery was the culprit by the sheriff on duty. When the sheriff arrived at the scene and received no more than a few details regarding the assailant, she implicated Avery based on prejudices against his family. The sheriff also happened to be friends with Beernsten, making this information all the more reliable to her. From this point on, the investigation was contaminated. 

The police continued to push the narrative of Avery’s guilt even after multiple solid alibis were produced. They went as far as to create a forensic sketch based on a previous picture of Avery rather than details the victim had provided. It should be noted that immediately following the crime, Beernsten described her assailant’s eye color and height as vastly different from Avery’s. Despite this, after being shown photos of Avery presented as a possible suspect, when it came to a lineup identification, she identified Avery without trouble and with absolute certainty. 

This type of distortion in memory is much too similar to the Snyder case and is a result of poor police practices. If the police had not previously shown images of Avery to Beernsten or conducted a more thorough investigation into potential suspects, perhaps she would have been able to identify her assailant. Thompson, the true culprit, was repeatedly ignored by the sheriff’s department despite the fact that his possible guilt was presented directly to the sheriff’s deputy. This was likely due to the deputy sheriff’s prejudice against Avery due to his altercation with his wife. As such, the deputy sheriff should have been removed from this case entirely to avoid bias. (372)

Steven Avery was a victim of the justice system. His family did not fit into the norm of the town, they had been outcasted their whole lives, and it was clear from the start that he was doomed. He had had a few misdemeanors throughout his life and the police had wanted him locked up from the onset.

When Penny Beernsten described her attacker, Steven Avery did not fit the description at all, however, Judy Dvorak claimed it did. She had  Chief Deputy Eugene Kusche make a composite drawing from Avery’s old jail records, rather than making one from the man Beernsten described. By showing this image to Penny Bernstenen they caused a commission bias in the lineup as the only man she had seen before was Steven Avery, causing him to stand out the most. Had this picture not been shown to Penny, I do not believe the verdict would have been the same. This case reminded me of the one we talked about in class. A news anchor was wrongfully committed due to an erroneous eyewitness testimony, where the victim had mistaken her attacker for the man she was watching on TV at the time of the incident. This proves how vital it is to not base the verdict solely on an eyewitness testimony, because as we have learned humans are not always as good at facial recognition as we may think, and many different circumstances can alter memories of what exactly happened. 

 The local law enforcement handled this case completely unprofessionally by planting the idea of Steven Avery into the victim’s head while turning a blind eye to all signs that pointed elsewhere. I was appalled by the way this was handled. When Avery was first arrested the Sheriff told him “I got you now,” and from there ignored any evidence that could have proven his innocence. Throughout the case, several people came forth as eyewitnesses proving that they were with Avery at the time of the incident, and yet, the cops continued to target him. They not only put an innocent man in prison, but they allowed a criminal to walk free for another 18 years, empowering him to commit more crimes. 

(Word count 366)

Steven Avery was wrongfully convicted for sexual assault in 1985, and served 18-years in prison for this conviction. One of the leading reasons for this wrongful conviction was eyewitness misidentification. Steven Avery had a criminal record and he was disliked by many people in his neighborhood including the deputy chief’s wife. When the chief was informed of this case he immediately named Steven Avery as his number 1 suspect. This in itself was odd, but what made this even stranger is the fact that the chief deputy took an extreme involvement in this case. However I’d like to focus on the “mistakes” made by the sheriff department that led to this eyewitness misidentification. 

In general eyewitness misidentification is often caused by several factors such as exposure to a suspect before a police lineup, suggestibility of who the police might have as their primary suspect, and human ability to remember faces in the event of an emotional situation.

The first “mistake” was the composite drawing. This drawing was supposedly drawn via the description of the victim, however the sketch oddly resembles Steven Avery’s mug shot from a couple years back. When the sketch artist was asked if he had access to this mug shot he claimed he had not seen it and didn’t have access, when in fact he did have access. The exposure to the sketch resembling Steven’s mugshots gave the victim misinformation of what she thought the perpetrator looked like. This in turn created a preconceived notion for the victim of what the perpetrator would look like during the line up. When the victim was presented with the line up, she selected Steven Avery who did not resemble entirely what he looked like in his earlier mugshot. Another important note is that Steven didn’t resemble the victims’ original description of eye color, build and length of hair that is available in the reports. 

At the time of the case there was no physical evidence that suggested that Stephen was the perpetrator, in fact Steven had at least 20 eyewitness accounts that claimed to be with him during the time of the crime. In this case the misidentification could have been avoided first by having the victim not be exposed to the artist’s erroneous sketch, and second by not being informed of who had been the primary suspect in this case. (391)

It was any ordinary morning on campus, I walked back to my dorm from my Psych class and then headed on my unexpected adventure. As I started my stroll down the steps to Mayflower Hill Drive, I was met with a cool breeze and the passing of many faces. The campus sounds filled my ears as I caught small fragments of people’s conversations when they passed or heard classes in session through the cracked windows. 

As I made it further and further from campus, these sounds vanished, and I was completely surrounded by open fields and trees or the occasional pass of a car or shuttle. Once my mind was not crowded with noise and was only filled with the stubble hum of cicadas in the tall grass, I was able to process where I might be headed. What did this sight look like? Was I about to see a dead body? Should I be worried that I’m walking here alone?

I soon made my way around a small bend in the road and the sight revealed itself to me. It seemed to be two generator-type boxes gated off by a metal rail in a small clearing from the woods. I was immediately confused by where these coordinates had led me, was I in the right place? Was I really standing where someone had been brutally murdered? 

As these thoughts continued to spiral in my mind, I walked over behind the generator and saw something that made my stomach drop slightly. A set of steep stairs leading down to a wooded area with graffiti reading “choke” two times on the side of the wall. Did a killer write this? Is this where they pushed their victim to the death? My mind continued to race with questions about where I was standing and fear started to creep in. When I continued to look around, I realized this would be a perfect place to commit a crime. It is secluded enough where there are plenty of opportunities to hide a body or violently murder a person, but still in plain sight of cars and buses that pass entering campus. No one would truly know if something mysterious occurred right at this very spot. 

The question still remains nonetheless, what happened at 270 Mayflower Hill Drive and why was I led there?  

Word count: 389

My mind rushed as I exited the parking lot behind the senior apartments and headed for Rice Rips Road. Thoughts filled with all the possibilities of what I would find at the location of the rather cryptid coordinates. Would it be an old, abandoned building that had been lost to time or maybe an empty lot at the side of the road? My brain halted as I arrived at the unpaved gate at the start of a gravel path.

Upon arrival, the thing that caught my attention was that the location did not look like the scene of a crime, but it felt like one. I felt an overwhelming feeling of emptiness and uneasiness as I stepped out of the car. The coordinates led me to a place that was less than five minutes away from Colby’s lively campus, yet it was almost completely silent. All that I could hear from the entrance was the sound of rushing water that came from the large, dark wooded pipe. As I walked toward the large concrete structure that had been weathered by the rain, I heard the movement of gravel under my feet.

On one side of the concrete structure was a winding river with two men fishing, on the other side was the wooden pipe. Surrounding everything was some thick woods. As I got closer to the large structure my feeling of unease grew. Once I got close enough, I noticed four men working in the structure, I spoke to them, making sure I was not intruding on their work. To be courteous of the workers and their jobs, I took some quick photos before leaving without disturbing anything.

As I was leaving my mind began to bustle again with what could have happened in that place. Had someone fallen into the river and drowned or fallen from the top of the structure? Or could it have been something I can’t even imagine?

(323)

As I attempted to make my way towards an unknown set of coordinates I passed a storage facility, drove through a neighborhood of single-family homes, and crossed a railroad track.  As I got closer, I couldn’t help but notice a massive wooden pipe that snaked beneath the road and into the woods as far as I could see, becoming more overgrown along the way. When my GPS told me to turn right without sharing a street name, I was confused yet turned down the dirt path. After parking near a yellow gate, I continued on. 

As I walked, the large pipe I’d seen earlier continued beside me. Now that I was next to it, I could see that it was taller than me, held together by metal wires with wooden supports, and was dripping water frequently. I inferred that it must be an old water pipe. I also couldn’t help but think that despite seeing many houses along the way, there were no longer any in sight and the only sounds were the birds. 

As I continued the pipe remained alongside me. Eventually, I reached a clearing where I could see a tall but not particularly large gray brick building with dusty green windows and masses of power lines running to it. The words “Central Maine Power Co.” were engraved near the top. Next to the building I saw a large concrete structure I originally thought was a dam. 

As I surveyed the area, I noticed some workers. They shared that the large gray structure was not just a dam but a reservoir. This reservoir fed water through a drain into a turbine in the gray building, which was a power station. 

Thinking about crime, I glanced back at the reservoir and thought of how easy it would be for someone to fall in. That is when I noticed a small railing covering only part of the reservoir. I couldn’t help but wonder if this had been installed as a precaution or a reaction to a tragedy that had happened here previously. 

If someone had fallen into the reservoir, what happened to them? Did they become sucked into the drain of the reservoir? Would they have been dragged through that massive pipe? There was also a nearby river. Is that where the entrance to the pipe is? Is that where something that fell into the reservoir would be found? (399)