A 2,000-word critical review and case for why this documentary series is essential viewing

When Making a Murderer exploded onto Netflix in December 2015, it didn’t just become a documentary phenomenon; it became a cultural earthquake. Within weeks, Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey were household names, petitions to free them gathered millions of signatures, and the words “Manitowoc County” became shorthand for alleged American judicial corruption. The 10-part series, directed by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, painted an almost airtight picture of two men railroaded by a vengeful police department after Avery’s $36 million civil lawsuit threatened to expose decades of misconduct.

Eight years later, Candace Owens and The Daily Wire released Convicting a Murderer, a 10-episode rebuttal series that premiered on their platform in September 2023 before arriving on Netflix in late 2024. Directed by Shawn Rech (the filmmaker behind A Murder in the Mansion and White Boy), the series is unapologetically positioned as the “untold story” and the evidence Ricciardi and Demos deliberately left out. Many dismissed it on sight as right-wing propaganda designed to own the libs who cried over Brendan Dassey’s confession. That knee-jerk reaction is understandable, but it is also wrong.

Convicting a Murderer is not a perfect series. It has clear ideological leanings, occasional tonal inconsistencies, and a few moments that feel more like podcast than prestige documentary. Yet it is one of the most important pieces of true-crime counter-narrative ever made, not because it conclusively “proves” Avery and Dassey are guilty, but because it ruthlessly exposes how selective editing, narrative framing, and the omission of inconvenient facts can manufacture national outrage. In an age when documentaries increasingly function as advocacy first and journalism second, Convicting a Murderer is a brutal reminder that every story has two sides, and sometimes the side you weren’t shown is the one that matters most.

1. What Making a Murderer Chose Not to Tell You

The genius of Making a Murderer was its laser-focused narrative: Steven Avery, wrongfully imprisoned for 18 years for a sexual assault he didn’t commit, emerges in 2003, sues the county that stole his life, and then, just as he’s about to win tens of millions, suddenly graduates to brutal murder. The implication was unmistakable: Manitowoc County framed him again.

Convicting a Murderer spends its first three episodes systematically dismantling that implication by presenting evidence the original series mentioned only in passing or omitted entirely:

• Avery’s long history of violent and sexual crimes that predate the 1985 wrongful conviction (including holding a cousin at gunpoint and pouring gas on her cat and throwing it into a fire).
• Multiple women, including his own nieces, who came forward with allegations of rape and domestic abuse (allegations the Netflix series never explored).
• The fact that Avery repeatedly called AutoTrader the day of Teresa Halbach’s murder specifically requesting her, even though Making a Murderer implied the magazine randomly sent her.
• Brendan Dassey’s multiple confessions (not just the famous “some of it I wasn’t there for” interrogation), including phone calls to his mother where he admits involvement and later confessions ruled voluntary by state and federal courts.
• The deleted voicemail evidence: Halbach’s phone records show someone deleted messages from her phone after she was already dead, strongly implying the murderer had possession of it.
• The mountain of physical evidence: Avery’s blood in Halbach’s RAV4 (with EDTA testing coming back negative for planting), his DNA on the hood latch, Halbach’s DNA on a bullet in his garage, her burned remains in his fire pit, and the miraculous discovery of her car key in his bedroom after police had already searched it multiple times.

Taken in isolation, any one of these could be explained away by a skilled defense attorney (or a compelling documentary). Taken together, they form a case that is, at the very least, far stronger than Making a Murderer ever admitted.

2. The Power of Omission

The most damning achievement of Convicting a Murderer is not that it presents new evidence (almost everything was in the original trial record), but that it proves how easily a narrative can be shaped by simply choosing what not to show.

When Making a Murderer introduced Ken Kratz, the prosecutor, he was portrayed as a sleazy, pill-popping sex pest who held a press conference spilling salacious details of Brendan Dassey’s confession just to poison the jury pool. Convicting a Murderer reveals the full context: Kratz’s press conference came after the defense had already gone on national television claiming Brendan had nothing to do with the crime and was being framed. Kratz was attempting (clumsily, perhaps) to counter that narrative before trial. The original series never mentioned the defense’s media blitz.

Similarly, Making a Murderer spent significant time on the infamous “blood vial with a hole in the lid” and the nurse’s note saying “do not give to law enforcement,” implying evidence planting. Convicting a Murderer shows the nurse testifying under oath that the note was her personal reminder because Avery’s blood had repeatedly tried to sue for his own blood in the 1985 case. The hole in the lid? Standard FBI protocol in 1995–1996 for EDTA testing. Again, this testimony existed in 2007; Ricciardi and Demos simply chose not to include it.

These are not minor details. They are load-bearing beams of the “framed by police” theory. Remove them, and the entire structure collapses.

3. Brendan Dassey: Tragedy, Not Innocence

Perhaps no part of Making a Murderer was more emotionally devastating than the portrayal of Brendan Dassey, the intellectually limited 16-year-old who appeared to confess only after hours of suggestive questioning. The interrogation footage is genuinely uncomfortable to watch, and the series masterfully positioned Brendan as the ultimate victim of coercive police tactics.

Convicting a Murderer does not deny the interrogation was aggressive. What it does is present the confessions most viewers never knew existed:

• Brendan confessing to his mother on a recorded prison phone call, with no investigators present.
• Brendan leading police to the exact location where Halbach’s license plates were recovered.
• Brendan drawing detailed pictures of the crime scene that matched physical evidence.
• Multiple appeals courts (including a 2018 en banc 7th Circuit decision) ruling that Brendan’s confession was voluntary under the law.

None of this proves Brendan is a remorseless killer. It does prove that the black-and-white narrative of “mentally disabled child coerced into false confession” is, at best, incomplete.

4. The Filmmakers Respond — Or Don’t

One of the most fascinating elements of Convicting a Murderer is its attempt to confront Ricciardi and Demos directly. Shawn Rech repeatedly reaches out for comment. They decline to participate, then release a statement accusing the new series of “harassment” and “misrepresentation.” Yet when Rech fact-checks their public claims (such as their assertion that they showed “both sides”), the contradictions are stark.

In a 2016 interview, Moira Demos famously said, “We didn’t set out to convict or exonerate anyone. We set out to show the criminal justice system.” Convicting a Murderer juxtaposes that quote with montage after montage of one-sided editing, defense-lawyer hero shots, and ominous music over police testimony. The cognitive dissonance is jarring.

5. Where Convicting a Murderer Stumbles

To its credit, the series never claims to be neutral. Candace Owens appears on camera frequently, and her commentary is unmistakably conservative in tone. Some segments feel like Daily Wire talking points grafted onto a true-crime story (particularly the tangents about “woke media”). Episode 9’s heavy focus on Kathleen Zellner’s alleged financial motives and social-media grandstanding veers into tabloid territory.

The pacing also suffers in the back half. After the airtight first six episodes, the series begins to meander, spending excessive time on side characters and re-litigating old battles. A tighter 8-episode cut would have been devastating.

6. Why You Must Watch It — Even If You Hate It

Here’s the bottom line:

If you believe Making a Murderer is the unimpeachable truth, you need to watch Convicting a Murderer, because it will challenge you in ways few documentaries ever do. If you already believe Avery and Dassey are guilty, you need to watch it, because it will give you the receipts you’ve been missing for years. If you don’t care about this case at all, you still need to watch it, because it is the single best case study we have of how modern documentary filmmaking can function as high-end propaganda while winning Emmys for “journalism.”

In 2025, when trust in media is at historic lows, when “believe the experts” has become both rallying cry and punchline, Convicting a Murderer is mandatory viewing. Not because it has the final answer (it doesn’t), but because it proves how easy it is to manipulate decent, intelligent people by simply editing out everything that complicates the story you want to tell.

Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey may or may not be guilty. Teresa Halbach is definitely dead. Her story deserved better than to be reduced to a cause célèbre for one side or a punching bag for the other. Convicting a Murderer doesn’t fully right that wrong, but it comes closer than anything else we’ve seen.

Watch it. Argue with it. Hate it if you must. But don’t look away.

Because if a 10-hour Netflix series can convince millions of people that DNA evidence was planted by police with no plausible motive, using footage selectively edited over a decade, then the next viral “injustice” documentary might be about you.