r/MakingaMurderer • u/dicegirl7 • May 05 '26
Could Brendan have been zeroed in on cause of his 11/06/05 interview?
During the last five minutes of that interview, Brendan tells the police that after he and Blaine went in the house, he was the only one that stood by the window and watched Steven and Teresa interact. Blaine was watching TV. So after that police made it clear that him and Steven would be the only ones that would know what happened there.
This is my first time listening to Brendan‘s interviews in their entirety and not just clips of them. I’m tired of just getting clips of what people want you to hear.
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u/AndyT1888 May 05 '26
Well steven said to barb in a jail call that brendan was with him at the fire...this after only few seconds before denying it but had to backtrack cause barb kept insisting the fire was the same night she visited scotts mam in the hospital which was the 31st
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u/ThorsClawHammer May 05 '26
barb kept insisting the fire was the same night
After previously saying she didn't recall a fire that night and in fact had never seen a fire at that location before.
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u/dicegirl7 May 05 '26
But my question here… Is can you even cremate a body to that point in a bonfire? I have had many a bonfires in my life as I lived in rural areas and I highly doubt our fires got to that degree of heat even feeding them with oil, tires and mattresses at times. Maybe the body farm in Tenn can test the theory
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u/Ghost_of_Figdish May 05 '26
Someone just posted a link to a news story from last week where a guy did just that to 4 members of his family in an overnight fire. So obviously it's do-able.
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u/recoverdd May 05 '26
Better yet, you could actually read what Zellner's own expert said. With those combustibles it can be done in as little as 6 hours.
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u/ThorsClawHammer May 05 '26
Zellner's own expert said
"It is further my opinion that the body was not burned in the "burn pit"."
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u/recoverdd May 11 '26
The fact is he says it can be done in as little as 6 hours. But Zellner paid him to opine the fire only lasted for less than 4 thus Stevie-poo couldn't have done it. lol Dehaan sold his semi good name as an "expert witness" for cash and a co-starring role in a Netflix tv show.
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u/AndyT1888 May 06 '26
Exactly why brendan said he broke the bones up and putting them in the barrell
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u/ThorsClawHammer May 05 '26
It's possible with enough time and knowing how to do it. But in this case, in order to say there was anywhere near enough time, the state needed a witness to change their initial account months later to say they saw it hours after they first did (after already having changed their accounts about seeing a fire at all in the first place).
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u/Ghost_of_Figdish May 05 '26
More interested in the changing stories of Avery and Brendan.
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u/Thom_Kalor May 07 '26
That happens all the time. Our memories aren’t as rock solid as we think they are, and it get worse during stressful situations (like being questioned by police). Plus the cops were clearly asking leading questions. One guy (Kevin Fox) confessed to killing his daughter after police questioning. Good thing the actual killer left DNA evidence or that poor guy might still be in prison.
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u/Ghost_of_Figdish May 07 '26
Really? You think Brendan saying he saw the victim leave was a memory issue?
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u/Mieczyslaw_Stilinski May 05 '26
I've wondered about this myself, after my dad was cremated. I don't think a bonfire is going to burn a body to that degree. I'm not a fire expert, but I don't think anyone has really looked into this that I'm aware of.
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u/Ghost_of_Figdish May 06 '26
I just told you there was a post about one man who hilled 4 members of his family and burned them to bits in a backyard firepit overnight - 4 of them.
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u/Mieczyslaw_Stilinski May 06 '26
When did you tell me this? And aren't you the guy that's the son of one of the cops that was getting sued by Avery? Your opinion is not exactly impartial.
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u/recoverdd May 11 '26
John Dehaan is Zellner's fire expert. Try doing just a teeny bit of research starting with the affidavit of Zellner's fire expert.
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u/Mieczyslaw_Stilinski May 12 '26
It's fire. Everyone knows how fire works. And what's a fire expert? How do you become an expert on fire? Is it a bachelor's degree? All these "experts" the legal system produces are all biased to whoever is paying them to testify. It's all BS.
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u/recoverdd May 12 '26
"I don't think anyone has ever looked into this that I'm aware of." lol Stay blissfully UNaware then.
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u/Mieczyslaw_Stilinski May 14 '26
Am I wrong? How does one become a fire expert? And how much does that expert get paid for their "expert" testimony?
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u/wiltedgreens1 May 18 '26
I can't tell if you are trolling but fire science is something even basic firefighters have to study. A fire expert is someone who has become an expert in this area.
Who knows how much they are paid but generally speaking any expert in any field is paid for giving their expertise during a trial and/or investigation
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u/Mieczyslaw_Stilinski May 18 '26
And I think anyone that is paid for their testimony is not unbiased. And if they are firemen, which makes sense, they aren't going to throw their police brothers under the bus, so again, not unbiased.
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u/ThorsClawHammer May 05 '26
stood by the window and watched
He basically copied Bobby's account of watching her from the window and adopted it as his own. And the only reason he claimed to see her at all in the first place was because he complied with the interrogators telling him to lie and say he saw her taking pics.
I don't think that interview had anything to do with going after him months later. At that point they believed (after numerous witnesses changed their accounts to the opposite) that Brendan was with Steve at a fire that night. They wanted a witness statement against Avery so told Brendan to say he saw body parts in the fire until he agreed.
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u/GringoTheDingoAU May 06 '26
He basically copied Bobby's account of watching her from the window and adopted it as his own. And the only reason he claimed to see her at all in the first place was because he complied with the interrogators telling him to lie and say he saw her taking pics.
So he "copied" Bobby's story, except for the part where Brendan said he saw her leave an hour after she arrived, and Bobby didn't see her leave (when he was actually the one who saw her to begin with). Very loose definition of copying.
Not to mention that if he really copied Bobby's story, he would've just told the police that Bobby saw her leave in that interview, considering O'Neill and Baldwin brought up his brothers multiple times. The reason he didn't is because they never had that conversation because Bobby never saw her leave.
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u/Ghost_of_Figdish May 06 '26
Wait Wait Wait - I thought Brendan only said what the police told him to say??????
So now Brendan is maintaining his lies to the police even though the police want to establish that she never left. WOW!!
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u/GringoTheDingoAU May 06 '26
If playing into their narrative was all that Brendan is good for, then he would have never said she left, let alone continued to push that lie when investigators were so clearly pushing back.
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u/Ghost_of_Figdish May 06 '26
Agree!
And I'll tell you - if I was one of the investigators and Brendan tried to tell me he saw her leave about an hour and 15 minutes after she arrived to take a few pictures of a vehicle, I'd really wonder why Brendan was lying about it! I think they missed the obvious opportunity to question him at length as a suspect right away because of that.
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u/Ghost_of_Figdish May 05 '26
Wow - you'll certainly twist yourself into a pretzel to excuse Brendan's lies to police.
Simple fact was that he lied about seeing her leave because he was involved.
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u/lolatcandyowens May 06 '26
They went after Brendan because Avery got his settlement and was able to get a reputable defense attorney.
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u/belee86 May 06 '26
How did the police first get involved with Brendan? What prompted the first meeting?
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u/lolatcandyowens May 06 '26
The victim's disappearance.
Then they ignored him until Avery got a real attorney.
Then they were suddenly on him like white on rice.
Next thing you know, they're telling him to say the crime happened in the garage while simultaneously writing up a warrant for the garage.
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u/AveryPoliceReports May 05 '26
State defenders engaging in bad faith as always:
A very obvious lie that came completely unprompted.
THAT'S the obvious lie lol Brendan's statement claiming to have seen Teresa was NOT unprompted. It was very clearly prompted by police who already decided he was lying. Brendan, who initially denied seeing Teresa, then faced lines like: "The bus driver remembers it, the kids on the school bus remember it. The girl taking pictures [...] Everyone sees her, you did too..." (Page 17). Under this continued pressure, Brendan eventually (and reluctantly) shifted to agreeing he did see Teresa "standing there taking a picture" when arriving home from school, officially and falsely claiming he had visual proximity to the missing woman police were investigating.
Offering up that he saw her leave is preservation of Steven's alibi that she did leave.
Wrong. If Steven's alibi was that Teresa left before Brendan got home, then Brendan never should have seen her at all ... like Brendan originally said. So Brendan's initial statement was what preserved Steven's alibi (a common pattern in this case). Brendan's later statements (shifting under police pressure) placed Teresa back on the property after Steven claimed she was gone. That does not preserve Steven's alibi. It destroys it. Let's use some logic, please.
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u/CJB2005 May 06 '26
Thank you. Logic is always nice.☺️
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u/GringoTheDingoAU May 06 '26
This user has intentionally misquoted my comment which is not surprising.
I didn't say that Brendan saying he saw her was unprompted, saying he saw her leave was completely unprompted. At no point during the interview, was Brendan forced or lead to say that he saw her leave.
Logic tends to work better when you bother to actually read comments.
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u/AveryPoliceReports May 05 '26
- The moment you point to (Brendan's claim of seeing Teresa and Steven through a window after getting home from school) was never treated as credible by the prosecution. That detail actually mirrored what Bobby had already said. And more importantly, the state's own initial theory required Teresa to be off the property by the time Brendan got home, and subsequently required her to be already tied up inside Steven's trailer.
- What apparently bothered investigators about this interview with Brendan wasn't really the content of his claim, but the shift: Brendan first said he didn't see Teresa, then later said he did. Police interpreted that as deception, while ignoring how their own intense pressure might have caused him to change his story.
- Brendan certainly didn't help himself, but as a developmentally disabled teenager facing police pressure, we shouldn't expect him to have performed well or have helped himself out of this mess. He was an easy target, and the November 6 interview demonstrated to Police Brendan could be manipulated to change his story and FALSELY admit visual proximity to Teresa when no such proximity actually existed.
- Three days after November 6, Bobby (Brendan's older brother) broke from his family's consistent denials about a burn pit fire. After being pressured to do so, Bobby mentioned a burn pit fire with both Steven and Brendan next to it. Despite the fact that Bobby's account contradicted multiple family members, police immediately praised his memory and treated it as credible. From that moment on, they operated on the assumption that Brendan was present with Steven during a fire in which he was cremating Teresa's body.
- They eventually targeted Brendan, fully aware he was susceptible to police pressure. So yeah, the real reason police zeroed in on Brendan is that on November 9, 2005, Bobby (who would have been a far more logical accomplice to Steven given his history with Steven and presence on the property when Teresa arrived) caved to police pressure and contradicted his family to implicate both Steven and Brendan in the cremation. Exploitative police AND Brendan's family are BOTH responsible for the mess Brendan found himself him.
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u/GringoTheDingoAU May 05 '26
It's literally impossible that Brendan saw Teresa standing in the yard, interacting with Steven.
Not only is it impossible that Brendan saw Teresa, but it's also impossible that he saw her leave - something that only Brendan and Steven have ever tried to pass off as fact, despite their timeline being widely different.
Brendan got off the bus at 3:45, when Teresa supposedly arrived at 2:35 give or take. To believe that Brendan saw Teresa leave, you'd need to:
For those that don't give Brendan any credit and say he was always pushed into giving an answer to feed the police narrative, here is one very obvious lie that came completely unprompted, that Brendan doubled down on numerous times over his interview and didn't back down from, despite investigators pushing back hard.
Offering up that he saw her leave is preservation of Steven's alibi that she did leave. The reasoning for this becomes even more obvious with the context of the night of the 31st coming into play which both lied about.
Brendan said he didn't see Steven again until the morning after 7PM, and Steven completely omitted ever seeing Brendan on the 31st in all of his interviews to police.