John Ferak, and Alison Dirr

Post Crescent

Steven Avery's attorney, Kathleen Zellner, filed an inch-thick motion in the Manitowoc County Clerk of Court's Office on Friday — and with it came more questions about how this case will unfold.

It's a document Zellner hopes will launch her client's eventual exoneration in the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach.

The filing comes more than seven months after Zellner issued a press release announcing that she was taking up Avery's defense, convinced that he had been wrongfully convicted of the crime.

RELATED: Zellner under microscope to free Avery

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Last week marked her first substantive court filing in an attempt to prove her theory that an abundance of evidence was planted by the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department to sabotage Avery's chances to win a $36 million civil rights lawsuit against the county arising from Avery's 1985 wrongful rape conviction.

Earlier in the day, the suburban Chicago lawyer filed a motion in the Wisconsin Court of Appeals to put on hold an appeal that Avery had filed without attorneys.

Zellner's ongoing efforts to free Avery will be featured in the second season of the Netflix docu-series "Making a Murderer," the first season of which spotlighted the plight of Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey.

Q: Will the case be assigned to the same circuit court judge that handled Avery’s trial?

No.

Avery’s case is currently assigned to Sheboygan County Circuit Court Judge Angela Sutkiewicz, according to the court record. His 2007 jury trial was handled by Manitowoc County Circuit Court Judge Patrick L. Willis, who retired in October 2012. Mark Rohrer, the Manitowoc County district attorney at the time of Halbach's murder, has since filled Willis' vacancy on the bench.

Q: What happens next in the circuit court case?

Avery’s attorneys are waiting on a state response to the motion Zellner filed Friday in Manitowoc County Circuit Court, according to Justin Scott, a spokesman for the Midwest Innocence Project where Zellner’s co-counsel, Tricia Bushnell, is the director.

"The state will have to decide if it wants to file a response and the court will wait for that before it makes any decision," he wrote in an email.

He said there is no deadline on that filing.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice, which is prosecuting the case, was unable to make an attorney available to discuss the timetable.

Q: What happens at the appeals court level?

On Friday, Zellner also filed a motion asking that an appeal that Avery filed without an attorney be put on indefinite hold. The appeals court will consider the motion — and any response received from the state — and issue a written decision, according to the office of the clerk of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.

Q: How do the Avery and Dassey appeals compare?

The efforts to overturn their convictions are on different paths.

Avery, now 54, is arguing in circuit court that there’s new evidence, or previously untested evidence, that proves his innocence.

Dassey, now 26, is arguing in federal court that his constitutional rights were violated. A federal judge in Milwaukee found this to be the case and overturned his conviction. The state of Wisconsin has yet to say what its next step will be.

TIMELINE: History of the Steven Avery case

RELATED: “Making a Murderer” coverage, archived stories and more

Q: Is the state Department of Justice handling the Avery case?

Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Thomas J. Fallon is listed as the special prosecutor on Avery’s circuit court case. Fallon and Assistant Attorney General Gregory M. Weber are listed as the attorneys on Avery’s appeals case in the motion Zellner filed on Friday.

Q: Did Zellner get specific about other suspects who may have committed the crime?

Friday's court filing by Zellner does not specifically name the person she suspects of killing Teresa Halbach. "In fairness, yeah, we're looking at multiple people, but we have narrowed it very dramatically," Zellner told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin at the Manitowoc County Courthouse. However, Zellner's court filing identified "Individual A" and "Individual B" as being allowed access to the Avery Salvage Yard property after law enforcement closed access to the public during the Nov. 5-12, 2005 probe targeting Steven Avery. Both "were untruthful in their police interviews," Zellner stated. "Mr. Avery will present his third party theory in his post-conviction petition that he will file once he obtains the new test results." Other investigative records in the Halbach murder case show that Individual A is Joshua Radandt, whose family owns the Radandt quarry directly behind the Avery Salvage Yard. Individual B is Ryan Hillegas, the ex-boyfriend of the murder victim, who grew up in Hilbert and had previously dated Halbach for about five years.

Q: Is Zellner seeking a new trial for Steven Avery in the death of Teresa Halbach?

Zellner has stressed in her social media posts on Twitter that she intends to prove who really killed Teresa Halbach. She has indicated in media interviews that she plans to uncover overwhelming proof of an alternative suspect, evidence that she will present in court. If she achieves her objective, she anticipates that the court will vacate Avery's murder conviction and that the Wisconsin Attorney General's Office will realize it makes no sense to retry Avery for the murder of Halbach — similar to Avery's 2003 DNA exoneration when DNA evidence excluded Avery for the 1985 rape of Penny Beerntsen, but instead the DNA came back as a match for Gregory Allen, a convicted sexual predator.

Q: What is the overall thrust of Zellner's legal argument on Avery's behalf?

Zellner contends that Halbach, a freelance photographer for Auto Trader magazine, left the Avery Salvage Yard alive on Halloween 2005, and that cellular phone records show Halbach's last call forwarded message bounced off a cell tower in Whitelaw, a tiny Manitowoc County village 13.1 miles away from Avery's business. Zellner contends that Halbach was probably slain by an intimate acquaintance. She has also argued the killer may be the same person who deleted several voice mail messages from Halbach's cellphone on the day she went missing and prior to Halbach being reported missing to law enforcement. During Avery's 2007 murder trial, special prosecutor Ken Kratz downplayed the fact that someone other than Avery deleted several voice mail messages from the victim's phone. According to Zellner's court filings, someone deleted 16 voice mail messages from Halbach's cellphone between Halloween, when Halbach vanished, and 7:02 a.m. Nov. 2, 2005, the day before Halbach's mother notified the Calumet County Sheriff's Department that her daughter was missing.

Q: What are some key pieces of evidence that Zellner wants to retest?

Foremost, Zellner wants to retest the blood stains found inside Halbach's RAV4. She also seeks the previously obtained fingerprints of Lt. James Lenk and Sgt. Andrew Colborn of the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department to compare with the unidentified fingerprints discovered on the victim's vehicle. She also wants to retest the DNA on the spare key to Halbach's RAV4 that Lenk and Colborn found in Avery's bedroom under suspicious circumstances. Zellner also wants to conduct DNA tests upon the RAV4's battery cable, the broken blinker light that was put into the cargo area, a lug wrench in Halbach's vehicle. the interior hood release, the metal prop bar that holds up the victim's hood, a pair of purple women's underwear found near a white trailer on the Avery property, and the victim's license plates that were found in an abandoned station wagon on the Avery property that had no windows.

Additionally, Zellner plans to determine the precise age of the blood stains found in the RAV4 back in November 2005 that were identified as fresh blood stains of Avery. Manitowoc County already had a vial of Avery's blood from around 1996. Blood in the cargo area of the RAV4 was reportedly that of Halbach. "One of the most compelling scientific facts pointing to planted blood evidence is that there was no mixture of Ms. Halbach and Mr. Avery's blood despite the state's claim that the bleeding Mr. Avery threw Ms. Halbach in the rear cargo area of her vehicle," Zellner wrote in her legal brief.

Q: What were the most unexpected aspects of Zellner's court filing from Friday?

Zellner revealed in court papers that Radandt and Hillegas made independent false statements to authorities during the early stages of the murder investigation, actions that now heighten suspicion toward both of them. Prior to the discovery of human bones at Avery's burn pit on the afternoon of Nov. 8, 2005, Radandt claimed he remembered seeing large flames coming from a fire in Avery's burn barrel behind Avery's garage back on Halloween. According to court records, Zellner's investigation debunked Radandt's version of events, calling his credibility into question. Zellner also introduced evidence that Hillegas used a fake name on at least one occasion to gain access to the Avery property. She also introduced Hillegas' phone records as evidence to show that Hillegas received 22 consecutive phone calls from unidentified law enforcement officials on Friday night, Nov. 4, 2005 — the same night Zellner said Halbach's RAV4 was moved from Radandt's quarry to the outer ridge of Avery salvage. Hillegas also "misrepresented that the victim's blinker light was broken months before and that she had made an insurance claim for it," Zellner wrote. The attorney suspects the front-end damage may have occurred when the RAV4 was relocated from the quarry to frame Avery for the murder.

John Ferak of USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin: 920-993-7115 or jferak@gannett.com; on Twitter @johnferak; Alison Dirr: 920-996-7266 or adirr@gannett.com; on Twitter @AlisonDirr