John Ferak

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

MANITOWOC - To the dismay of legions of “Making a Murderer” followers, the post-conviction murder case of Steven Avery remains in a lull — and it may stay that way for a few more months.

It remains unclear whether the testing on nine pieces of evidence from the 2005 Teresa Halbach murder is under way, or whether the items are backlogged, which is common occurrence at laboratories.

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Avery's attorney, Kathleen Zellner, of suburban Chicago has told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin that the testing should wrap-up by March. The slow pace has dampened the spirits of some Avery supporters.

“Slowly beginning to lose hope guys,” one person recently commented on the social media website Reddit. “Someone give me a pep talk! All seriousness, does anyone feel this case has stagnated in a big way and not for the good? Thought she had what she needed? Also I am sure some of the results would be back by now. I can’t help but feel a slide in the confidence levels. All in all my gut feeling is telling me this will not be resolved. Does anyone else feel this way?”

Eventually, the independent lab tests will be known to both Zellner and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, whose lawyers worked with Zellner to facilitate the testing. In court filings last August, Zellner made it clear she intends to file her highly anticipated post-conviction motion aiming to prove Avery's innocence after the results are available.

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In two of Zellner's most high-profile exonerations — Ryan Ferguson of Missouri and Kevin Fox of Illinois — she has focused on overlooked, obscure scientific evidence. She has also focused on uncovering evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, mainly exculpatory evidence that was concealed from the defense.

In all likelihood, the actions of special prosecutor Ken Kratz will be at the forefront of Zellner's efforts to win a new trial and get Avery's 2007 murder conviction thrown out.

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin has identified a number of areas where Zellner’s eventual post-conviction motion may focus.

Voicemail deletions

One of the most baffling mysteries surrounding Halbach's disappearance concerns the cryptic deletion of several voicemail messages from her cellphone. A number of saved messages were deleted between the time Halbach vanished on Oct. 31, 2005 and the morning of Nov. 2, the day before her mother reported her missing. The voicemail deletions are paramount to Avery's claims of innocence. Unraveling that mystery may shed new light on the events leading up to Halbach's murder.

In addition, Zellner aims to prove that the time frame of Halbach's murder and the phone records presented by Kratz to convict Avery were inaccurate and flawed. Zellner suspects Halbach left Avery salvage around 2:30 p.m. and was driving closer to the Whitelaw area at the time she was harmed.

"Ms. Halbach disappeared after she completed her assignment and left the Avery salvage yard," Zellner wrote in last year's legal briefs. "Her last call-forwarded message at 2:41 p.m. occurred when her cellphone was still powered on and registered. That call pinged off the Whitelaw Tower, which was approximately 13.1 miles from the Avery Salvage Yard."

Flyover video

One of the most important events in the sequence of the Teresa Halbach investigation was a police flyover on Friday afternoon, Nov. 4, 2005. The flyover filmed the Avery Salvage Yard and the surrounding terrain. The next morning, volunteer searcher Pam Sturm notified Calumet County that she found Halbach's RAV4 on the perimeter of Avery salvage. The contents of the flyover video, however, prompted more questions than answers.

The flyover, conducted by former Calumet County Sheriff Jerry Pagel and investigator Wendy Baldwin, may have lasted two to three hours, police reports reflect. However, the video supplied to Avery's trial lawyers only contained a few minutes of footage. The videotape, however, appears to be heavily edited. For instance, Baldwin's videotaping inexplicably pans away from the perimeter of Avery salvage where Halbach's vehicle was recovered the next morning. People who question the video's authenticity have theorized that Calumet's original, unedited video contained footage showing whether or not Halbach's RAV4 was in fact parked on Avery's property. The absence of the RAV4 in the flyover video,would have raised suspicion from Avery's trial attorneys giving them solid proof somebody was out to frame Avery for Halbach's disappearance.

Zellner contends that Halbach's RAV4 was moved onto Avery's property using the conveyor road on Joshua Radandt's adjacent quarry under the cloak of darkness, once Baldwin and Pagel finished their flyover. Halbach's vehicle is believed to have sustained front-end damage while it was towed or pulled there. A broken blinker light was recovered from inside the cargo area. The front bumper may have been torn by one of the metal gates at the quarries. During Avery's trial, Kratz downplayed the significance of the vehicle damage.

County property

One of the most underplayed events occurred away from the Avery Salvage Yard — the recovery of various pelvic bones at the Manitowoc County-owned gravel pits located off Highway Q. The pelvic bones were charred. They showed distinct markings indicating they were cut. However, Kratz suggested to the jury that the bones might not even be human, contradicting testimony from his own expert witness, state anthropologist Leslie Eisenberg, who examined the pelvic bones. At Avery's trial, Avery's lawyers Dean Strang and Jerry Buting mistakenly believed the pelvic bones were found at the large mass of nearby quarries owned by Joshua Radandt, also southwest of Avery's land.

However, more precise police reports show the pelvic bones were recovered from Manitowoc County's land. Zellner has also recognized that several Calumet investigators were spending an inordinate amount of time over the course of several days scouring for evidence of Halbach's murder and dismemberment in and around these quarries, including Radandt's property.

Calumet Sheriff's Lt. Kelly Sippel's regular presence around these off-site quarries has drawn Zellner's attention. Reports of his activities, though vague and short, indicate he was aware of the recovery of the charred pelvic bones and the recovery of suspicious burnt material at a burn barrel kept by the Radandt deer camp property. On Nov. 10, 2005 — the day after Avery was taken into custody — Sippel threatened to arrest a Green Bay television camera man who was positioned south of Avery's property in the vicinity of the quarries. “I informed (the cameraman) the road that he was coming off of was posted as closed and that another breach like that would result in his arrest,” Sippel wrote in his report. “Searching continued throughout the day with several sites being located in a county quarry to the southwest. These sites were marked and GPS was taken …”

Blood from quarry

Calumet Sgt. Bill Tyson and Ron Ebben of the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation were involved in the recovery of bloody clues that remain a huge forensic mystery to this day.

Their observations raise the possibility that Halbach was harmed or dismembered at one of the quarries south of Avery’s. They collected fresh blood stains within the gravel and a stained rag of "possible blood or rust stains," their reports show. Significantly, the blood stains that were recovered from the quarry contained a full DNA profile for a male, not a match for Steven Avery, the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory determined.

Law enforcement’s interest in a seldom-traveled road nearly a half-mile from Avery's has raised the possibility that Halbach’s RAV4 was found nearby, and that her body was initially buried, only to be dug up and dismembered at one of the quarries.

Bolstering that scenario, cadaver and tracking dogs were far more intense along Kuss Road and the nearby quarries than at Avery’s trailer where Kratz suggested the brutal killing occurred. Kratz downplayed evidence that showed the tracking dogs were preoccupied with a number of sites that weren't near Avery's trailer and burn pile pit. Reports show that one of bloodhounds borrowed from the Kaukauna Police Department tracked Halbach's scent to a concrete stoop at the south entry door of a red house trailer that was part of the Radandt deer camp property. Dogs also tracked Halbach's scent to the cul-de-sac at the end of Kuss Road, reports show.

Manitowoc and Calumet deputies spent an entire day, Nov. 7, 2005, scouring an area near the end of Kuss Road that retired Manitowoc County Sheriff's deputy Mike Bushman suspected was a possible grave. The wooded area, near the Radandt quarry, drew heightened interest from one of the bloodhounds following the scent of Halbach's shoes and also from one of the police cadaver dogs. Authorities wrote reports stating that the site had no connection to Halbach's disappearance. The following afternoon, Sippel and Manitowoc County Sgt. Jason Jost were involved in recovering two charred human bones near Avery's burn pit.

John Ferak of USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin: 920-993-7115 or jferak@gannett.com; on Twitter @johnferak