Alison Dirr

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Attorneys for and against Steven Avery re-entered the spotlight in a major way this week.

"The prosecutor who helped secure two convictions for the gruesome murder of Teresa Halbach has written a new book and he's teamed up with one of the lead investigators on the case to fight back against a series they say misled the public into believing a lie," Crime Watch Daily correspondent Ana Garcia told her audience.

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Viewers should be angry at the filmmakers, not the justice system, former Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz said on the show. Avery, who remains in prison, is exactly where he belongs, Kratz said.

Investigator Tom Fassbender, was also featured in the show. He said the docu-series used facts but edited them in a way to "further the narrative" that Avery is innocent. He denied that Avery was set up.

Part 2 and Part 3 are available on YouTube.

On the defense side, one of Avery's attorneys Jerome Buting came out with his book, "Illusion of Justice: Inside 'Making a Murderer' and America's Broken System." He argues that the deck was stacked against Avery, writes Green Bay Press-Gazette reporter Doug Schneider in his review of the book, which was released Wednesday.

"For more than 300 pages after its opening description of a terrified Brendan Dassey being interrogated by police, a new book by one of Steven Avery's former defense lawyers strives to make the case that the pair were as good as convicted almost from the moment they became suspects in the 2005 murder of a photographer," Schneider writes.

In an excerpt posted by Entertainment Weekly, Buting criticizes Kratz and the investigation, including what he characterizes as a lack of focus on her former boyfriend, Ryan Hillegas.

"That most murder victims, especially female, are killed by people they know well does not seem to have ever crossed the investigative radar in Teresa’s murder," Buting writes. "From the outset, investigators had their eyes on one suspect only, Steven Avery, and our efforts to suggest other suspects had been denied by Judge Willis. I tried to highlight this law enforcement bias in my cross-examination of Hillegas."

Alison Dirr: 920-996-7266 or adirr@gannett.com; on Twitter @AlisonDirr