Doug Schneider

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Is there new evidence that could free Steven Avery from his life sentence for the 2005 murder of photographer Teresa Halbach?

A website’s examination of that question leads off today’s news from around the Web related to the Halbach slaying and the Netflix documentary "Making a Murderer."

Joseph Lyons at Bustle.com does a good job of collecting months’ worth of statements — most via social media — from Avery lawyer Kathleen Zellner and sorting them to give readers a solid idea of Zellner’s potential strategy. See story here.

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Timeline: History of the Steven Avery case

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

The story doesn’t reveal any “new news,” but it helps present a clearer picture of what the defense team is up to. Lyons writes that Zellner’s Twitter statements fall into four categories: planted evidence, forensic testing, cell phone questions (Zellner claims records indicate that Halbach left Avery’s property alive, though that would seem to be a lot to conclude from a cell phone record) and “some other guy did it.”

They don’t say very much about another common approach for attorney’s challenging convictions: “My client’s previous legal representation was inadequate.”

Closer to home, my colleague John Ferak of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin investigative team has been using public records to reveal a number of behind-the-scenes aspects of the case, which saw Avery and his then-16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 2005 murder of Halbach.

In this week’s story, Ferak details the mad public-relations scramble at the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office in the weeks and months after "Making a Murderer" began airing in December, and more and more viewers became convinced that sheriff’s investigators had planted some of the evidence that helped convict Avery.

Read the story here.

The story details how a national sheriff’s group put the Manitowoc department in touch with a consultant who had once advised George W. Bush and had worked for the National Security Council. It also drew comparisons to image-related crises facing police agencies in Ferguson, Missouri, Chicago and Baltimore.

"No doubt sheriffs across the country will be asked 'can you assure us this cannot happen here' and from there a host of unanswerable questions putting you and your colleagues into a no-win 60 Minutes type of situation," an organization official wrote to Manitowoc County Sheriff Robert Hermann.

The story also offers a peek behind the curtain at a number of other things going on at the department after the documentary began airing:

Emails the department provided in response to an Open Records Law request indicate that a "Nancy Grace" show producer and Hermann developed a bit of a mutual admiration society, with the producer encouraging Hermann to provide a bunch of angry emails to be used in a show that painted the department as a victim of the documentary. “I apologize that your department is having to go through this,” the producer wrote, later adding, “I hope that you have been happy with our coverage."

(Here, a bit of me dies. Our job as journalists is to tell accurate and complete stories, not please our sources.)

Emails also show that Manitowoc County Executive Bob Ziegelbauer was initially underwhelmed with Hermann’s response to the criticism, but said it has since improved. The executive, though, has no authority over the sheriff, who is elected by county residents, except in the sense that he helps determine the sheriff’s annual budget.

Also ... Where can you see Steven Avery, Michelle Obama, Tinder, Jimmy Fallon, Jessica Alba and The Onion in the same place? At the 2016 Webby Awards. "Making a Murderer" took home the Film & Video Breakout of the Year Award. Haute Living has a list of winners.

Finally, what do you do when it’s Take Your Son or Daughter to Work Day and you’re covering the Steven Avery case? If you’re John Ferak, you take your 8-year-old to the Avery Salvage yard in Manitowoc County and you introduce him to Avery’s father and brothers. I’m guessing that JD Ferak is the most-impressive kid at show and tell today. See Ferak's Facebook post here.

dschneid@greenbaypressgazette.com and follow him on Twitter@PGDougSchneider