John Ferak

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Since late January, legions of "Making a Murderer" fans have developed a weekly obsession — scouring the internet for the latest tweets from Kathleen Zellner, Steven Avery's high-profile criminal defense attorney from Illinois.

Now five months later, Zellner continues to reward her growing list of 163,000 Twitter followers with 140-character snippets of her theories and ongoing defense work on behalf of Avery, 53, who has remained incarcerated since his arrest in November 2005 for the death of freelance photographer Teresa Halbach of neighboring Calumet County.

But some have questioned the social media tactic, including Matthew J. Haiduk, a veteran criminal defense attorney in Geneva, Illinois. He told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin that Zellner's frequent use of Twitter in the Avery case is highly unusual.

"I have never seen anybody in Illinois use social media during a pending case like she's doing with Steven Avery's case," Haiduk said last week. "She's kind of in a weird gray area because it's not like there was a pending case involving Steven Avery for a while."

Zellner has vowed to make Avery the latest addition to her law firm's list of persons who were proven to be wrongfully convicted. On May 17, Zellner tweeted that evidence was planted in Avery's trailer, burn pit, burn barrel, garage and inside the head of Avery's nephew, Brendan Dassey, who was also convicted in 2007 for participating in the Halbach slaying.

But by Memorial Day, some of Zellner's Twitter followers who expected a quick exoneration for Avery were left feeling deflated. Zellner asked the Wisconsin Court of Appeals to grant her a 90-day extension. The courts have now given Zellner until Aug. 29 to file her legal briefs seeking to overturn Avery's 2007 murder conviction.

Zellner tweeted on May 30 that Rome was not built in a day.

Haiduk is not convinced that using Twitter to alert everyone to Zellner's ongoing legal battle plans is the best approach to winning Avery's exoneration. About half of Zellner's tweets on the Avery case are nothing more than "self-promotion," he said.

One example, he said, was her February tweet that declared: "Fifth trip to Steven Avery. Collected samples for new tests. The inevitable is coming — he was smiling so were we."

"These tweets, other than inciting the mob, they don't (accomplish) anything," said Haiduk, who practices law about 40 miles west of Chicago. "I could never support what she's doing. And I don't think this is the future of our profession. As a professional colleague, I wish she wasn't doing this. Really, cases are decided in the courtrooms and not on Twitter."

Pete Baetz, a retired Illinois police investigator who appeared in "Making a Murderer," said he spoke with Zellner for about 45 minutes on the phone when she first took over Avery's appeal. Baetz served as a defense investigator for Avery's trial lawyers, Jerry Buting and Dean Strang, in 2006 and 2007.

Baetz said he, too, has had difficulty deciphering many of Zellner's tweets. He cited an April tweet in which she mentioned that she spent all day re-tracing Teresa Halbach's steps. Halbach disappeared after visiting Avery Salvage Yard on the afternoon of Oct. 31, 2005. She was there to take photos of a van Steven Avery was trying to sell.

"No doubt she left Avery property alive. All roads lead to one door and it's not Steven Avery's," Zellner tweeted.

Baetz said he has gone over that remark about the roads multiple times and still can't figure out what she meant.

In March, Newsweek reported Zellner was re-examining several people who may have been overlooked as suspects at the time of the original murder. When Halbach vanished, Avery was embroiled in a $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County. He had lost 18 years of freedom due to a wrongful rape conviction.

In that interview with Newsweek, Zellner implied that Halbach's killer was a male who she knew. When asked if she had identified alternative suspects, Zellner told the national publication: "we have a couple. I'd say there's one leading the pack by a lot. But I don't want to scare him off. I don't want him to run."

Baetz said that he also failed to grasp another of Zellner's more popular tweets from March that declared how cellular phone tower records provide Avery with an airtight alibi. "She left property. He didn't," Zellner tweeted.

Zellner's tweet will not carry any weight with the courts unless she can prove who Halbach was talking to on the phone, he noted.

"Since I don't know the reason for many of her tweets to begin with, that one really confuses me," Baetz said. "You have to know who's on the other end of the cellphone before you make an impression that somebody else grabbed her, and it's not to say that (the killer) used her phone to dial it up. Cell phone towers identify the location of a cell phone, not the person using it."

Baetz believes the "Stranger Beside Me" Twitter reference was Zellner's way of trying to smoke out a suspect from a large list of people on her radar who had motive to kill Halbach. Other than Zellner, he has never seen a criminal defense attorney use social media in hopes of trying to prove a client was wrongly convicted of murder.

"I was really surprised by it," said Baetz, who has about 40 years of experience in police work and private investigations. "But you can't argue with her success."

Still, Baetz wonders whether Zellner is spending enough time digging into allegations that the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office planted evidence.

Baetz contends that evidence-planting suspicions may be more widespread than Strang and Buting were able to raise before Manitowoc County Circuit Judge Patrick Willis. During the trial, the attorneys mainly focused on the small droplets of Avery's blood that appeared inside of Halbach's RAV4 and they accused Lenk and Colborn of planting a spare key for Halbach's vehicle inside Avery's bedroom.

The same day that then Sgt. Andrew Colborn and now-retired Lt. James Lenk found the spare key, human bones were found at Avery's burn pit by Manitowoc County Sheriff's Sgt. Jason Jost. However, nobody in Wisconsin law enforcement — including Jost — took photos of the bones at the scene.

At this juncture, it appears Zellner may have to prove who killed Halbach if the murderer was not Avery or Dassey, Baetz said.

"She is saying that she's going to prove that somebody else did it and that's going the hard way, the extremely hard way," Baetz said.

"On that basis, she has got to make a big splash for this appeal to go any place at all. Let me put it this way, everybody is expecting that. They will be very disappointed or they will be elated. There won't be any middle ground at all. She's made all these promises."

Haiduk, the suburban Chicago lawyer, said he can't criticize Zellner's track record as a trial lawyer. She has achieved numerous exonerations for other prisoners. "She has an outstanding record," he said. "Hell, you can't argue with success."

As far as her tweets, "it certainly keeps up interest in the Avery case, that's for sure," Haiduk said. "She's keeping it in front of peoples' minds. At some point, a judge may tell her to stop. If this case was (awaiting a trial) in circuit court, you can't do it. Not a chance."

On the other hand, Haiduk said he stopped paying attention to Zellner's tweets weeks ago. They were becoming "obnoxious," he said.

It's now been six months since Zellner issued a press release announcing that she had made Avery her latest client. He still remains locked away in Wisconsin's prison system.

Zellner has yet to file a legal brief that offers any substance in terms of proving her theory that Avery was the victim of a wrongful murder conviction.

"Clearly, there are a large element of her tweets that are self-promotion," Haiduk told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. "I would take anything she says on Twitter with a grain of salt. It's just that these tweets are more distracting than they are helpful as far as the (legal) process goes."

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