Doug Schneider

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

First, Steven Avery was engaged to be married. Then he wasn’t. Then, “Dr. Phil” told us Avery was, indeed, engaged — at least until we remembered that what we were watching had been pre-recorded.

It's been a busy week in "Making a Murderer"-land.

We started off with the news that the convicted killer had ended his engagement to she-looks-normal-but-maybe-she’s-a-little-crazy Lynn Hartman — fiancée no. 3 since he was convicted of killing photographer Teresa Halbach.

The Wrap and others reported the sad/happy news, saying family members and fiancée no. 2, Sandra Greenman, had announced on social media that SteveLynn was kaput. The reason? Avery and his advocates had decided she was a gold-digger — which makes all kinds of sense if he somehow is exonerated and lands book and movie deals, and little if he stays in prison.

The news unfolded as TV psychologist Phil McGraw was promoting a two-part show in which he would go one-on-one with Hartman, who he would surprise with a call from Avery during the (taping of) the show.

After Phil repeatedly played up Hartman’s attractiveness — an audience of USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporters began to experience nausea from hearing the word “statuesque” so often — Avery’s then- future-ex detailed their “instant connection,” forged via letters and expensive calls from Avery’s prison in Waupun. Our Alison Dirr swallowed some Pepto Bismol, then captured the highlights, including Hartman calling Avery her “innocent (!) teddy bear.”

Part 2 of the special included an appearance by Hartman’s daughter, who did a credible job of being supportive of a mom who, we imagine, might have been a tad difficult to support at that moment. Among other news to come out of the two-day special, mom accepted Avery’s marriage proposal before having met him.

The circus, er interviews, spawned all kinds of reactions and conspiracy theories and whatnot. The most interesting, via The Daily Beast:

“BAD LUCK: Did Dr. Phil Break Up … Steven Avery’s Engagement?” This apparently stems from claims from Greenman and some folks in Avery's family that Hartman was paid decent bank (a few thousand bucks, anyway) for her "Dr. Phil appearance.

Meanwhile, Avery wasn’t the only convicted killer from "Making a Murderer" to make news during the week.

Brendan Dassey, Avery’s nephew and co-defendant, hit the headlines when state prosecutors filed a response to Dassey’s lawyers’ request that he be released from prison. That, attorneys for the state wrote, would cause "irreparable harm."

"His release must be viewed as a serious threat to public safety, regardless of his recent conduct in a controlled prison setting," the state wrote. The state also said the loved ones of murder victim Teresa Halbach would be "irreparably harmed" by his release before the Seventh Circuit had reviewed the case.

Also, defense lawyer Kathleen Zellner issued another Avery-related tweet from her @ZellnerLaw account: "Many snitches find religion to justify concocting fabricated stories- somehow always fits prosecution theory. #MakingAMurderer#TrialbyLiar

Make of that what you will.

Former Avery attorney Dean Strang continued an Irish tour that, while not quite as energizing as Rory Gallagher’s from 1974, continued to make news.

Strang addressed the “how can you defend those people” question, according to the Irish Examiner. He also offered some insight into the American justice system.

“What are the qualifications for being a judge? Well, that you have a law degree,” he said, according to the IE. “You simply can be elected and serve as a judge and what that does is it produces for us traditional elections in which the candidates are competing for who's going to be tougher on crime.”

“We do not elect our federal judges. They are and always have been appointed for life by the president with the consent of the U.S. Senate. I think it really is no accident that it was a federal judge who finally held that Brendan Dassey’s statement was involuntary.”

Jerry Buting, Strang’s partner in the Avery defense, made it two appearances in three weeks in Indiana Lawyer (suggested slogan: “The New York Times of the Indiana Bar Association.”)

Buting kept his legal audience enthralled during a lengthy speech, answered questions for an hour and then “posed gamely for pictures” with his admirers.

And award-winning "Making a Murderer" film-makers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi got some ink in New York-based college publications during the week.

They took part in a panel discussion at Columbia University’s School for the Arts — their grad school alma mater.

“Show, don’t tell’ was certainly paramount to us,” Ricciardi said of the film-makers’ style. “Because with showing, not telling, we really thought we could give the viewers an experience, and we want to be very mindful of where our viewers are relative to our characters in the story. Are they ahead of the characters? Are they behind them? Are they with them?”

Ricciardi followed that two days later with a write-up on the alumni site of her undergrad alma mater, Manhattan College.

And who doesn't love a college named after a drink?

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