I hate to get into and sound like a conspiracy theorist... but the thing that I could not stop thinking about that they touched on briefly. The training police take to get confessions. I am curious about the relation of this training to potentially get false confessions and hypnosis. I know very little about either subject, but the calm demeanor of the officers interrogating Brendan struck me as similar to how I perceive hypnosis.

@1 You might find this piece about false confessions from the New Yorker interesting: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/1….

I can't remember which technique they mentioned in "Making a Murderer," or even if they mentioned a specific technique, but the Reid & Associates technique is still used, despite the fact that, "Of the three hundred and eleven people exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing, more than a quarter had given false confessions—including those convicted in such notorious cases as the Central Park Five."

@2 The Central Park Five are who I thought of a lot when I watched Brendan's "confession". After seeing the documentary and how they were manipulated, it was especially appalling. Hasn't the Reid technique been banned for use in certain countries, at least for use in extracting confessions in minors?

This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. I've got so much reasonable doubt about Steven Avery, where I'm not positive he's innocent, but I never could have convicted him. Yet Brendan, I actually am sure is an innocent in all of this. And it breaks my heart. When neither he, nor his mother, knew what "inconsistent" meant, I was in tears. Wrestlemania? Tears. First defense attorney? I think he made a blood vessel pop in my left eye. These convictions need to be vacated, because this was a travesty of justice.

"Of course, as he's drawing it, you think: How could he envision such a thing if he's really not that bright and if it didn't happen?"

Well, no, you don't actually think that. You think, "he drew a rectangle with a stick figure on it the way a kid would if he was told to draw a person tied to a bed. Now, how is that evidence?" Which is a much scarier thought.

We watched the entire 12 hours in (almost) 12 straight hours on Christmas Eve. I'm not a TV binge watcher but this series was totally addictive. Steven may or may not have done it, but the evidence wasn't there to convict him (where's the freaking blood?!?). Brendan is definitely innocent and completely coerced. But I nearly fell out of my chair when, after repeating "I don't know" for 10 minutes, Brendan suddenly answers that he got the idea from a book: "I believe it was called 'Kiss the Girls."

Like I said, I think Brendan is innocent, but I find it surprising that he's a ... reader. Does anyone believe this poor kid reads books? Did his lawyer coach him to say that? A family member? Why didn't the prosecutor have someone pull up a copy on a laptop and have Brendan, with his extremely limited vocabulary, read aloud to see if he's capable? It was such a potential OJ/glove moment, but in reverse.

Thank you for writing this piece. It saved me from having to type in these exact thoughts. The hardest, hardest parts of this documentary were the Brendan scenes. That poor, poor boy. I was physically relieved when around episode 6 & 7 they didn't focus on him. Where was his protection from any one in a professional capacity? Also, broke my heart when his cousin, Kayla, was brave enough to admit she made up her conversations with Brendan. God I want to help.

As a career criminal defense attorney I could write about this subject forever. There are great public defenders, and then there are some who shouldn't be allowed In the courtroom. We know who the bad cops are - try getting rid of them or a prosecutor to believe you. The imbalance of the system when witnessed close up is sickening. Look at the budgets of prosecutors and law enforcement compared to defense offices. Also, the Reid method is still used and taught. Some agencies also use voice stress analysis that has proven to be junk - but as long as it gets a confession they don't care. And unlike on tv, in many states children do not have the right to have a parent present when questioned by the police. This is an interesting documentary, but sadly many of the pieces of it ring true.

Watching Brendan confess is very similar to Jason M. confessing in the West Memphis 3 case

I am commenting here mainly to thank you Christopher, just as someone else did in an earlier post. I have watched the documentary twice and will probably watch it again because it's just so shocking and so tragic. I have signed a couple of petitions to free Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, but I don't know if those petitions will do any good. I had not seen the TV interview of Dean Strang until reading your article here so, again, thank you.

I spent the whole series wondering if they would come back to the video shown in the first episode, where the victim discusses her own death. In the final episode there was another clip from the same video, but still no context given. Why did she record this video?

I would have liked to see more about who may actually have killed her. At one point one of the cops (Lenk, I think?) says he was given two names of possible suspects to investigate, Steven Avery and some other guy. Who was the other guy and why was he of interest?

What about the phone call Brendan had with his mother when she was asking him about going over to Steven's the day of the murder? Episode 9 played during Brendan's trial. She said "that girl would be alive if you called 911." There was no evidence Brendan was there except for this call. Brendan also said He couldn't leave because Steven was stronger than him.

the system works together to not bring charges against cops that murder people, why wouldn't the system work together to bring charges against an innocent non-cop person

Thank you so much, Christopher for writing this piece. Loved the excerpt of your friends email, enlightening perspective. Watched 1/2 of the series and couldnt continue after Brandon's interrogation, when he asked what time they'd be done because he has to get back to school. Sickening. And it's all recorded, like a blind complacency but it's all there. So many failures for this boy- authority figures and people charged with protecting his interests; police, his attorney, the judge, and he was tried and convicted by a jury?? Did they watch the 'confessions'? What can we do, online petitions?? Feel helpless.

I do not think Brendan is guilty but the most damning piece of evidence that really wasn't shown in the documentary is the bleached jeans. Apparently the jeans were an exhibit and his mom stated that they were bleach stained because Brendan helped Steve clean the garage with bleach on Halloween. The reason this evidence bothers me is because (a) the evidence is coming from Brendan's mother and (b) if Steven did ever decided to clean his garage I dont think he would do much more than sweep it after seeing the cluttered messy interior. So I don't know how to square that in my mind. I would like to see all the evidence on that issue. I think its possible that Brendan helped clean up but I really don't want to believe it.

I believe Avery is guilty. His wrongful earlier conviction is his very best defense and distracts from his sociopathic prior bad acts. I don't know to what extent Dassey may be culpable but if what we are shown in Google etc can be assumed credible I don't know that I could have voted him guilty without reasonable doubt. Even if he did do the things he's convicted of, he doesn't appear to be completely competent as a person. What is pretty clear though is that Dassey was abused by our system. His rights were trampled and the police were thugs. His atty was just awful. The sad thing is, bc of their egregious behavior, Avery has attached himself to those abuses. Avery's claims of innocence are bolstered by the abuses of our system. This should be a warning for future cases where misconduct may cause murderers to go free. Avery isn't a wronged man however. Not in this case.

After watching on Netflix, the only irrefutable fact to me is that Brendan was spoon fed the details of his "confession" then bullied for hours into signing off on it - watching this made me ill & furious that officers sworn to protect the public would blatantly victimize a mentally vulnerable teenage boy all the way to PRISON...

Oh my God, thank you so so so so much for writing this. I feel so terribly sorry for Brendan dassey. I have been reading the transcripts of his confessions, and every single last thing he mentioned in his first confession is completely different from the rest! He is clearly saying what the investigators are coercing him to say, and what he has been hearing from the news, and/or other people. He is blatantly making up every single word of it. It makes me so sick, and I can not stop thinking about it!!!