Did ‘Making a Murderer’ Filmmakers Use Images Without Permission?
In the hit documentary series Making a Murderer, filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos raise a lot of questions about whether police officers and prosecutors acted improperly while investigating and prosecuting Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey for the murder of 25-year-old Teresa Halbach.
Now at least three peripheral subjects from the docuseries say they were either unaware their photographs or personal image would be used in the film, or asked the filmmakers not to use footage of themselves after the fact.
Penny Beerntsen — the victim of the 1985 sexual assault for which Steven Avery was wrongfully convicted — recently told the New Yorker she was not aware the filmmakers planned to use a photograph taken as evidence immediately after her assault in the film.
“Beerntsen, for her part, was dismayed to discover that the filmmakers had obtained a photograph of her battered face from the 1985 attack and used it without her knowledge,” the New Yorker‘s Kathryn Schulz writes. She goes on to quote Beerntsen as saying, “I don’t mind looking at it, but my children should not have to relive that…. And everything we’re dealing with, the Halbachs are dealing with a thousandfold.”
In addition, one family member says Avery’s ex-wife, Lori, was surprised and upset to see images of herself and her children used throughout the series. Brad Dassey, who is Lori’s step-son and Brendan Dassey’s half-brother, tells Rolling Stone she is distraught that her family photos were used without her permission.
Steven Avery’s ex-fiancée, Jodi Stachowski, recently told a producer for HLN that the last time the filmmakers contacted her, she asked them not to use the footage they shot of her years before in the documentary.
“I asked [Laura] and Moira not to even use anything with me in it…. Because I told her it was all lies,” she said. “She called me and asked me if I wanted to do another interview before the documentary came out, and I told her no…. I want nothing to do with it, I don’t want any part of it, and I don’t want to be in it.”
Stachowski, who now says Avery abused her, went as far as to suggest that she only defended Avery in the film because he threatened her. “I said ‘It’s all lies’ because Steven called me and told me — it should be all on police phone records — that if I didn’t say anything good and nice about him I’d pay,” she said.
In response to a question about Lori’s claim, a representative for the filmmakers told Rolling Stone that “the filmmakers have material releases for all of the photos and that the claim is false.” They declined to provide that documentation, or to comment on Beerntsen’s or Stachowski’s claims.