Teresa Marie Halbach, Missing Since October 31, 2005, From Manitowoc, Wisconsin
By Steve Huff
On July 29, 1985, Penny Beerntsen was jogging on a beach north of Two Rivers, in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. In an article written for The Forgiveness Project, Beerntsen tells what happened that day:
I was out jogging when a man grabbed me from behind and pushed me into a wooded area. When I screamed, he choked my windpipe; when I fought back as he tried to rape me, he began beating and strangling me. Finally I lost consciousness. My last thoughts were: "I wish I'd kissed my son goodbye this morning" and "my daughter's last vision of me will be of my dead, beaten body."
Two good Samaritans found me, bleeding and naked in the sand dunes. In the emergency room in the hospital I gave a description of my rapist to the police. I asked the sheriff if he had a suspect in mind and he said, "Yes." I found out later that this was Steven Avery, who was out on bail for sticking a rifle in the face of a deputy sheriff's wife.
A Wisconsin Dept. of Justice News Release published December 17, 2003 details why Avery was a reasonable suspect at the time:
(T)he sheriff's department was familiar with Avery from an incident that had occurred only six months earlier, in January 1985, in which Avery ran a deputy sheriff's wife off the road at gunpoint and told her to get in his car. The woman told him that she had her baby in her vehicle and that the baby would freeze. After checking to see if the child was in fact in the car, Avery let the woman go. He confessed to the crime and stated that he had done this because the woman had been making allegations that he appeared naked in his front yard on several occasions. Avery was ultimately convicted of endangering safety for this offense and was sentenced to six years imprisonment, concurrent with the sentence in the assault against P.B. District Attorney Vogel told investigators that he assumed that the January incident involving Avery was sexually motivated. Avery was also convicted in Manitowoc County in 1981 of two counts of burglary, for which he received five years of probation, and was convicted in 1982 for cruelty to animals.
Steven Avery, however, was the wrong man. He was convicted of the attack on Penny Beerntsen, and served nearly 18 years in jail. In 2001, with the assistance of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, Avery's case was reviewed. His DNA was tested against evidence from the assault on Beerntsen, and the suspect DNA was found to be from a man named Gregory Allen, who was already serving a 60-year sentence for a rape in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1995. On September 11, 2003, Steven Avery was set free.
For a time, Avery was something of a reluctant celebrity. A simple Internet search of his name turns up numerous newspaper articles as well as weblog entries and essays on the case. The Wisconsin Legislature passed so-called "Avery Legislation," a set of laws geared towards eliminating any future miscarriages of justice like the one inflicted on Steven Avery.
On October 31, 2005, freelance photographer Teresa Marie Halbach, age 25, had an appointment to photograph a van owned by Steven Avery. She met him at his family's business, Avery Auto Salvage, located in Manitowoc County.
Halbach graduated summa cum laude from college in 2002 with a degree in photography. After an internship with Pearce Photography in Green Bay, WI, she began to work for herself — she developed her own website for her nascent business — www.teresaphoto.com.There you could see samples of her work — photos of families and high school seniors, weddings and newborn children. On the "About Teresa" page at her website, you could read about her basic goal as a photographer:
(To) capture emotion in portraits, showing natural smiles and not that "posed" look. [Teresa] works closely with her clients to get portraits that will serve as treasured memories for years to come...
Halbach was photographing Avery's van as part of her freelance work for Auto Trader magazine. According to Steven Avery, she wasn't there any longer than 10 minutes. He claimed he saw her drive off. A simple business-like transaction, one he'd had before with Halbach.
Teresa Marie Halbach has not been seen since that day.
Saturday, November 5, searchers found Halbach's vehicle, a dark green 1999 Toyota Rav4. It was discovered in a gravel pit close to Avery Auto Salvage. A day later, further search warrants were executed at Avery's property.
In an interview published November 6 in the Sheboygan Press, Avery said, "If I can help, I'll help. That's just the way I am. I don't know why this stuff happens to me."
Authorities were careful to not point fingers. In the same article in the Press, Manitowoc County Sheriff Ken Petersen said, "Everybody's a suspect right now... But there is nothing that points to anyone specific..."
It was easy in the hoopla surrounding Steven Avery's released from prison in 2003 to forget that though Penny Beernsten had been wrong when she identified him as her attacker, Manitowoc Police did have reason to believe he was capable of violence.
Teresa Marie Halbach had the following on her "About" page at www.teresaphoto.com:
What we have to Offer:
A fun studio and a comfortable atmosphere.
No feeling rushed or pressured.
A creative, friendly, and experienced photographer.
Professional-quality photographs that will last a lifetime, unmatched by other studios.
When referring to photographs that would truly last, Teresa Marie Halbach surely thought that a lifetime was much longer than her 25 years.
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