The 6 Wildest Reddit Theories About 'Making a Murderer'

Many Americans spent their holiday breaks quietly sneaking away from loved ones to watch another episode of Making a Murderer, Netflix's heartbreaking true-crime series about the Teresa Halbach murder investigation and subsequent convictions of Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey. Given the flimsy evidence and unbelievable law-enforcement bias involved in the case, a lot of people think the guys are innocent. Not surprisingly, Redditors are sharing their alternate theories and, based on the threads, a few of them are rocking tin-foil hats. Hard. Here are six of the craziest current arguments, in no particular order.

Brendan Dassey's brother Bobby and stepfather Scott Tadych are popular alternate suspects on Reddit. Suggesting they had the means to kill Halbach and frame their unfortunate relatives isn't too crazy, but saying that they mistakenly hunted her kinda is. Per thunderheel: "The two guys who went hunting (SA's nephew and brother in law) were both in close physical proximity to TH at the time of her disappearance, while holding loaded rifles with same caliber bullet that TH was shot with. The .22 bullet fragment was (months later) found in SA's garage. My theory is that perhaps one of them accidentally, or intentionally shot TH and used Steven's property to cover it up."
 

In this scenario, Halbach wasn't just a photographer but a plucky reporter who stumbled onto a huge drug expose. DennaAbusesKvothe theorizes that she might've had photos of a local "marijuana field" under the protection of crooked cops, who may have started leaving her threatening voicemails. But when she didn't take the hint, they took her out -- and they also trashed her camera, in order to preserve that murder-inducing field o' weed.
 

Why Satanists? Why not! Those guys love causing trouble around Halloween. "Something satanism-related," burningsodium writes. "And the guilty parties are either members of law enforcement, or else have connections to it. Really the least-complicated answer. Just consider the date of the murder."
 

This theory posits that members of a sex club with possible Satanic or Masonic roots killed Halbach in a ritual slaying. And because some of them are also cops, they framed Steven Avery as a bonus. It's all derived from a three-part YouTube confessional from a man who's had a lot of alleged experience with the group. As zoso471 posits, "Sacrificing Theresa [sic] AND getting to incriminate Steve Avery is a pretty attractive deal for those cops a part of this club."

To understand the following doozy, you have to know a little about the enduring "German" figure. It's all laid out in this blog post, but basically, a psychologically disturbed guy -- whose last name was supposedly German -- was allegedly living near the Averys at the time of Halbach's murder. He told his wife about visiting an auto salvage yard and meeting a "stupid" photographer on Halloween. Later on, the wife found a blood-stained pillowcase containing a strange woman's clothes and called the cops, worried that her husband had something to do with the Halbach case. They assured her they already had their suspect and moved on. End of story.

But that's not the crazy theory. The crazy theory is that said wife was mad at Avery for mistreating one of her dogs, so she spotted Halbach on his property, killed her, framed Avery for the crime, and then decided to (unsuccessfully) blame it on her husband instead when he pissed her off. Props to Redditor cescalina, who should probably lay off the cold medicine.

Someone had to accuse directors Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos of engineering the whole thing for sweet Netflix cash, and so the noble soul known as TILwhofarted rose to the occasion. He/she offers zero evidence to support this claim, but considering how both Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey's trials went down, that feels right.

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Kristin Hunt is a freelance writer for Thrillist, and wants to punch Len Kachinsky more than words can express. Follow her at @kristin_hunt.