Making a Murderer: The Abuse of Brendan Dassey

Brendan Dassey is innocent of the murder of Teresa Halbach. So is Steven Avery, but he's not my focus right now.

I know Brendan is innocent, because every time Netflix's Making a Murderer shows a clip of his gruelling interrogation, I have a searing flashback.

What I am about to write has probably zero legal merit, but the psychology is indisputable.

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When I was little, my parents used to send my brother and me to our paternal grandparents for a couple of weeks over the summer. I remember these as happy times. In the mornings we watched Stingray and The Pink Panther on their ancient TV. We went to a kids' club at the local brewery (why it was in a brewery I'll never know), where we spent one particularly exciting day walking around town taking Polaroid™ photographs. I think my grandma may have bought me a small Transformer™†.

Sadly, those days also included one massive, formative trauma: an interrogation and a false confession.

I was the 'bad' brother in the family. I questioned authority and had no interest in following the path my parents set out for me. I remember having little autonomy, glimpsing praise only when my interests converged with those of my carers. My older brother was in the same situation but he embraced the slavery, and was rewarded with endless love.

This leads us to one of those summer mornings at my grandparents. My grandma sat five year-old me down on the parquet lounge floor and said: "Why did you break your grandad's game?"

The game she referred to was one of those clear, water-filled discs (like two Petri dishes glued together) with balls and stuff inside. A puzzle. This one contained a Dalmatian and a load of floating black spots that you had to return to her body.

In addition to water, a Dalmatian, and floating spots, this puzzle contained one other feature: a small air bubble. This air bubble was the subject of my accusation.

The air bubble was, in fact, not exclusive to my grandad's puzzle. All of these type of puzzles have an air bubble. Whether I knew that then, I cannot recall. But what I did know is that I did not put it there.

I looked up at my grandma, aghast. Why would she accuse me of this? Surely I could simply tell the truth and carry on with my day.

No.

"I didn't break it, grandma," pleaded little me.

"Yes you did," came the reply, "your brother wouldn't have done it."

Grandma pointed to the disc's edge. Indeed there was a small hole—a remnant of the injection moulding process. Given that the plastic was hard and at least 3mm thick, I'm not even sure that anyone could have made that hole without a power drill.

"That's a remnant of the injection moulding process," future me tried to express to my grandma through an imaginary fissure in space-time.

Soon I was in uncontrollable tears. No amount of begging and mucus could convince her that I had nothing to do with the air bubble.

"If you don't admit it I'll send in your grandad to give you a good hiding!" spat a red-faced grandma.

A hiding sounded good. I wanted to hide. I did not know then that 'hiding' was an archaic term for spanking, but I inferred violence from her tone.

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Back to Brendan. At this point both he and I are in a fix. Neither of us is allowed to leave the room until we confess. Brendan is not being threatened as such, but he is has no discernible way out. He has told his story but they want a different truth. They want him to give their version of events and, crucially, they want embellishment.

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Five year old me, trapped and hopeless, finally cracks. My thinking is that any punishment could not be worse than this psychological torture. I need the conversation to end because by this point I am in physical pain from the crying and begging.

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Brendan is screaming inside too.

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"I did it," I muttered.

That was the point of no return. That was the confession. There is no way to un-confess, unless your accuser actually wants the truth.

By this point, grandad was in the room.

"We know you did it," said grandad.

"Why did it take all of that for you to tell us the truth?" asked grandma.

And then the kick in the guts:

HOW. DID. YOU. DO. IT?

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Brendan has confessed too. And now he is pumped for details.

Mark Wiegert: "Who shot her in the head?"

Brendan: He did."

Fassbender: "Then why didn't you just tell us that?"

Brendan: "Because I couldn't think of it."

The real reason, of course, is that Brendan is now making things up on the fly. He has been pushed into a lie. He has to support it with more lies.

Tellingly, when he invents the wrong lies, he is led in other directions until the cops hear something that fits with their narrative. And then it's on tape, and there is really no exit.

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It was slightly easier for me, but no less soul-destroying, relatively speaking.

Me: "I used a pin."

Grandma: "Where did you find the pin?"

Me: "In that armchair...(?)"

Grandma to Grandad: "Well that could be the truth, because I did some sewing in that chair."

So now my lie has been corroborated into fact. God knows what would have happened if she had not done sewing in that chair.

I never trusted my grandparents again. And now they are dead.

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Brendan Dassey is in jail for a crime which he knows nothing about. I know this because I recognise the helpless teenager slouched on a sofa, tugging on his lip, trying to get back to school so he can hand in his homework.

Regardless of any other factors around this murder, regardless of the fact Brendan did not have an attorney or his mother present, regardless of his IQ, regardless of the gentle tone of the police in the room, Brendan saw no way out of that situation other than to give a false confession.

I know this. They know this. You know this.


† I'm pretty sure it was Powerglide