In June, NBC26 received nearly 2,000 pages of e-mails from the Department of Corrections discussing Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey after the release of the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer. On Friday, we received hundreds of more pages of attachments to those e-mails through a public records request.
The attachments provide more details on how DOC leaders handled the extra attention on Avery and Dassey after the documentary's release.
As interview requests rolled in for Steven Avery, DOC officials told staff not to speak with media or post anything on social media about the Making a Murderer documentary, according to the documents.
The attachments also show that the extra media attention overwhelmed Brendan Dassey. A letter dated January 7, 2016 from the DOC to Dassey, said Dassey was concerned about attorneys he did not know trying to contact him. The DOC responded in the letter that it would make sure only Dassey's 5 lawyers he listed could call or visit.
Another attachment said the warden at Green Bay Correctional Institution, where Dassey was originally held, was screening magazine articles about Dassey and Avery for potential security risks before allowing inmates to read them.
Some of the documents also detailed a series of events in October 2015, before the documentary's release. They say an inmate wrote a letter to Steven Avery's mother, Dolores, saying he was not safe with DOC staff. Dolores Avery then sent a copy of that letter to a Sheboygan County judge.
Another documents shows DOC staff then tried to interview the inmate who wrote the letter later in October, but he refused to cooperate with staff. The DOC then dropped the investigation.
In a letter dated December 21, 2015, the DOC told Dolores Avery about the inmate's lack of cooperation, and also stated they take "any kind of allegations very seriously."
Some of the documents also discussed Dassey's move from GBCI to Columbia Correctional Insititution, but no new information was given about why the DOC moved him.
