Kenneth Kratz (Photo via Netflix)
Before Calumet County District Attorney Kenneth Kratz became the most hated lawyer in the America thanks to Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer, he was reviled in his home state of Wisconsin for putting a domestic abuse victim through “three days of hell” by sending her dozens of disgusting sext messages.
In 2009, Kratz sent the woman in question 30 sexual messages in an effort to have an affair with her. The smarmy prosecutor wrote in one message: “Are you the kind of girl that likes secret contact with an older married elected DA … the riskier the better?” In another, he said: “I would not expect you to be the other woman. I would want you to be so hot and treat me so well that you’d be THE woman! R U that good?”
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After she rebuffed his unwanted advances a number of times, Kratz, as smug as he was about his station in life, wrote: “I’m serious! I’m the atty. I have the $350,000 house. I have the 6-figure career. You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize!”
It seems that Ken Kratz has always thought of himself as the prize. Getting a conviction based on ostensibly tenuous evidence in the 2005 Teresa Halbach murder trial wasn’t enough for this self-satisfied attorney. Steven Avery, who has professed his innocence for more than a decade, received a life sentence for the killing, but Kratz wanted more.
This past fall, with knowledge that he’d likely been painted as a villain in Making a Murderer, Kratz wrote a letter to Avery where he begged the convicted murderer to confess to him — and only him — so that he could write a book about the confession. Avery’s new lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, posted the letter on Twitter this weekend:
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Zellner said of Kratz’s letter: “This bloodsucking gives vampires a bad name.”
Apologies to Ken Kratz, but he’s no prize. The world can rest easy knowing that Steven Avery will never give the prosecutor who put him away for life the chance to get a six-figure book deal out of a confession for a murder Avery claims he didn’t commit.
Ken Kratz Letter to Steven Avery [Twitter]