Who Is Kathleen Zellner Steven Avery's Lawyer? Background, Family, Career, Net Worth

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Kathleen Zellner Background

Kathleen Zellner is an American lawyer who has extensive experience in wrongful conviction advocacy. Steven Avery (the subject of the 2015 and 2018 Netflix series Making a Murderer), Kevin Fox (who was falsely accused of murdering his daughter), Ryan W. Ferguson, Larry Eyler, and 19 exonerees are among the notable clients Zellner has represented.

Zellner’s exact birth date is unknown at the moment, but she will be in her 60s by 2023. Her birthdate was not suggested by Wikipedia. We don’t know her exact birthdate, but we do know where she is from. She was born in the Texas town of Midland. According to some online platforms, she is 68 years old.

Kathleen Zellner family

Robert Zellner, her husband, is a commodities and bond trader with a doctorate in economics. Anne, their daughter, is also an attorney.

Career

The Illinois Supreme Court appointed Zellner to handle Larry Eyler’s Death Row case in October 1990, her first major case.

Larry Eyler was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Daniel Bridges in 1984, but he was also suspected of murdering about 20 other teenage boys and young men between 1982 and 1984 in the Midwestern United States. Eyler always maintained his innocence in the one murder for which he was convicted. Despite the fact that the victim was stabbed and dismembered in Eyler’s apartment, Eyler claimed he only assisted in the disposal of the body.

Zellner established her own law firm while working on the Eyler case.

Eyler, according to Zellner, began compiling a list of his victims shortly after she was appointed as his legal representative in 1990 in order to obtain a plea bargain in which his sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment. The transaction did not go through. After his death in the spring of 1993, Eyler finally granted Zellner permission to reveal his list of 21 victims.

Eyler died of AIDS-related complications in 1994. Zellner held a press conference two days after his death, on March 8, detailing the killings. Zellner had recently prepared a new appeal challenging her client’s conviction in the Bridges murder.

Following the Eyler case, Zellner vowed never to represent another client who she knew or suspected was guilty. Zellner handled the cases of many other people who claimed to be innocent, including the Roscetti Four (murder), Kevin Fox (murder and rape), Ryan Ferguson (murder), and Melissa Calusinski (murder), and was successful in the majority of them.

Katlaeen Zellner and Steven Avery

Kathleen Zellner has recently been working to free Steven Avery, a wrongfully convicted murderer who has been wrongfully convicted again for an unrelated murder. A woman who was attacked and sexually assaulted along Lake Michigan chose Avery from a lineup, despite the fact that Avery had 16 eyewitnesses (and a timestamped receipt) identifying him 40 kilometers away near the time of the event. Avery was wrongfully imprisoned for 18 years before being exonerated by DNA testing.

Avery filed a $36 million lawsuit against the police in 2003, but was arrested in 2005 for the murder of another woman. During police questioning, Avery’s nephew Brendan Dassey admitted to assisting Avery in the murder of the victim. Dassey attempted to retract his statement, but it was rejected. Zellner took over the case in 2016 and is currently fighting for Avery’s release, which is documented in the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer.