MANITOWOC, WI — In 2016, Wisconsin murderer Joseph Evans of Marinette County mailed a nine-page typed letter to numerous Wisconsin news media outlets purporting that Steven Avery befriended him and confessed to murdering Teresa Halbach during their time together as prison cellmates.
Now, Evans is circulating another letter, this time claiming he alone killed Teresa Halbach. Evans sent a copy of his letter to Avery’s world-famous exoneration lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, of Downers Grove, Illinois.
Zellner told Patch she spoke on the phone with her client, Steven Avery, on Monday during a legal call and Avery laughed out loud as she read Evans’ purported confession letter to her client.
In 2009, Joseph Evans was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his 40-year-old wife in 2008 in Marinette County. Evans originally claimed he accidentally shot her, a Wisconsin television news station reported. Evans is now serving out a life sentence at the Wisconsin Department of Corrections penitentiary in Boscobel.
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At the end of the Sept. 18 letter he sent to Zellner, Joseph Evans wrote: “Keep your panties on and skirt down because I’m not out to screw you. This is a deal relationship you, me, you’ll win when I give all up and the full cover up story that took place and how the state and others used me to get to Steve. I’m done with all that. I’m jumping ship to look out for myself and my children, eight grandchildren. Your choice. I’m already set. Now, it’s up to you for the next move …”
In his August 2016 snitch letter, Evans claimed the opposite.
Evans wrote to several news media outlets claiming “Steven Avery told me that he had seen Teresa out at the salvage yard before, he said that he thought that Teresa would be an easy lay, because he didn’t think that she was all that pretty or anything like that to him, but she did have a sexy bottom on her. He said that on the day he killed her, he had called up the auto trader magazine (sic) place that Avery’s auto part salvage yard had used before to get Teresa to come back out there to the salvage yard because he was trying to sell a vehicle.
“Steve said that was the only excuse that he could come up with to get her to come back out there so he could ask her to go out to dinner with him or for a few drinks at the tavern.”
Now, three years later, Evans is writing even more letters, now taking 100 percent responsibility for Teresa Halbach’s death.
But first, Evans wants Zellner to begin the process of putting $13,000 onto his prison bank account through the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
The following are some of the key excerpts from Evans’ Sept. 18, 2019 letter to Zellner: