Steven Avery was sentenced to 32 years in prison for the 1985 rape of Penny Beerntsen. He was freed in September 2003, after the Wisconsin Innocence Project successfully petitioned for another round of DNA testing to be carried out.
As the DNA test had shown, the 13 hairs recovered belonged to Gregory Allen, a rapist who by then was serving a 60-year prison sentence for another crime committed in 1995.
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But Steven Avery's days as a free man were numbered.
A 25-year-old photographer named Teresa Halbach was reported missing in November 2005. She was last seen at the Avery's Auto Salvage, a salvage yard in Wisconsin.
Avery was arrested in November 2005 for being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was found guilty of intentional homicide and being a felon in possession of a firearm on March 18, 2007, per The Post-Crescent.
He received a life sentence without parole on June 1, 2007. He is held at the Waupun Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wis.
