Spoilers for Making a Murderer throughout.
Two weeks after Netflix debuted its blood-boiling new true-crime series, Making a Murderer, one of the show’s most important real-life key players is now on an even more public trial: As BuzzFeed reports, viewers have been bombarding the Yelp page of the law firm for Wisconsin lawyer Ken Kratz, whose prosecution led to the series’s subject Steven Avery being sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach. The series documents both the trial and questionable circumstances that led to Avery’s arrest and implication with Halbach’s death, suggesting that Avery was framed by local law enforcement, and that Kratz participated in the conspiracy. (Avery had previously spent 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.)
To correct the alleged injustice, fans are now leaving damning reviews on Kratz’s Yelp page — many referencing the former prosecutor’s 2010 resignation over sexually explicit texts he sent to a domestic-abuse survivor whose case he’d been prosecuting at the time — giving him a 1.5 star rating for the time being. Here’s just a small sample of Kratz’s latest reviews:
“I hope Ken Kratz gets slapped in the face by the cold hand of reality in the form of an incurable deadly virus.”
“Ken Kratz is an incredible prosecutor! When I wanted to get my husband out of the picture I got the local sheriff’s department to ‘discover’ *wink wink* a murder on our property. My husband was zeroed in on in a jiffy! Attorney Kratz was able to put him away for life by skirting the defenses questions and skewing the concept of reasonable doubt. I’ve got the entire house to myself now! Thanks Ken Kratz!”
“Ken Kratz is a vile waste of an egg and sperm whom decent people should not have to share a planet with. This barely human parasite’s father should have jizzed into a sock instead.”
“If you enjoy sexual harassment, give Ken Kratz a call! This man is a lying unethical POS that should have been disbarred many years ago.”
“Morally and ethically bankrupt ass clown whose licensure and election is more embarrassing to Wisconsin than those cheese heads.”
“Oh Mr. Kratz how the tables have turned. I hope you enjoy getting such horrible messages and correspondence from the public. Now you know how Brendan and Steven have felt all these years. They deserve a new trial and you need to do the right thing and advocate for them to get a new trial at least. You have embarrassed yourself by taking advantage of women needing your help. You can redeem yourself if you stand up and do the right thing. It will probably get you less prison time if you step up willingly, instead of in shackles where you belong. I’m sure all the defendants that you prosecuted are gonna enjoy your company.
Kratz recently told a local Fox affiliate that Making a Murderer directors Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos did not allow him to tell his side of the story, a claim they both refute. “I believe there to be 80 to 90 percent of the physical evidence, the forensic evidence, that ties Steven Avery to this murder never to have been presented in this documentary,” he says.
