[Narrator] Hands up, who's been watching Criminal
season two, the cat and mouse drama
that takes place entirely in police
interrogation rooms with investigators
locked in a psychological battle of wits
with suspects?
[Woman] Do you want to say it, or shall I?
[Dramatic music]
[Woman] We don't believe you.
[Narrator] The very nature of interrogations is
intrinsically dramatic, full of
deception, tension, and injustice.
And while we love Criminal,
nothing hits quite like the real thing.
So here from Netflix's catalogue of
true crime shows and documentaries
are some real life interrogations
we just can't stop thinking about.
A warning before we dive in:
This video explores some of the darkest aspects
of these cases, including murder and sexual violence.
Making a Murderer was one of the first
true crime series to really get people talking,
and years later, it remains truly compelling
and deeply shocking.
The series focuses on Steven Avery,
a Wisconsin man who was
convicted of sexual assault in 1985
and spent 18 years in prison.
In 2003, DNA evidence secured his release,
but Avery believed the police had a vendetta against him,
and the stakes got higher when he launched
a lawsuit seeking damages.
[Kim Ducat] They weren't going to
hand that man $36 million.
They weren't going to be made
a laughingstock, that's for sure.
[Narrator] Two years later, photographer Teresa Halbach
disappeared. Her last assignment had been to
take pictures of a vehicle belonging to Avery,
which put him firmly under suspicion.
He was found guilty of murder,
but as the series explores,
there are questions over much of the evidence
that put him there. The most shocking moment, though,
involves Avery's nephew, Brendan Dassey,
who was charged with being an accessory
to the crime. With little evidence
to support the state's case,
everything depended on a confession,
and they got it.
Dassey was ultimately convicted
and handed a life sentence.
In the three and a half hour interrogation
without his lawyer present,
Dassey spilled everything they asked him to.
The trouble was, some of what he said didn't
line up with the case against Avery,
and some of it barely made sense at all.
In the interrogation, a mumbling Dassey seems
more worried about making his mother happy
than about how confessing might affect him.
[Interrogator] Did you cut her hair off?
[Dassey] Yeah.
[Interrogator] Where did that happen?
[Dassey] In the bedroom.
[Interrogator] What did you cut the hair off with?
[Dassey] The knife.
[Interrogator] The knife you guys found in the garage?
That doesn't make sense, it's impossible.
You took her out to the garage and that's
when you got the knife.
[Narrator] In 2016, a judge overturned
Dassey's conviction on the grounds
that the confession had been coerced.
But legal wrangling means he remains
in prison to this day.
True crime show, The Confession Tapes,
is all about miscarriages of justice,
and how police have used interrogations
to convict the innocent.
It looks at several cases across the series,
but one of the most haunting is that
of Wesley Meyers. Meyers didn't just
confess once to the 1997 murder of his
girlfriend, Teresa Haught, he confessed three times
and even made a public apology to her family.
[Meyers] I want to apologize to the family
for what I've done.
[Narrator] Meyers was duly found guilty.
The only problem? Confession aside,
the evidence really didn't seem to point to him
being the one who committed the crime.
And while the police were pursuing him,
they were ignoring plausible leads on another
suspect. But it's when you watch the
interrogation itself that alarm
bells really start to go off.
Over many hours of questioning,
the police railroad a compliant Meyers
into believing he's got no choice
other than to cooperate with them
and the story they've constructed,
even telling him they have physical evidence
against him that proved to be nonexistent.
[Police] We both know, Wesley, and let's
be honest with each other,
the people that generally get you the
most pissed off in all the world
are the people you love.
[Narrator] All this was being secretly
recorded, so Meyers didn't know
his words could be used against him.
In 2012, a judge ruled that Meyers'
constitutional rights had been violated
and ordered a retrial. He pled guilty
to a lesser charge and was
released based on time already served.
Meyers remains bitter about the legal process.
[Meyers] They have hardened me.
[Narrator] Henry Lee Lucas was America's most
prolific and notorious serial killer.
A drifter, with no home territory,
he claimed responsibility for
over 600 murders, starting with his own
mother, although the number
eventually settled around a more believable
200. Unlike most known serial killers,
he had no established MO.
He said once that he used anything but poison
on his victims. How did police
catch this slippery shapeshifting
operator? Because he confessed,
and confessed,
and confessed, and confessed.
[Lucas] Well after that I cut her
up into little pieces.
[Narrator] After Lucas was
arrested in 1983 on suspicion
of committing a double murder,
he began claiming responsibility for more and more crimes.
Police came from all over the country
to clear up old cases by pinning them on Lucas.
But in exchange for these confessions,
Lucas was receiving special privileges,
like cigarettes and milkshakes.
He was also getting attention from law
enforcement, praise from the police
whose intrays he was helping to empty,
and a feeling of purpose for the
first time in a life that had been
chaotic and cruel.
[Lucas] I've tried to show law enforcement,
I've tried to teach 'em.
[Narrator] He had basically become a
celebrity, and every confession
only helped to grow his fame
and importance.
In this series, The Confession Killer,
you can see just how unreliable this process was.
It's not just one interrogation that stands
so much as the sheer mass of them,
which all show a cheerful Lucas
enjoying his chats with investigators.
Did he commit any of the crimes
attributed to him? Later in life,
after his wilder claims had come apart
under scrutiny, he was telling a different story.
[Lucas] My mother, back in 1960,
that is the only murder I've ever committed,
and I'm not positive I committed that.
[Narrator] The kind of 'ah-ha!' moments
that feature in fictional interrogations
rarely happen in real life, but sometimes,
real life gets close. Before 2012,
Steubenville, Ohio, was a normal small town
with a typical American passion for
its high school football team.
After 2012, the word Steubenville meant
something very different. It became a byword
for toxic masculinity and victim blaming
after a harrowing rape case became
a source of international outrage.
Documentary Roll, Red Roll,
tells the story of the investigation, the prosecution,
and the public reaction, and shines a light on the
misogyny and entitlement that contributed
to the crime. At a party that August,
a teenage girl, she's not named because of
laws to protect victims of sexual violence,
was sexually assaulted by multiple male students,
many with connection to the football team.
There wasn't any question that she could have consented.
Witnesses confirmed that she was so drunk
that she had to be propped up,
and her assailants had bragged
about what they did to her in graphic terms
on social media. But for investigators, part
of the problem was establishing
exactly who had played what part in the crime.
Over a series of interrogations,
they pieced the night together,
and in one dramatic scene,
they finally get one boy to describe how
a gang rape had been planned.
[Investigator] You said you're a football player.
Fucking man up.
[Boy] I think they were talking about
training her. I...
[Investigator] Why do you believe they were talking
about training her? What makes
you believe that?
[Boy] Because that's what they were talking
about earlier in the night, like
when we were first leaving.
[Investigator] They were talking about this
in the car?
[Boy] Yeah, like, going to Jake's house.
[Narrator] As a result of the investigation,
two high school football players,
Ma'lik Richmond and Trent Mays,
were convicted of the rape of a minor,
while several adults, including a school
superintendent, were indicted for obstructing
the course of justice. You can watch
all of these incredible interrogations
and Criminal season two on Netflix now.
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[Music]