This Photo Could Be The Key To Steven Avery's Case

Never say spending hours traveling down the rabbit hole that is the Internet gets you nowhere. Looking at countless files and images may sound unproductive when you've got an exam to study for, but the process sounds a lot more useful when a person's innocence is up for debate. Making a Murderer Internet detectives may have discovered a piece of evidence that could have totally changed Steven Avery's case back in 2007 and could affect his current appeal process. It really will make you a believer in the power of the Internet.

The most recent discovery comes from a photo of Teresa Halbach, the Wisconsin woman Steven Avery was convicted of murdering back in 2005. A close-up of the photograph, which was featured on the Netflix series, appears to show Halbach holding a set of keys (as in, multiple keys on a key ring). As viewers know, when Manitowoc County police conducted their investigation of Halbach's death, they recovered from Avery's bedroom a single key on a fob that was determined to be her missing car key.

The find, had Avery's defense team been aware of what looks to be multiple keys in the photo, could have boosted the argument that the key recovered by police was not Halbach's main set. And that could have helped the argument it was planted in an effort to frame Avery for the murder.

Viewers are not the only ones speaking out on the web sleuths' discovery. Jerome Buting, one of Avery's defense lawyers, told Rolling Stone that folks scouring and debating on the Internet are like millions of bonus members on the defense team.

We were only two minds. What I'm discovering is that a million minds are better than two. Some of these people online have found things with a screen shot of a picture that we missed.

Buting said he and his partner, Dean Strang, did point out during the trial that having a single key would be atypical. The second look at the photograph, though, could be a game-changer.

Now, we did challenge that, how unusual it was for her to be walking around with one key, but I don't think I caught the fact that there was a photograph showing that what she really carried around was a bunch of keys, and none of those keys were ever found.

According to Buting, though, what could have been still has the potential to be. The lawyer said that, if Avery's application for an appeal does move forward, evidence found by Reddit users and the like could at some point make it in front of a jury.

Check out the 'Making a Murderer' stream in the Bustle app for more on Steven Avery & Brendan Dassey's cases.

Image: Making A Murderer/Netflix; Imgur