Lynn Hartman said he made the astonishing remark the first time she saw him at Waupun Correctional Institution
MAKING A Murderer’s Steven Avery boasted he had "five days to clean up" after killing Teresa Halbach, his ex-girlfriend has sensationally claimed.
Lynn Hartman said he made the astonishing remark while grinning like a "Cheshire Cat" the first time she saw him at Waupun Correctional Institution.
In that first visit, Lynn asked Avery about about Teresa's murder and why just a few days after her death, police investigators went into Avery's trailer and could smell bleach and the carpet appeared freshly cleaned.
"I said - half joking, as I believed he was innocent at the time: 'People say the only reason there was no evidence in your trailer was because you had three days to clean it up'," Lynn revealed.
"He leaned back in his chair, I'll never forget it, his eyes constricted to the point that they looked almost white, and he said: 'No, I had five days to clean it up,' he said it grinning like a Cheshire Cat.
"The hairs raised up on the back of my neck and there were goosebumps on my body. Out of all the things to say in the world, that's the last thing you'd say. Why wouldn't you say: 'I didn't need to clean anything up'?
"Even though this was a big red flag, I'd gone this far and I just felt I couldn't get out of the situation and really wanted to believe that Steven was not guilty."
Since their acrimonious split, Lynn’s life has been made hell, but now she told Sun Online she’s prepared to risk further abuse so people find out the "truth"; about the world’s most unlikely superstar and convicted killer.
For the first time, Lynn, 56, reveals everything she knows about Avery, also 56, who was sentenced to life without parole for killing 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach on 31 October 2005, alongside his nephew Brendan Dassey, then 16.
Dassey, who has a mental age of nine, confessed to police after a four-hour interrogation, which supporters say was unfairly coerced.
Lynn paints a picture of a man obsessed with sex, prone to fly into rages, who gave her the crude nickname “my vagina”.
She claims that Avery blames for Dassey for their incarceration and after hearing that he was initially successful in winning an appeal in 2016, Avery told her: "F*** Brendan, I don't give a s*** about him. He should have kept his mouth shut."
Avery and Lynn's unlikely romance started in February 2016 after daughter Kamilia Woolsey, 26, told her mum - who was then going through a difficult divorce - to watch the show.
"I was affected by it, I felt sorry for him, so I typed a letter. He responded and we swapped a few letters, but it felt he wanted it to escalate immediately, he wanted handwritten notes, not typed, and wanted personal things I wasn't comfortable with," says Lynn.
"In one of our first calls, I ran to answer the phone and he said: 'There's my vagina'. His nickname would be vagina. I laid down the marker and said it is not going to happen, that's not how you are going to refer to me, but that's where he wanted to take the conversation - down a sexual route."
The phone calls and letters escalated and, by July, Avery had split with his then fiancé Sandra Greenman, 75.
Lynn adds: "He told me that the reason he wanted to stop seeing his current girlfriend Sandy is that she wouldn't be able to keep up with his sex drive when he's released, as it would require someone who could give him continuous sex four hours a day.
"He'd say things like that, which would knock me off my chair, but I'd still make excuses for him. I thought he had no social etiquette as he had been in prison so long. And I felt special as he was speaking to me out of all the women writing to him.
"He would go straight into things like: 'You need to send me a picture of a white shirt with no bra.' He'd say in the letters: 'Honey, you got nice B cups'. The longer it went on, the more I made excuses for his behaviour. I had to continue convincing myself that he's OK, as I'd gone so far."
Not long afterwards, she says Avery smashed his TV after his ex Sandy gave an interview saying he received up to 40 letters a day from young girls and claimed he’s the “strangest sex symbol”. His lawyer, however, claims there are no records of any such outbursts at the prison.
"Steven wanted me to take over his main Facebook group, it was always: 'We need donations, Steven needs this, Steven needs that'," Lynn said.
"He took his TV down and threw it down on the floor, smashing it everywhere. There’s meant to be money in his mum’s house in a safe from one of the funds, but she wouldn’t give him the money from that account for the TV. He went really mad.
"He then wanted me to get more donations to pay for it, as the money had trickled down to barely nothing by then, so we were doing fundraising campaigns and rallies online."
Lynn and her daughter
By this point Avery was already calling her "Lynn Avery" in letters and bought her a flight to see him behind bars where he made his remarks about cleaning up.
In their letters, Avery would repeatedly say that it was "God's will" they should be together for ever, writing in one note: "God told me that you need me and I believe him so much and I can't let go so I know God is right. God told me to marry you so I told God yes I will marry you and he said OK to me."
He was also insistent that after his conviction was overturned, they'd live away from anyone else in the Wisconsin woods.
When Avery and Lynn were approached to do the Dr Phil Show in October 2016, they agreed, so that she could tell the world about their love - and the producers were determined to make it a great love story.
"The executives wanted me to have a loving nickname for him, so I had to say on one clip that when I first saw him 'he looked like the cutest little teddy bear I'd ever seen'. I was so embarrassed, as that wasn't the truth.
"The first time I saw him, he waddled over to me and I thought: 'He looks like a teddy', as he was round and 5ft 2in, not 5ft 8in like he'd told me," says Lynn.
The interview was going well until Dr Phil asked about the pair's future, saying: "One of the things, he'd like to do is to get out and for the two of you to just go off into the woods to live alone, would you feel comfortable doing that?" Lynn said "No".
"That's when everyone went nuts, family and supporters were telling him what happened on Dr Phil, and he was furious that I didn't want to live in the woods for the rest of our lives. I wouldn't want to live in the woods with anyone, it's just weird," says Lynn.
"So Steven then told his supporters to put it out there that I was a phoney and a gold-digger. Honestly, those next few days were the worst of my life. I was getting harassed by everyone online and Steven was calling every minute of the day.
"When he spoke to me on the phone, he would be screaming at me.
"He'd usually call two or three times a day, now it would be 25 times a day. I don't know how he did it, they're not meant to have a phone all day long.
"I said this is insane, I don't want anything to do with it and wrote him a postcard saying I think we should split up. He was scaring me, this guy's a freaking lunatic.
"He'd be constantly blowing hot and cold in the same calls and letters. He'd be writing to me three or four times a day telling me how much he loves me, but in the next sentence, tell me how much I drive him mad.
"When he's rejected, he becomes the Steven Avery I read in the police transcripts. When he gets mad, it's really strange, I've never seen anything like it. As soon as he started feeling rejected, the monster revealed itself."
The stress of the online abuse from Avery fans took its toll on Lynn, who was admitted into hospital just days after their split.
"Telling the world that I was a gold digger ruined me and was a lie. I got thousands of prank phone calls, text messages, Facebook messages, emails, so much online hate, all saying I'm a 'money grabbing whore' and to 'rot in hell'. People were changing my address, and for four months in a row, I never got my post.
"They're still constantly messing with my head.
"I ended up in hospital for a few days, but it wouldn't stop. He wouldn't stop calling and writing after I ended it.
"When I tried to defend myself in Facebook groups, saying to go easy, I'd be told that I'm a diseased whore. Now I know how it feels to be terrorised without being able to do anything about it."
Despite coming to a temporary truce with Avery's lawyer Kathleen Zellner, where both parties handed over letters, Lynn says the threatening calls and letters from Avery continued for a further month until she got a no-contact order from the prison, after initially contacting the FBI for advice.
"I finally turned it all over to the authorities, I was that desperate. I even went to the FBI and they suggested I get a no-contact order from the prison. I had to submit evidence before it was issued. I wanted this harassment to stop. I was scared and all alone. I had no one - all my friends blamed me for getting involved and my family didn"t want to know," she explains.
"My daughter was also getting letters from Avery and abuse online, she wouldn't speak to me for a year. She was furious that she was getting all this treatment."
In an email dated 30 December 2016, Nathan Haynes, Captain of Waupun Correctional Institution, wrote an email to Lynn, saying: "I did serve Mr. Avery with a no contact order as requested. If anyone else would like to place a no contact order on Mr. Avery and they are over the age of 18 they will need to contact WCI directly."
Lynn moved from Mesquite, Nevada, to a small town in California, yet the abuse from Making A Murderer supporters continued. Taking a break from social media gave some respite, but Making A Murderer 2 started it all back up again earlier last year.
"In February 2018, I came back on social media as I was sick of people calling me a fraud, a whore, a disgusting human being - yet there was a new wave of followers, who were now shouting the abuse. A Twitter user said they had a blow up doll of me, stabbed it to death and threw it in the garbage can," says Lynn.
"I started making reports to Facebook, Reddit and Google, and I had most of the old stuff cleared up, but there's always new stories reappearing."
Lynn realizes that by speaking up, the abuse online from hardcore fans will probably get worse, but she wants her story to be told.
She says: "I don't think it will ever stop and after this interview, I've decided I won't speak about it again. I've done all I can.
"But I thought I'm going to fight fire with fire, one person against this army, I want my voice to be heard."
Avery's lawyer Kathleen Zellner hit out at Lynn's claims, telling Sun Online: "Steven Avery has never blamed Brendan...
"We have demonstrated that the forensic evidence refutes Brendan's confession. Steven has tremendous empathy for Brendan and knows his confession was coerced.
"The authentic letters of Steven, which we have, do not indicate any obsession with sex. We are also in possession of Hartman's letters to Steven which illustrate that people in glass houses should not be heaving stones.
"The prison does not issue orders only courts do that. Steven broke off the relationship with Hartman almost 3 years ago. She keeps talking. He has completely forgotten her and moved on.
"Steven is considered a model prisoner. He has no disciplinary history. There have been no violent outbursts on his part ever noted by the prison staff.
"Ms. Hartman's 15 minutes of fame expired quite some time ago. Her behaviour reaffirms the old adage 'hell hath no fury like a women scorned.' We would recommend yoga, a diet high in fiber and some serious meditation."