A few near-universally-acknowledged truths emerged from Netflix’s hit docuseries Making a Murderer: our criminal justice system is corrupt and dysfunctional, Dean Strang and Jerry Buting are passionate, hard-working men, and district attorney Ken Kratz is an asshole.
Since the release of the series, Kratz has spoken to severalpublications about elements he feels were misleading or misinformation. On Tuesday, Gothamist joined the pack and posted a video of a conversation between Kratz and comedian Jena Friedman.
“I was a dick,” Kratz says upfront. “Some of that was bravado that was necessary for the presentation of the case, but some of that was me. And I think it’s important that people understand that I’m not that person anymore.”
Friedman asks if he would do anything differently today.
“There was a press conference that I had March 2nd of 2006 after Brendan Dassey was charged,” he responds. “I was basically reading from Dassey’s criminal complaint to tell the general public. The public has a right to know, that’s why we’re allowed to release that kind of information. What I would do now much differently than I did then was simply release the written criminal complaint.”
In their conversation, Kratz discusses why he subpoenaed the series’ filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, why a key piece of the defense’s evidence was meaningless, and a change in his astrological identity.
“For the first 35 years of my life, I was a Leo, and then they decided that July 23rd was really in Cancer instead of Leo.”
“So you’re a cancer,” Friedman counters.
“Stop.”
The tone of the interview is generally hard to pin down, and inconsistent, often abrupt editing contributes to the vagueness. Since Kratz, who was accused of repeatedly sexting a domestic violence victim (as well as several other potential clients) in is such a widely despised figure, I would have liked the opportunity to see him answer for his past actions in some kind of substantial way rather than being quietly rude for eight minutes.
