Prosecutor Ken Kratz, known for his role in the Steven Avery case made famous by the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, says that pressure from the case led to addiction and suicidal thoughts.
Kratz recently spoke to Dr. Drew Pinsky on his podcast, explaining to the host that he suffered insomnia and anxiety because of the case.
“This all began, I would suspect, as a result of the Avery case,” said Kratz. “It was a case that I was very much in the public eye, very much in the limelight, for 18 straight months we were on the front page and really in a very, very high-profile case. And then it all stopped.”
He added that he mixed drugs including Xanax and Ambien in order to cope, which he says led to “erratic” behavior on his part. Referring to the publicity of the Making a Murderer documentary but mostly to his 2010 scandal that involved sending inappropriate text messages to a woman connected to one of his cases, Kratz said that things then got worse.
“After this whole thing kind of blew up, I became suicidal,” he told Pinsky. “I actually put a gun in my mouth and was really, really having a hard time with having kind of gone from very well-respected and obviously very into my job to really vilified within maybe a 48- or 72-hour period.”
Kratz also talks about the case against Brendan Dassey on the podcast, mentioning a possible “false confession” that have people once again wondering the truth of Dassey‘s role in Teresa Halbach’s death.
“It’s every bit as interesting as the Avery case for different reasons,” he said, “you know, with the false confession and just the manipulation of this young man.”
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