did you? not really. what do you mean, not really? at the first moment that brendan gets outside the influence of those interrogators, he says, nope, this is not true, they got to my head. but tom fassbender, the interrogator himself sees it all very differently. coming up this was seen by many as a false confession. i feel it was a real confession. he knew right from wrong. brendan was involved in this. when dateline continues. protect your pet with the #1 name in flea and tick protection. frontline plus. trusted by vets for nearly 20 years.
and brendan someone capable of rape? no. no. i don t even think he knew what that was at the time. in 2008, attorneys took up dassey s case for his appeal. they saw a mentally challenged teen with a low iq. how do you spell garage? g-a-r-a-g-e. what did you think of brendan dassey when you were able to meet him in person? brendan is a simple soul. i was struck by his humanity. this is not somebody i could see committing a crime like that. that s the psychological power of interrogation. the two attorneys are based at the northwestern school of law outside chicago. they ve worked to free a number of wrongfully convicted defendants and say what they learned about dassey s case astounded them. nobody was in brendan dassey s corner at the moment he needed help the most. beginning, they say, with this man. gimme one word to describe len kachinsky. unbelievable.
entirety of the interview, i would say yes. and as for the other moment that has angered so many followers of the case. i m going to come out and ask you, who shot her in the head? he did. any regrets about that? bringing it up yourselves, about putting that in his head? there s always things that you can improve on. there were instances because of brendan s personality that, yeah, we had to talk to him about and ask more specifically certain questions. and it happens. what do you say to those people who have made you part of this big discussion about false confessions and who are yelling at their tvs because they didn t like the job that you did? just that it s easy to arm chair quarterback. it s easy to second-guess. that i that s partly why i m here, to explain that there was nothing nefarious done. but even fassbender wonders if everything dassey said in the confession was true.
immigration. coming ago republicans face criticism over the policies separating parents and children coming across the border. eight people have been injured after a taxi crashed into pedestrians on a moscow sidewalk. that driver in the crash has been detained, police saying it appears he lost control of the cab. for now, back to dateline. welcome back to dateline. i m craig melvin. investigators deny they framed steven avery for the murder of teresa halbach. after all, his nephew, brendan, confessed. but did he tell detectives the truth or what he thought they wanted to hear? here with more of our story is andrea canning. all the renewed attention in the steven avery saga has shed light on the other defendant in the case brendan dassey. the teenager had been convicted of re and murderbut to his family, none of it ever made any sense.
that he punched her. what else? it s okay. cut her. what else happened to her, in her head? extremely, extremely important you tell us this. for us to believe you. come on, brendan. what else? that s all i can remember. all right, i m just gonna come out and ask you, who shot her in the head? he did. why didn t you tell us that? because i couldn t think of it. those officers wanted that information in the worst way, and they got it in the worst way. by feeding it straight to brendan dassey. even they know that that s bad police practice. then they discovered something at the end of that interview which was a revelation to them, something jurors in his trial never heard. dassey speaking to his mother. i never did nothing.