Photo: Facebook via Steven Avery Project
If you’ve ‘Netflix-n-Chill’-ed recently, then his name will definitely ring a bell: Steven Avery, who may still be in prison, but that doesn’t stop him from finding love. The Making a Murderer star is engaged to Lynn Hartman, a legal secretary. The clincher? He’s only met her once.
Avery is set to marry Lynn Hartman, who hails from Nevada, per his lawyer Kathleen Zellner, who recently made a statement about the engagement. “Steven Avery’s engagement to Lynn is one bright spot in an otherwise unbelievably tragic and unfair life story. Cheers to both of them.” The pair has been dating for about eight months, but only met face-to-face for the first time recently, according to The Daily Mail.
Photo: Facebook via Un-Making a Murderer
The duo’s romance has been kept top secret until recently, when letters and phone calls turned into an in-person meeting last week at Waupun Correctional Institute in Wisconsin, where Avery has been imprisoned for the last 11 years. The 53-year-old was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of Teresa Halbach in 2005 — which includes a widely debated murder narrative that has much of the public still questioning his innocence thanks to the Making a Murderer Netflix documentary (which most of us obsessively watched over the course of two days — sleep? Who needs sleep?). Avery’s nephew Brendan Dassey, now 26, was also convicted in the same murder, but is now set to be released in the next 60 days.
Before the Netflix series, which was filmed over the course of 10 years by Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, Avery served 18 years on the charge of rape due to a DNA evidence snafu. Since that time, he has been married twice and engaged three times — which includes the time during his first and second stints in prison. While many would think that a prison sentence would deter women from ogling and pining after him, his ex-fiancée Sandra Greenman shared in an interview with The Daily Mail that Avery allegedly receives up to 40 letters a day from women who view him as a “sex symbol.”
And his newest love is no different. “Despite all obstacles, and Steven’s wrongful conviction and incarceration, we plan to be married shortly after he is released,” his new fiancé explained.
While we don’t see any engagement ring on her finger as of yet, it sounds like their plans are pretty set in stone and the former mechanic, 53, seems to concur. “I’m happy, she treats me decent, she loves me, she’s kind of spoiling me right now. I just want to be happy and enjoy my life, I think I did enough time. She’s going to be my future wife. We’ll be laughing forever.”
See More: 20 Things You Should Do As Soon As You Get Engaged
We may be hearing wedding bells sooner rather than later, as his lawyer, Kathleen Zellner has been working on overturning his case. A new wife and fresh out of prison for the second time? Now that would be another very interesting Netflix follow-up documentary. For now, we’ll just have to sit back and see how it all unfolds.