Steven Avery walks out of a Wisconsin prison in 2003 after eighteen years for a rape he did not commit, cleared by DNA evidence, and this opening episode traces how a small-town outsider from a salvage yard family became the county's easiest suspect in the first place. Archival news footage, courtroom photographs, and interviews with Avery's family and lawyers lay out the original 1985 conviction, the flawed identification that sent him away, and the civil suit he files against Manitowoc County once he's freed. The episode builds toward the turn that made the case famous: while that lawsuit is still active, Avery is arrested again, this time for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach, and investigators from the same sheriff's department he's suing take charge of the scene. The film lays out the physical evidence and the timeline without editorializing, letting the coincidence of timing speak for itself. It closes with Avery back in custody, the county's motives already in question.