Kathleen's death
On December 9, 2001, Michael called the emergency line to report that he had just found Kathleen unconscious and suspected that she had fallen down "15 or 20 stairs." Peterson later maintained that Kathleen must have fallen down the stairs after consuming alcohol and valium. Toxicology results showed that his wife's blood alcohol content was 0.07 percent. The autopsy report concluded that the 48 year old victim sustained a matrix of severe injuries, including a fracture of the thyroid neck cartilage and seven lacerations to the top and back of her head consistent with blows from a blunt object and had died from blood loss one and a half to two hours after sustaining the injuries. Kathleen's sister, Candace Zamperini, and daughter Caitlin had both initially maintained Michael's innocence and publicly supported him alongside his children but Zamperini reconsidered upon finding out about Peterson's bisexuality as did Caitlin after reading her mother's autopsy report, both subsequently broke off from the rest of the family. Police investigators concluded that the injuries sustained were inconsistent with an accidental fall down the stairs (although a forensic expert later testified that the blood spatter evidence was consistent with an accident). As Michael Peterson was the only person at the residence at the time of Kathleen's death, he was the prime suspect, and was soon charged with her murder. He pleaded not guilty.
The Durham coroner concluded that Kathleen had died due to lacerations of the scalp caused by a homicidal assault. There were in total seven lacerations to the top and back of her head caused, according to the coroner, by repeated blows with a weapon similar to a fireplace poker.The trial drew media attention, as the details of Michael's life emerged. The Durham County DA, James Hardin Jr and prosecutors (among them future District Attorney Mike Nifong) attacked Peterson's credibility, focusing on his alleged misreporting of his military service and what they described as a gay life he led and kept secret. The prosecution contended that the Petersons' marriage was far from happy, suggesting that Kathleen had discovered Michael's alleged secret gay life and wanted to end their marriage. Despite this scenario being discredited by police investigators, it was the only motive for Kathleen's alleged murder offered by the prosecution at trial.
"She would have been infuriated by learning that her husband, who she truly loved was bi-sexual and having an extramarital relationship - not with another woman - but a man, which would have been humiliating and embarrassing to her. We believe that once she learned this information that an argument ensued and a homicide occurred" —Assistant District Attorney, Freda Black
The defense argued that Kathleen knew about and accepted Michael's bisexuality and that the marriage was very happy, a position supported by Michael and Kathleen's children and numerous friends and associates. The prosecution maintained a poker was the weapon used, and showed jurors a replica, but claimed they could not find one. A poker actually had been found in the garage but forensic tests revealed that it could not have been the murder weapon. A juror contacted after the trial said the jury had dismissed a poker or anything like it thus making the poker irrelevant. The defense disputed this finding as Kathleen's skull had not been fractured by the blows nor was the brain damaged. When asked by the defense why, in the 250 recorded beating deaths in North Carolina in the past decade, was there not one single incident involving multiple blows to the head which did not include these injuries, the coroner stated she did not research criminal cases so could not comment.
Suspicion surrounding Elizabeth Ratliff's death
Elizabeth Ratliff, who died in Germany in 1985, was also found at the foot of her staircase with injuries to the head. The death was investigated by both the German police and U.S. military police. An autopsy at the time of her death concluded she had died from an intra-cerebral haemorrhage secondary to the blood coagulation disorder Von Willebrand's disease, based on blood in her cerebrospinal fluid and reports that she had been suffering severe, persistent headaches in the weeks leading up to her death. The coroner determined that the haemorrhage resulted in immediate death followed by Ratliff falling down the stairs after collapsing. By all accounts, including his own, Peterson was the last person to see her alive.
Before Peterson's trial, the Durham court ordered the exhumation of Elizabeth's embalmed body for a second autopsy in April 2003. The defense requested an independent autopsy by a forensic pathologist in Texas, pointing out that the state has no shortage of qualified professionals in this field. Over the defense’s objection, the autopsy was conducted by the same Durham medical examiner who had performed Kathleen Peterson's first autopsy who later reported that Ratliff had also been murdered. This necessitated that the body be transported under guard from Texas at great expense.
The prosecution introduced Elizabeth's death into the trial as an incident giving Peterson the idea of how to "fake" Kathleen's accident. Despite police reports that there was very little blood at the scene of Ratliff's death, the nanny, who was the first to discover Ratliff's body in 1985, took the stand at Peterson's trial and testified that there was a large amount of the blood at the scene. Another witness testified spending much of the day cleaning blood stains off of the wall. Despite the implication that Peterson had also murdered Elizabeth Ratliff, her daughters stood by him: "The DA is trying to say that our dad killed our birth mother and our mother. But where are we sitting? We're sitting behind our dad."
The admissibility of the Ratliff evidence in court was one of the grounds for the subsequent appeal against his conviction, lodged by Peterson's lawyers in 2005.
Verdict
On October 10, 2003, after one of the longest trials in North Carolina history, a Durham County jury found Michael Peterson guilty of the murder of Kathleen Peterson and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Denial of parole requires premeditation, despite the jury accepting the murder was a "spur of the moment" crime they also found it was premeditated. As one juror explained it, premeditated meant not only planning hours or days ahead but could also mean planning in the seconds before committing a spur of the moment crime.
Peterson is housed at the Nash Correctional Institution near Rocky Mount.
Appeal
Peterson's appeal was filed by his defense counsel Thomas Maher, now serving as his court-appointed attorney, and was argued before the North Carolina Court of Appeals on April 18, 2006. On September 19, 2006 the Court of Appeals rejected Peterson's arguments that he did not get a fair trial because of repeated judicial mistakes. The appeals ruling said the evidence was fairly admitted. The judges did find defects in a search warrant but said they had no ill effect on the defense. Because the Court of Appeals' ruling was not unanimous, under North Carolina law Peterson had right to appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court, which accepted the case. Oral argument was heard on September 10, 2007. On November 9, 2007 the Court announced that it affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals. Absent a reconsideration of the ruling or the raising of a federal issue, Peterson has exhausted his appeal of the verdict.
As of Tuesday, March 10, 2009, the request for a new trial has been denied.
Arguments for a New Trial
On November 12, 2008, J. Burkhardt Beale and Jason Anthony, Richmond, Va. attorneys, who now represent Michael Peterson, filed a motion for a new trial in Durham County court on three grounds: that the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence about a tire iron; that the prosecution used an expert witness, whose qualifications are disputed; and that one juror based his judgment on racial factors not evidence. On March 10, 2009 Peterson's motion was denied by the Durham County Superior Court.
In late 2009 Peterson's attorneys raised a new theory of Kathleen Peterson's death, that she had been attacked by an owl outside and had fallen after rushing inside and climbing the stairs. The owl theory was raised after it Peterson's attorneys claimed that the SBI crime lab report listed a microscopic owl feather entangled in a clump of hair that had been pulled out by the roots found clutched in Kathleen's left hand. A re-examination of the hair in September 2008 found two more microscopic owl feathers. Advocates allege the existence of other evidence supports the theory, namely that two of the seven scalp wounds were tri-lobed and consistent with marks left by talons, the feathers are similar to those found on the feet of owls, cedar needles were found on her hands and body indicating she had fallen over outside shortly before entering the house and that two drops of Kathleen's blood were found outside the house on the front walkway along with a finger smear on the front door consistent with her pushing the door shut. The advocates for the owl attack hypothesis also note that owl attacks on people are common in the area with one victim stating that the impact was similar to being hit in the head with a baseball bat.[1] According to attorney T. Lawrence Pollard, had a jury been presented with this evidence it would have "materially affected their deliberation and therefore would have materially affected their ultimate verdict." Prosecutors have ridiculed the claim and Dr. Deborah Radisch, who conducted Kathleen Peterson's autopsy, says it is unlikely that an owl or any other bird could have made wounds as deep as those on Kathleen's scalp. No motion for a new trial was filed on this point.
Suspicions: a documentary of the trial
The court case generated widespread interest in part because of a televised documentary variously named
Soupçons (Suspicions),
Death on the Staircase and
The Staircase, which detailed Peterson's legal and personal troubles. The six hour documentary was assembled from over 600 hours of footage and comprises eight segments. It was released by Maha Productions in October 2004 and was directed by French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. The documentary offers an intimate depiction of defense preparations for the trial. It also examines the role and behavior of the popular press as it covered aspects of the case. The filmmakers started their project within weeks of the December 2001 death and Peterson's murder indictment; jury selection took place in May 2003 with the case itself going to trial in July 2003.
Following the guilty verdict, de Lestrade interviewed the jurors to find why they decided on this verdict. By and large the jurors were swayed by the amount of blood Kathleen lost and the number of lacerations which indicated to them it could not have been an accident.
Film 2007
The story was filmed as The Staircase Murders, starring Treat Williams.
Current status of the parties
- In October 2002, acting as administrator of Kathleen's estate, Caitlin filed a wrongful death claim against Michael. In June 2006, he voluntarily filed for bankruptcy. Two weeks later Caitlin filed an objection to the bankruptcy. On February 1, 2007, Caitlin and Michael settled the wrongful death claim for $25 million, pending acceptance by the courts involved; finalization of the settlement by the court was announced on February 1, 2008. In the settlement, Michael did not admit that he murdered Kathleen. Caitlin is unlikely to ever collect a significant amount of the judgment.
- Caitlin Atwater recently graduated from Cornell University.
- Peterson's younger son, Todd Peterson, lives in Dubai.
- Peterson's older son, Clayton Peterson, was married in 2004.
- Martha Ratliff lives in San Francisco.
- Margaret Ratliff is studying documentary filmmaking at Columbia College in Chicago.
- Following the trial, one of Peterson's lawyers, Thomas Maher, resigned from the firm that bore his name (Rudolf, Maher, Widenhouse & Fialko). He is now Peterson's court-appointed attorney.
- Lead defense counsel David Rudolf mentions the Peterson case on his website [2].
- This case was featured in the episode "A Novel Idea" of Forensic Files.
- This case was featured in the episode "Murder, He Wrote" of Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justice on TruTv
