MURDERED: Kathleen Peterson

Summary

Podcast Summary: "MURDERED: Kathleen Peterson"

Clues with Morgan Absher and Kayla Moore
Episode: MURDERED: Kathleen Peterson
Release Date: July 2, 2025
Hosted by: Morgan Absher and Kayla Moore
Produced by: Crime House, powered by PAVE Studios

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Introduction

In this gripping episode of Clues, hosts Morgan Absher and Kayla Moore delve deep into the mysterious 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson. Initially believed to be a tragic accident, Kathleen's demise spirals into a high-profile murder trial fraught with twists, questionable evidence, and lingering mysteries. The hosts aim to uncover hidden details, analyze overlooked evidence, and explore the trail of clues that have kept this case in the public eye for decades.

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Background of Kathleen and Michael Peterson

Kathleen Peterson, born Kathleen Hunt in 1953, was an exceptionally intelligent and accomplished woman. She was the first woman accepted into Duke University's prestigious engineering program in 1971, later earning a master's degree in mechanical engineering. Kathleen had a successful corporate career in telecommunications and was the primary breadwinner for her family. She had one daughter, Caitlyn, from her first marriage to Fred Atwater.

Michael Peterson, Kathleen's second husband, was a decorated Vietnam War veteran and a struggling author. Ten years Kathleen's senior, Michael had a complex family life, raising four biological children and two daughters, Martha and Margaret, from his first marriage. The couple blended their families and appeared to lead a harmonious life together.

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The Night of Kathleen's Death

On December 8, 2001, Kathleen and Michael spent the evening Christmas shopping before returning to their luxurious 14-room mansion in Durham, North Carolina. After dinner and a movie, they spent time by the pool, sharing two bottles of wine and possibly a Valium to manage Kathleen's work-related stress.

At around 11 PM, Kathleen went inside to take a call, while Michael remained by the pool until after 2 AM—a span of over three hours. At 2:30 AM, a panicked Michael called 911, reporting that Kathleen had fallen down the stairs and was unresponsive. Six minutes later, he made a second distress call, stating that Kathleen was no longer breathing.

Morgan Abshur [04:14]: "It is one of the twistier cases I feel like we're going to cover."

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Initial Investigation and Autopsy

First responders found Kathleen at the bottom of the staircase, dead and covered in blood. Michael appeared disoriented, barefoot, and covered in blood, seemingly trying to explain the incident. Initial assumptions suggested an accidental fall exacerbated by intoxication and stress. However, Kathleen's autopsy revealed seven irregular gashes on the back of her head, indicating possible blunt force trauma consistent with being struck repeatedly by an object. Additionally, she had a cartilage fracture in her neck and a small hemorrhage on the left side of her brain, suggesting strangulation or severe head impact.

Notably, Kathleen had clumps of her own hair in her hands, indicating a struggle or extreme distress before her death. Her blood alcohol content was 0.07, below the legal driving limit, though it might have been higher earlier in the night.

Kayla Moore [16:24]: "Like she was ripping her hair."

These findings shifted the investigation from an accidental death to a potential homicide, with Michael Peterson emerging as the primary suspect due to the lack of evidence pointing to an intruder and the extensive blood spatter implicating him.

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The Trial: Prosecution and Defense

Prosecution's Case:

1. Blood Spatter Analysis: Duane Deaver, a blood spatter analyst, testified that the patterns of blood supported the theory of Kathleen being repeatedly struck with a blunt object, likely the missing fireplace blowpoke from their home.

   Duane Deaver [32:23]: "It's exactly what I'd expect to see if someone was repeatedly raising a blunt object and striking someone in the head with it."

2. Michael's Behavior: Michael's delayed 911 call, extensive cleanup, and disoriented behavior were portrayed as indicative of guilt.

3. Motive: The prosecution highlighted financial stress, including significant credit card debt and Michael's declining writing career, suggesting Kathleen's life insurance as a potential motive for murder.

4. Michael's Sexuality: The presence of gay pornography on Michael's computers was used to suggest marital discord, arguing that Kathleen would not tolerate his bisexuality, potentially leading to motive for murder.

Defense's Case:

1. Accidental Fall Theory: Led by attorney David Rudolph, the defense argued that Kathleen's injuries were consistent with an accidental fall, influenced by alcohol and Valium. They pointed out the lack of typical assault wounds, absence of struggle indications, and inconsistencies in blood spatter analysis.

2. Bias in Blood Analysis: The defense presented alternative expert opinions, including Dr. Henry Lee, who suggested the blood spatter could result from Kathleen coughing up blood from her injuries, though this was contested.

3. Questioning the Evidence: The defense challenged the credibility of key evidence, such as the missing blowpoke, which was later found undamaged and possibly unrelated to the crime.

4. Michael's Character: Family members testified to the apparent happiness of Michael and Kathleen's marriage, countering the prosecution's narrative.

Kayla Moore [37:44]: "Do you just do it with milk?"

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The Owl Theory Appeal

In a surprising twist during the appeals process, Michael's defense introduced an unconventional theory: Kathleen was attacked by a barred owl. This theory suggested that an owl's talons caused her head injuries, explaining the peculiar blood spatter and missing blowpoke.

Evidence Supporting the Owl Theory:

• Scalp Lacerations: The shape and nature of Kathleen's head wounds were consistent with owl talons.
• External Evidence: Blood found smeared on the exterior door and a feather on Kathleen's body hinted at an outdoor encounter.
• Comparable Cases: References to a 1985 case where a trucker named Robert Schmidt was fatally attacked by an owl added a semblance of plausibility.

Despite its novelty, the owl theory garnered significant media attention but failed to persuade the courts, maintaining Michael's conviction.

Morgan Abshur [55:50]: "They had like, this one small feather found on Kathleen's body and a twig stuck to her like a. Like a pine needle."

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Blood Spatter Expert Credibility Issues

The prosecution's case heavily relied on Duane Deaver's blood spatter analysis. However, a 2010 independent review of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations crime lab unveiled systemic issues:

• Overstated Qualifications: Deaver had more training as a zoologist than a forensic blood analyst.
• Misleading Testimony: The review highlighted instances where Deaver provided false or misleading information, leading to wrongful convictions, including one where a 17-year-old was exonerated after 30 years in prison.
• Impact on Michael's Case: Deaver's unreliable testimony was pivotal in securing Michael's conviction, leading to questions about the validity of the blood spatter evidence presented.

This revelation undermined the prosecution's case, casting doubt on the foundational evidence used to convict Michael.

Kayla Moore [61:36]: "It completely destroys Dwayne Deaver's credibility."

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Appeals and Conviction Vacated

In December 2011, leveraging the newfound doubts about Deaver's credibility, a judge vacated Michael's conviction, leading to his release after eight years in prison. The state retained the right to retry the case but opted to accept an Alford plea in February 2017:

• Alford Plea: Michael maintained his innocence while acknowledging that the prosecution had sufficient evidence to convict him.
• Result: Charged with voluntary manslaughter, Michael received a sentence of 64 months, of which he had already served, leading to his release.

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Caitlyn Atwater's Stand

Kathleen's daughter, Caitlyn, initially believed in her mother's and stepfather's happy marriage. However, upon reviewing the autopsy details, she became convinced of Michael's guilt. She filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Michael, seeking $25 million, which remains unpaid. Caitlyn's stance created a rift within the blended family, estranging her from her step-siblings.

Kayla Moore [73:44]: "Caitlyn is at least out there, like, trying to keep her mother's memory and legacy alive because Kathleen is really just viewed as like a corpse in the entire documentary."

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The Staircase Documentary Bias

The episode critiques the Staircase documentary for its apparent bias favoring Michael Peterson. Key points include:

• Selective Narration: Focus primarily on the defense, neglecting Kathleen's background and character.
• Conflict of Interest: The documentary's editor was in a relationship with Michael post-trial, raising concerns about impartiality.
• Misrepresentation: Kathleen is portrayed more as a victim without exploration of her life, achievements, or personality.

Kayla Moore [67:03]: "You don't learn anything about Kathleen in the documentary."

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Current Status and Legacy

Michael Peterson remains a polarizing figure—maintaining his innocence while having served significant time in prison. His case highlights critical flaws in forensic evidence handling, expert testimony credibility, and the judicial system's susceptibility to biases. Kathleen Peterson's legacy is overshadowed by the controversy surrounding her death, with her daughter striving to honor her memory amid ongoing legal battles.

Kayla Moore [73:18]: "I do not think there was enough evidence to convict him in a criminal court."

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Conclusion

This episode of Clues meticulously unpacks the Kathleen Peterson case, revealing the complexities and unresolved questions that continue to surround it. From flawed forensic analysis to questionable motivations, the Peterson saga serves as a stark reminder of the challenges within the criminal justice system. Morgan and Kayla invite listeners to ponder the evidence and form their own conclusions, emphasizing the importance of scrutinizing every clue in the pursuit of justice.

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Notable Quotes:

• Morgan Abshur [00:17]: "Could Kathleen's death have been accidental or was it definitely murder?"
• Kayla Moore [03:47]: "If you comment initially and you're like okay, initial take this is what I think. Reply to yourself and then post what you think after you hear everything."
• Kayla Moore [73:44]: "I do not think there was enough evidence to convict him in a criminal court."

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Key Takeaways:

• Forensic Flaws: The reliability of blood spatter analysis was critically undermined by the misconduct of Duane Deaver.
• Judicial Oversight: The case underscores the necessity for rigorous vetting of forensic experts to ensure unbiased and accurate testimony.
• Personal Biases: Michael's sexuality and personal struggles were controversially used against him, highlighting societal prejudices influencing legal outcomes.
• Unanswered Questions: The introduction of the owl theory and unresolved aspects of Kathleen's life leave room for continued debate and investigation.

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Engage with Us:

Have thoughts or theories about the Kathleen Peterson case? Share your insights and join the discussion on our Instagram and YouTube channels. Your input enriches our community and fuels our quest to uncover the truth behind history's most perplexing crimes.

Transcript

[Unknown Speaker]

Foreign.

[Morgan Abshur]

This is Crime House.

[Kayla Moore]

I've whispered her name more than a thousand times and I can't stop crying.

[Morgan Abshur]

It is one of the twistier cases I feel like we're going to cover.

[Kayla Moore]

Could Kathleen's death have been accidental or was it definitely murder?

[Unknown Speaker]

Foreign.

[Morgan Abshur]

Hi guys. Welcome back to Clues where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases.

[Kayla Moore]

I'm Kayla Moore and I'll be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories and the court files released for these cases.

[Morgan Abshur]

And I'm your Internet sleuth, Morgan Abshur. I'm going to be pulling at the strings that I found deep online that add up or don't.

[Kayla Moore]

Each week on Clues we're going to explore how even the smallest pieces of evidence think blood spatter, an email, even a fireplace blowpoke. Which we're going to get into could lead to groundbreaking discoveries and may even bring long awaited justice.

[Morgan Abshur]

At Crime House, we really value your support. So please be sure to share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow clues to help others discover our podcast for bonus episodes, early access and ad free listening to join our Crime House plus community on Apple Podcasts.

[Kayla Moore]

Today we are going to get into the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson, which you might know this case from the staircase documentary that came out. What seemed at first like a tragic accident led to a very high profile murder trial with enough twists and turns to make a scripted courtroom drama seem boring by comparison.

[Morgan Abshur]

Police suspected Kathleen's husband, Michael, but with no witnesses, no murder weapon and no concrete DNA, they had to piece the crime scene together from circumstantial and forensic evidence. Plus a secret or two from Michael's past come out. And even after the trial was over, the case wasn't A shocking appeal presented a new suspect nobody anticipated. And key parts of the story remain a mystery to this day. More on this case and the clues that defined it right after this quick break.

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[Kayla Moore]

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[Morgan Abshur]

I am so curious to see where I stand when we get to the end of this one because this is by far one of the most baffling cases to me.

[Kayla Moore]

I know, and I mean we'll say this now, but people watching might have seen the Staircase documentary. It is very popular, very famous. It's on Netflix right now. There's a lot that the documentary doesn't cover about this case that we're going to get into today. So as always, if you think you have an opinion on what happened to Kathleen Peterson, please let us know in the comments like at the start of this video and then let us know if your opinion changes at all by the end.

[Morgan Abshur]

Wait, I would love that. If you comment initially and you're like okay, initial take this is what I think. Reply to yourself and then post what you think after you hear everything.

[Kayla Moore]

If anything changes.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, because I'm like, I'm so. I don't want to spoil it for anyone but like this truly is. It is one of the twistier cases I feel like we're gonna cover. And like I didn't really know a lot about this case until getting into the research about it. It was kind of happening around the same time as the Kaylee Anthony case and so I think it kind of got a little lost in the media and so this one is really interesting for me.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, there's a lot of twists and turns, a lot that the documentary doesn't cover. So let's get into it. Also, if anyone is watching this episode on YouTube, you're going to see some photos that will help you visualize parts of this case. And if you're listening, don't worry, we will be posting those same photos to our social media that's at Clues podcast on Instagram. On December 8, 2001, 58 year old Michael Peterson and his wife, 48 year old Kathleen Peterson are home after a long day of Christmas shopping. They spend the evening together at their very luxurious 14 room home mansion that sits on this beautiful 3 acre lot in Durham, North Carolina. As you can maybe tell, they're a pretty successful couple. Michael is an author who wrote three well received novels based on his experience in Vietnam. He had even recently managed to sell the movie rights to one of the non fiction books he wrote called quote, Charlie Two Shoes and the Marines of Love Company. And that's based on the true story of a Chinese boy who was taken in by American Marines during World War II. And that actually is part of the reason they were celebrating that night. Kathleen is also very successful as well. She has a six figure telecom job with corporate stock options. She's also the steady breadwinner of the family. Michael will write books and kind of make money depending on that. But Kathleen has like a pretty consistent job. But on this night, Kathleen may have needed to have a nice evening with her husband because over the last few months she's been dealing with a lot of stress from work. Her company had been going through layoffs and Kathleen was actually one of the people who had to break the news to some of the employees that they were being laid off. So after the couple shares a meal and watches a movie, Kathleen and Michael go. When they lay out by the pool and chat under the stars for a bit, Michael says that they shared about two bottles of wine throughout the evening. He also said that Kathleen may have taken a Valium for stress at some point during the night. Then Kathleen went inside around 11pm because she had to take a call. And according to Michael, he stayed out by the pool until sometime after 2am So I was over three hours that he was out by the pool by himself. At that point he wants to head inside intending to go to bed. But around 2:30 in the morning, Michael calls 91 1. He is absolutely panicked on this call and he tells the operator that his wife has had an accident. He says she fell down the stairs so you can hear. Michael tells the operator that Kathleen is still breathing and he asks them to get someone here right away. And then he hangs up abruptly. Here's a clip from that.

[Unknown Speaker]

1810 Cedar Street. Please, what's wrong? My wife had an accident. She still. What kind of accident? Stairs. She's still being. Police. Is she conscious? What? Is she conscious? No, she's not conscious. Please. How many stairs did you fall down? How many stairs? Stairs. How many stairs? Calm down, sir. Calm down. No. 15, 20, I don't know. Please get somebody here right away. Please. Okay, somebody's dispatching the ambulance while I ask you questions. It's a force field. Okay? Please. Please. Okay, sir, somebody else. Is this back in the ambulance? Okay. Is she awake now? Hello? Hello?

[Kayla Moore]

But then six minutes later he calls 911 again and he's wondering where the police are. But this time he says that Kathleen is no longer breathing. And he asks for the ambulance to hurry up.

[Unknown Speaker]

Where are they? 1810. Breathing. Please, please, would you hurry up? They're on the way. Can you tell me for sure she's not breathing, sir. Hello? Hello.

[Kayla Moore]

So let's take one step back here and talk a little bit more about who Kathleen and Michael are. Kathleen was born in 1953 as Kathleen Hunt. She was an award winning student who studied advanced Latin and graduated first in her high school class. And in 1971 she was accepted to Duke University's prestigious engineering school.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, and just to give you guys idea about how big of a deal that was, Kathleen was actually the first woman ever accepted into the program. And this program was founded in 1939. So 1939 and 1971. Someone else that's better at math can do that. But that's a long time and for her to be the first woman accepted, that's a big deal. She was clearly very smart.

[Kayla Moore]

And that is also where she met her first husband, a man named Fred Atwater. And after graduating with a master's degree in mechanical engineering, a huge feat, Kathleen started her corporate career in Baltimore. And she was so smart, smart. Everyone just always talks about how smart she was and she was working in a male dominated field and she never gave up. She's just like, was like an incredible person. Then she had a daughter Caitlyn in 1982 with her first husband. But by 1986 when Kathleen was 33, she ends up splitting from her husband. And then shortly into that separation, Kathleen met someone new. A decorated Vietnam war veteran with a passion for writing. And that brings us to Michael Peterson. The two were introduced sometime around 1986 or 1987, shortly after Michael had actually moved home to the United States where he had settled in Durham, North Carolina. And before that he was living in Germany with his first wife, this woman, Patricia. Michael was about 10 years older than Kathleen. He was raising four kids, Clayton and Todd. Those were his biological children. But then he had two other children, daughters, Martha and Margaret, who were actually taken in by the family after the girl's parents both died. Their parents had really close friends of Michael and his wife Patricia. So when they passed away, it was actually in their will that the children go with that couple. And at some point Michael and Patricia realized that though they were very good friends, they actually didn't want to be married any longer. And that is when he met Kathleen. And we know that the two fell in love very quickly. And by 1989, they were living together, and then they kind. They kind of, like, Brady Bunched their families together. All five kids ended up living with Michael and Kathleen. There were his two boys and his two girls, and then Kathleen's only child, Caitlyn. They were this, like, very happy, seeming blended family. By 1997, Kathleen and Michael were officially married. But let's go back to the night that Michael called 911.

[Morgan Abshur]

You guys, we are going to show one of the photos from the staircase just to show you guys the blood spatter. It is a pretty intense scene, so please skip if you can't handle that today. The markers will be in the description and show notes.

[Kayla Moore]

So police and paramedics arrive just a few minutes later, and they find Kathleen lying on her back at the bottom of the stairs. She's wearing a sweatsuit, and she is very obviously dead and in a pool of her own blood. I don't know if you've seen the crime scene photos. If you watch the documentary, you definitely have.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

But there is so much blood. And that's actually what the investigators and the EMTs notice right away is kind of the shocking amount of blood that is at the bottom of the staircase, on the wall, on the landing, like, all down the stairs.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's everywhere.

[Kayla Moore]

And also they kind of make note that it's very dry. A lot of the blood has dried, so it's not clear how long she's been there for. Everyone kind of just makes a mental note of that. Now, Kathleen is barefoot, and there's blood on the soles of her feet. There's a pair of flip flops lying nearby her body. There's also, like I said, blood all over the walls next to the stairs. It's not necessarily smeared, mostly spattered around, almost like the pattern you would see from a spray paint bottle. And when Michael goes to let the cops in, he's also covered in blood. He's barefoot as well. He's tracking bloody footprints everywhere in the house. And as first responders are examining the body, Michael's kind of walking aimlessly in circles, appearing totally disoriented. Someone ends up having to check his pulse just to make sure he's not having a health emergency of his own. And he's not. And he's with it enough to let police know that he and Kathleen had been drinking that night. He does seem to want the investigators to know that, like, they had been drinking. He actually goes and displays their wine bottles and empty wine glasses for, like, the cops to see, as police are, like, Looking at the wine glasses, like looking at the bottles, talking to Michael. They also noticed that Michael may have tried to up some of the blood before the first responders arrived because they see a roll of bloody paper towels.

[Morgan Abshur]

Next to Kathleen, which, I mean, cleaning wouldn't be the first thing I do, but everyone handles things differently.

[Kayla Moore]

Turns out the medical examiner thought that maybe that was a normal response because the medical examiner on the scene says Kathleen's death was probably accidental. Michael doesn't end up calling a lawyer that night. There's no reason to. He never even makes a formal statement to the police because, again, it doesn't seem like there's any reason to. The initial theory, just based on seeing the scene that night, is that Kathleen maybe tried to go up the stairs in her flip flops after having too much to drink, potentially a valium, and she slipped somewhere around the third or fourth step. She fell backwards, hit her head, maybe fell forward, and then fell backwards again and hit her head. But it doesn't necessarily explain the. The sheer amount of blood that was on the stairs or the spatter that's all over the walls. But it does fit the position that she was found in at the bottom of the stairs. But remember, they're just looking at the scene. This is just based on what they observe. It's not really until we get Kathleen's autopsy that we start to get some more clues as to what may have happened.

[Morgan Abshur]

Just a trigger warning for you guys. We do go into pretty gruesome details about the autopsy reports. Please skip ahead if you can't handle that today. Markers will be in the description. So Kathleen's autopsy report does come back, which kind of ends up being clue number one for us. Dr. Deborah Radish is the associate North Carolina medical examiner at the time who handles this, and she finds something super interesting. She actually found seven irregular gashes on the back of Kathleen's head. She thinks these lacerations are consistent with being struck repeatedly by a blunt object. In other words, Kathleen may have fallen down the stairs, but the medical examiner doesn't think that's what actually killed her. She thinks Kathleen was actually beaten to death. Kathleen Peterson's cause of death is listed as, quote, blunt force trauma. Aside from the gashes on the back of her head, there were also some cuts and bruises on her arms and back. This would be consistent with either an assault from behind or a fall backwards. But her buttocks and legs were totally uninjured, which would be pretty strange if she fell down the stairs with enough force to split her head Open multiple times. If she was attacked, you'd expect the autopsy to turn up some skin cells from under Kathleen's fingernails, A clear indication that, you know, she might have struggled with her attacker. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. And these are some big points that are really talked about in this investigation. But the full autopsy report also points out a few other things. Kathleen also had various small cuts and bruises on her face. Those would be consistent with a fall down the stairs either before or after her death. But here's what's really perplexing. Kathleen had clumps of her own hair in both of her hands. And this hair was actually pulled out, like, from the bulb. It wasn't broken strands. It was like, you have to.

[Kayla Moore]

Like she was ripping her hair.

[Morgan Abshur]

You have to, like, really aggressively do this.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

The medical examiner thought maybe she was grasping at her injured head in pain and pulled out some hair. She also had a cartilage fracture in her neck, though, which could be from a fall. But more often, you see this type of injury when someone is actually strangled. On top of that, there was also a small hemorrhage on the left side of her brain, which basically means that she was bleeding on the surface of her brain, which then further supports the blunt force impact as the cause of her scalp lacerations, as opposed to, say, a different type of weapon. A toxicology report also found trace amounts of antihistamines and muscle relaxers in Kathleen's blood. A slightly larger amount of Valium was detected, but it wasn't a big dose, and it actually wasn't possible to determine when she last took this Valium. This report also confirmed Kathleen had been drinking, but her blood alcohol content at the time was 0.07. This is essentially low enough for her to drive. However, she might have had more alcohol in her system when she either fell or was attacked. And then if Kathleen was, you know, lying there for a few hours, that alcohol level would have gone down. This report actually says that Kathleen's brain became so starved of oxygen for at least a few hours before she died, which caused her brain cells to begin dying, presumably due to this massive blood loss. I mean, it's. It's apparent based on the scene, which would make it hard for her body to supply blood to the brain. So the examiner kind of comes to the determination that Kathleen might have been already bleeding heavily but still alive, actually, between midnight and 1am which would kind of explain why they're already seen dried blood for, you know, something that Michael just came upon at the earliest that places her injuries nearly three hours before Michael's 911 call at 2:30am so after.

[Kayla Moore]

This autopsy takes place, they're pretty quick to drop the accident theory and they begin investigating Kathleen's death as a possible homicide. And really, the only suspect they have is Michael. On December 12, they end up searching the Peterson's home again. And they confiscate a bunch of stuff. They take computers. They take condoms. They found hairs found on the staircase and more blood evidence. And a few days later, they also obtain phone records from three cell phones and a landline that belonged to the couple. And they thought that if they combed through the house and turned over every little thing that they would possibly find the murder weapon. But they never do. And actually, they don't find anything that may have caused the lacerations or trauma to the back of Kathleen's head. And remember, this property that they owned was huge. Just the house alone was 9,000 square feet. That is massive.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's a big house.

[Kayla Moore]

There's also not really neighbors close enough who could have, like, heard or seen anything. And on top of that, it's not like the couple had a history of threats. They never had any domestic violence calls on them. Their kids all said that Michael and Kathleen were very happily married. Which kind of brings us to our huge question. Could Kathleen's death have been accidental or was it definitely murder? This episode is brought to you by our friends at Mint Mobile. Wireless bills used to be one of those expenses that I had just accepted. Mint Mobile wants you to know that if you're fed up with your bill creeping higher and higher every month, you can actually switch to Mint Mobile and not miss your provider for a single second. Mint Mobile gives the same great coverage and fast speeds that you're used to. For instance, it's very comparable to the speeds I experienced with, like, my old provider. And right now, they're actually offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for just $15 a month. That's really what got my attention with this deal, because I've never seen a wireless provider for that cheap. Almond. Plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text, all on the nation's largest 5G network. When you switch, you're able to keep your phone, your phone number, all of your contacts. It's also really easy to switch to. You just pop the SIM card into your phone and you're basically up and running within like 15 minutes. The savings are real and the service is just as reliable as your old plan without the sticker shock this year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your 3 month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com clues that's mintmobile.com clues upfront payment of 45 required equivalent to 15amonth limited time new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabyte on unlimited plan taxes and fees. Extra cement mobile for details at Designer.

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[Morgan Abshur]

Really had to dig into this more because I was curious how likely it was for her to die by falling down the stairs. Apparently it happens to almost 2,000 people a year in the United States alone. That still makes it a pretty rare cause of death, even compared to murder, which there's about 20,000 cases a year in the US and it's often not just a simple fall. Right. Like they said, Kathleen probably fell from the third or fourth stair, not from the top. And a sober, healthy person who falls down the stair will oftentimes like reflexively shield their head. It's kind of just like one of those reflexes that's ingrained in us.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

So people who fall and end up with fatal head trauma, they're often intoxicated or have another health event while they're actually descending or ascending the stairs. Like, like a heart attack, a stroke. And given all these stats, statistics say that you'd have to be pretty terribly unlucky to lose one loved one due to a fall down the stairs, much less two. So remember the two girls Michael became the guardians of in Germany, Martha and Margaret? Well, at the time of Kathleen's death, Martha's about 18 and Margaret's about 19. And after interviewing the two girls, people realize Kathleen was actually the second person in Michael's life to be found deceased at the bottom of a staircase. The first was their mother and the family friend, Elizabeth Ratliff. Which brings us to our second big break in this case, the mysterious death of Elizabeth. As you mentioned, she and Michael and his first wife, Patricia were all really good friends in Germany. As a fellow expat, Elizabeth really helped them adjust to life in Europe. In return Michael and Patricia looked out for Elizabeth while she raised her two girls alone, while her husband was on tour and after his death. But in 1985, about a year before Michael and the family moved back to the States, Elizabeth was found dead in her home after seemingly falling down the stairs. And Michael was actually in Elizabeth's house the night before she died. There was even one source I saw where a neighbor said that she saw him running from the house that night, but he wasn't suspected of any foul play at the time of her death. He didn't seem to have any reason to hurt Elizabeth. Granted, there was no investigation at the time. Nobody really tried to find a motive, though. And that's really because her cause of death was ruled to be a cerebral hemorrhage, which caused her to collapse and then fall down the stairs. It was not ruled a murder, but remember, Kathleen also had a small hemorrhage on her brain. But again, it wasn't necessarily what killed her. Instead, the medical examiner suspected it was what. What caused the fall. Something that might have been overlooked in Elizabeth's case. Plus, he, like, really didn't seem to have a reason to really hurt Elizabeth. Granted, there was no real investigation at the time, so nobody tried to find a motive. But they did have a medical explanation for her death, which was blunt force trauma to the head, which led to a brain hemorrhage. So when prosecutors find out about this, it all just seems way too coincidental. So much so that later they actually have Elizabeth's body exhumed and brought to North Carolina for a new autopsy with the same medical examiner who performed Kathleen's. And she finds Elizabeth also had scalp lacerations at the back of her head and was probably also beaten to death. Her cause of death is then changed to homicide.

[Kayla Moore]

And I wanted to jump in here at this point because this is something that, like the Staircase documentary gets into. But there may have been somewhat of a political angle to Elizabeth being exhumed and then reexamined, because they could have done her autopsy in Texas. That's where she was buried. But when they dug her up, they sent her 1,200 miles away, so that the exact same Radish, Deborah Radish, exact same medical examiner could look at her body. And she had already said that someone had beaten Kathleen to death. So she was maybe a little bit more inclined to say that this other person was also beaten to death. So there's that angle to it. And then also her daughters had talked about how it was kind of known that around the time of their mother's death. She had been complaining of horrible migraines, like really bad headaches, but she hated going to the doctor. So she hadn't gone for a long time. But actually like two days after her death, she had a doctor's appointment to go get these headaches treated. So it's not unrealistic to say that maybe this actually was a hemorrhage. I think that's just important context to kind of add to the larger picture. Because without that context, like, Michael just looks like he killed two women. Yeah, but it's a little bit more complicated than that.

[Morgan Abshur]

It is. And in an ideal world, they would have had this done by a more neutral medical examiner to see if there was any corroboration between the two cases. So it is interesting that they went through those efforts to do that.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, exactly. So at this point, police don't really have any other suspects besides Michael and Kathleen's death. There's no signs of an intruder in the house anywhere. So about a week after Kathleen passed away, Michael decides to get lawyers and he hires this guy named David Rudolph, this high profile private defense attorney, and he starts building his case. David interviews Michael's family members, including Kathleen's sisters, Lori and Candace, who both say Michael's marriage to Kathleen seemed great. They fully believed that they were soul mates. A friend also says he spoke to Kathleen that night and she sounded fine. It didn't seem like there were any troubles going on at home. Michael's 24 year old son Todd and a friend actually stopped by the house earlier the night that Kathleen died as well. And they both said that Michael and Kathleen seemed totally normal, very happy. Nothing seemed up. So David starts building a pretty strong case of this, like, loving couple that didn't have anything wrong in their marriage. But when it comes to identifying a different suspect, he has the exact same problem as the police. There's no witnesses, there's no DNA evidence. Though I will say David is the defense. He doesn't have to build a case against someone else. He just has to build a case that says Michael didn't do it. He doesn't have to find the actual suspect. And so while David isn't really like, interested in building out what could have happened, he does start kind of coming up with a theory as to why Michael was maybe being targeted by the police. Like maybe this was an effort against Michael. And so David starts thinking that the cops maybe don't like Michael and they want to see him go to prison. Because, see, Michael was a columnist for the Local paper, the Herald. Son, he did this in between writing his novels. And most of Michael's writing included very scathing commentary on local politics and the police department. From his point of view, he felt like he was calling out government corruption and like the police department's failure to deal with rising crime rates. But many of the local police officers did not appreciate what he had to say, and it kind of landed him on their radar. And David starts wondering if maybe this made him a target within the police department. And then on December 20, 2001, a grand jury feels like there's enough evidence against Michael and they do indict him on charges of first degree murder. He turns himself into the Durham county jail, he brings his own personal bible. And on the way inside, he actually pauses to speak to reporters and he proclaims that he is innocent. And he says to them, quote, I've whispered her name more than a thousand times and I can't stop crying. And if you've seen any of the footage from trial, that actually is accurate, he really doesn't stop crying the whole time. He continues saying, quote, I would have never done anything to hurt her. I am innocent of these charges and I can't wait to prove it in court, end quote. And about a month after that, Michael actually gets out on 850, 000 bail. Over the next year and a half, he has to give up his car, he has to give up his passport, he can't leave the state, though technically he is a free man. And according to some reports, he actually spends some of this time negotiating a book deal for one of his memoirs. And he also, this is something that's not really talked about in the documentary, but he pockets347,000 in deferred compensation owed to Kathleen by her employer, Nortel, and he is most likely using that money to defend himself in the trial.

[Morgan Abshur]

That is honestly wild that he was able to do that given he's on trial for potentially killing her.

[Kayla Moore]

Her murder. Yeah. And he's able to still collect that money. I know, I thought that was interesting too.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, very interesting. I will say too, something I, I do want to point here is his family, all the kids at this time except Kathleen's daughter from her first marriage were super supportive of him. They were outside with like signs saying, like, a man with a family has nowhere to run.

[Kayla Moore]

Oh, yeah, there's something like that. There's no doubt in their mind that he's innocent. And even Kathleen's daughter believed he was innocent for the first year. And then she starts feeling like maybe it was murder.

[Morgan Abshur]

But let's jump into where the prosecutors are at during this time. Prosecutors are continuing to build their case against Michael, and they're focusing really heavily on the blood spatter. Duane Deaver, an expert blood analyst, has been digging through all of the police photos and videos of the crime scene. Basically, Duane is, like, trying to figure out what happened to Kathleen based on where all of her blood ended up up, which is tricky because there is, as we've mentioned, a lot of it. Not only was there blood all over the floor, the walls, and Kathleen, it was actually all over Michael, too. And he tried to clean some of it up with both paper towels and white bath towels. The blood on the walls, though, this is really, really important because it wouldn't be there if Kathleen just fell backwards down the stairs. Though some say she could have fallen, hit her head, tried to get up, made it partway up the stairs, and then fallen again due to her head injury. There was something else that we've kind of mentioned that was really telling. Some of the blood was partially dried, suggesting that Kathleen was lying at the bottom of the staircase for a long time before Michael called 91 1. Still, after examining all of this evidence and the spray of blood on the wall, Duane does agree with the medical examiner. He feels by the patterns of blood he's seen, it's more likely that Kathleen was beaten to death. According to Duane, it's exactly what he'd expect to see if someone was repeatedly raising a blunt object and striking someone in the head with it over and over. And based on the way that the blood accumulated on Michael's clothes, Duane believes Michael was the one who committed the crime.

[Kayla Moore]

It is not great news for Michael, but there's kind of a caveat here, and that's that that blood spatter analysis isn't necessarily an exact science. There's a recent study that we found that says bloodstain analysts are still wrong about 11 of the time. Another study said that it might be because blood stain analysts base their conclusions unconsciously on maybe other information that they receive about the case. And mostly they get other information from the police, which kind of can lead them to believe police theories more often than they should. Also, Michael's lawyers claim that the crime scene photos prove some of the blood actually moved after Michael was removed from the scene. It's very weird to see, like, in the documentary, they literally show photos where it's like, before Michael was removed from the scene, when they're, like, immediately taking photos and then afterwards and there's like extra blood spatter. There's like drops that appeared out of nowhere. And the cops were trying to say that that was Michael that was messing with the crime scene, but there's definitive proof that he was in. He was like being held in custody at the time. So it definitely wasn't him, like moving the blood around or like adding to the blood.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, there was a lot. And you see this a lot on the subreddit and threads on this case too. There is a lot of speculation on all of the blood spatter, especially because some even think Michael actually changed clothes at some point because there was blood foundation in his shorts. And so it's confusing, like, how would the blood get there? And so people think maybe he changed and accidentally as he was getting into the new clothes, that's how the blood transferred. But there's a lot that people really kind of argue over when it comes to the blood evidence.

[Kayla Moore]

Absolutely. And the defense had a blood spatter analyst as well, Dr. Henry Lee. He's like a very famous forensic expert. He was on the O.J. trial. I'm pretty sure he worked on Casey Anthony, on JonBenet Ramsey. Like he was being called to all these really high profile trials. And he said that it through his analysis basically that the, the spatter on the walls could have come from someone coughing. So his theory was maybe that Kathleen hit her head and the blood was pouring down her face from her head wounds and she was coughing it back up onto the wall. But, but what I have to say about that, what a lot of people have to say about it, is if you look at pictures of Kathleen after she passed away, like, there's no blood on her face. She's not like soaked in blood. And it seems like it was like getting in her mouth. There wasn't blood found in her mouth, there wasn't blood found in her lungs. So it doesn't really make sense either that she was coughing it up, in which case, like the blood spatter on the wall just really doesn't make a lot of sense. And that's basically what the prosecution tried to say, that it had to come from, like someone hitting her with something with some sort of blunt force object. So Dwayne's analysis is kind of the closest thing that they have to hard evidence against Michael and they basically decide that they're going to rely really heavily on that in court. And In July of 2003, 19 months after Kathleen's death, Michael's trial for first degree murder officially begins and he pleads innocent as with all criminal trials, the prosecution goes first. They know that they have one very important problem to deal with. If they want to convince the jury that Michael is guilty, they need a motive. Like, that's still the thing that they don't have right now. This couple seemed absolutely perfect and in love. What could the motive have been? So they start trying to point at things like the couple's financial situation. Apparently, it was not as secure as it seemed from the outside. Michael did have debt. Some of his sons had debt. Kathleen was the breadwinner. They, like, point to that. And they go after their relationship in a very serious way because there's actually this huge reveal, this huge secret that was being held inside of their marriage. And one that was even more dramatic in 2003, specifically in North Carolina, than it would have been today.

[Morgan Abshur]

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[Kayla Moore]

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[Morgan Abshur]

These shakes are so good. There's five flavors to choose from. Chocolate, vanilla chai matcha, and coconut acai. The matcha has surprisingly been my favorite. It's my new go to in the mornings.

[Kayla Moore]

Do you just do it with milk?

[Morgan Abshur]

Oat milk, Oat milk. Because I'm dairy free.

[Kayla Moore]

Okay.

[Morgan Abshur]

And it is so good and it's honestly so satisfying. It's like a little treat for breakfast.

[Kayla Moore]

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[Morgan Abshur]

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[Kayla Moore]

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[Morgan Abshur]

So our next big clue in this one, Michael's possible infidelity and the truth about his sexuality. You see, after the police confiscated all of his computers, they found a lot of gay porn on them. And the prosecution uses this as evidence to say that he was actually bisexual. Their theory is that Kathleen and Michael might have been fighting about his sexuality right before he died. Kathleen might have gone on his computer to email a colleague for work. She might have happened to see some things. But the defense says that it actually wasn't a secret about Michael's sexuality and that he was bisexual. Michael's family members even testify that they've known about his sexuality since he was a teenager. The prosecution argues that even if Kathleen knew. Knew about his orientation, she definitely had no idea that Michael saved thousands of images of nude men to his computer until perhaps she found those photos on the night of her murder. They do have some circumstantial evidence for this theory, too. You see, Michael was actually using this computer while police were still at the house on the night of Kathleen's death. They actually found dried blood on these printed pornographic images of men, and they were found, like, near his computer. This led the prosecution to theorize that Michael was at his computer while calling 911 after Kathleen died.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, I know. There's a theory that she died and he immediately went to go start deleting things from his computer.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. Still, there's no hard proof Kathleen ever saw what her husband was looking at online. But it didn't stop with pornography. Apparently, Michael was exchanging emails with a male sex worker who went by Brad starting in August 2001.

[Kayla Moore]

What do they call him? Secret soldier. That's what he was. That was, like, his username.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. Brad seems interesting when he takes the stand. You know, he's really badgered about what kind of sexual activities he performs. Like, I don't know if this line of questioning would fly today. Like, it was very. Like, it was very aggressive. Like, the prosecution continuously calls Michael filthy, Filthy, filthy, filthy.

[Kayla Moore]

Like, what services did you offer? Describe to us everything you would do with these men.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. And Brad just kind of replies, like, everything under the sun.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Like, it's just like, okay. But they have evidence from these computers that they plan to meet up for sex the next month. But on the day of the appointment, Brad actually canceled. Michael never reached back out to Brad to reschedule so, again, like, they're bringing up kind of this seemingly innocuous thing like they never met even.

[Kayla Moore]

Right. But they did can't, like, Brad did cancel. They were going to meet up. And so that I know that the prosecution kept bringing that up, like, well, they would have met up if Michael had it his way. It was not Michael who got a conscience and, like, canceled on Brad. It was Brad that canceled because he had to go to Palm Springs the next day and he was worried he was going to be tired.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. And so if Michael actually did have any physical affairs with a guy during his marriage to Kathleen, the prosecution was never actually able to find it. Still, most of Kathleen's family members said she would have considered that email exchange alone to be infidelity, and she really would not have tolerated that from Michael. Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

And it seems like this is really the thing that does it in for Kathleen's family. Like, after they learn about his bisexuality and the affairs, they really considered him guilty after that. Even though, you know, Brad brought up something interesting on the stand. He says that the guys he dealt with were all, like, very important people. A lot of them were like, judges, lawyers, doctors. Like, Brad was like, I charge a big fee, so everyone that sees me as a professional. And most of these guys would not even identify as bisexual. They are primarily straight. They have wives. They've only ever been with women. Maybe they're, like, a little curious. But he also said that none of them ever talked about their wives, but Michael, in emails, would talk about how wonderful his wife was. And Brad found that, like, endearing in a way. So he does talk about that on the stand. I don't think the prosecution cared, but it was, like, an interesting tidbit, but.

[Morgan Abshur]

That'S really just kind of like, like the tip of the iceberg for Michael, because there's another big thing that prosecutors lean on in court. The money.

[Kayla Moore]

And this, I will say, is something that is severely left out of the documentary, is all of the stuff pertaining to their finances.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. Despite Kathleen's $145,000 a year salary, the Petersons were up to their eyeballs in credit card debt. And Michael's writing career was. Was kind of floundering at this point. He hadn't made any money in the past three years. They were financially supporting five kids, three of whom were attending expensive private universities. So even with the royalties from, you know, Michael's old books and Kathleen's really successful telecom career, they weren't making enough to cover their living. And prosecutors looked to there being one Quick way to get out of debt fast. You see, Kathleen had a life insurance policy through her employer that was worth $1.4 million, and she had made Michael the beneficiary after they were married. Michael never ended up getting the money, but the prosecution says that's only because he got caught. If Kathleen's death had been ruled an accident, he would have gotten paid. And as you mentioned, he was already using some of that last work settlement to potentially pay for legal fees.

[Kayla Moore]

Right.

[Morgan Abshur]

On the other hand, there are easier ways that Michael maybe could have gotten out of debt. They owned six rental properties, various cars, a collection of antiques. So if they really needed to, they probably could have liquidated some of these assets. Plus, the house they lived in, which was entirely in Kathleen's name, had appreciated so much in value. So they could have either sold it or gotten a second mortgage. So the defense said that there's no way Michael would have turned to murder just for money when they could have just sold a property or two to pay off these debts. But the prosecution claimed Michael thought Kathleen was about to get laid off from her high paying job. You know, she was the one doing all these layoffs. What's to say she's not next and killing her was the best way to keep getting the money from her after this happened?

[Kayla Moore]

So during the trial, when it comes time for the defense team to speak, they share a totally different, different theory on the case. According to Michael's lawyers, Kathleen did definitely fall down the stairs. They say she was under the influence of alcohol. She'd taken a Valium. She had been under all of this, like, stress from work. And remember, like, blood tests did confirm that she had both of those substances in her body, but her blood alcohol level was under the legal limit to drive. She could have operated a vehicle that evening. Still, this kind of tracks with one part of the story that, that both sides agree on, and that's that Kathleen and Michael had dinner together and they drank some wine that night. The defense also says that Kathleen was wearing flip flops, which made it easier for her to trip going up the stairs. And when she fell backwards, she got those injuries on the back of her head. And then while trying to get up, they say that Kathleen maybe slipped in her own blood and then fell again, hitting her head on a piece of crown molding on the wall. And the defense also tells the jury that Kathleen's autopsy didn't show injuries usually found in people beaten badly enough to kill them. And this is like, a really important part that they bring up. They Say, listen, there were no skull fractures. There was no swelling of her brain. There was no real sign of a struggle. Yes, there was that hemorrhage on the surface of her brain, and there was that fracture in her neck cartilage that was like, maybe consistent with strangling ceiling. But the defense says that those injuries were caused by the fall too. Like, they're also consistent with a fall. So maybe she just hit her neck on something as she went down. And one thing they point to also is there's not blood spatter on the ceiling. That's consistent with like being hit with something and then you pull the weapon away. And so the prosecution tried to argue that maybe Michael hit her, wiped off the instrument, then raised it, hit her again. But even then, like, her injuries weren't consistent with like, that hard of a hit. So he was probably just like raising the, the object to chest level and kind of coming down. It's just like a weird, like to come down, wipe it back up, come down, wipe it. It was just like a very strange way to attack someone.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

But that's what they were trying to say happened. The defense also says that the Petersons marriage was happy and Kathleen maybe knew all about Michael flirting with men. Like, Michael really believed Kathleen knew he was bisexual. Did you hear about this? Like, this one really got me. They would go to like, a military event where there was like a bunch of military guys, and Kathleen would say something like, look, those guys are just like you, like, they're gay. And Michael, Michael was like, you know, it was so beautiful when she said those things to me because it just really proved that she understood me and she knew that I was like a bisexual man. She saw me, and I think she was just being like, kind of homophobic by saying that. But, like, he took it as like this tacit understanding. So he said that they never, like, explicitly talked about his bisexuality or his affairs with men, but that he figured she approved of it because she would, like, make those kinds of comments to him.

[Morgan Abshur]

And again, like, context of this one, you guys, marriage was not legal. Like, same sex marriage was not legal nationwide in the US until 2015.

[Kayla Moore]

We were 14 years out when Kathleen died.

[Morgan Abshur]

So again, that's really why the prosecution was going to after his sexuality and really, like, making this such a big bombshell.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Again, like, you kind of mentioned it. Like, I don't know if you would. You'd see that today.

[Kayla Moore]

I know, like, this was such a devastating secret that if someone learned about it, he had to kill them to make sure that it didn't get out.

[Morgan Abshur]

They're, they're outing him on the stand, which is just, yeah, insane. But yeah, it's to speak to that like that's enough motive to keep that secret.

[Kayla Moore]

That's what they're saying. And as for money, they claim that the couple wasn't really feeling much urgency to pay off their credit card debt. They actually knew that Kathleen had deferred almost $350,000 of her compensation to reduce their tax bill. So it seems like they were going to pay off their debt once that came in. And then Michael's daughters Martha and Margaret also testified for the defense. And they said that they do not think Michael killed their biological mother or Kathleen. There is one person in the family who has a totally different point of view, and that is Caitlin Atwater, who is Kathleen's 19 year old daughter with her first husband. She said that initially she felt like her mother and stepfather had this amazing marriage. She felt like neither of them would do anything to hurt one another. But after she reads the autopsy report and learns about the horrific intensity of her mother's wounds, Caitlyn changed her mind. Soon she began to feel certain that Michael had beaten her mother to death. And Caitlyn even filed a wrongful death claim against Michael Peterson in a civil lawsuit. So Caitlyn decides to testify, but she testifies with the prosecution against Michael and she talks about her mother's marriage. And she adds some serious credibility to the prosecution's theory about that based on everything she knew about her mother. Caitlyn says that Kathleen would definitely not have accepted Michael's bisexuality if she knew about about it. Which kind of to them proved that like Kathleen didn't know about the bisexuality. She also confirms to the jury that she believes Michael killed her mother. Caitlyn can't imagine the mother she knows getting drunk enough to fall down the stairs backwards once, let alone multiple times. And Caitlyn's testimony creates this really like permanent rift with her stepsisters and stepbrothers. Margaret and Martha decide to never speak to her ever again. I actually don't think any of the kids speak to her now, now, but at least to Caitlyn, she feels like telling the truth is worth whatever cost she has to pay. So the prosecution does get a big boost to their proposed motive, and the defense is kind of left reeling from it.

[Morgan Abshur]

The defense does have one more trick up their sleeve. Remember how nobody ever found a murder weapon? Like nothing in the search of the property?

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Turned up anything that would fit well, the prosecution theorized it was probably a fireplace blow poke that Kathleen actually had received as a gift from her sister that was used as a murder weapon. And basically, you guys, if you don't know what a blow poke is, it's this long brass tube with a small point at the end, essentially used to, like, stir firewood around.

[Kayla Moore]

You stick it into the fire, and you blow into one end, and it, like, adds.

[Morgan Abshur]

Adds oxygen to increase the fire. And this was something that was, like, very prominent in their home. Like, it was in so many pictures of their house where you could see the fireplace. Like, it was out and about, very commonly displayed. And they argue that this is the murder weapon because it would be hard enough to hit someone with it, maybe even split their skin open, but not hard enough to crack their skull.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Which matches Kathleen's autopsy pretty perfectly. And the blowpoke from the family set of fireplace tools was actually missing. It wasn't with the set, and police couldn't find it around the house during their investigation.

[Kayla Moore]

But did you see that part of the staircase? Like, one of the daughters has a theory as to, like, why the blowpoke was missing. It seems like they really thought that the blowpoke was part of the house because they had seen it in a family photo from, like, the early 90s, and they were like, okay, there it is, the blowpoke. But the daughter, Martha, is like, no, I'm gonna go through all of my family footage from the last 10 years and see if I can find the blowpoke when it moves. And for years, like, the blowpoke is not in any of the, like, footage she has around Christmas time. So she's like, I don't think the blowpoke's been there in years. So it's missing, but is it, like, really missing, or has it just not been there in years? That's still, like, a question that people have.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. Well, on Tuesday, September 23, 2003, the defense team presented that missing blowpoke in court and asked the judge to actually enter it as evidence. Apparently, someone had found it in the Peterson's garage the previous Saturday night and then turned it over to the defense. But if this really is the missing blowpoke, there's no way it was the murder weapon. It's undamaged, which was be pretty impossible given Kathleen's injuries. Plus, it was, like, covered in years of dust and cobwebs. Yeah, and I believe they had a picture of it, too, like, before they moved it and turned it in. And, like, it is very Clear. Like it was tucked away in a corner, kind of seemingly maybe easy to miss. And covered in cobwebs. Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

There's like, dust all over it.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. And we can't totally be certain that this is even the. The right blowpoke. It's not like the fireplace tools have serial numbers. It's. It's kind of also like kind of a generic design.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

But it did match the other tools in the set. And so the defense offers the prosecution the opportunity to test the blowpoke for DNA or traces of blood. But the DA actually declines. It's too late in the trial for that now, and he really doesn't want to hold anything up.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, it was. This did come into evidence, like, two days before the trial wrapped, and they were like, like, we want to go home.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. We're almost to the finish line.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. Which is unfortunate because it is, like, a very important piece of evidence. So after three months of testimony, imagine being on that jury.

[Morgan Abshur]

That's a long time.

[Kayla Moore]

It's a long time. The jury finally goes out to deliberate on Monday, October 6, 2003. There's a lot that they have to consider. They have two different blood spatter analysts who say two totally different things about how the blood spatter got in the walls. They have people telling them that, like, the lacerations are from a fault. Fault lacerations are actually from a blowpoke. The blowpoke was missing. Now it's here. But it's maybe not the right blow poke. Also, Michael was gay, but does that have anything to do with his crimes? Like, they were in debt. There's, like, so much to consider in this. You have the kids testifying just so. Like, what is that, 90 days worth of new information? That's a lot. And so they don't come back with a verdict until Friday the 10th, which is really only four days. Days. And when they do return, they decide that Michael Peterson is guilty of first degree murder. And under North Carolina law, Michael is automatically sentenced to life without parole. But the case is actually far from over. So Michael and his team appeals the verdict several times. Pretty much immediately after the verdict is read, they start appealing this. And they use various different legal theories. In one appeal, his lawyers claim that the evidence about Elizabeth Ratliff's death in Germany should not have been admitted into court. They say, like, that death was so unrelated to this. Like, that was an open and shut case. It was determined that she had a brain hemorrhage 18 years ago. It was put to rest. That should never have been admitted into this trial. Like, there's no reason that that should have been admitted, and it was political, But a judge rules against that appeal. And then every other time they come forward with an appeal about some sort of, like, mishandling of the case case, they're completely rejected. And there's actually one appeal that they file that, like, maybe people listening have heard of, and that one gets a lot of attention.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, you guys, this is the part where this case really got to me. Okay.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

You guys are all like, I teed up at the beginning. I'm like, this case is so baffling. And you guys are all sitting there, and you're probably like, morgan, baffling. It seems pretty straightforward so far. Yeah. Until this. This next part is wild. So in 2009, six years after Michael was convicted, his attorney files a motion, and this motion claims that there was something else responsible for Kathleen's death. It was actually an owl. Yeah. O W L. A barred owl, to.

[Kayla Moore]

Be specific owl, I believe. It's actually is like, the bard owl call.

[Morgan Abshur]

Look at you.

[Kayla Moore]

They taught us that in New England in elementary school.

[Morgan Abshur]

Allegedly. The lacerations to Kathleen's scalp could have actually been caused by this owl. And oddly enough, there might be some evidence behind that.

[Kayla Moore]

I know we're, like, cracking jokes, but they're like, this is potentially a very legitimate theory.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yes. And so the theory basically goes like this. At some point in the night, Kathleen was outside, maybe close to entering her house, and was attacked by a territorial barred owl. It grabbed her head with its talons from behind, Causing her to slap the back of her head and pull some of her hair out. She might not have even seen or heard the owl. I mean, these birds fly completely silent. If you watch a video of them on YouTube, it's. It's really crazy. And so a person being attacked by one might just experience, like, this hard impact pain. Like, you're kind of going into shock, like, you don't really know what happened. And then the owl just might let go and fly away with the victim, like, not even really knowing what caused the wounds. Even more interesting, some of Kathleen's scalp lacerations were really in the shape of owl talons. And we'll have an image for you guys to look at where you can kind of see how these wounds were. And you can see kind of like a claw, like, cut in some of them.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, the exact shape of the talons.

[Morgan Abshur]

And there were even drops of blood on a walkway outside of the house and blood smeared on the exterior door. Frame, as if an injured person walked back inside from outdoors. And this is the one piece of evidence that really does say owl. All caps. Owl. There was one small feather found on Kathleen's body and a twig stuck to her like a. Like a pine needle. Which owl. Up in a tree. Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

Where did that come from?

[Morgan Abshur]

Could be carrying the pine needle. And in this new appeal, they even argued that there were additional microscopic feathers, along with these wood splinters and cedar needles, found in the fistfuls of hair that Kathleen had pulled out. And they go even further to say that, like, this does also align with some of Kathleen's other injuries. You know, she had some scratches on her face and things like that. So it could actually be an owl.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. Like, maybe it attacked her from behind, and she, like, was grabbing at her head or, like, trying to fight the owl off of her head.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

Wow.

[Morgan Abshur]

And it would explain why she had, you know, the cuts and bruises on her arms, but her legs and buttocks were, like, seemingly uninjured if she was covering her head. As you kind of explained from an owl attack. Ultimately, the owl theory gets way more attention in the media than in the courtroom room. And it doesn't lead to a new trial or sentencing relief for Michael. But a bunch of websites, TV shows, and podcasts. Hi, guys. Debate whether or not owls can be murderers.

[Kayla Moore]

I mean, you said that there was only really ever one other case of a barred owl killing a person.

[Morgan Abshur]

There has been one case. Okay, I. I went off the deep dive on this, and there is actually one prior fatal owl attack that's been recorded. It was actually a trucker named Robert Schmidt, and he was killed by an owl in 1985. His death has also kind of mystified investigators because he was found dead on a California roadside just outside of a small town. And his big rig, like, his semi truck, was still just pulled over on the side of the road, idling, like, it was still on. And he was found just a few hundred yards away. They found that it had a dent in the hood, and then his body was covered in a series of, like, chicken scratches is what the medical examiner referred to it as. And his face and chest bore, like, a majority of these wounds. And so they kind of put all of this together, and they're like, okay, hood has a dent. He pulled over. He was known to be, like, a huge animal lover. And so they hypothesized that, like, he hit the bird. He felt bad, tried to go over and help it, and then it turned on him and just attacked him. And so they were able to conclude that, that, like, because of the blood loss from all these scratches all over him, he went into shock and passed.

[Kayla Moore]

Wow. Interesting that the owl was also not seen at the crime scene in that case too, though.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

They get in and get out, they're gone. Wow. So in 2010, there was actually another huge twist in this case. There's a bombshell report that drops. And it's an independent review of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations crime lab. And it finds 230 cases where blood analysts misled juries by misstating, omitting, or lying about blood evidence. And Dwayne Deaver, who is the blood analyst who testified in Michael's trial, has really the starring role in this report, even though Michael's case isn't specifically mentioned in the entire report. But in fact, some suspicious testimony he gave is really the whole reason that the state Attorney general orders a new independent review into Michael's case case. And it turns out that Dwayne Deaver hugely overstated his professional qualifications. It's so funny to read about, but like Dwayne Deaver is, has more training as a zoologist than he does as a blood spatter analyst. Those two things not really compatible. The bottom line is that for at least 16 years, the state Bureau of Investigations crime lab hasn't been providing objectives expert testimony. It's been systematically helping prosecutors get convictions, even in cases where the evidence isn't really clear or points to maybe a different suspect. And in at least three of those cases, defendants were later executed by the state.

[Morgan Abshur]

Terrible.

[Kayla Moore]

Horrible. And this report completely destroys Dwayne Deaver's credibility. I mean, they even interview one of the people who gets out of prison after 17 years because. Because Dwayne Deaver said that he tested blood spatter he found on a car and confirmed it was blood. And then years later it comes out that, like, it was tested and it wasn't blood. It was like rust. And that completely exonerated the person that went to jail for 17 years for a murder. And it's heartbreaking to hear that story where he's talking about missing his daughter's graduation and the birth of his grandchild. Like, you miss out on so much of life because Dwayne Deaver is like, just being an absolute idiot. And because Dwayne's testimony about blood spatter was a huge part of Michael's trial. Think about it like the blood on the inseam of the pants that came from Dwayne Deaver. The fact that he said the only way that, like the blood spatter could have happened was if Michael was above Kathleen and was striking her with a blunt force object. That was all coming from Dwayne Deaver. They even interviewed jurors afterwards who said the reason they felt Michael was guilty was 100 because of Dwayne Deaver's testimony. And so they actually grant Michael a chance to appeal his case. And In December of 2011, a judge sides with Michael and actually vacates his conviction. All thanks to Dwayne's history of making, quote, material misleading and, quote, deliberately false statements when testifying about blood spatter evidence. The judge also orders that after eight years behind bars, Michael be released immediately. Meanwhile, NC can actually still try Michael again for this crime. But first, they appeal the judge's decision to vacate the conviction. And in 2013, the judge's decision is upheld by an appeals court. Then the state Supreme Court declines to consider the case. So prosecutors are going to have to go forward with a new trial after all. And some clarification on this. It's not really considered double jeopardy when a judge decides to vacate a conviction. It's actually just returns the decision back to the states. But Michael doesn't really want to take any chances with this new trial. So on February 24th of 2017, he actually takes this thing that's known as an Alford plea. And it's this rare type of plea bargain where the defendant basically maintains their innocence, but kind of like acknowledges that the government has enough evidence to convict them. And Michael's plea agreement isn't for murder this time. It's actually for voluntary manslaughter, which still includes intentionally killing someone, but under mitigating circumstances, like a crime of passion, per se.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, that was like, one thing he really wanted to be crystal clear on, like, was that he was not admitting any guilt.

[Kayla Moore]

Yes, yes, this. Yeah, the plea deal was able. It was like this kind of crazy loophole that they were able to find. But the maximum sentence for voluntary manslaughter in North Carolina is actually 64 months. And because Michael had already served eight years, was. He was free to go. I did just want to add here because we talk a lot about Dwayne Deaver kind of coming in and having, like, very misleading blood spatter analysis. So remember I was talking about how the defense also has a blood spatter analyst take the stand. This guy, Dr. Henry Lee. He also had a career ending scandal when he put two people behind bars for 30 years because he said that he tested like a T shirt or a towel for blood and confirmed that there was blood on it. And that was enough to send these two guys away to jail for 30 years. And then eventually they found out that he lied about that and that there wasn't actually blood on the towel. So, like, blood spatter guys in this case are like liars. So that's why it's so hard to figure out exactly what happened in this case, because I go back and forth on it all the time. But what's interesting in, like, being able to watch the documentary, kind of like understanding some of the scandals that have come out afterwards, like, a lot of this was political. A lot of it was people being buddy, buddy with each other, kind of saying whatever they felt like they needed to say to get the result they wanted. And, like, it's so hard to tell who is being truthful in this case.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. And I know there's. There's a lot in this case that the jury really picked up on. I think, you know, Henry Lee also did something that was of kind. Kind of contentious at the time and put a ketchup packet in his mouth during his blood spatter analysis.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Like spit the ketchup out and tried to say that would be similar to if blood was coming down your face. So there were things like that. Something else that, you know, a big bombshell that really comes out at this trial is Michael had talked a lot about being a Purple Heart recipient.

[Kayla Moore]

Yes. Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Decorated. Decorated veteran. And it turns out that he was lying about that. They put him on the sand, and he says something along the lines of, like, it was just easier to lie. And so they really shot his credibility in all of this too. Like, if you're willing to lie about being a decorated veteran, a Purple Heart recipient, what else are you willing to lie about? Like, that was a huge thing. This is also coming after 2001, September 11th. Like, we are in a very patriotic phase of culture history.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

And so there was a lot that really just kept shooting down his credibility. And then, like, to have, you know, an expert that.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Spits a ketchup packet out. There were a lot of things that just didn't really make him look great.

[Kayla Moore]

No, absolutely. And so you can kind of see how the jury came forward with, like, their decision. It is interesting, too. I will say we talked about this a little bit, but, like, the decision to right away allow a camera crew into your home pretty much within weeks of your wife's murder, to film this documentary that ultimately becomes the Staircase is a little bit strange to me. Like, it made me think of Robert Durst of, like, I'm so innocent. I have to show people how innocent I am so I can let these cameras in. Because no one will ever think I'm not innocent if they can, like, see up close how innocent I am. And really, like, you're harboring this whole secret. You just think you're smarter than everybody. Everyone I know, a lot of people have issues with that. And then it, of course, comes out that the editor of the documentary was in a relationship with Michael afterwards. And.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

What side are you really seeing of the case when you watch the documentary?

[Morgan Abshur]

It's definitely not unbiased.

[Kayla Moore]

No, it's. It's like, severely biased. I mean, the whole time is spent with the defense.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

You don't even, like, hear from the prosecution. They don't interview anyone in the prosecution.

[Morgan Abshur]

And Kathleen's daughter did not participate in.

[Kayla Moore]

That, and all the other kids did.

[Morgan Abshur]

He had a very heavy hand in. In the editing, dating the editor. I mean. Yeah, there was a lot in that.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. I'm curious for anyone listening who did see the documentary, what you felt at the end of watching the documentary. Because there's a lot of people who say, like, listen, I know that they were trying to make him look innocent in this doc, and I still. It made me think he was even more guilty than I would have otherwise.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, I mean, I find that really interesting. You know, there's a lot about him, personality wise, that, like, you're just kind of. Of like, oh, that's interesting. Like, I think the timeline of this, like, he was outside for three hours and they did luminol and they found his footprints, like, all throughout the yard and all this stuff. So they. They kind of speculated he was, like, maybe running around cleaning things up. Like, there was obviously a very big gap. And, like, maybe he found Kathleen and then tried to clean and clearly tried to clean up blood. So it's like, where, like, his response just seemed really odd to people. And he tried to be mayor, and then so that leads back into the cops, like, maybe not liking him. Yeah, I went down the rabbit hole so much. So, like, I'm. I'm sitting here now after all of this, and I'm like, was it the owl?

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Like, no joke. I mean, when you look at the scratches on Kathleen's head, like, you're. You start to, like, just.

[Kayla Moore]

It's the lacerations without the head trauma that really throw me off. Like, how can someone have no broken bones, no head trauma from the fall, but have seven deep cuts Enough to die from blood loss.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. How do we have owl feathers, you guys?

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

How did owl feathers get there? And, you know, owl attacks do happen. So I, I honestly, I don't know where I stand on this one. I know Reddit is just like. Yeah, they're off the rails a little bit. You know, they really still want to know what happened to Elizabeth Ratliff.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

They talk about the cat painting that, that, you know, Michael and Kathleen in their house had the same cat painting that Elizabeth had. Well, turns out Elizabeth's sister actually said that's Elizabeth's painting. Michael just took it.

[Kayla Moore]

Oh. Afterwards and put it in his own stairs.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. So it's, it's the same painting.

[Kayla Moore]

Wow.

[Morgan Abshur]

So there's so many rabbit holes you could go down with this one. I'm really, really curious to see where everyone has ended up.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, absolutely. To this day, Kathleen's daughter Caitlyn still is very vocal about her belief that Michael killed her mother. Typically, Caitlyn does say she doesn't like talking about this case, but she did give one interview to a childhood friend that we saw, who now happens to be a reporter, on the condition that they would only talk about Kathleen. And Caitlyn spoke about her favorite childhood memories. She shares that she still cooks from Kathleen's recipes for her own children. I know, know, maybe you agree with Caitlin. Maybe you don't like one thing about the documentary. And really everything that's come out about this case is it completely erases Kathleen from the equation. You don't learn anything about Kathleen in the documentary. You don't learn how smart she was, how hard working she was, this, like, beautiful life she built for herself and her children. And Caitlyn is at least out there, like, trying to keep her mother's memory and legacy alive because Kathleen is really just viewed as like a corpse in the entire documentary. And it's like, it's so heartbreaking. She was a very real person. And, like, Caitlyn is doing a lot to keep that alive, at least.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

And there's still issues with Caitlyn and Michael. We don't have to get, like, too far into it. But he does owe her $25 million in from the wrongful death settlement that she filed against him. And it does not seem like he has paid any of that to this day.

[Morgan Abshur]

No, I don't think she's gotten a century.

[Kayla Moore]

No. I did read that he has donated the money from the two books he's written to charity because he did admit in an interview that he is, like, Intentionally avoiding making any money on his writing because he would legally have to pay that to Caitlyn. Any money he makes on his writing, especially if it's about Kathleen, he's not allowed to make any money, any profit from anything regarding k. Kathleen's death. That money is supposed to go straight to Caitlyn. And so he is. Is like, very intentionally skirting around that so that he doesn't have to pay.

[Morgan Abshur]

Her any money which donated a charity out of spite. So going to charity, it's interesting legally that it's not immediately garnished and that he even gets the decision to donate to charity.

[Kayla Moore]

Right.

[Morgan Abshur]

Interesting. Where do we stand today? While Michael still insists that he is innocent, he's a bereaved husband that was railroaded by cops and prosecutors who hated him for writing negatively about their work. And he claims that using his sexuality against him was pretty biphobic, even though members of the jury later said those arguments didn't really sway them. And that leads us to today. Caitlyn, as you mentioned, is, you know, really trying to do right by Kathleen's memory. And Michael, on the other hand, is still insisting he's innocent. He's a bereaved husband who was railroaded by cops and prosecutors who hated him for writing negatively about their work. Work. And that's kind of where we stand.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, that's really all we have for this episode of Clues. We hope you enjoyed unraveling this case with us today. And as always, we do really, really, really want to hear from you guys. It's your thoughts, your theories, your feedback that make this community so special. And I'm just after, like, living with this case for so long and doing all this research, I need to talk about it with someone. So I need everyone who's watching to really like, like, drop what they think happened in the comments.

[Morgan Abshur]

What's your final thought?

[Kayla Moore]

My. My final thought. This is what I. I'll say. I do not think there was enough evidence to convict him in a criminal court. And that's really, like, the only thing I have in terms of, like, guilty or innocent, I don't know. But I do feel like there wasn't enough evidence to convict him and that a lot of the conviction was based on probably feelings about gay people at the time and, like, preconceived notions about, like, marriage in the South.

[Morgan Abshur]

A lot of implicit biases here.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

But that is all we have for this case. We are shutting it at Crime House. We really value your support. So again, please be sure to share your thoughts on social media. Like subscribe, rate, review all of the things. And if you want additional bonus content, we've got you covered. Head over to Apple Podcasts and we.

[Kayla Moore]

Will be back next week. What are we doing next week? I don't even know which one's next week. We have a lot of good stuff coming down the pipeline.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yes, we do. And we hear you on lesser known cases are really, really, really doing the research on a lot of cases that impact people of color. Missing murdered indigenous women. Like, we hear you guys. This is something we're so passionate about covering.

[Kayla Moore]

We had a lot of pre recorded episodes too. And so we've like just now started being able to like incorporate feedback and stuff into the episode. So we're like very excited for the stuff we have.

[Morgan Abshur]

I know our schedule was like really? And like the research our team did and everyone and what we've been working on was like kind of concrete until this point. So we are really, really, really diving into those cases. And if there's any that you really want to hear, I have a spreadsheet.

[Kayla Moore]

I'm keeping a spreadsheet of the ones you guys are suggesting. So it is being noticed.

[Morgan Abshur]

There's been some really, really great suggestions. You know, one we are considering for Domestic Violence Awareness month is a woman who testified at her own murder trial. There are some really important cases to shed some light on. So if you have one that comes to mind for you, please drop it in the comments. We really want to, you know, make this show something bigger than just a show and definitely really help with advocacy.

[Kayla Moore]

All right, we will be back next week on that note and we will see you next time on Clues. Bye guys.

[Morgan Abshur]

Bye.