Episode 22: The Staircase

Join us for episode 22 as we discuss the case known as "The Staircase" and covers the death of Kathleen Peterson and the trial of her husband, Michael Peterson, who is accused of murdering her. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Hey, all you divas and dudes.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome back.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

We missed you.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

I'm Sarah. And I am Tina. And together we are your deadly divas, and this is our true crime podcast, bringing you a new look at a new true crime story every week.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

This week, that story would be known as The Staircase, with such a back and forth of did he, didn't he, that it makes your head spin. So let's get into it. We are taking this version of events from the dramatization starring Colin Firth and Tony Colette that you can catch on Netflix and HBO Max. And I do love Tony Colette. Muriel's Wedding is one of my favorite movies. Have you ever seen that? I haven't seen that. Okay, I'm adding it to the list of our girls' night movie Marathon. It's one of her very, very first movies, and it's an Australian movie and it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Okay, is she Australian? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Had no idea. She's great though.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Yeah, I know she's fantastic. So the reason I chose to take it from the traumatization is because it is more recent. And also it has more of a, I want to say unbiased debut, but they do specifically say that the French documentary, which was the original one that was on Netflix, that was actually done kind of from the Peterson family point of view. And Michael Peterson approved that one. And it is pointed out in the documentary that it came across as he wanted that to be done so that he had a way of telling the public about his innocence.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Whereas the dramatization is supposed to be more of unbiased. And Michael Peterson himself actually hates it and says that none of it's accurate and it's it's basically like a fictional movie. So I like to take the one that's seen from the outside, maybe, and not so much from the point of view of the murderer.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_03 2:12

But I also like the most recent one because it has more recent events. But I did compare the two, so we'll drop a little bit of that in there. But if you want to watch the one that we're talking about today, so you're riding along with us, then it is called the staircase, and it is the dramatization with Tony Colette. So, moving on. The way the story is told in the dramatization is the timeline bouncing back and forth between before and after the death of Kathleen. And it also shows different versions of the theories of what might have happened. So I'm kind of gonna do it the same way so that I don't leave anything out. So buckle in for a long one, guys. But I also have tried to put some sections together so we're not bouncing back and forth as much as them.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

Okay. So on December 9th, 2001, at 2 40 a.m., Michael Peterson calls 911 to report that his wife, Kathleen, has fallen down the stairs and she isn't breathing, and there's a lot of blood. Shortly after that, police arrive, and Michael's son Todd arrives home from a night out. He sees police cars outside of their house and he goes in to find his dad hysterical. And he sees Kathleen in a heap of blood at the bottom of the staircase. And the police inform Todd that sadly she's passed away. He informs his dad, Michael, of this, who runs to Kathleen's body, embraces it, and he's crying hysterically. But the police are suspicious about the circumstances, and they order Michael to get away from the body. This is a crime scene, and you are messing with our DNA. He goes to the sink to wash his face because he's now covered in blood, and the detectives are like, stop touching everything. This house is now considered a crime scene. Meanwhile, Todd, who told the police that Kathleen is his stepmom, is trying to get out of his hysterical father. Like, what? And then Todd calls Uncle Bill. This is Michael's brother. And he lets him know that Kathleen is dead after a nasty fall down the stairs, but also lets him know that police are treating the house as a crime scene. And he says, Is this unusual? And Uncle Bill says, Yeah. He's an attorney, Uncle Bill is, and he advises them not to talk to anybody till he gets there. So after the phone call to Uncle Will, the police actually serve a search warrant pretty damn fast for the house and the clothes that Michael is wearing. And then they are told they have to leave while they're investigating the death. So Michael and Todd are told to leave the house, and we see Michael make more phone calls to inform family members of what happened. Some of them he can tell, and others, like his his daughters, he calls their husbands and it's like you tell them. Which I thought was kind of cold.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:51

So then we hear the police call it in and they describe the scene as if she looks like she has been beaten with a long skinny object, and the amount of blood looks like, and this is a quote, her head exploded. Wow. Yeah. So we now find out that Michael is a successful author who has been caught in lies before about war injuries of all things. This hurt me so bad. This is yeah. So he claimed that his leg had been hurt in the war when it actually wasn't. And he also claimed that he received a purple heart medal, which he did not. The leg injury was a result of a car accident. This is something that he had even told Kathleen. Wow. Right. So next we're invited into the autopsy in progress, and under her fingernails, they find some pine needles, which seem odd. Um, and a large laceration to the top of her head, among many other cuts and bruises, just all over her body. So Uncle Bill arrives, he talks to Michael, and his first question to Michael is, Did you kill her? Which Michael's not too happy that anybody would even ask him that. He also informs him he can't represent him. This is not his level of expertise. He's not a criminal lawyer, and also he's related to him. He talks at the funeral home, Uncle Bill does, who tells them that the autopsy is actually going to take longer than expected due to the amount of injuries and the fact that the police found a used condom in the couple's bedroom. So they're also checking for sexual assault. Again, that pisses Michael off. So the coroner rules that the actual cause of death was bleeding to death, because there's no obvious blunt trauma to the head because she has no skull fracture. So she had five like deep lacerations to her scalp, but there was no actual skull fracture. Um, and I think, you know, your skull pretty much protects your brain, right? So usually a blunt trauma to the head kills you because your brain is damaged, but not in this case. So Michael meets with a lawyer. Um, his name is David Rudolph. Um, and the rest of his family also arrive home because I think one daughter was off at college, and so everybody comes home for a funeral, but also to see what's going on and be supportive. But they all ask him, like, what the hell happened? And at first he's like, I just don't want to talk about it, which I thought was weird. But they get him to start and he says, Well, I just sold a book and we wanted to celebrate. So we got some wine, we got movies from Blockbuster. This is 2001. And he said that Kathleen then got an email that kind of annoyed her. So they went out to the pool a bit to shake it off and drink some more. But she got tired and had to go to bed because she had a big conference call in the morning. He hung out for a bit longer. But when he went to go to bed, he found her in a bloody mess at the bottom of the stairs.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

I just want to quickly mention that the whole, oh, I just did a huge, big, great work thing and we were celebrating sounds awfully familiar to Corey Richens to me.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

Oh, for sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Anyway, moving right along.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Moving right along. And of course, that's when he then makes the nine more one call. So the family asks, well, then why are the police so interested? And Michael's like, they're just looking at me because they're trying to blame me because of politics in the system. He had gotten into playing for mayor in the city council, and he lost terribly, and he believes that they just wanted to shut him up and basically make sure he never ran again. So that's his theory. They don't like me, they want to shut me up. It's actually his oldest daughter, Margaret, birthday, and they go ahead and bring out a cake, which all seemed very surreal and bizarre, but Michael insists that Kathleen would have wanted her to celebrate still. So this is this day after her stepmom has died, the whole family's there, the police are investigating, and he's like, Well, we can't miss her birthday. Let's get a cake.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Mm-mm. Poor taste. Very poor taste.

SPEAKER_03 8:50

Poor taste, but it gives you an insight of how uninterested he was in everything. Oh, arrogant. He's he comes across as totally arrogant this entire time. And I believe that that was also an arrogant move. Like, I don't even have to worry about this. We just carry on and celebrate your birthday. So then we do see a flashback of the couple at a party. This was two months before the incident. Kathleen's a little drunk, and she decides it would be fun to dive into this pool, but she doesn't surface. And Michael jumps in and saves her, and it appears she has damaged her neck in some way. She hadn't broken it, but there was definitely some kind of neck injury. Um, and it appears to be relevant because it was only two months before she died. So some of these injuries were hard to differentiate between that and the ones that happened on the night of her death. On the day of the funeral, the police show up at the Peterson house and Michael flips out. He's like, Can I just bury my wife? And I kind of get that. That was kind of uncouth. But their plan was to go through the house while everybody was at the funeral.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Wouldn't you want to know what happened? I would want to know what happened to my wife or to my loved one. Like, please investigate this and do what you need to do. I I want to know if there's any question.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

Yeah. I mean, some some people do die from falling down the stairs, but the amount of blood and injuries to her just seemed absolutely fucking bizarre for falling down the stairs. Yeah. But anyway. So when they get back from the funeral, they can see that police have they've turned the house upside down and they've taken all of Michael's computers, but they deliberately left a printout of something that they found on his computer, which was proof of his homosexual extracurricular activities, and they wanted him to know he had found it. So this was a naked picture of a man um fully erect. So Michael calls the lawyer, David Rudolph, decides that he just has to hire him. Initially, he was reluctant too because he didn't really know him. He was going to be very expensive, he didn't kind of like David's attitude, but now he realizes, oh shin, I'm in trouble. Right. He's gonna have a lot to answer for in court. Now he is indicted on a charge of first degree murder. And David, the lawyer, tells him, Go ahead and turn yourself in. I'm gonna get you bail approved. And the entire family go with him to support him, and the press are waiting outside. So Michael and his arrogant self can't just walk in and turn himself in. He decides to give an immediate statement to the press outside the police station, claiming that he's innocent of all this, and he's gonna get it all cleared up and everything's gonna be hunky door. So we then see the prosecutor with Kathleen's biological family. So basically, this was a blended family. Kathleen already had a daughter with a previous husband, and Michael had his two sons with his previous wife, Patty. Now she's a character.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Oh, she's a big character.

SPEAKER_03 11:49

And then his two girls had been adopted by him, and that comes into the story big time later on. So we're talking about Kathleen's two sisters and her biological daughter, Caitlin. And the prosecution decides to show them pictures of all of Kathleen's wounds, and they were horrific. So this included seven large lacerations to the head. They're then told the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. And this is something that does go back and forth of whether or not it was blunt trauma to the head as the official cause of death or bleeding to death. But basically, the trauma to the head caused the bleeding to death. So you know, it swings and roundabouts. Do you say that over here?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

No, but I like it. Swings about.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Swings and roundabouts. Okay. Like the same thing. So they believe that Michael beat her in the head. And they're like, but why? Why would he do that? What's the motive? So then they show them the pictures from Michael's computer and suggest that maybe Kathleen had also found them. And that's actually the turning point where Kathleen's family go from being supportive of Michael to on the other side. Right. Literally, now it's two sides. So now we meet the French documentarians who've taken an interest in the case and they want to make it the subject of their latest documentary. And that is the documentary called The Staircase that is on Netflix that was released in 2017. And we also get an insight into Kathleen and Michael's life before the incident. Mainly Kathleen's under a lot of pressure under work, and Michael's just picking up men in the gym. He's so gross.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Not for picking up men, not for being bisexual, but like doing this while his wife is so miserable and unhappy, and he's just out like, oh, let's go pick up men and have fun.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

She's under a lot of pressure. She's also looking after his entire brood who have multiple problems in their own personal lives and are very demanding. And she's the one that's basically bringing home the bread and butter.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

She's doing it all and he's living his best life.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

While he sits back and writes his books. Now he was a fairly successful author, but I don't think it brought in like that big celebration that they were having. He made $10,000. Right. That's not and the look on her face. And I'll just inject right here, actually, having said that, obviously we're talking about the dramatization. So when I say the look on her face, we're talking about an actress playing her, not her. However, I saw an interview with Tony Collette, and she said it was very, very important to her and the makers of the documentary that everybody was portrayed exactly as it happened. She said it was very important to her because one, she was playing a real, actual person, and two, that person is no longer alive to make sure that she played that person with as much authenticity as she possibly could. And if you watch both the documentary and the dramatization, there's some differences for sure. There's some stuff that's shown in one and not the other, but a lot of it's word for word.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

So even though I'm saying, oh my God, the look on her face, whatever, and she's just an actress playing her, I feel like, and the actors are saying that this was made to not be like a semi-fictional version of the story. This was made to be as factual as they could get it. So side note, anyway. Um, so Uncle Bill goes to see Michael in jail, and he tells Kathleen's family is no longer talking to any of them. It's unfortunate, even the sisters. So Michael's two adopted daughters, Martha and Margaret, who were really close to Caitlin. Like there's now a divide. There's a line in the sand, nobody's talking.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

It shattered that whole family.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

It's such a shame. So he suspects that they've probably shown Kathleen's family the pictures on his computer. So he asks Bill, please let my kids know about them as well before they find out. And another way. Poor Uncle Bill, I'm telling you. Yeah, I mean, he admits that he knew since they were kids. Right. But that doesn't surprise me because they were boys growing up together. But he has to now tell kids. And they're so confused. They're like, is he gay? Is he bi? And did Kathleen know about this? And Bill tells them, yeah, of course she knew.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

I kind of question, and this is my opinion, this is my own speculation. I kind of question if Uncle Bill did really know, or if Uncle Bill was trying to cover his brother's ass. So I'm trying to make it seem like, oh. Yeah, especially since he's like, oh, of course Kathleen knew. I knew. Everybody knew.

SPEAKER_03 16:23

Michael did tell Bill that Kathleen knew. He also told the police that Kathleen knew. Um, until later.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

And obviously he's very trustworthy. Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:32

So Michael wakes Bail and David tells him about the French documentary, and he's super interested because it's all about me. And one thing that comes across about him in both of these series is everything is all about him. Very much, yeah. Very much so. He's very egotistical, arrogant. Now the father of Kathleen's daughter turns up to let her know that Kathleen's back pay from her job and her life insurance has been paid out. But Caitlin had no knowledge of this. She doesn't know where it's gone. She moves into the hotel with her dad and stays away from the family because I think she was 15. She was still living in the family home, but she didn't want to be around them anymore. And she's starting to get concerned. So he lied about war injuries, he lied about a medal, and now she finds out he lied about being bisexual, like a red flag alone. Yeah. So David and Team set up an experiment to see how the blood spatter could have happened if she had fallen, and explain all the blood and injuries, and see if he would heard her yelling from the pool area where he was sitting. So they like play it horrible, horrible. They play these tapes of somebody going, help, help me, somebody help me from the stair area to see if they can hear it from the pool area, which I don't know how effective that is. They don't know how capable she was of screaming loudly or quietly, or I don't know, just seemed very, very unrealistic. Unrealistic. Yeah. Yeah. Unlikely. Okay. So now we see the incident acted out in the way that the defense is claiming. Kathleen's tired, she's tipsy, she walks up the stairs, she trips, she hits her head, and after a couple of moments of unconsciousness, she realizes her head is covered in blood. She's coughing, she's trying to crawl up the stairs, she's slipping on all of the blood, she's unable to get herself up and eventually falls to the floor, basically looking like she's choking on her own blood, which we know she didn't, because she bled to death, but that's what it looks like. And the prosecutor tells Kathleen's daughter that they believe Michael killed her with a blunt object to the head, but they've not figured out yet what it was. And they also tell her that Kathleen's blood alcohol level was 0.07. So by legal standard, she was not intoxicated when she died. Because you've got to be 0.08, right? To get a DUI. She then goes to the house and collects the rest of her belongings and leaves the family for good. So the French documentary crew turn up in the States and start filming the documentary. Michael walks them through the timeline of events the night that Kathleen died. And they don't like the first take. And they're like, hey, can we do that again with more emotion? Like, what?

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yeah, you shouldn't have to ask that. And the fact that you do.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

There should have been so much emotion that he couldn't do it in one take. Right. So as Kathleen's family sit and mull everything they've heard and they're tending to their fire, they're realizing that it's very likely the murder weapon to fit the description would be a regular household blowpoke. And Kathleen's sister had actually given her a blowpoke for Christmas, which everybody points out was a very unusual gift. But she's like, I bought a new one and I loved it. And so I bought one for everybody in the family that Christmas. And then people start to realize that that blowpoke can no longer be found anywhere in the house. It didn't turn up in the searches that the police did.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

I have a really stupid little side note, but there are definitely people like that that they buy this new product and they think it's the best thing ever, and they go and buy everybody else one. And one year that was one of my aunts. It was when the Swiffer first came out, the Swiffer wet jet.

SPEAKER_03 20:19

The Swiffer is fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

It is, but she bought one and she was obsessed with it. And I was like 13 at the time. Guess what I got for my 13th birthday from her? A fucking Swiffer wet jet, you guys. So yes, those people exist. Anyway, continue.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

I'm kind of one of those people, insofar as if I get something and I absolutely love it, I'm gonna get one for you too. But it's not gonna be your birthday yet. You know what I'm saying? Okay. Anyway. Back to the French documentary being filmed. They are talking to the police about a possible murder weapon, and they find that the blowpoke was actually missing from the Peterson fireplace and didn't turn up in any police search. We now see Michael turning to his ex-wife Patty for financial help as money is so tight. And we see Kathleen's daughter, Caitlin, talking to a lawyer about her mother's estate, which Michael appears to be using for his defense, and she hasn't seen a penny. Patty does actually tell him, No, I can't help you.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Good Patty.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

Yeah, good Patty, but Patty in both um series was a very interesting character.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Very eccentric woman. Nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

She was actually more bizarre in the real thing than she was in the dramatization. And yes, very eccentric. But I found it's like she never moved on and got married again, and she seemed very close to Michael, very supportive, and she was there the whole time. Right. And I get supporting your children, but I felt like she was a little too attached.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Yeah, I agree. A little too close for comfort, given all the circumstances.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

Exactly. So police find and interview the subject of the naked pictures that were found on Michael's computer and ask him if he ever actually had a personal relationship with Michael. But it seems like it was just sexual hookups. So this guy is saying that there was a physical. Relationship, but not like an emotional relationship. Whereas Michael's actually telling them, I just look at pictures. Right. I don't follow through. So Michael's legal team inform him that the prosecution are trying to look for more male subjects that he has slept with. But he says, I haven't had any encounters. I just like looking at the pictures. And his lawyer is telling him that this kind of behavior is not that unusual, especially in France.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Not the especially in France, y'all.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

Which makes you think maybe this is why they jumped at the chance to be part of the documentary, because they can spin it in a normal light. Although, interestingly enough, of the two documentarians, one really thought he did it and one didn't.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

So yeah. Um, his kids seem to have been told that Kathleen knew about these sexual preferences and that the couple had an understanding.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

And some couples do, but it's still risky behavior. Like you're going and picking up random dudes at the gym, and then you're also coming home and having sex with your wife. Like, what have you picked up from these random men that you're gonna bring home? It's just it's risky behavior, period. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

And we see a flashback of Kathleen coming home and hearing men's voices in the bedroom. And it seems like maybe she's suspicious, but it turns out that Michael has arranged for a massage for her. But I think the point they were trying to make here is that maybe she had an inkling or a suspicion about Michael's behavior, but didn't actually know. And they do that more than once in the documentary. I didn't throw them all in there because these notes are extensive enough to see. Right. So once the police turn up one man Michael slept with, and he is confronted about it in the documentary in front of the cameras, and he denies it. Brother Bill takes him aside and asks him, How many more are they gonna find? Which Michael can't answer. He actually says, it's not like they kept a diary. And he says, So, Bill, you were cheating on Kathleen. And he says, No, I just had sex. It's not affairs, it's not love. I loved Kathleen. She knew about it, and I had sex with men and only men outside the marriage. And to say she didn't know would be insulting to Kathleen. I mean this fucking guy.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

This fucking guy, you guys.

SPEAKER_03 24:14

So what he's saying is it's not cheating if it's just sex and it's not a relationship and it's not another woman.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Okay. It is cheating if your partner doesn't know and if they'd be upset about it, period.

SPEAKER_03 24:26

Right. So Bill wants to leave and go spend time with his own family because he's flown in from this. He doesn't live in Durham, North Carolina, where this where this takes place. Michael's like, fuck no. Everything's about me right now, and that's all that matters.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Wait. Am I like Michael? No. Only in that scenario. Everything's about me. I'm not a murderer.

SPEAKER_03 24:47

If we ever do a documentary though.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

The prosecution are now having no problem finding more and more men who have encountered Michael in a sexual way. And meanwhile, their blood spatter and injury analysis team are using blowpokes to beat styrofoam heads over and over and over again to prove the blunt force drama theory. Unfortunately, though, some of the men they uncover have also been intimate with other important local married men whom they don't want to out. So they decide not to use them.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Corruption runs deep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

And we see the French guys making the documentary having a private conversation. As one of them, as I just said, is convinced that Michael did it and wants to focus on a different story because he's like, I don't want to make this documentary about this guy. Um, because it is really filmed from Michael and his family's point of view. Right. Um, but the other's insistent. No, we need to follow this. This is gonna be good.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

And it is, it's a good, crazy story, whether he's innocent or guilty. He's not wrong, but at the same time, I understand the other guy's perspective. I don't want to give this guy any notoriety or money or anything from this because he's probably a murderer.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

Right. And like I said at the beginning, the documentary seems to have been done more from Michael's point of view, and and he didn't get to testify. This is his way of letting the public know his side of the story. And if you think somebody's guilty, you know, doing it from their point of view might be something you don't want to be attached to. Um, whereas I think the other guy was like, uh, we're in the documentary business to make money. Right, right. And make successful documentaries, and this is juicer. So Michael's daughters are brought into the documentary, but Kathleen's daughter's still separating herself out. And she goes by her mom's office to find that no one else from the family has bothered to go there and get any of her mother's personal belongings.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

So they sure do jump on her money real quick, but they don't want her pictures and personal stuff from the office. Just this whole thing is so cold.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Yeah, it's heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

Now, Michael hears that Kathleen's daughter and Kathleen's ex-husband, so um Caitlin's father, have managed to stop all payments to him from the back pay and life insurance. To which he says, after everything I've done for her, greedy bitch.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

About his stepdaughter, the youngest one. I mean, this is where you really see the arrogant, it's all about me, nobody else matters. You don't care about this poor 15-year-old that just lost her mom.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

She obviously didn't even know that this money was coming in. He had been lying to her. Do you think that she would have seen a dime of it otherwise? No.

SPEAKER_03 27:31

Yeah, who's the greedy bitch? Right? So now they have to talk about refinancing the house for the legal battle. So Michael's daughters are interviewed for TV, and we learned that they were both born in Germany and their parents passed away before they were both two. So it turns out they were taken in by Michael and his first wife, Patty. When he left his first wife for Kathleen, she became their mom. And they loved her like a mom and she loved them. Now, watching this TV documentary is their biological's mom's sister, and she calls police immediately to tell them that her sister, their mom, Liz, also fell down the stairs and died in Germany. So she also calls Michael's girls, the two that were biologically related to Liz, and they just don't want to hear about it. They don't remember anything from Germany, and they're like, you're lying to us. But the younger one, Martha, she points out that it's quite a coincidence that they've now had two mums die from falling downstairs.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

I have known zero people that died from falling down.

SPEAKER_03 28:39

Right. Now, it was said that Liz had a brain aneurysm, which is what caused her to fall. It took me a little digging to see how everybody knew each other in this Germany thing. So Liz worked with Patty, and that's how they met. And Michael was friends with her husband, and her husband died in combat, I believe. Then Liz died by falling down the stairs, and then there were these two girls, and they had asked them, hey, if anything ever happens to us, will you make sure our girls are okay? And they'd promised them that, which is why they had taken in the girls. Because I was like, this is unusual. It's not like a sister or something when you take in somebody else's children. Right. Um, so I, you know, I researched that a little bit. So that's why they ended up taking um the two girls.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:22

So the defense are trying to keep anything about Liz out of the trial. They know this doesn't work. Right. Um, and the prosecution's experts, however, have successfully come to the conclusion that Kathleen was killed by a direct blow to the head from possibly a blowpoke from directly above. So he was standing over her when he struck her. And the prosecution requests Michael's daughters give permission for their biological mother's body to be exhumed. So this is Liz. They're like, okay, it was said aneurysm, but maybe we need to look at it again now. They reluctantly agree in the hopes that it helps exonerate their father. So these poor girls have now lost three parents to death and are looking at losing one to jail. And I get it, but damn. And things only get worse for these two, Margaret and Martha.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Yeah, their story is so tragic.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

So tragic. So now we start the trial. The prosecution's version of events is that the couple had an argument over Michael's extracurricular affairs and it got nasty. He got mad, he tried to strangle her, and then struck her with an object, most likely the missing blowpoke. And they focus on a speck of blood found on the inner leg of Michael's shorts, saying logistically the only way it could have gotten there is if he was standing over her when she was struck. So your blood splatter analysis, right? Um, the defense version is that Kathleen was drunk and tired. She also had Valium in her system, and she she simply fell. And but the main point the defense make is that Kathleen had no skull fracture, which is unheard of when dying from blunt force trauma to the head. So no record of anybody else ever that they could find had actually died that way without experiencing a skull fracture as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

And that's compelling evidence.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

Definitely. So the media get hold of the fact that Liz is being exhumed due to her also dying by falling down the stairs, and it has not been kept out of the trial. And they call a witness from Germany to hear the circumstances of that death. Now she was the nanny at the time, and she says on the stand that she believes Michael did it, and she was even concerned for the girls' welfare once they were given to Michael. This freaks the girls out. They're sitting there listening to the trial and they have no memory of any of this. I just I can't even imagine how these poor girls got through all this. The jury are taken to the house to see the staircase, and then just look around the house in general. And now both sides have their own blood spatter experts, which that has to be confusing for the jury. We've said before how we believe experts, where you've got one bunch of experts saying this and another bunch of experts saying that. And I just don't know as a jury how you separate the two. So just as the defense are ready to rest, and Michael tries insisting upon testifying, but his lawyers talk him out of it. One thing they're worried about is Michael's previous lies about the Purple Heart and that he got in battle, which he did not. But right as we're coming to the end of the defense, the sons come across the blowpogue. It's just sitting there in the garage. It wasn't missing, it wasn't covered up, it wasn't hidden. So despite the fact that the thesis did multiple search of the home, there's suddenly this blowpoge brought into evidence, and there is absolutely no evidence on it that it was used to commit a murder. And nobody can explain how it suddenly got there months later after several police searches.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

The only thing that makes sense to me is that it was the murder weapon and somebody hid it. And then once the police were done with their searches and everything, they were like, Oh, let me just go pick it up from the lake or wherever I put it and put it back here as if it was here the whole time.

SPEAKER_03 33:08

I thought that at first, but my new theory is so they're getting towards the end of the trial, they're getting nervous that he's gonna get convicted. If they could just produce a blowpoke that has no evidence of blood or anything on it, so you know, maybe one rushes to the store or the you know, the thrift store used one, I think that it wasn't the original one.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

That's also a good possibility. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:36

The sons found it.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Right, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

I mean, and an interesting fact, actually, that I don't think I've got in here. This is told by Michael, who knows if it's true. But at one point, one of the sons says to him, Is there like anything you need me to do?

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Right.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

And he says that he knew that his son was hinting that if he needed to cover up something, he would. Right. One, I think that's arrogant. Maybe their sons would, maybe their sons wouldn't, but you don't say that on a documentary that your sons would commit a felony for you.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

Um, but the fact that he thinks that they would makes you wonder, did they go by this bloke open pocket? Yeah. Anyway. So this family here was so close before are so divided. You've got Michael's sons fervently defending him. His daughters adopted from Germany are just so confused given the details of their biological mother's death, which I think was news to them. And Kathleen's daughter, who just believes he killed her, and none of them asked for this, these these five kids. And they're adults now, but you know, they're always your kids. So the verdict is that he is found guilty and sentenced to prison for the rest of his natural life without the possibility of parole. But wait, we are only halfway through this mini-series. Wow. Maybe this should have been a two-parter because we're at 40 minutes. So now we meet Sophie, and she is a French national who was the editor for the documentary, and she is convinced that he has been wrongly uh convicted and she wants to help his cause. So she decided while editing and seeing all the footage that she believed in. But again, this documentary is told from his family's point of view. Michael's not doing well in prison. He just doesn't fit in, he's getting beaten up. But Sophie writes him letters on a regular basis, promising him the new trial he deserves. And the guys who shot the documentary are still not as convinced as Sophie that he's innocent. And Michael happily writes back. He thinks releasing the documentary will help his case. It shows his side of the story, which, as he wasn't able to testify, he wants out there. Um, his family are having an estate sale and selling the house to raise funds for the appeal. But the house price is lowered quite a bit because of what happened there. And that pisses him off, too. Right. Because, you know, to him it's not the house my wife died in. It's the house I need the money for to save my skin. Right. So the first appeal is denied. The documentary is well received, and Sophie takes a trip to visit Michael in prison for the first time. And she rents an apartment in North Carolina. So she lives in Paris normally, but she rents an apartment in North Carolina and visits Michael on a regular basis, and they start a romantic relationship.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

This disgusted me. This fucking disgusted me.

SPEAKER_03 36:18

It was very bizarre. So Michael's second appeal is then denied as well, and he's told, I'm sorry, dude, you're out of appeals. And he says to his lawyer, You're just gonna let this happen to me? Maybe not murder your wife, buddy. His lawyer has dedicated years of his life. And David, his lawyer, says to him, Look, it's time for me to bow out. I need to go back to my own life. But Michael is just pissed at him. I mean, what a fucking David. So despite the way Michael treats him, he calls the rest of the family to tell them, I'm sorry, we're out of options at this point. It's time to just accept it and move on. And it was a pleasure to work with all of you. So he keeps his dignity. Right. Yeah. So next, and this is a good one, comes the owl theory.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

The owl theory.

SPEAKER_03 37:07

The owl theory. Michael's neighbor, who is convinced of Michael's innocence, tells Sophie that he believes an owl might be responsible for Kathleen's death. He says it's Barn Owl mating season when she was attacked, and apparently there are other owl attacks in the area, and the wounds on her head match the talons of an owl, which also explains no skull fracture. Then she was disorientated, and in an effort to get up the stairs to get towels for the blood, she fell. I mean, or maybe it was a dragon attack.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

That makes just as much sense. Just as likely.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

Yeah. Also, wouldn't you go back to the backyard and get Michael for help rather than tempt the stairs in that concession? Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

That's what I can't reconcile. And I I talked to my friend who's a biologist about this, who has actually dealt with barred owls. And I'm going to talk to you about that in the after show, but continue.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

Okay. So as much blood as there was, and as m bad as all of the injuries were, at that point, it's not like I have a scratch, I'm going to run upstairs and get a towel for the blood. It's she's disorientated, she's bleeding everywhere, she was severely attacked. No one is going to run upstairs and get themselves a towel when there's another person home to help you. Right. But lovesick, Sophie, she just buys into all of this 100%. So she goes back through the evidence and then finds feathers in the hair. And again, that pine needle under the nail. So Sophie goes to the coroner with the theory, who says, All right, I'll take another look if the body can be exhumed. But you're gonna need Kathleen's daughter's permission. And you can guess how that works. Right, right. Yeah, I won't even bother going into that. I'm gonna let you guys either watch it or imagine what Caitlin said to her. So Michael's oldest daughter, Margaret, she goes to see her biological mum's sister and learns that they actually lived with her for a period of time and she had custody of them. But Michael took them back because he didn't agree with her religious devotion. But four years later, tried to give back Martha, the youngest, because she was too much of a handful. So he wanted to split these two girls up.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

This enrages me to a level that I cannot put into words.

SPEAKER_03 39:24

Yeah. I mean, you you probably feel this, right? Yeah. So they had lost both parents. They've been living with Michael and Patty, they've been living with their aunt, and now he wants to split them both up because he can't handle the little girl. But Liz's sister, she refuses. She's like, look, I know what it's like to lose a sister. I lost mine. She died. And I just I can't go through with it. I'm not gonna take her if it splits them up. So Margaret calls to tell Martha, but she can't go through with it. But maybe she should have, though, because Martha decides to go to Germany and find out more about her family there. And she meets with the nanny who takes her to the house where her biological mom Liz died at the bottom of the stairs. And she also finds out that Michael hit her a lot as a child. She was seen with lots of bruises. And he and his first wife, Patty, tried to get rid of them by giving them to people to adopt them or by giving them away. And she was finally told that Michael wanted to keep her sister and give her away because apparently she was too much of a difficult child due to losing both parents to death, and she was only three.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

I want this man to just suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer forever.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

So Martha goes back to Patty and Patty admits it all. She's like, yeah, that happened. So next, there's another twist. Wow. A man is found dead due to blunt forced trauma to the head with no skull fractures. Meaning that Kathleen's case is now less unusual. But the real twist is the dead man is one of the men who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Michael. These bodies sure are piling up around Michael, aren't they? So this takes Sophie on a whole new path. So maybe Dennis, the dead man, and Kathleen were murdered by the same person in the same way. So she starts to interview different people about the dead guy and comes to realize that her her new lover, Michael, cheated multiple times on his wife, Kathleen, with men. Like, girl, what? You edited this entire documentary and you're so blinded by love that you just what walked out that whole part?

SPEAKER_00 41:52

I don't know what it is, but so many women fall victim to this that are just otherwise very smart, very capable women.

SPEAKER_03 42:01

Now, especially when she finds out that the murderer of Dennis is also someone that Michael slept with.

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Jesus, y'all.

SPEAKER_03 42:09

I mean, there's not many people, apparently, men left in North Carolina. Apparently. So even Sophie starts to wonder what else he's lied about, but she's into deep. And she confronts Michael in prison at a visit, and he promises, but I'd never do that to you. I'd never cheat on you in that way.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

I would never continue the same pattern of behavior that I've repeated my whole life.

SPEAKER_03 42:30

So this is assuming that he gets out and they have this lifetime together awaiting ahead of them. But her theory is that the person who murdered Dennis Rowe had met Michael, been to his house for a sexual encounter, seen how wealthy he was, and later broke in as he knew the way his way around the house. And then obviously murdered Kathleen and later did the same to Dennis and murdered him in the same way. So this is she's moved on from the owl theory.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

That's not an owl, it's this other random dude that you were having sex with.

SPEAKER_03 42:59

Yeah. However, no one else's DNA was ever found. And Michael was also there the whole time. So, like, you know, if somebody broke in and had this thing going on with Kathleen, like beating her over the head, don't you think that Michael hanging out by the pool? So anyway, it turns out that this guy, Tyrone, was in jail the night that Kathleen died. And the policeman that's been looking into it for Sophie says to her, you know, maybe it's time to accept that he killed his wife. Right. So, another little side story here. In the meantime, an attorney for the North Carolina Innocent Project, Evelyn Ivans, has decided to delve into how evidence in cases is handled and was it fair? And she believes that an innocent man, Greg Taylor, is in jail in North Carolina and wants to prove in court that evidence was covered up and left out. And she successfully manages to get Greg released and pardoned. And she's wondering if the SBI, which is the State Bureau of Investigation, in this Case the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation covered up more cases in North Carolina. So she plans to audit all cases involving the SBI, including Michael's case. She actually thinks that the SBI's mission was to make sure the convictions happen successfully for the state. So they bring this to the attention of Michael's team, and they go through all of their trial records. They just want to make sure that what's she going to find. And they're able to find that one of the SBI officials lied on the stand about how much experience they had, giving them a window of opportunity. So this gives them the opportunity to ask for a hearing for a retrial. At the hearing, Kathleen's sister Candice, she gives this really emotional statement. However, the judge approves the retrial. So we only are 10 years later, and kind of a lot happens with the whole, are they or are they not going to have a retrial? But at the end of the day, this manages to get him an Alfred plea for involuntary manslaughter, where he admits there is enough evidence against him without actually admitting guilt. And he would actually be immediately released from prison from time served. But this arrogant shithead says, nope, I'm not pleading guilty to anything. So even the lawyer that he treated so badly has made a statement saying he did nothing to hurt Kathleen to go along, uh, to go along with the plea. But eventually Sophie manages to convince him that they can build this life together in Planet Paris like they'd planned. And so he makes the plea and is released from custody. Wow. So the family celebrates along with Sophie and she moves ahead with their plans uh to move to Paris until Michael tells her he actually doesn't want to go. And she realizes that he has not made her a priority in his life since getting out. And although she has turned her life upside down for him when asked, he admits that he didn't actually love her.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

SPEAKER_03 46:07

So she goes to see her fellow documentary maker who says to her, You know what, I have this video that Michael asked me to record and not tell you about, but to let you watch. And in this video, he admits his attraction to men. He admits that Kathleen didn't know anything about it. And when he is asked on the documentary, Did you kill Kathleen? He doesn't say yes or no. He says, It was an accident.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 46:35

And that's where it ends.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

I mean, obviously he's a narcissist. Obviously, he has no regard for other human beings whatsoever and treats them like objects. All the way up to like being imprisoned and manipulating this Sophie, like, and I don't really feel bad for her because he used her. He used her. Yeah, 100%. But she put herself in that position. Like he murdered his wife.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

I mean, the fact that she blocked out all of the homosexual extracurricular activities tells you that she was not listening to the fact.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

She made a choice not to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:17

So I've got here as a as a last note is that Michael Peterson has been vocal about his disapproval of this dramatization, calling it egregious fabrications, despite the fact that it's based on his memoirs.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

Yeah, because he knows that that documentary makes it. Makes him look like a piece of shit. Because he is. I could not get through it, y'all. I've legitimately tried to watch the staircase on Netflix again. I watched it when it first came out many years ago. And I tried to watch it again for this, and I just couldn't.

SPEAKER_03 47:48

Are you talking about the documentary or the documentary?

SPEAKER_00 47:50

I couldn't get through it. It was just a bunch of white dudes like living their best life, drinking wine, talking about, oh, how are we going to get this wife killer off? Off. Yeah, basically. It just it sickened me.

unknown 48:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:05

I'm I'm amazed at Martha and Margaret still a hundred percent behind him. And I do wonder if that's just because they've lost three parents and they they don't want to lose the other. Regardless if you did it or not, they don't want to lose another.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

Yeah, because it's at that point it's like, who else do you have? And that's that's scary when you've been through so much trauma and you don't have a support system. I mean, I I get it. I don't I don't fault them in any way. I think they're doing the best that they possibly can. I would have jumped off my balcony by now.

SPEAKER_03 48:34

This has been a long episode, and then we there's a lot to unpack here, but let's just let's just leave that for the after show you too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:40

Guys, you should subscribe to us if you're not. It's four bucks a month. You'll get our after shows where we just chat like we're buddies, which we are. But if you are a subscriber, we will see you in the after show.

SPEAKER_03 48:52

If not, we'll see you next week. And I guess we'll To be determined. We don't be determined. We haven't thought that reporting while we're at the beach, right? So maybe maybe we'll find a nice beach you want to do. Other than the Gilgo Beach.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

Yeah, is Gilgo coming out while we're at the beach? That'd be so ironic if it does. Maybe. It might be. Yeah. We'll see, guys. Um, if you want to shoot us your ideas, tell us what you want to hear. We'll get on it.

SPEAKER_03 49:20

We do have a list though, so we're never gonna run.

SPEAKER_00 49:24

No.

SPEAKER_03 49:26

All right. Well, I guess that's it for today.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

Yeah, so until next time, be divas.

SPEAKER_02 49:32

Not deadly. Bye.