Crime Weekly - S3 Ep107: Kathleen Peterson: Experts At War (Part 3)

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

In the early hours of December 9th, 2001, a man named Michael Peterson made a panicked phone call to 911, telling them that his wife, 48 year old Kathleen Peterson, had fallen down the stairs and they should hurry because she was still breathing. Six minutes later he called back and reported that Kathleen was no longer breathing, she was gone. Initially, it appeared that this had been a tragic accident, but as first responders and law enforcement began to arrive at the scene, the tension was palpable. The Peterson family and friends felt that Michael was being unfairly targeted, that the police were only suspicious of him because he had been loudly outspoken and critical of the Durham North Carolina Police Department in his role as columnist for a local paper. The law enforcement professionals on the scene claimed that from the moment they walked in, it felt as if something wasn’t right, and there was far too much blood for the death of Kathleen Peterson to be attributed to a simple fall down the stairs. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: Prose Prose is the healthy hair regimen with your name all over it. Take your FREE in-depth hair consultation and get 15% off your first order today! Go to www.Prose.com/crimeweekly for your FREE in-depth hair consultation and 15% off. Surfshark For a limited time get 83% off of a 2-year plan plus 3 extra months for free at www.Surfshark.deals/crimeweekly. This special offer makes your subscription just $2.21 per month! Go to surfshark use code crimeweekly to protect your online privacy today. Daily Harvest If eating well is a goal for 2023, let Daily Harvest support you on the journey. Go to www.dailyharvest.com/crimeweekly to get up to forty dollars off your first box. Cerebral OUR LISTENERS WILL RECEIVE 50% OR MORE OFF YOUR FIRST MONTH OF THERAPY BY GOING TO CEREBRAL.COM/CRIMEWEEKLY. FOR QUALITY MENTAL HEALTHCARE THAT’S ACCESSIBLE AND AFFORDABLE, JOIN CEREBRAL TODAY.

Are you ready for more independence as a financial advisor? Consider the RIA model. Schwab Advisor Services has helped thousands of advisors make the move. To find your path, start with Schwab at advisorservices.schwab.com backslash paths today. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today's episode, we have a lot to cover. We have a lot to give everyone who's listening right now a quick reminder that if you follow us on YouTube at Crime Weekly on YouTube you will see that we're doing a separate segment that's not available on audio and it's called Crime Weekly News where we spend

about 30 minutes every week talking about something that's in the headlines as far as true crime goes and for the past two weeks, we've been discussing the University of Idaho murders. And with the probable cause affidavit just being released this past week, we did go over that and kind of give our opinions and get to hear what we think about that. So if you haven't seen it yet, head over to YouTube and make sure you subscribe to us there so that you get notified every week when we talk about, you know, Crime Weekly News. Yeah. And for those of you asking, because there were a lot of you, you know, why isn't this on audio? To make it really simple, we have a deal with Audio Boom. We have a certain

schedule that we put out episodes to add another episode in the RSS feed, kind of would screw up the scheduling that we have. So to not complicate things right now, it's going to be specifically on YouTube and it's going to be there for a while. So you definitely want to subscribe and turn the notifications on down the road. Yeah, sure. It'll probably be on audio, but for right now, YouTube's the place, the place to get it and great episode this week talking about the affidavit and breaking that down. So if you want to check it out, if you're looking for short form content, that's where you want to go.

Absolutely. And like I already said, we got a lot to talk about today. I'm really excited to dive in because we're talking about the autopsy. We're talking about blood spatter, all of that stuff where I felt like I needed five college degrees to even understand what I was reading, but I got through it. And hopefully, I will be able to explain it to you. And then Derek can come in with his expertise as far as law enforcement goes, because I'm sure he already just kind of started off knowing more about blood spatter and things like that than I did. And it was tough for me, man. I was like real exhausted this week with all the information that

was coming through, all the medical information. I felt stupid. I kept having to look stuff up. So hopefully I haven't nailed down enough where we can have an intelligent discussion about it. All right. Today's episode is going to be one that is dense with information and evidence from the autopsy report to the blood spatter analysis, and it would be this evidence that's introduced during the trial that expert witnesses would give their opinions on. Now, experts for the state, the prosecution, they testified that Kathleen Peterson's injuries were consistent with a beating, And experts for her husband, Michael Peterson, would testify that her injuries were more consistent with an accidental fall. And that

is really something that I noticed as I was kind of listening to the trial and watching portions of the trial. The defense and their witnesses, they won't say anything with 100% certainty. They'll say like, hey, we can't tell you exactly what all of this evidence means. We weren't there. But we can tell you that reading this evidence makes us feel that the blood spatter and the scene are more consistent with an accidental fall, whereas the prosecution and their witnesses were like, oh, absolutely no way this could have been an accidental fall. This 100 million percent shows that she was beaten by her husband, basically, right? Like that's what they're

saying. And it kind of did bug me a little bit because you really don't know what happened. Unless you were there, you can look at blood spatter and you can look at the scene and the injuries on Kathleen and you can say as somebody who has some knowledge of these things, it looks like this is what may have happened. But the prosecution was really going hard with their witnesses who, I mean, spoiler alert, we find that some of their expert witnesses weren't as much expert as they were a witness, but they went really hard with kind of just saying this absolutely could not have been an accidental fall in a million years. And that kind of bugged me a little bit and rubbed me the wrong way. Yeah. I feel like the prosecution's trying to tell a story where the defense isn't necessarily trying to prove what they believe. They're just trying to put different ideas out there to create this level of doubt in the minds of jury members. Again, it's not their job to prove it 100%. It's just to say, hey, here's an alternative. And if this alternative is even potentially true, well,

that could rise to the level of reasonable doubt. And if that's the case, well, then you have to find our client not guilty. That's all they're trying to do. So it's definitely frustrating. I agree with you 100%, but they're doing what they're getting paid to do. The defense or the prosecution? Well, the prosecution doesn't get paid nearly as much. They're trying to put on a story, but the defense, they get paid a lot of money to create that reasonable doubt, to create just an uncertainty in the minds of jury members, where all you need is a couple of them to say, yeah, if you made me choose, he's probably guilty. However, because of these other possible scenarios, I just can't get there. That's all the defense needs. And that's why the best are the best for the reason. They're not proving innocence. They're just creating doubt

Absolutely, and I think that we do kind of look when we're when we're watching trials like this We look at the defense and their lawyers and then we look at the prosecution and their lawyers and each sides experts and we almost are Biased towards the prosecution where it's like Oh, well you you expert witnesses are on the side of like the truth. And then the defense expert witnesses are kind of like just trying to do and tell whatever they're paid to tell. They're just trying to build a narrative. That is typically how I do look at a trial. And I think how a lot of people look at a trial. But in this trial, I was uncomfortable doing that because I did feel that a lot of the witnesses on the prosecution side were saying things and doing things that just didn't make sense, even as a layman, as somebody who didn't know what the hell was happening. And when you slap the title of expert on somebody, it does sometimes give you a feeling that like, well, what do I know? I'm just a stupid, stupid person

walking around. This is the expert. I know what he's doing right now doesn't make sense to me, and it doesn't seem right, but he is the expert. And I think we do have to get away from that and start thinking a little bit more critically, because as I get into it, and I tell you more about Dwayne Deaver, which we're not going to really dive into his mess until next episode, we're going to touch on it today. But as we dive more into that, you'll see that like he was doing some things, some experiments and stuff that I remember everyone was like, well, this is weird. It doesn't really make a lot of sense, but he's the expert. So like, who are we to question him? We need to start using some more critical

thinking here. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of expert witnesses out there. There's a lot of criticism that come with expert witnesses because it's very subjective, right? There's not the standard that you have to pass in order to be an expert witness. It's just they qualify you based on your experience. And if the defense team or prosecution feels you're qualified, that's what it is. And they have to put out your qualifications in court. But again, it's not going to stop you from testifying

I will say prosecution or defense whatever side you're on these expert witnesses get paid a lot and They charge a lot for their their research and their experiments whatever they're doing outside of court so that they're they're caught up on the case to testify under oath and Generally how it works is you'll have prosecution or defense, whatever side you want to come from. They'll interview five or six expert witnesses. They'll get their overall assessment of the case just based on the preliminary information they know. And they will go with the person who fits their narrative the most. Now, in some situations, you may say that the expert witnesses know what the prosecution

or defense is looking for. So they'll tailor their opinions to that. Who am I to say that's not the case, especially when you have all this money riding on it, but essentially they're not wrong either way, because that's what you're saying. You have two people who are considered both experts and yet they have completely differing opinions and so what it really comes down to in trial in my opinion is not only who's the expert as far as their experience but how they're able to convey that opinion because the person who's more convincing to a jury is probably going to be the one they believe and that person may not have as much experience as the other person but if they're if they're someone who is a showman, it's it's almost more important than the actual foundation of their expertise.

I completely agree with you. And you do see some of that in in this case and in this trial. I mean, we've seen it before. Like look at Casey Anthony and things like that. They had a lot of expert witnesses that were showman and sometimes the attorneys themselves can be showmen. And, you know, we talked about Dr. Henry Lee a little bit last episode, but he does kind of get a couple jabs in here in this trial. And I got a little bit of a laugh out of it. But either way, the first person from the medical examiner's office to see Kathleen's body and to give an opinion on what had happened to her was Dr. Kenneth Snell, who viewed the body at the Cedar Street home around 7.40 a.m. on December 9, 2001. After this, Dr. Snell filled out an initial field report, and in this report, Snell wrote that he determined the probable cause of Kathleen's death was a closed head blunt force injury to the head due to an accidental fall down the stairs.

Now, Snell claimed that to him, it looked as if Kathleen had hit her head on the top step above the corner. She had then hit the floor in the corner of the stairs and landed at the base of the stairs on her back. Now, this initial field report is just what it sounds like. The first impression of a medical professional on the scene before the victim's body was taken away for an autopsy on that same morning dr snell had been speaking to a police officer on the scene and apparently this police officer had some experience with blood spatter analysis and this police officer told dr snell that it appeared kathleen may have hit her head on the stairs more than once and Dr Snell

agreed that from what he could see the blood spatter evidence supported the theory that Kathleen had died from an accidental fall and hit her head on the stairs however Snell could only see two distinct lacerations on Kathleen's scalp and because her hair was matted with blood he decided that an autopsy needed to be done so that the rest of the head could be examined. Later, Dr. Kenneth Snell would change his mind about it being accidental after watching some of the autopsy and reading the autopsy report. And during the trial, Snell said, quote, any of this information may not be correct. It's quite routine. That information in this report gets changed in some fashion. Snell was asked by the then District Attorney Jim Harden if this was his practice, to fill out the report before the autopsy was complete, and Snell responded,

quote, not currently. I feel now that it's better to wait until I have at least the preliminary autopsy findings, end quote. And Dr. Snell basically said he decided to do this, to wait until the preliminary autopsy findings before filling out his report, because it would cause less problems for law enforcement. And Michael Peterson's lawyer, David Rudolph, who also talked to Dr. Kenneth Snell about his initial findings, he asked him, quote, When you say problems, it causes law enforcement. This was an honest opinion you gave at the time, wasn't it? It was what you believed at the time, and the suggestion was made that maybe Dr. Snell had switched his opinion due to pressure from the police and from the DA's office. But I don't find this to be super suspicious. You know, a lot of people, you know, who are like kind of pro-Michael Peterson do kind of make a big deal about this. We're going to talk about the medical examiner who did Kathleenathleen's autopsy dr radish and and we're going to talk about you know there's some evidence that she kind of got some pressure and changed her opinion to me

that's a little bit more impactful dr snell showed up he saw what he saw with his own two eyes which you can't get a a really um accurate determination of what wounds kathleen has uh or or if there's damage underneath the wounds, if there's damage to the skull or to the brain, you can't really get an idea of what kind of impact could have caused those wounds when you're just looking with what you can see with your eyes. So if he made an initial determination based on only what he could see, and it wasn't what the autopsy ended up agreeing with, to me, that's not a big deal. No, I agree with you.

And it happens often. We have situations where we'll respond to a scene. And in some instances, it's an elderly person where it doesn't appear that there were any signs of foul play. Just seems like they pass in their sleep. We always have to call the ME. We can give them the findings over the phone or the observations we're seeing, some of the specifics, the health conditions of the person. Usually they'll want medication bottles in the house. We'll relay that all to them,

and they'll make a determination as to whether or not they're going to come out to the crime scene. In many instances, they don't. But if you have a situation where it's at all questionable about the death in the person, a healthy person, and ME is usually going to come out and they're going to do exactly what you said. They're going to have their preliminary observations about the body. And it's purely just surface level, just basically what they can see. It's not until they get in there during the autopsy when they're going to get to the actual findings and a more definitive conclusion as to what they think happened. So yeah, it's pretty much, I feel that's pretty standard and I'm with you. I don't have an issue with it, but just back to what we had said earlier, this is where there's a practice. It's nothing nefarious and the defense doesn't necessarily have to prove that it is. They just have to bring it up and just kind of put it out there into the stratosphere, into the world so that the jury members can hear it and they'll ponder it and

they'll think about it. Maybe some of them will latch onto it. Maybe they won't, but it doesn't hurt the defense to bring it up and just to throw it out there as a possible idea. And maybe that's something that stays with them throughout the trial. I will say though, this case has been putting me through the wringer. It's been really stressing me out because what I've been doing is I've been going through it from like the prosecution's angle, you know, from like, oh, Michael Peterson's guilty. I go through from their angle. And, you know, depending on how you're looking it up online, you can find everything from each person's perspective, from each side. And so I'll go through it like that. And then I'm like, oh, he's guilty of sin, man. He definitely did side and so I'll go through it like that and then I'm like, oh

He's guilty of sin, man. He definitely did this and then I go through it the other side and I'm like, oh shit They didn't say that I didn't know that and then I'm going back and forth and it's torture. Honestly, it's torture because It's very clear like even the reporting on this case is very biased and slanted depending on who's doing the reporting. And I just don't, I don't know how we can continue to live in a world where we can't get on the same page about the most basic of things, you know? And I feel like on this, like I will say initially I was like, okay, this whole, what is his name? Dwayne Deaver. I was like, it's not as big of a deal as everybody's making it out

to be, right? Because I had read some reports from other Emmys or other like experts in the blood spatter field. And they were like, well, we don't really see what he did wrong. You know, we wouldn't have done anything differently. But then I really looked deeply at the experiments he did. And I was like, this does not make any sense why he's doing these experiments. Am I the stupid one? And then I started looking deeper and I was like, no, I'm not the stupid one. This experiment doesn't make any sense. But you've got other experts, you know, quotations experts who are like, oh, he did everything exactly right. And I'm like, there's no way he did everything exactly right. So it's just like sometimes you will choose a side even if you don't have any specific motive

to do so. You just align with people who are like you. And I think people in the scientific community who were also like Dwayne Deaver or doing his job were like, well, we got to kind of like line up behind this guy because he could be any of us. We could be under the microscope in the future. So we would want our community, you know, the scientific experts to band behind us. And it's very difficult. You have to really like put everything aside and listen to, this sounds stupid, but listen to like your instinct and your heart when you're looking at these things and say, does this feel right or does it feel wrong? And a lot of this felt wrong. So all that that I just said to you will bring us right back to what I still don't know where I stand.

And like, I feel like I'm so far into this by now. I should have a better feeling about it by this point. I don't I don't necessarily think so. I think we've covered some basic stuff. You know, we've talked about I shouldn't say basic, some detailed stuff. But so back to what you were just saying, it's kind of like our society as a whole right now, whether it's true crime or not, depending on what you choose to believe is the side, what you believe personally is the side you're going to go with. You can see it in politics every day. People are very one-sided. They're very biased. And a lot of the country's divided red and blue, right? It doesn't even matter who the person is, what their backgrounds are. If they're a certain political party, you're supporting them. That's just the way it is. And I feel like that's a more macro level, but we have it in true crime as well, where if you're going into it and you believe that the person's guilty or innocent,

it's going to be very hard to sway you if you truly believe that, regardless of the evidence that's put in front of you. So I do think you're right. You got to use some instincts, got to use some common sense. And I feel like all we can do is kind of relay the facts as we've, as we see them and allow you guys to come to your own conclusions. But sometimes it's hard to find those facts through all of the noise, you know, like to find the actual fact,

not the fact that's been presented and, and colored and slanted before you even see it. And that's why you really have to like watch these trials. And some people won't do it because it does get boring. Like maybe 5% of a trial is interesting and the rest is just like, what's your education level like? How long have you worked for the ME's office? And it's like 30 minutes of somebody just talking about nonsense before they even get into the actual flesh of their testimony. So it can get boring and you can tune out, but you really have to listen to the raw

data and compute from there. But I do want to talk about the actual autopsy that was done at the office of the chief medical examiner at Chapel Hill, and that was performed by Dr. Deborah Radish. But before we do that, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Okay, we're back. Let's dive into this autopsy, the results from the autopsy done on Kathleen Peterson. Dr. Radish found that Kathleen had strands of her own hair grasped tightly in both her right and left hand. Additionally, there was dried blood found on the bottom of both Kathleen's feet,

as well as dried blood on her face. And there was a small splinter of wood that was located in the hair at the back of Kathleen's head. And just based on what we know, this splinter of wood could have come from the stairs that Kathleen may or may not have fallen down, or from a possible instrument or weapon of some sort that was used to beat her if she in fact died from being beaten. Kathleen's nail beds were intact, and there was blood crusted beneath them, but there was no tissue found under her nails. So usually, if you would see in an autopsy, some broken or cracked nails might suggest that the victim was attacked and that they had fought back.

But in this case, Kathleen's nails were not broken or cracked, and although she did have blood underneath them, she didn't have any tissue underneath them. So once again, we can look at this piece of evidence from both angles. The lack of tissue under Kathleen's nails could be viewed as her not being attacked because she didn't have these telltale signs of fighting back. This could also mean that she had her own blood under her nails because she accidentally fell down the stairs and she injured herself and she got blood under her nails maybe when she was trying to move away from the base of the stairs, maybe clawing at the ground, trying to get help, or maybe she

even touched her own head and her face wounds trying to determine herself how badly injured she was. The lack of tissue under her nails combined with the blood under her nails and the hair clutched in her hands, it could also signify that she was being attacked or beaten with something. And so she pulled her arms and her hands to basically cover her face and her head to protect herself from an attacker. And if she was doing that and she had her hands kind of curled, her arms kind of curled in front of her face and her hands covering the top of her head. She may have like, you know, closed her fists, and that's how she got her own hair in her hands. Moving on to the wounds on Kathleen's body, starting with her head,

the autopsy revealed at least seven distinct lacerations on the posterior scalp or the back of her head. An internal examination of the head revealed a slight subarachnoid hemorrhage primarily over the left parietal and occipital lobes of the brain. However, there were no subdural hemorrhages present, there were no contusions on the brain, and no skull fractures present. So as a quick review, this means that there was bleeding inside the skull, but how deep did that bleeding go? Under the skull bone, everyone has a protective membrane that surrounds the entire brain, and this is called the dura mater. If injury or hemorrhage is seen on the dura mater and it's the part of the membrane that's facing the skull bone, it's referred to as an epidural hemorrhage.

Now, if it's on the portion that faces the brain, it's called a subdural hemorrhage. Under the dura mater is the brain itself. The arachnoid mater is the visible outer layer of the brain, and the subarachnoid space is located between the arachnoid mater and the pia mater. So all three of these, the dura mater, the arachnoid mater, and the pia mater are considered meninges, like the three membrane layers that cover and protect your brain, your spinal cord. So Kathleen had a slight subarachnoid hemorrhage, which means there was bleeding in the space that surrounds the brain, but there were no brain contusions,

no skull fractures, no subdural hemorrhage. Now, the most common reason you would see a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is what Kathleen had, is when a blood vessel on the surface of the brain bursts and leaks. And this can happen for various reasons, but it's most often caused by head trauma, such as from a serious fall or an automobile accident. Kathleen also had several wounds on her face, including three contusions over the right eyelid that were one quarter inch by one quarter inch, a contusion of the same size on her right ear helix. So the helix is the place where you'd get like a little cuff on your ear if you got your ear pierced. It's kind of like in the cartilage area there was also three linear horizontal abrasions

over her left eyebrow a small linear abrasion on the right side of her nose a horizontal contusion over the bridge of her nose followed by a skip area and then a one inch by one half inch vertical contusion over the dorsum of her nose. She also had a small abrasion over her lip and two small linear horizontal abrasions inferior to her left eye. Now, all trauma to Kathleen's head and face was described as blunt force trauma. None of the injuries are described as sharp force injury. Sharp force injury would result from stabbing or slicing, you know, a knife or something. So even though these wounds on Kathleen's head were described

as lacerations, and sometimes people just associate the word laceration with some sort of cutting instrument, you can get a laceration from blunt force by hitting your head on something hard enough. In fact, I have a scar on my head from blunt force trauma to my head where I had to get stitches, but it literally sliced my head open and then it bled so much. So none of these injuries are sharp force injury. And while there was some lacerations on Kathleen's skull, the injuries to her face and body were only described as contusions or abrasions, not lacerations, meaning just scrapes and bruises on her face and on her body. Now, on Kathleen's back, there was a fairly large 3-inch by 3-inch contusion with a central pressure mark found over her left scalpula or shoulder blade. She also had abrasions on her left elbow,

two linear short abrasions over the base of her index finger, a contusion over her left thumb, and a contusion on her left hand over the first digit, as well as a lateral left wrist contusion. There were also some contusions on her right elbow, hand and wrist, and on the back of her right hand, there were two pine needles found. So it looked as if the contusions and abrasions to Kathleen's body happened just to the back of her arms and hands. And her facial injuries were the only real damage done to the front of her body.

So if you look at the autopsy pictures, you know, the ones that they kind of put in the autopsy and they mark where these wounds are, it shows a very distinct pattern, which is she does have some injuries to her body, there's just these abrasions and things on the back, on her backside and on the back of her arms and hands. So this is showing a pattern. Once again, when you move to her head, all of those lacerations are pretty much to the top back of her head. So the only real damage you see to the front of her body is these abrasions and contusions on her face. Yeah, it's a lot to take in there. I've written it all down. I think what might take away from this point, just up to this little section here, and I know you have more to go, is on the surface, if it were an assault with a blunt force object like a bat or a wrought iron poker or something like that, I would expect that these, the injuries would be more severe on the surface. If you were to tell me these injuries without the backstory

of this case, I would say that this person, like, let's say I didn't even know they died. I would say that this person was in a fight, like a fist fight, or they fell down something like a set of stairs or something just a way because your body the way you would go down you kind of tumble down the stairs and we've all fallen down the stairs i actually had a pretty hard fall down the stairs a couple years ago and i rolled over my my body and most of my the pain the next day was in my neck my head and my shoulders even though my legs hit the stairs too but it's just the way your body kind of naturally whips over on itself. So on the surface, not knowing any of the context, this sounds like, I don't want to undersell it, but it sounds like I would, I would see more. And he would, he,

if he was assaulting her, he wouldn't be able to control the, the, the forces to the front of her face so that they would only be abrasions. It would be all or nothing. That's just my initial thought as I'm just hearing you go through everything. So if you took a tumble down the stairs like that, though, would you expect to see so much damage to the head, but so little damage to the face? Or would you expect to see any damage to the face if you were going down kind of on your back? Like, that's kind of my question. Like, why is all of this damage to the back, which would be consistent with, I think, a fall down the steps. But how did she get these contusions and these abrasions and things on her face at all? Like, where did that happen? So only personal experience. And I'll give you the quick story. I, as you know, I like to build

like electronics and clocks and all these things. I like to solder stuff. So you wear like these special glasses, like magnifying glasses that like really, so you can solder the stuff really close. And I had it on the lowest, like magnification, I should say the highest, it wasn't very magnified. It was just a little bit distorted. So I had the glasses on and I was running downstairs to grab some more butane fuel for my soldering iron. And I was at the top of the stairs. My stairs have a little bit of a turn. It was at this house and I was stepping on the stairs.

And because my vision was a little distorted from the magnification. Yes. I don't know why I didn't take the glasses off. I don't know, but I misjudged the step. And the best way I can describe it is like my foot went to land on it because I thought I was there and I was a little bit forward. So my foot completely missed the step and I went right over. And I can tell you definitively all the weight went on the top of my head. I actually went two times.

I flipped over twice before I got to the bottom. And all the pain that I had, and I'm pretty sure I had a concussion, was at the top of my skull cuz literally I went over the first time Hit the top of my head. Yeah, you guys can laugh at me and on the second pass I hit my back on the back of the stairs and then on the final landing I hit the front of like the front of my head here, but there was nothing on my face So I can't really explain the abrasions I mean she could have obviously felt much differently than I had fallen But I want to go back to something because you said it and I believe it was last episode.

I haven't heard anyone really throw out the theory that she could have fallen down the flight of stairs. Everyone who kind of brought it up, I think you said it was like, oh, maybe she was walking up and fell backwards. I don't see how she would have these many, this amount of injuries from just falling down a few stairs. If this was the flight of stairs that we're talking about here, I don't think there's any way she sustains those injuries without starting at the top of the stairwell and going all the way

down on her head and her back and then ending at the bottom of the stairway. That's the only way. And I'm not a biomechanical engineer, but those injuries look like that was multiple impacts with the stairs if that's what happened. Well, yeah, no matter which expert you talk to, you know, whether it's Michael's experts or the state's experts, they agree that there's multiple impacts. The state's experts don't believe she fell down the stairs at all, right? They believe she was attacked at the base of the stairs and then fell forward on top of the stairs. I think it's probably something to do with maybe the blood. Like, I don't think that there was as much blood or hardly any blood found at the top of the stairs. You wouldn't expect that, though, right? There wouldn't be, right. Yeah, there wouldn't be.

You get injured and then wherever she's resting is where the blood's going to be. But I'm sure you might see like maybe something like if her head made impact with like crown molding or something or like the molding on the ground, you might see like a spot of blood there. But once again, even blood spatter isn't a perfect science. And, you know, they will try to make you feel like it is like, oh, the blood tells a story. They kept saying, you know, the blood tells you what happened. But that's not necessarily true, especially when you're working backwards, the way that these blood spatter experts or Duane Deaver was working backwards from like,

I think this is what happened and this is how I'm going to show it did happen because I already think that this is what happened. So when you're doing that, when you're working backwards, you really can't get an idea and you're not listening to the blood or letting the blood sort of guide you. You're letting the theory guide what the blood's telling you. And honestly, like if you look at these pictures, it was a mess. There was blood

all over the place. And I don't think anybody, anybody's theories explained where all that blood came from. So did she fall all the way down the stairs? It's possible. But yes, you're right. Nobody really kind of played with that theory or kind of brought that one to the forefront. you know even five minutes before him where she she goes upstairs for a second maybe there were no signs that she had been upstairs but maybe she went upstairs and then realized oh shit you know what i want to go downstairs and do this for a second and so she's rushing back down the stairs to go turn off something or whatever and she misses a step and boom it's over like that could have easily have happened so i don't it's interesting that that was never brought up as a possible defense for michael like hey there's a possibility here that she was at the top of the stairs and it would explain multiple tumbles where you have these different impacts and yet you don't have any serious injuries to the face and you would expect that in an attack it's all to the back but you have these light abrasions on the front where again I don't know how that would be the case if he was impacting her even from behind me i guess before her head hits the stairs then you could have those light abrasions it just seems like a lot of there would be some severe blows and then some controlled

blows to the front or to i guess to the from the stairs to cause it i'll just say right on the surface it seems more consistent with a fall down the stairs than attack right now we're very early not saying that's how i'm going to feel at the end of this episode or by the end of the series, but just on the surface where we are right now, I feel like it's more in line with an accidental fall than an assault. That's just where I am at this moment. All right, let's continue on with the autopsy and then tell me if you still feel that way after hearing the rest, right? Of course, absolutely. Probably going to change, but right now, I don't think, I don't know if there's gonna be many people who are looking at that piece of information saying, oh yeah, 100% he killed her.

Yo, people do. Do people absolutely look at that? Of course, I get it. I get it. I get it. But I mean, you know, it'd be great. I know I asked you last episode about the biomechanical engineer, but we'll get into it more.

I know we have a lot more to cover. All right. So what you also saw in Kathleen's autopsy was she had a fracture of the left superior corneal in the thyroid cartilage in her neck. And this causes some people to believe that Kathleen was strangled. So the thyroid cartilage is a piece of pretty pliable bone and it protects the front neck organs like your larynx or your voice box. The superior corneal is the arm that extends off the thyroid cartilage and in Kathleen, this was the area that was fractured and there was also associated bleeding around it. Now, damage to this

area could suggest that Kathleen was strangled or choked because, according to the autopsy podcast, quote, that area of the neck is somewhat protected structure, not usually prone to blunt impact forces. It's one of those occasions where the pathologist cannot necessarily prove one way or another, so they simply document it and leave it at that, end quote. Now, of course, there's always a chance this area could be damaged from a fall down the stairs. But as far as I can tell, honestly, it is in instances of choking or strangling that are the most likely things to cause fractures in the thyroid cartilage. That's what I, as far as I could tell when I was looking up these injuries, that was usually what was associated with them. But anything's possible. We can't, once again, rule out that she may have fallen in a certain

way when she's taking a tumble down the stairs where that part of her neck would be damaged or fractured. Yeah, it could be a freak accident. It might be the definition of a freak accident. It doesn't line up logically, but it's exactly what it is. But I do concede that point too, where I know, I don't know if it's the same bone. I'm not an expert in this area, but I know with the hyoid bone, when you see that as far as being fractured, that usually is a sign of compression on the neck and during a strangulation. The hyoid bone was fine though. There's no mention of it in the autopsy. So this is a different bone? Yes. It's underneath that bone. So the hyoid bone

is a little bit higher, I believe. The superior cornu is, I believe, kind of like in this general area. No one can see me if you're watching, if you're listening in audio. But the hyoid bone was not mentioned in the autopsy, which leads me to believe that there was nothing to say about it, right? Nothing to say about it. And I will say that I would expect that if the bone underneath the hyoid bone is fractured, you would see some signs of strangulation around her neck afterwards. You would see some signs of, whether it's a ligature or handprints, you would see something to suggest that she was strangled. Or maybe, I don't know if you're going to get there, we're not all the way through, petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes, that would suggest strangulation.

So the lack of these things, to me, would go more towards the side of freak accident. But, you know, nevertheless, it could be either or, depending on how you want to interpret it. No petechial hemorrhaging in her eyes. Doesn't definitively rule it out, but those are also things you would see with strangulation, and we don't have those. Exactly. So, and I mean, you know, you could also say that maybe it was fractured, not from like a strangulation to the point of loss of oxygen, but some sort of like struggles, some sort of, you know, interaction, some fight that somebody's hands were around her neck, but not tightly enough to cause the oxygen to not reach, to

stop the oxygen to cause the petechial hemorrhaging. You could say that is all I'm saying. Yeah, it just started with it. Yeah. Yeah. It's possible. Yeah, it's possible. But with that amount, if it's fracturing bones, you would think there would be some form of

asphyxiation there that would cause that, but- No, right? That's what I'm saying. Like if it's a fracture, then it sounds like it could be like you fell down the stairs. And this staircase, it's like an old staircase. You know, if that house was like an old timey mansion

when people still had servants, that would be the servant's staircase. It's narrow. It's like twisty. You can see a twist at the bottom. And there's a lot of sharp edges going on there with the wall and the stairs themselves. So if she hit her neck just right on a stair or on like the corner of a wall, I would assume you could, you know, cause a fracture of that cartilage. Yeah, I would think so too. That is that fracture.

Could it be suggestive that even her head was just bent a certain way? It might not have been a direct impact, but just by her neck contorting a certain way, it would fracture that bone as opposed to the hyoid bone. Yeah. And we're going to talk about different theories of what happened with that. Well, basically, there's only two theories. There's the people, the prosecution, which is like, oh, this is a sign she was strangled. And I believe the defense, I'll get into a little bit more detail, but I believe they said that they thought this could be a post-mortem

injury, that this could have happened post-mortem during the autopsy. The fracture. Correct. Oh, interesting. While they're examining the body. Yeah, that would make sense too. I guess that could be, that does happen. Sometimes you have injuries because I will tell you, we're not going to go into, we could do it another day on a live or something, but autopsies are the absolute worst to be present for. I, as a detective, I hated them. They were the, the, the smells, the sites, the sounds. It's one of the few times in my career where I've had to run to the bathroom and vomit

because it's terrible what happens during those autopsies. And when you're as a detective, you, you're supposed to be present for it. Sometimes the pathologist will let you watch from behind the glass, but I, you know, new young detective, I'm going to be right in there. I can handle this. I was not ready. I was not prepared for the sounds and smells that come with the, and it's very, it's very aggressive. It's very violent what they have to do to get inside the body. And you can look it up. It's, it's so very easy to damage other parts of the body while conducting that autopsy. Yeah, I agree. And I'm once again, not saying that that's certainly what happened here. I'm just saying people are only human. They make mistakes. And like you said, I agree. I've seen, you know, I haven't seen an autopsy performed, but I have seen.

You're lucky. and things. And it's very, that's probably what you mean about the sounds and probably the drills and things that sound, the drill going into bone. Like I just remember the first time I heard that it was like goosebumps immediately. It was definitely not prepared for it. So yeah, I could see with sometimes the amount of force that has to be applied by the pathologist to do what they have to do, you could accidentally fracture the bones in the surrounding area. I would love to know how strong that bone, we're not doctors, right? So we're just speculating, but I would love to know how easy it is to fracture that bone. And has that happened in previous autopsies before where you have situations where this particular bone is

fractured during autopsies, or is this the first time it has ever happened if it did happen that way? You know what I mean? Like, is it a common thing for in that field? It does seem like it happens during autopsies sometimes. Okay. Well, so that gives some more, gives some more credence to it. Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's like a cartilage, you know? So it's, yes, it's a, it's a bone, I guess, but it's, you know, cartilage, it's more pliable and, and things like that. It's less rigid. So I guess it depends, I guess, but it's, you know, cartilage. It's more pliable and things like that. It's less rigid. So I guess it depends. But yes, I did read because I had to look into that because once again, I don't know.

I did read that that it does happen sometimes during autopsies. Okay. Well, that again gives a little bit more possibility to it where it's not like, oh, if this did happen, it would be the first time in the history of autopsies that it makes a lot less believable if that were the case. Because I think it was the defense, one of the defense experts who said something like that. And you always have to keep that in mind, you know, like consider the source, right? That's why I looked it up because I'm like, well, you could just be saying that. But also, you would expect in that landscape to like the prosecution or one of the prosecution's experts would be like false. No, that's not true. That doesn't happen. That's incredibly rare. And it only happens in these circumstances. So nobody challenged that during the trial. And I looked it up myself and did see that it sometimes happens during autopsies. So, I mean, it's not out of the realm of possibility, but once again, is that absolutely what happened? We don't know. We just have these theories that are posited and we have to figure out which one's the more likely one.

Again, go back to our theme, right? This is a possibility, but it doesn't mean it necessarily happened. However, that doesn't matter. Just merely throwing it out there like, hey, this could be signs of strangulation or it could be just due to an autopsy being conducted aggressively. Whatever the jury member decides to believe, that's up to them. But by throwing out that alternate theory, it makes them think. Yeah. But you know, you always say like, it's not about what you know, it's about what you can prove. It just feels like nobody can prove any of this stuff. You know, like even somebody in the comments was like, wait, did she fall down the stairs or up the stairs you said both and I'm like how do I know we weren't there you know Michael Peterson told the 911 operator she fell

down the stairs his defense experts gave the theory that maybe she was going up the stairs and that's how she kind of fell in and hit herself and then fell backwards and hit her head. But when no one was there to see it, even Michael Peterson himself says he was outside. So like we don't even know if she fell down the stairs. You know, it's just like it's not about even what you know or what you can prove, because how could you prove any of it? I'll tell you what, whether she fell down the stairs while facing backwards or down the stairs while walking down them, either way, I don't think there's a world where, based on the photos that I've seen, the amount of blood that you have, the amount of contusions that you have, that she fell down three or four stairs. Regardless of whether she was walking up the stairs or down the stairs, if this was an accident, she was near the top landing when she fell. I think it would be physically impossible for her

to have that many injuries from only falling down a stair or two. I mean, again, not an expert, got to qualify it, but I don't see how that would be possible. She'd basically be rolling around on the ground on basically one or two stairs to cause all those injuries. So I agree, right? But I also don't see how her getting hit repeatedly over the head with like a blow poke would have caused those injuries, you know, especially not the ones that were like they weren't that they weren't deep enough. If you're like hitting someone over the head with something over and over again, you'd expect to see something deeper. You'd expect to see some underlying damage, which we've already gone over and there isn't any there.

So I don't see how either, like to me, the accidental fall and hitting her on the head with the blow poke, neither of those things explains what those wounds were. Now, is there a world where maybe the person did beat her to death, but they didn't use a blow poke? Like this blow poke thing we're going to talk about in a minute is so stupid. I can't believe they even came up with this. If she was attacked and her death wasn't an accident, I think it's far more likely that somebody was hitting her head into the stairs, right?

Yep, absolutely. If we're playing devil's advocate, if I'm going to see a world where she was assaulted and the injuries from that assault is what killed her, he's standing over her. They get in a fight in the kitchen. It kind of stumbles onto the stairs. She maybe loses her balance while falling on the stairs. She has some initial injuries where she's bleeding while being assaulted. And that's how her feet get bloody because she's stepping in her own blood. She goes down, he's bouncing her head off the stairs from the front. So you're getting some slight abrasions on the front because he's using the pressure to, you know, to hit her head off the stairs, the back of her head off the stairs. She's laying on the stairs. So she's getting the contusions on her back from that. And yeah, at that point, if he could be strangling her,

he could be hitting her. He could be slapping he could be slapping her punching her which is causing the slight abrasions to the face while getting more significant injuries on the back that is at this point equally plausible so yeah we're just we're going through it all this is why Netflix is covering this case because it's not a slam dunk either way you slice it so the depending on what you believe, I think more so about Michael Peterson and the facts themselves is the way you're going to go. And remember, they said there was that, you know, above her shoulder, there was kind of like a pressure point, like maybe somebody put their foot on her and kind of like braced her body while they

hit her head into the stairs. Like that's what I see. And then as we know, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about that, but there was a footprint found on the back of her leg. Like somebody stepped on the back of her leg with blood on the bottom of their shoes. So it doesn't seem like this is, I'm hitting her with a blow poke.

It seems more like very fist to cuff sort of. Like this is just, know, I'm hitting her with a blow poke. It seems more like very, you know, fist to cuff sort of like this is just she's getting beat. But once again, did Michael Peterson have, you know, bloody knuckles? Did he have wounds on his hands? No, he didn't. So if she was getting beat with his hands, like you said, maybe he was punching her. You'd expect to see something like that. So I do really think if we live in a world where we're believing that Michael Peterson killed her on those stairs, it's because he was grabbing her head by her hair and slamming her head into the stairs and using the stairs as his weapon. Yeah. I do think you'd probably see a lot more hair around the area. You would see some injuries, even if it was some defensive

wounds, some scratches to his arms, his face, things like that, his chest, something where before rendering her unconscious, you would see signs of a struggle. Yeah. But we are going to get inside the brain because they did do a neuropathology report as well. Before we dive into that, let's have another break. So we're back. And because it was clear that Kathleen Peterson had had a trauma, the medical examiner wanted to look deeper into the brain. So in a situation like this, the brain and the dura would be removed from the skull and placed in a chemical that basically freezes it, halting decomposition and causing the brain tissue to become fixed. And this usually takes some time, like they got to put it in the substance until the brain tissue does become fixed.

And so by early February of 2012, this had happened, and neuropathologist Thomas Bolden was able to give his opinion, which was, quote, The cause of death in this case was due to severe concussive injury of the brain caused by multiple blunt force impacts of the head. Blood loss from the deep scalp lacerations may have also played a role in her death. The number, severity, locations, and orientation of these injuries are inconsistent with a fall downstairs. Instead, they are indicative of multiple impacts received as a result of beating, end quote. And this decision mainly came from the presence of something called red neurons. Sections of Kathleen's cerebellum and cerebrum showed the presence of these rare red neurons.

And this was basically consistent with Kathleen having a significant episode of widespread brain ischemia at least a few hours prior to her death. So brain ischemia is the result of restricted blood flow. And with no oxygen-rich blood being delivered to parts of the brain over extended periods of time, you basically see death and necrosis in those areas of the brain that were blood deprived. Now, the red neurons are what suggests to the neuropathologist that there was decreased blood flow to these areas of the brain. The red neurons are basically born when brain cells die. So Dr. Thomas Bolden would later testify that the presence of these red neurons was proof that Kathleen had experienced

decreased blood flow to her brain for approximately two hours before her death. And this would have been proof that she'd been dead for two hours before Michael Peterson made the 911 call. It would be proof that he could not have seen her an hour before he claims he found her on the floor in a puddle of her own blood. The presence of red neurons, the widespread nature of the early acute ischemic necrosis, that suggests that Kathleen died slowly. And unless she was passed out or unconscious, her death was most likely very painful. Well, that's interesting because we're not going to dispute the doctor, the brain, you

know, the person who's an expert in brains. And these words are way smarter than I am as far as what it means and neurons and all that. So you just got to kind of go with them. He's saying, in layman's terms, there's no way this was due to a flight of stairs, right? Falling down a flight of stairs. He's saying that she was assaulted, right? That's the takeaway.

Yeah, basically. Yeah. And the only thing I was a little confused on is then at the end there, it says, oh, she could have died slowly over a period of two hours. Well, to me, again, the not smart guy, that would be suggestive of a fall down the stairs and maybe not being attended to immediately where we don't have to go back to the duration because we talked about that with michael and whether it's right or wrong and the discrepancies within that but let's say she falls down the flight of stairs and she's there for a while and her injuries weren't immediately life-threatening like she was

obviously bleeding out but there's a lot of injuries out there where if you're not attended to for an extended period of time you will bleed out and you could die. So that last part, although I guess it's supposed to support the theory that she was assaulted, to me would be more suggestive that and just died due to her injuries over a period of time where I can't see Michael allowing that to happen. What if she doesn't die? If that's what he's trying to make occur. Right. Dude, I'm on the same page.

It's like, this is what I'm saying. They say things and they're like, this is proof of this, which means it's proof of this. And I'm like, are we just dumb? Or do we just misunderstanding it? Are we dumb? Can we just proved that we're dumb or or they're trying to make us feel dumb because as far as i'm concerned like yeah we already talked kind of about like you know michael's outside by the pool allegedly he they've been drinking he's like smoking his pipe he could have dozed off and just thought

that he was out there for an hour and he was out there for like two hours and then he goes inside and and he's all disoriented he doesn't know exactly what time it is and and i think that the presence of these red neurons which would mean she died a slow painful death are more supportive of a fall down the stairs where nobody's there to help her. Because listen, yes, do husbands kill their wives? Yes. Do they kill them for several different motives like money, jealousy, whatever? Yes. But do I think it's plausible that any person who had ever loved somebody and had lived with them for that long could literally let somebody lay there like breathing like like still breathing but dying a slow painful death while

they walk around and like set the stage and put wine glasses out you know like he would have to know she was still alive because she would have been gurgling and bleeding and still breathing and things so am i are we supposed to believe that he like hit her, didn't know she was still alive and he's just walking around while she's slowly dying there? I think that is what they're trying to suggest. I'm not saying that I agree, but that does sound like he injured her.

They're trying to say he injured her. The injury sustained couldn't have been caused by a fall to the stairs. So he injures her. He believes maybe she's already dead, but she's not. And she's laying there and she's maybe unconscious or whatever, but she's still alive, barely. And while he's setting the stage, which explains why it took so long for him to call police because he was there right away, while he's setting the stage and cleaning up after himself, not knowing she's still alive slightly, that's why you have these results. I think that's what they're trying to say. So I get it.

It just, to me on the surface, when you read it, it sounded more in line with the other theory as far as her being injured and not being attended to. Yeah, but dude, check it out because their theory is also, because they got to explain

why is there dried blood and then fresher blood over the dried blood? Okay, now their theory with that is like the initial injuries caused the the first blood that dried and then possibly when he figured out she wasn't dead he started beating on her again which is where the fresh blood came from like mingya i mean like yeah anybody who kills their wife for money or whatever is a bad person, but that's a monster. Like that's an actual monster who would do that. And honestly, like, I just don't see why somebody would do that to somebody they knew. Maybe like if you're a psychopath or

like a Ted Bundy serial killer and it's a stranger, maybe. But like somebody you knew, loved, lived with, I just have a hard time understanding how that could happen and and that's also another thing they sort of like have all these random theories about what happened and why he did it because they have two different motives that they kind of go with and then they have all these random theories of how it happened and then they just sort of like make the evidence fit those random theories like oh she died a slow painful death but why was there you know blood that was dried and then fresh blood over that well now we have to explain that because this is probably what happened you know and it just kind of doesn't make a lot of sense with with who we know Michael to be

like maybe not the most honest guy maybe not the most honest guy, maybe not the most straightforward guy, but is he a violent monster who would beat his wife to death like twice? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it would be foolish of me to be like, oh, no, that's not possible because we've seen we were just covering on Crime Weekly News. We're just covering the Idaho murders. And you think about that. We've talked a little bit about motive and saying, you know, there's no way, regardless of whether we knew the motive or not, it would, it would satisfy whatever we need because it wouldn't ration. It wouldn't be rational to most normal people. I guess I'll say

this. Ultimately there's three different scenarios here. We're looking at it's one where it was this premeditated murder, maybe based on financial motive, right? Money, insurance, all that stuff. Or it was a, an argument that ensued after she found out things about him that she was unaware of. And that argument escalated to an assault, which escalated to this death, or it was an accident. I think two of those three scenarios, which is the fight that gets more violent and leads to a death and the accident are more plausible than the premeditation. It doesn't seem like there were any signs of dissension or some type of

misunderstanding between the family. They were drinking wine, hanging out. That doesn't seem like there was any evidence that put forward a plot to kill her prior to that on his laptop, any other place. So I think we're looking at the two other scenarios being more plausible. And if that's the case, like you just said, if he assaulted her and it escalates to a point where he's going to kill her, he's going to make sure she's dead. I would also say just to combat the idea that she, the first blood, the dried blood is from the initial assault and the fresh blood is from him going back and realizing she's not dead and having to continue doing what he was doing.

I would also make the argument that that could be a situation where she falls down the stairs. There's all this blood from the initial injury. It starts to dry up. He comes in. Now he's in the crime scene with her and he's moving her around. He's got her blood on him. He's touching walls. He's moving her body a little bit. And now blood from her body is getting on him. And now he's touching things. And now there's fresh blood over the blood that's been drying for almost two hours. So that could also explain it and still be an accident. And so again, I'm torn. You can go either way with it, depending on, I guess it goes back to what you were just saying. Again, it goes back to Michael.

And when you look at him, what do you think he's capable of? Okay. I agree. Like it's tough to say that this was premeditated murder. But understand the prosecution charged him with first degree murder, no lesser charges, meaning they believed it was premeditated. And when Dwayne Deaver, their blood spatter expert, when he talked about the blood spatter, he talked about it in a way as if it was a foregone conclusion that this was premeditated but then you have to look at their motives right they got two motives that they sort of go back and forth with during the whole trial depending on what's convenient for them depending on what they're talking about either a it was the money he was killing her for the money which would suggest premeditation or b b it's the pictures that she sees on his computer and then they have a fight and then she dies because he attacks her, which is not premeditated, which I think we can both agree that her finding those pictures and then like saying, oh, what is this? And then him being like, ah, and like attacking her, not premeditated.

Yet they brought that up and use that as a theory for his motive and still charged him with first degree murder. So it just doesn't seem like they even knew they were literally just throwing things at the wall. And usually you see that with the defense team, not the prosecution. You really want the state to kind of have a handle on what the hell they think happened before they go into this trial and start throwing things around like like a wild person. Yeah, this one's this one's a head scratcher.. Yeah. This one's a head scratcher. I'll say that. It's a head scratcher. I've never, honestly, I've never seen such a like ass backwards prosecution team than this one. Oh, I have. I hope you have.

Go watch the OJ Simpson trial. Well, I mean. Let's have him try on a glove when he has been off his arthritic medication for two weeks that's a smart one well but but i mean like that that is another like obviously we think oj did it right and so the prosecution did too right so but you sometimes believe something so heartily that you think you're you're invincible you believe it so heartily that you think you're invincible. You believe it so heartily that you're like, there's no way this glove ain't going to fit. So what's the harm in doing this? Because we think we're invincible. We're just going to fly through like Superman here and

nothing can touch us. We're bulletproof. And then you shoot yourself in the foot because you're not bulletproof. So Michael's defense team used forensic neuropathologist Dr. Jan Leestma to contradict the opinion of the medical examiner and the neuropathologist who had performed Kathleen's autopsy. I do want to say that I read the neuropathologist who did Kathleen's autopsy was not board certified, whereas Dr. Jan Leestma was. I read that. I don't know if it's true but I'm just going to put it out there Dr leastma had worked as the chief of neurology at Northwestern University's Medical Center he was an associate medical examiner and neuropathology consultant and he had examined over 5 000 brains and had reportedly consulted on hundreds of cases of beating deaths and he disagreed with

the results of the autopsy and with the prosecution's claim that Kathleen had been beaten to death with a fireplace blow poke now remember at this time the prosecution did not have the actual murder weapon but they did bring in a similar blow poke so that the jury could see it and feel it and And they kept like waving it around and they were always walking around the courtroom with it. And, you know, it really looks like the whole idea of the blow poke being the murder weapon originated with Kathleen's sister, Candace Zamperini. And Candace testified that she'd given Kathleen this fireplace blow poke for Christmas of 1984. So when Kathleen was still married to

her ex-husband, Fred Atwater, her sister gifted her this blow poke. And she said, I gave it to her in 1984, like she always had it. And she showed the police pictures from 1987, 1996, 1999, where the same blow poke was seen in Kathleen's house when she was with Fred and then when she was with Michael. But when the police searched the Peterson home after Kathleen's death, allegedly, they couldn't find it anywhere. However, when David Rudolph showed Candace pictures of the Peterson fireplace in 2000, there was no blow poke in the pictures. And Candace was like, yeah, well, I mean, like, I don't know if it was there in 2000. I hadn't been to my sister's house since 1999. The prosecution was actually able to get their hands on this replica blow poke,

which was exactly the same as the one that Candace had given Kathleen, because apparently Candace, Candace Zamperini had a thing for blowpokes and she gifted them to like everyone. So they were able to get another one of these blowpokes and use it to show the jury what kind of weapon could have been used to cause Kathleen's death. And the reason the prosecution seems to have placed all their eggs into the blowpoke basket is because of the fact that Kathleen had these lacerations on her head. But those lacerations weren't deep enough to cause skull fractures or brain damage and the the blow poke is it's long and it's thin so they believed that they could have caused those lacerations but it's hollow right because apparently a blow poke can be used believe believe it or not, to blow or poke. You know what I mean? For a fireplace, you can blow through it because it's hollow, so you can stoke the fire that

way, or you can poke at the logs. Also, it does both, which is kind of crazy because I had never heard of a blow poke before in my life. But apparently it's like this long, thin, hollow tube that also is like a pokey thing on the end and that's what they thought had made these lacerations because they're figuring like okay it's like strong enough to to break skin but not strong enough to break you know bone i want everyone to take a drink if you're over the age of 21 every time stephanie says poke tonight or blow. Hey, now, see, I wasn't gonna go there.

See how I stuck just up. OK, never mind. Head in the gutter. Well, I'm going to say blow and poke a lot more. So grab your drink. That's what I'm saying. I know it's coming. I can see it in the script.

So Dr. Jan Leestma, he was basically on a roll and he pointed out this blow poke could not have been the a V or Y-shaped pattern where the round skull curves away from the straight blow poke's impact point. Kathleen's wounds, Dr. Leistma testified, radiated in several directions from likely impact points, more like the way ice cracks when something is dropped on it. He said that Kathleen's wounds were more likely to have come from hitting her head against a flat, immovable object, like stairs. Dr. Listema said, quote, These are not linear-type lacerations in the scalp. These are complex and, if anything, look more like splitting injuries, end quote.

Which I agree with, by the way, because, like I said, I hit my head on a kitchen counter and the same thing happened. It looked like I'd cut myself with a knife. When I finally looked at it in the bathroom mirror and I got all the blood off, it looked as if somebody had taken a knife and like split my skin, but everything underneath was fine. It was just bleeding a lot and I had to get stitches. And then I looked really rough for like a couple of weeks. In fact, I got sent home from work. They were like, you can't serve tables looking like this. You look like Frankenstein. That's what they said to me. But I agree. When you look at the wounds on Kathleen's head, and some of these are tri-pronged. So it almost looks like Dr. Listema explained, like when you drop something, like if

you dropped a bowling ball on some thick ice, it would kind of have these like fractures or like, you know, kind of arms that come off the impact point. And I do think that the wounds on her head from what I could see as far as the drawings did look like that. Dr. Listema also said that in his experience, the vast majority of deadly beatings to the head resulted in skull fractures and damage to the brain underneath, and neither of these were present in Kathleen. Dr. Listema also disagreed with the medical examiner, Dr. Deborah Radish, who had already testified that there were defensive wounds on Kathleen's hands and arms. Dr. Listma said that Kathleen had no broken bones in her hands or wrists, which you would expect to see if she was defending herself against a swinging metal rod. According to Dr. Listma, Kathleen had fallen and hit her head, causing wounds that bled heavily, and when she tried to stand up, she slipped on her own blood,

falling again and hitting her head again, causing a total of four or five impact sites. When Dr. Jan Listma was cross-examined by District Attorney Jim Harden, he was confronted with his own words from a 1987 textbook that he had written. And in this book, Dr. Listma had claimed that a contra-coup injury is one of the telltale signs of a fall that affects the back of the head. And basically, and I didn't have to look this up because I remembered it from a different

case, the Lindsay Parton case, it basically means that you would see bruising on the brain that's caused when the brain moves back and forth inside of the skull. So if you were, you know, shooken or, you know, you fell and hit your head very hard, your brain would sort of like go and fly forwards towards the front of your skull and you'd see bruising on corresponding areas of the brain. And there was no coup or contra coup injury on Kathleen's brain. So basically the district attorney, Jim Harden, was like, how can you say so confidently that she had fallen down the stairs when she doesn't have coup or counter-coup injuries on her brain? And Dr. Jan Listma, when asked about the red neurons that the neuropathologist had seen, he even claimed that they indicated that Kathleen had suffered severe blood loss at least 30 to 45

minutes before she died. But he did say that it didn't take two hours for those red neurons to pop up. They could come and be seen in the brain within 30 to 45 minutes, which once again would support Michael Peterson's claims that he'd been outside and he came in when Kathleen had already fallen and there was already quite a lot of blood. And it was Dr. Leestma who claimed that the injury to Kathleen's thyroid cartilage would be consistent with a post-mortem injury, similar to artifactual bleeding when the spine is removed during autopsy. Dr. Listma also talked to the jury about 257 autopsy reports

from people who had died in North Carolina from blunt force trauma to the head as a result of a beating. Of the 257, Dr. Listma informed the jury that 215 autopsies showed skull, facial, or other associated fractures, and of the remaining cases, only eight of them did not have traumatic brain injury. So basically, out of the 257 autopsy reports where people had died after being beaten, only eight of them did not have traumatic brain injury or skull, facial, or other associated fractures. So if Kathleen was in the same boat and she had been beaten to death, she'd be in the drastic minority of cases where she

wouldn't be exhibiting any of these things. Pretty compelling, right? Yeah. Pretty compelling. And that's deferring to the experts. If you're to believe them in this case and you're believing they're coming from a place of truthfulness where they're not just trying to skate it one way or the other, that's obviously always a lens you have to look through and consider. But that statistic that they're putting out, I'm sure was confirmed and vetted and more

than likely accurate. So that all being the case, it doesn't mean it's not 100%, right? There are cases where you do have situations where people are assaulted and you don't have those signs. So she could fall into that category. But more likely than not, it wouldn't be the case. And then you have these weird circumstances surrounding this particular case where we don't even know if it was an assault. In some of those cases, I'm sure they definitively knew based on whatever evidence they had, this person was assaulted and yet they didn't have these signs. All of those cases, they definitively knew that it was a beating death. Yeah. They knew it was a beating and you still didn't have it.

And this one, we're not even saying that. We don't know. We truly don't know. So to have that here is interesting. But then again, you go back to what you were saying earlier about the neurons and things like that. And it's a seesaw. You go back and forth throughout this whole story where there's moments where I'm like,

not looking good for michael and then like 15 minutes later you know we get into the 911 call whatever and i'm like we disagreed there but i'm back and forth on it and i and i feel like what's interesting to me knowing what happens as the near the end as far as the alfred plea and stuff i don't know why he felt like he needed to take that in this case. Maybe he just was really scared of potentially what could happen. But man, this is so far to me a weak case. did. And, you know, we will find that they did come to this conclusion based heavily off of Duane Deaver's testimony, which turned out to be bullshit. So, you know, to put it kindly. And once again, I will say, like, when you're looking at these statistics, only eight of them to not have these things like Kathleen. And when you look at the red neurons, it's not as if red neurons only occur when somebody's beaten to death.

They can occur anytime. There's head trauma or trauma that prevents blood from getting to certain areas of the brain. Car accidents, falls, things like that. You will see those red neurons. They are not a sign that somebody has definitively been beaten. It just happens when the blood can't reach the brain tissue and the brain tissue dies. And then those red neurons are born out of that brain tissue dying. But here, if you look at Dr. Jan Listma's statistics, yeah, that is very compelling. So let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

Okay, we're back. And now we're going to talk about the blood spatter analysis that was performed by Special Agent Dwayne Deaver, who arrived at the Peterson home approximately 14 hours after Kathleen's death was reported. Now, Deaver claimed, based on what he saw at the scene and from what he saw of articles of clothing worn by Michael Peterson that he didn't think Kathleen could have possibly died from a fall down the stairs. He believed she'd been attacked and her husband had been the one to do the attacking. The articles of clothing that Dwayne Deaver examined were a pair of Brooks Sport brand shorts that Michael had been wearing the night his wife died. Now, the front of those shorts were heavily blood stained to the point where blood had soaked through to the inside fabric of the pockets. And there was a V pattern on the front of the shorts, like kind of in the crotch area. And Dwayne said that it looked like this blood had been, you know, basically tried to be washed

up on the shorts, like Michael had gotten the blood all over his shorts and then he took water and like kind of scrubbed it in that V area to like clean the shorts. Dwayne Deaver said he would have expected to have seen some smears and contact blood stains on Michael's shorts from when he'd been embracing Kathleen, but Deaver said he also noted blood spatters,

including blood spatter on the inside of the right leg of Michael's shorts. To Duane Deaver, the blood spatter inside the right leg of the shorts was something that he had seen in relation to many crime scenes, but not crime scenes depicting accidental deaths. The blood being on the inside of the shorts told Duane Deaver that Michael Peterson had been standing over Kathleen, hitting her, causing the blood to spatter upwards towards him. The evidence team had also collected four white athletic socks, which had been found at the bottom of the staircase, along with a pair of white men's Converse athletic shoes, size 8 1⁄2. These were Michael's shoes. The soles of both shoes were bloodstained, and both shoes had blood spatters, drips, smears, and contact stains. On the right shoe,

Dwayne Deaver noted 90-degree drops of blood on the toe, indicating that Michael had been wearing the shoes at the time of Kathleen's death. His foot would have been directly underneath the dripping blood. Deaver believed that Michael had been wearing the shoes because he saw small droplets of blood on the outside edge of the shoe, and he said that these blood drops had noticeable directionality, meaning the foot had been in motion when the blood had fallen on it. The white size medium L.L. Bean sweatpants Kathleen Peterson had been wearing also showed heavy bloodstains, specifically on the front waist area, and Deaver once again noticed

that there were diluted bloodstains visible along the crotch of the pants and down each side of the leg. Now, what stood out the most about the pants Kathleen had been wearing when she died was the transfer stain in blood found on the back of her right leg, a shoe track in blood that matched Michael Peterson's size eight and a half Converse sneakers. And I will admit, like, if that's true, which can we can we believe anything Dwayne Deaver says as being true? I don't even know anymore. But if that's true, it is suspicious because why is Michael stepping on the back of Kathleen's leg after he stepped in her blood? You know, like, why is that happening? Yeah. And for me, my understanding going through this and maybe I just missed it was that he was barefoot during this whole occurrence. He had been out by the pool bare feet and then came in. But're nodding your head no so maybe i'm just wrong no he will i don't think he i don't think he was barefoot by the pool he was barefoot when first responders got there but then his okay shoes and socks were flound in in the

blood so it looks like he took them off yeah okay the print on her is definitely questionable and something that's suspicious the fact that the shoes were found so close and the socks were found so close to where whatever happened occurred, it does weaken its strength a little bit to me. Now, if those Converse shoes or socks and or socks, doesn't even matter if it was both, were found somewhere else in the house, nowhere near where they could have gotten blood spatter on them during whatever occurred, then it would be a lot stronger to me. But I'm not discrediting them at all. It's definitely valuable evidence that we have to interpret and kind of try to understand what

the blood spatter on them means. And again, we have another expert here, and you don't really like this guy from what I can tell. I don't know where we're going with it, but. Oh man. Cause if Michael Peterson is guilty, Dwayne Deaver screwed everything up by literally pulling stuff out of his ass is what happened here. So like, yeah, I don't like him. I can tell. So I think what he was trying to say was like, okay, Michael comes in with his shoes on, you know, he's got his shoes on. He beats Kathleen to death while he's wearing the shoes, causing her blood to drip onto his shoes. He steps on her while he leave them in this pile of blood and then creep around the house barefoot and set up this scene to make it look like we were drinking and having a great night and I was out by the pool. That's what Dwayne Deaver is basically saying happened here.

Yeah. I mean, it's possible. I know I keep saying that, but yeah, who am I to say, oh, he's completely wrong. There's no way, shape or form that could have happened. It just seems awful sloppy, right? Because if that's the case, then you would assume there was some premeditation and it seems like it wasn't well thought out. But I guess you could make the argument that if this was a crime that escalated over time and it wasn't expected after the fact when Michael realized what he had done, that's when he's trying to go back and clean up his mess in hindsight so that he doesn't have law enforcement looking at him, which clearly didn't work. But I would think that whether it was accidental or intentional, I don't know why you're taking your shoes and socks off.

I don't think that's something I would have been thinking about. That's more questionable to me than some of the evidence we've discussed, like the idea that he cleaned up some of the blood and decided, oh, let me get the, let me get my wife's blood off my, let me get these shoes, these bloody shoes and socks off before law enforcement gets here. Because if we're to believe that he found her when he found her and he calls police, it's not long after where first responders arrive and he's already taken off his socks and sneakers.

Like what, when did you have a moment to do that while your wife, who's dying or has just died, is laying there? I don't know if that would be something that would be on my mind. Well, they're saying that he didn't call the police right when he found her, that he beat her to death and then staged the scene, then called, right? And that, to me, that behavior of taking off the shoes and socks would be more in line with something like that than an accident where you just found your wife she's deceased and you're thinking about anything other than her i think it's weird i think it's weird that he took off his socks and shoes i completely agree but what i don't understand is how can you charge

him with first degree premeditated murder but then act like he basically killed her and then said oh shit I've got to stage this so it doesn't look like I killed her that doesn't say that to me saying like oh after I have her blood all over me I have to stage this scene says it was you know a passion yeah right and now I'm having to clean up my own mess and not something that was premeditated it just just doesn't make sense. Their theories, their argument, the way they decided to charge him and what they claim his motives were, none of that makes sense together. I agree with that. I agree with that. There's kind of two different theories going on into one story. And some of the stuff they put forward contradicts some of the stuff they've said earlier in the episode. Which I understand because they looked

at this and they said, we 100 percent believe he did this, which I'm on board. OK, I get it. But now what you did with the prosecution's case was completely just mishmash everything together so that when, you know, something does come out like Dwayne Deaver's past history with other cases, now the whole thing falls apart because it never had a strong foundation to begin with. And now you could have somebody who should be in prison for the rest of his life for what he did walking free because you guys didn't have your shit

together. Wouldn't be the first time. They wouldn't. So going into how Dwayne Deaver inspected the crime scene, I was initially going to tell you guys where every drop of blood was located. That was when I had faith in him and what he was doing. But as I went through this and as I kind of looked at what was actually happening here, and really, honestly, blood spatter is not a perfect science. It's not a perfect science when you're even talking about somebody like Dr. Henry Lee, who I believe it was just, what was it, like 2018 or 2019 that he was being accused of, you know, putting a bunch of innocent people in prison because of his blood spatter analysis and things

like that. What we have to realize is whether you're Dwayne Deaver and you've been doing this for two years or you're Dr. Henry Lee and you've been doing it for 50 years, it's not a perfect science either way. And, you know, the jury does put a lot of stock into this stuff because for them, it's something they can see. It's a map that can be drawn for them. And I do think that Dwayne Deaver took advantage of that. So I was going to first tell you where every drop of blood was located, but I'm not going to do that now because honestly, we're going to come to find that it pretty much all gets thrown out anyways. But Dwayne Deaver first inspected the crime scene at around 5 p.m. on December 9, 2001,

and he initially concluded that the blood patterns near the stairs indicated that Kathleen had died from at least four blows. Three of the blows created blood spatter near the bottom of the stairs where Kathleen had been found, and he believed a fourth blow was the initial injury that caused the bleeding. After further testing and examination of blood and items found at the scene, Deaver concluded that two of the blows were made at least 19 to 11 inches above the second to bottom stair. The third spatter indicated to him that there was also a blow 27 inches above the fourth stair from the bottom. Additionally, Deaver would later testify that blood found on the header of a hallway stair from the bottom. Additionally, Deaver would later testify that blood found on the header of a hallway wall at the bottom of the stairs could be cast off from

a blow that was delivered while someone stood on the second to last stair. Like I said, I'm not going to go over all of these specific bloodstain patterns, but what I want to let you know is he did number these stairs starting 1 through 18. One would be the top stair and then the bottom stair would be 18. We also have blood spatters on the wall outside of the staircase as well as on the header over the hall leading to the kitchen area. So if you're looking at this picture, which I'll send Shannon so she can put it in, there's the little like stairway and it kind of goes out into a hall and then there's a door where that hall leads into the kitchen. There was blood

spatter on the walls of the hall and on the top of the door basically that leads to the kitchen. There was just two drops of blood there, but that's 114 inches off the floor. So that's like over nine feet. Now Deaver claimed that these drops showed a downward path of origin from above the drops. So he said that this was cast off from a weapon that was swinging upwards. At the front of the stairwell, Deaver also saw a pair of footprints in the blood transfer. And he said that this would have been the same spot Kathleen's body had been found. So he believed that Kathleen, who we know had blood on the bottom of both her bare feet, had at one point stood up in her own blood, and that's why there was footprints there, and that's why she had blood

on the bottom of her feet. The trim molding on the stairs did have finger and hair-like transfer stains as well as blood stains, and the light switch to the left of the trim molding had a blood transfer stain on it. There was a piece of trim along the inside stairwell above step number 15, which remember is still one of those lower steps, that had finger-like blood transfer stains as well, and there was three individual stains at the end of the handrail, which made it look as if someone had tried to pull themselves up. That handrail end would be towards the bottom of the stairs as well. So the cast off is the big takeaway there. If it is cast off, obviously suggestive of an assault. And I'm trying to, as you're reading it, play it out through my head. Okay, you have droplets on

the wall, definitely could be cast off. But is there another way to explain it where it could be still an accident? And I'm thinking in my head here, I don't know if it was ever brought up, but if Michael walks in and he grabs her initially, he's got her blood on him and he's kind of flailing around, taking off his shoes, taking off his socks. He could have some droplets spray onto the wall. It may also explain the one spot of blood that you had mentioned that I thought was interesting. The light switch to have blood on the light switch itself. Did he walk in and the light was off and he said, Oh my God, you flick the light on quick after again, after touching her, because I don't think during the assault you would have that, that, you know, someone turned the light switch on, whether it was Catherine or Michael, I would be interested

to know if the blood on the light switch was blood spatter, where it was like spray, or was it someone flipping on the switch? You know, so it looks like you're shaking your head. No. So probably blood spatter. It was blood transfer. So that is somebody touching the switch as far as I'm concerned. So that's not blood spatter.

So that is someone consciously turning on a light after an injury. And so you have clearly at that point, Kathleen's bleeding and either she or Michael flipped a switch on. I don't know why that would happen if it was during an assault. I could see it more happening if you discovered Kathleenathleen And didn't expect to find her like that and you turn on a light you grab her quick like kathleen you shake her She doesn't move. Oh my god, you flip on the light to kind of try to see what's going on I don't know if I can see a world where He's flipping on the light switch after he kills her, but I guess the people out there would say you could argue He's staging it. He's setting it up. He's making it look like, okay, she was in the house. She was fine. She flipped on the switch to go up the stairs. She slips and falls and accidentally hurts herself. And then poor Michael comes in to find her later. So he's, he might be staging it to look like it's just a normal day where he could have killed her. And now he's got his blood all over her himself.

And now as he's staging it, he's, there's blood transfer occurring in multiple areas, including the light switch. So again, you, whichever way you want to look at it, you can take this information and mold it to fit your narrative. But this is purely an opinion by this guy. And I get where he's coming from as far as some of the blood spatter, but I feel like the most interesting thing that I can't explain is the fact that there's a, I just want to make sure I got this right, a bloody potential shoe print on the back of her leg, right? That's a problem. Why are you stepping on your wife? What's going on there? Maybe you tripped over her. Could that be it? Like you're, as you're moving around, you slip and step on her accidentally. I mean,

it seems like an awful lot of accidents. Yeah. But man, could you imagine if it really did go down like that? And this guy's like getting accused of murder. And he's like, I just walked in. There was something wet on the floor. I didn't realize what it was. So I walked over to turn on the light switch in the process, getting blood on the bottom of my feet, stepping on her and turning the light switch on. Or you could say the light switch was turned on by Kathleen, who both the prosecution and the defense claim she stood up in her own blood because they got to explain why she has blood on the bottom of her feet, right? You have to explain that somehow. So she falls, hits her head, starts bleeding. And as she's injured, she's trying to stand up because she doesn't realize what's going on. And then she slips in her own blood again. So maybe as she's standing up,

pulling on the handrail, pulling herself up, she goes to flip the light switch, and that's where that blood comes from. We don't know, but what I will say is only two drops of cast-off on the header because there's just two drops up there. There's none on the ceiling. If you're getting hit that many times, you'd expect there to probably be more just two drops up there. There's none on the ceiling. Okay. If you're getting hit that many times, you'd expect there to probably be more than two drops of cast off, right? Yeah. Usually if she's bleeding the entire time, it depends on what injuries caused her to bleed. But if you have six blood spatter patterns, you would expect to see seven blows because obviously the first blow, there's no cast off. The cast off occurs after the victim is bleeding. So as you're assaulting that person, their blood is now on the instrument or your hand.

And as you're bringing it back, you're casting off the blood onto the wall or onto whatever object you're talking about. So yeah, you would expect to see more, especially with the amount of blood that you have in that area, right? If it's this bloody crime scene where she's being murdered with his fist or with a weapon, I think you would see more blood on the wall. Or you would have some type of luminol test done later and find just blood everywhere that's been cleaned. Now, listen, there's no cast off from this blow poke that they literally talked about every single day. No cast off from this blow poke. And when Dwayne Devers asked about this on the stand, do you know what he said? No, but you off from this blow poke. And when Dwayne Devers asked about this on the stand, do you know what he said?

No, but you're going to tell me. Yeah. He said, well, if Michael Peterson wiped the blow poke off on his shirt every time he went back to hit her, like after every blow, then you wouldn't see cast off. So does that make any sense? That's ridiculous. Yeah. I'm not buying it. Who's literally like beating somebody to death with a blow poke and like, hold on, this blow poke is messy.

Let me wipe it off on my shirt before I go back for another another hit. Like that's ridiculous because that's going to assume that like Michael Peterson knows there's going to be cast off. So he has to prevent that. And Dwayne Deaver was saying this because he's like, well, it's premeditated. He knew it would there would be cast off. So he's making sure that the crime scene doesn't look like a murder. But you guys said it looked like a murder as soon as you walked in. So you're contradicting yourselves again. Yeah, I'm definitely leaning more towards if this was an assault, it wasn't premeditated because he did a really shitty job if that were the case. So if you're going to say

on one hand, he was conscious enough to wipe the weapon off between each blow, but yet there's a million, there's like four or five different things in this crime scene that implicates him as potentially being a murderer to have that type of self-awareness, but not, um, no, you shouldn't be cleaning up blood before law enforcement arrives. Seems a little two ends of the spectrum as far as the type of mindset that was going on during the incident. Yeah. He's stepping on her, the back of her leg with his bloody footprint, but he's like, can't leave cast off, you know, come on. Yep. So I do want to talk more about a further blood stain pattern exam that had been ordered

by the Durham police department. Basically, Dwayne Deaver built a full scale replica of the Peterson stairwell at the SBI lab in Raleigh, North Carolina. So I want to talk about that, but let's take our last break before we dive into that. So a couple of things to mention about this replica was basically Dwayne Deaver decided that there had been at least two points of origin for the blood spatter. And there was an unstained area on the wall that measured approximately 10 inches long and 4 inches wide. And this area was surrounded by bloodstains. So Dwayne Deaver said it was clear to him that this voided area had already been cleaned. However, he kind of figured this out after, you know, making the

replica and kind of re-putting everything back together. So I'm not sure if they checked that voided area for bloodstains with luminol or things like that. I don't think they did. The weird thing about the actual staircase, though, is even two years later, it still hadn't been cleaned, right? So like Kathleen's sister, I think it was Candace and Lori, they came and they like started cleaning the blood, but it was too hard for them. And Michael Peterson just ended up boarding up that staircase like from the top and bottom and like leaving it as is. And Michael Peterson just ended up boarding up that staircase from the top and bottom and leaving it as is. And just they started using the other staircase. So that was always odd to me. But I will say that to me, that doesn't suggest somebody who's guilty.

It suggests somebody who's like, I think that if somebody actually knows how to read these bloodstains, it will tell the true story of what happened. So I'm going to leave it as is and board it up so that it can be looked at again. And they did bring the jury back during his trial to kind of stand in that stairwell and see for themselves what it looked like, which I believe backfired because, like I said, all the blood was still there by the time the trial started. And the jury came to visit the Peterson home and see for themselves the stairwell. And there was just a lot of blood. And I think that they were very shocked by that. So I think it backfired for the defense team. Yeah, just by looking at some of the photos, I could see how that would be the case where you have normal citizens who are not exposed to this.

They're being told certain things. They've seen photos. But there's no substitute for seeing it in person and to understand that what you're looking at and process it, that that's someone's blood. And they sustained it during these injuries. And then you're thinking about, they're getting a layout of the kitchen and where it happened. And they're thinking to themselves, you know, in proximity where Michael would have been out by the pool and coming in here, how would he have not heard her if she was yelling or heard some banging or whatever? They start to process their own thing because now they're putting themselves in the environment

where it happened. Couple that with the amount of blood seen on the walls. Yeah, I could see how someone would leave that house going. No way. No way she fell down the stairs. Yeah, that's pretty much what happened. I think Dwayne Deaver's testimony combined with this field trip to the Peterson home really cemented that in the jury's mind.

But when you look at the diagram that Deaver kind of drew, there's steps 16 and 17, which are going to be, if you're going up the stairs, it's the second and third step. And there was blood in the corner of the wall above step 17. And then there was a line of blood spatter that ran above step 16 and 17. And that would match an area where a metal chairlift had been located. And for anybody who doesn't know, elderly people or disabled people will have these chairlifts so they can get up and down the stairs. It's just a little chair on kind of a rail. And then the chair moves up the stairs and down the stairs. My grandfather had one.

I tried to slide down it when I was young. It didn't feel good. It really, really hurt me. My imaginary friend told me it would be a good idea, and it wasn't because there's like a thing at the bottom of it. It's not like a slide. There's like a little machine at the bottom of it. So the people who had owned the house before the Petersons had installed this, and it was still there when Kathleen fell down the stairs, and the chairlift device had blood on it and bloodstains behind it.

And based on the cleanup attempt that had happened using water or some other liquid, specifically on that bottom step where Kathleen's head had been when the first responders got there and the rest of the bloodstains, Deaver believed that Kathleen had been struck repeatedly and that her body had also been moved to several different positions. And he believed that as well, because remember, I kept saying there was finger-like stains and hair-like stains. So Deaver kind of believed that Kathleen's hair had blood in it. And as she was being moved, her hair was sort of like painting blood stains on the stairs and the wall. So during the trial,

David Rudolph, Michael Peterson's attorney, stated the issues he had with Dwayne Deaver's recreated experiments that ended up bringing Deaver to the conclusion that Michael had beaten Kathleen to death with a fireplace blow poke. Deaver insisted that he wasn't trying to recreate the scene exactly. He was simply trying to see what impression blood leaves when it's dropped on a surface or wiped on a pair of shorts or beaten out of someone with a

weapon. Dwayne Deaver told the jury, quote, a forceful impact occurred on step number 16. It was an impact on the surface and the back of the head of the victim came in contact forcibly. It is consistent with something more forceful than a fall. End quote. At the end of the day, Deaver said he believed that Kathleen had been hit on the back of the head at least three times and that the back of her head had also hit two wooden stairs. Based on the evidence, he believed her husband Michael had been standing right over her when she was killed, not sitting outside enjoying the mild weather and smoking his pipe. An attacker had struck Kathleen with a weapon like the missing blow poke.

The attacker had been standing outside the stairwell. Kathleen then fell forward onto the stairs where she was hit twice more in the back of her head. Kathleen attempted to stand up, and at one point she was standing up, and then her head forcibly hit two more steps. As Kathleen continued to bleed out, someone began cleaning the scene. Deaver would tell the jury, quote, there should have been bloodstains on step number 17. In my opinion, the blood had been purposely removed after the victim came to rest on step number 18, end quote. So not only did someone clean up the stairs, but they had also tried to clean themselves up, which is why he said there was a blood stain on Michael Peterson's shorts that was diluted in a V-shape. And he didn't say that Michael Peterson did this to hide the fact

that he had blood on him, but to alter the bloodstains so that somebody like Dwayne Deaver wouldn't be able to tell whether that blood had come from like transfer or whether it had come from, you know, an impact that caused the blood to go up towards him. You know, do we know if I know what he's saying where it should be, but I'm going to assume that luminol testing was done. And just to refer back to a case that you mentioned before, Daniel Redlich, it's something where you see the blood, but then when you do further testing, if you were to go under

a luminol test with it, you spray everywhere, whether it's blood or a cleaning agent that was used to clean up the area, that place would be lighting up like a glow stick. They'd be, especially with that amount of blood. So do you know if they ever conducted that type of test where under a luminol test, under the black light, there was obviously the blood that was seen by the human eye, but then under a luminol test, there was just blood everywhere where you would see the smearing throughout that whole hallway and maybe potentially throughout the kitchen and wherever else Michael may have walked if this was something that he did intentionally to try to throw off law enforcement. they said they saw like footprints, like bloody footprints when they put the luminol down. But in that situation, they allegedly put the luminol down, saw the footprints, but didn't take photographs

of the footprints in the luminol. So it was just like, you know, somebody's word because he like drew a picture of where the footprints went. And then the defense was like, well, where are these footprints? You know, show me the pictures that you took of the footprints that were lighting up in luminol. And they were like, well, we didn't do that. We just drew a picture of what they looked like and where they went. We didn't take pictures. So they did the luminol there, but it didn't look like they did the luminol in the hallway or on the stairwell because at the end of the day, they took pictures of that. And then using those pictures, Dwayne Deaver replicated that in his fake staircase at the SBI lab.

And from there, he's saying, well, there should be blood here. But because there's no blood here, it looks like it was cleaned up. And that's what must have happened. Yeah, I think the luminol would have just emphasized that where you would have said, yeah, there should be blood here. And not only that, when we put under a luminol test, there was signs of blood or a cleaning agent that was used to wipe the blood that should have been there. But I, in defense of them, I will say Michael admitted to cleaning up the crime scene

to a certain degree with paper towels. So there's a lot of smearing in there. That's very obvious to even the human eye. And he's not denying that if he went in there and said, yeah, I came in here, I've been sitting by my wife the entire time. I have not moved since the time that I've discovered her. And there's a smearing all over the place and the signs of cleaning up. Well, then that's a, that's a sign of deception. He's lying. He obviously did.

Someone cleaned up before they got there. So the fact that he's admitting that doesn't necessarily mean he's innocent. He may be admitting it because there's no way to hide it. Cause he's looking around and seeing the obvious signs of a cleanup. Even if that's the case, as I said in episode one, and I'll stick to it no matter where I end up falling on this one, the idea of cleaning up any blood in any area and before law enforcement or the ambulance even arrives is absolutely bonkers to me. It's either a sign that he is a criminal and he did exactly what a lot of people think he did, or he just is out of his mind because I don't know

if you took a hundred people and surveyed them, I think 99 out of a hundred, if not a hundred out of a hundred would say the last thing on my mind is cleaning up the blood from my loved one. When there's a chance they can still be saved. I agree, but there's going to be people who say, well, you can't tell how people are going to act when they're mourning. Way down in the comments. Let's do a little, let's do an unofficial poll here. How many of you, I'll even go this far. You walk in, you find your loved one, they're dying.

So you're staying with them at that point because you don't, you're trying to help them, trying to keep them awake at some point while you're waiting for first responders to arrive, your loved one dies. You know it, they stopped breathing. They're dead. You call back to dispatch and say, my loved one is deceased, which he did right at that point, even though that just, that just occurred. And you know, you, there's nothing you can do to save them. Where are you thinking about grabbing anything to clean up the blood around them at that point? Is that anywhere on your radar? As far as you know what, I might want to clean up a little blood before they get here, because this is, this is a mess. I want to hear if you do believe that we're no judgment here, nobody come at anybody, but maybe there are people who do feel

that way. And if you do, please tell me why. Cause I can't think of a reason. Maybe there's something in the comment where you're like, Hey, this would be the reason for it. And maybe you changed my mind. I'm open. No judgment, man. But he said, if you do that, you're out of your mind. I did say that. Didn't I? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. You are. I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry. You got me. I'm on recording here. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think you got to reorganize your priorities if they're like, Oh, let me clean up a little bit before they get here. This is kind of, this is nasty. This is embarrassing.

Yeah. I don't want anybody slipping and falling before they, when they come in here, that's crazy. I don't want anybody to think I live like this. And not to make light of it. That's where it comes from me. It's not necessarily the lack of blood in certain locations. That's suspicious to me. It's the idea that he would even, Michael would even consider cleaning up the blood in the first place. So there's still a problem with what happened in that stairwell, whether it was an accident or intentional, it's still questionable. I just don't know if the lack of blood, you could automatically

assume that it was cleaned up when you can't see it. And there was no test to definitively determine there had been blood there that was cleaned up before law enforcement arrived. Yeah. I think it's more likely that he cleaned up the blood and then was like, because he was suspicious and he was like, oh, it looks suspicious if I say I didn't clean up this blood because it's obvious. So I'm going to say I cleaned up the blood, but I'm not going to say why, you know? Okay. Right. Because if he did something wrong and he tried to clean it up, that is kind of a first reaction. But then he realized like, oh, it's going to look like I tried to clean this up. But if it was just an accident, I don't see why he would try to clean it up. Yeah, I don't either. I agree. And I've

been I mean, if I'm to like replay this episode in my head, I would say I was leaning towards accident or the way my questioning and comments have been, but I will tell you that's a big problem for me. I know we've talked about some more physical evidence with the injuries and all that stuff. And that's very important, but sometimes the most simple things are the things that bug you the most. And the idea of cleaning up your wife's blood so early in it, when there's still a chance that she can be saved just seems crazy to me that you would leave her side at any point to go grab a paper towel or a towel when she's still there. And you're not a doctor. You don't know for certain that she's gone. You being there, you know, talking to her, whatever might be the thing that keeps her alive. So to put her down and leave her there alone just makes no sense to me. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, but once again, this is just talking about how somebody is reacting and what their emotional state is.

We can't say. That's true. We absolutely can't say any more than we can say what happened to that stairwell because we weren't there. But just our opinion opinion it's weird and if he could you know michael if you're listening and you want to give a call in and explain your thought process we will definitely entertain it by the way this isn't a knock i think we both can agree on the surface michael's a weird guy so it's not completely out of the road and that's not a knock it really It really isn't. But he's an interesting guy, to say the least. So maybe that's his character.

I don't know. There's quirky people out there. I don't know what the rationale would be. But maybe if we heard it directly from him, it would make sense. I don't know, because that's just the way his brain works. I don't know. Yeah, I'm open to it. If he wants to explain it, I am open to hearing it.

Don't hold your breath. Well, for the defense, we have forensic pathologist Dr. Henry Lee, who testified that after 240 hours of studying the crime scene, the photos, and visiting the SBI lab to view Dwayne Deaver's replica, he concluded that the evidence told him this was more likely to have been an accidental fall. The blowpoke the prosecution was insisting had been used to beat Kathleen to death would have been about four feet long. The opening to the stairwell was about 81 inches high, and Michael Peterson was five foot nine. If Michael was swinging the blowpoke where Dwayne Deaver claimed he stood when he first attacked Kathleen, wouldn't the weapon have struck the header of the stairwell opening? Henry Lee testified that the blood spatter at the scene and on Kathleen and even on Michael's own shorts could

have been caused by a wide variety of factors, telling the jury, quote, could be coughing, could be anything that projects the blood, end quote. Basically, the blood spatter could have been formed when blood from Kathleen's head and face ran into her mouth and then she coughed the blood out. When DA Jim Harden asked why Dr. Lee hadn't tested hair samples for DNA or tested the blood that was on the wall to see if there was saliva in it, Dr. Lee responded, quote, that's not my job, that's your job, end quote. Ouch. Dr. Lee said that the Durham police and the SBI had done a good job with the case, but he had a different opinion than they did. He said he couldn't exclude everything, but he felt the scene was just more consistent with a fall than with a beating. And Lee talked about Dwayne Deaver and his full-scale model of the stairway. He referred

to it as child's play. And when DA Jim Harden went for Lee again saying, quote, didn't you tell Dwayne Deaver that he'd done some of the best work you had seen? End quote. Henry Lee responded, quote, no, I tell him it was the best model I had seen. End quote. Harden then pulled out a copy of Henry Lee's book, which is called Henry Lee's Crime Scene Handbook. This was a copy of the book that Henry Lee had given Dwayne Deaver. And inside, he had written in it, to Dwayne Deaver, one of the best, keep up the good work. Warm regards, Henry Lee. And so Jim Harden was like, well, you wouldn't have written that unless you thought he was one of the best. And Lee responded, quote, no, no, no. I give everyone courtesy, Chinese courtesy. I went to his place. He extended the

courtesy. Let me see what he has. It's my upbringing. You can't write in there something like, you are totally wrong. End quote. In Henry Lee's opinion, the blood that Deaver had thought was cast off could have come from coughing, sneezing, wheezing, or from Kathleen's hair. And he kind of used the example of like a dog when it gets wet and it shakes and the blood like spatters all over. He also used a mouthful of diluted ketchup to elaborate and show the jury this. He showed the jury close-up pictures of Kathleen's face with blood stained around her lips and mouth, proving that blood had been around her mouth area. And then he said that there was far too much blood in the stairwell

for Kathleen to have been beaten. On top of that, since the prosecution was stuck on the blow poke as a weapon idea, you would expect to see blood cast off onto the ceiling, but there was none. Now, once again, we already kind of talked about this. I touched on it. But when Dwayne Deaver was asked about this, he said, well, there's no cast off on the ceiling because Michael could have wiped the blow poke off on his shirt before and after every strike. Now, also, according to the autopsy, Kathleen did have alcohol and Valium in her system. The defense argued that she'd slipped and fallen accidentally because she was disoriented from these two substances. And like I said, Dwayne Deaver and the prosecution believed she'd been attacked and beaten to death, that the scene had been cleaned and staged. And Deaver goes on to like really like elaborate on this. And he says, listen, there was blood on the kitchen cabinet that

contained the wine glasses. Those stains were finger-like and they'd been found on the knob. Below that cabinet, there was a drop of blood on the kitchen counter. Near the sink, there were two wine glasses and an open bottle of wine. But inside the sink, there was a large pasta pot and a food strainer covering the drain. And when Deaver removed the strainer, he said he noticed a strong smell of alcohol, as if a lot of wine had been poured down the drain, maybe even a whole bottle, he said. And I just completely disagree with this. First of all, he's a blood spatter expert. So what are you talking about? A strong smell of alcohol.

He's basically saying they didn't even drink wine. Michael poured the bottle of wine down the sink. This doesn't even match the evidence. She had alcohol in her system. And, you know, Todd and Christina, they saw her drinking. So, like, when he goes off on these tangents like this, and first of all, all you have to do is pour half a glass of wine down the sink and you'll have a strong alcohol smell. I do it all the time. I know it is very strong no matter how much wine you're pouring down the sink. that this wine was staged and you keep coming back to this, when there's people who saw her drinking and she had alcohol in her system just shows me that you want to ignore all the evidence

that doesn't align with your narrative. And that's concerning when you're supposed to be like a scientific expert who's unbiased. Well, you're overstepping your area of expertise, right? When you're starting to weigh in on other things and speculate as to why things may have occurred the way they did, just stick to the facts, stick to what you know. And I want to come back to that infamous blow poke now, the instrument that the prosecution had been waving in front of the jury from the very first day of the trial. One of Dwayne's Deaver's tests had even been to hit a blood-soaked sponge that was supposed to represent Kathleen's head with a blow poke over 30 times until he got the exact blood spatter that he saw on Michael's shorts. He had to do that, I think, 38 times

before he got that blood spatter. And then they played this video for the jury. Now, it seemed like every time Jim Harden or the other prosecutor, Freda Black, were addressing the jury, they kept saying, where's the blow poke? Where's the blow poke? But then David Rudolph, he strolled into court one day holding the blow poke. Now, the story with this blow poke is interesting because when it was suggested by the prosecution that this could be the murder weapon and that it was missing, Michael Peterson did search his home for it, but nothing turned up. Now, remember, the police claimed they'd already looked for it and they couldn't find it. Towards the end of the trial, Michael's son, Clayton, was working on his 1966 Mustang in the garage of the Peterson home. And he happened to come across the blow poke.

It was in a dark corner covered up with cobwebs. So Clayton went and got his sister, Margaret Ratliff, and it was nighttime. So they both went in. They woke up Michael. Michael called his lawyers. The lawyers called the judge on the case. The judge went to Michael's house and made sure that the blow poke was photographed and sent for testing. And this testing revealed that it must have been in the garage for some time since it was covered with cobwebs.

And besides that, there was no sign that it had been used in a murder. It wasn't bent or broken. And the lab test came back negative for blood. So after the blow poke was found, the prosecution never said the word blow poke again, but it gets worse. Years after Michael Peterson was convicted and sentenced to prison, it came out that the police had found the blow poke in the basement during their initial search of the home in early 2002. They had taken it out of the basement along with some other items, and they brought those items outside and photographed those items outside in the daylight

and then put them back into the house, but they must have put the blowpoke in the garage. The police had dismissed the blowpoke as being a possible murder weapon, but the pictures they had taken of the blow poke were in the file that the prosecution had. But those photos were not turned over during discovery to the defense team. Now, I'm not saying that the prosecution knew those pictures were there. I'm not saying they even knew that the police had found the blow poke early on, but it is the job of the police, as you know, to make sure that the DA knows everything that the police know. And if we were able to prove that the DA's office knew the blow poke wasn't missing and that they

had seen pictures of it and chosen not to turn those over to the defense team, that would be a Brady violation. And I think it's pretty... Okay, just my supposition. I think they knew. I think they knew. I think they knew that the police have found that freaking blow poke. No, you would. And I guess I would automatically think they didn't. Because I think that if it were something nefarious, they probably would have made sure any evidence that they had taken photos of those, the blow poke, wasn't left in the file. So either they're really-

No, because then they're destroying evidence. Like that's complete, you can't feign ignorance if you like actively destroyed evidence. I think if they if they purposely are leaving something out, you're going to make you're going to go all the way and make sure there's no no trace of it left. But we knew we were going to differ on that one. Right. You're going to know. No, we should differ. We shouldn't differ on that one, dude. You're telling me none of the police officers who remember taking pictures and finding the blow poke and hearing the word blow poke every single freaking day of that trial weren't like blow poke. Oh, I actually remember finding a blow poke.

I remember taking pictures of it. This is I wonder if it's the same blow poke. Nobody put two and two together. How did it come out? How did it come out that that was the story behind it? Because the blow poke was found and the blow poke didn't tell the defense, hey, by the way, there were photos taken of me. You might want to look into that.

So who eventually divulged this information? I don't know. It was like 2018, but they've never denied it. They just said they didn't know. That's what I'm saying. So it had to be the prosecution that came forward and said, Your Honor, we have something that we- Or it was the police.

Yeah. The police came to them and said, listen, we got to tell you something. Joe Schmo over here, he came forward and told us that he actually took photos of it. We screwed up. You got it. And now prosecution's like, hey, we got to tell the court about this. We can't keep this under wraps. Listen, I'll say it's possible.

Of course it is that they completely tried to do this on purpose. It was a Brady violation and they didn't want to turn it over to the defense, but accidentally left the photos of the blow poke in the file that was turned over to prosecution. Dude, get this. When they found the blow poke and they brought it in, Jim Harden, he's like, oh, listen, okay, they found the blow poke. But I will also tell you that a woman who owns this blow poke company called me and said Michael Peterson ordered three blow pokes from her. So this could be one of those. They were still trying. And then Michael Peterson and David Rudolph are like, yeah, we ordered the blow pokes because like we were doing testing just like you guys were doing testing to try to,

you know, like take your testing off the table and disprove your testing. But like this is not the same blow poke. You know, the this, like, what are you talking about? They still were like stuck on the freaking blow poke because they had hung their hats on it so hard that I think at some point during that trial, they remembered or found out the blow poke had been photographed. And they were like, well, what are we going to do? We got to literally die on this hill, man. It is so, so shady and so sketchy. And that's what I'm saying. Like Michael Peterson could a million percent be guilty. I kind of think he is. But when you got antics like this, clouding the waters, like muddying the waters, who's the bad guy here? Who's the bad guy? Everyone. When you're doing a murder investigation, I know in every case

mistakes happen. When you're doing a case investigation, I know in every case mistakes happen. When you're doing a case this big mistake, man, the significant it's super it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. And we were talking about the Idaho police case. And, you know, on the surface, we might learn there were mistakes made there, too. But on the surface, it looks like they did a great job. So I had this high tonight where I was like praising good police work. And then you hit me with this and you just bring me down. Why would they bring you down? Like, because it's representative of all of us. You know, it's one of those things where this is our job, you know, and you know,

this going into it. And I do agree with you where, while this is going on at trial and prosecution is bringing up, like you said, the blow poke, by the way, if you played my game tonight, get yourself to a hospital.

Cause you are going to die from alcohol poisoning by the amount of times a blow poke was said. But to hear this multiple times and this not to come forward at some point, someone with half a brain got a hold of this information and went to the prosecution and said, hey, listen, I know this ain't going to be good for you, but we got to fill you in on some things that happened behind closed doors. So-and-so, let's say it was a detective who took the photos and he's like, oh shit, I should have put this in a report and I didn't. I'm just going to be quiet for now. But then it gets out. That is by definition, a Brady violation. As soon as you realize there's something, you have to turn it over. So I'm definitely acknowledging it could be the case. It also could be a situation where you have so many people, so many cooks in the kitchen that it slips through the cracks. And I will say it's inexcusable because the blow poke was such a big part of this case. This wasn't like some insignificant piece of evidence. This was the

main character in the story. And you forgot that you found it and took photos of it, it's embarrassing. I don't know what else you want me to say. I'm owning that. It's embarrassing. Okay. I would argue that another possible Brady violation is a letter that the medical examiner, Deborah Radish, wrote to her boss, chief medical examiner, John Butts. And remember, Deborah Radish did Kathleen's autopsy. And in this letter, Deborah Radish basically says like, listen, I don't really feel comfortable saying that Kathleen Peterson died from blunt force trauma. And her boss, John Butts, responded basically like, well, that's what we're saying. Okay, that's the party line. That's what's being said. And there's evidence that the prosecutor,

Freda Black, was aware of this exchange between Deborah Radish and John Butts, and she did not disclose that to the defense. So, you know, that's a Brady violation, I think. I wonder if it would be, because if it's not something, so if there's a private conversation, right, there's a private conversation between, you know, colleagues where they're debating what's going to happen here. You know, listen, I've had conversations, colleagues where they're, they're debating, uh, what's going to happen here. You know, listen, I I've had conversations with colleagues where it's like, what do you think in here? What would the charge be? What do we have for statutes? And we might go back and forth where I'm saying, Hey, I think we can hit them with this, this, and this. And they're like, no.

And then ultimately my Lieutenant who's above me in rank as a Sergeant can say, listen, I'm looking at what you're saying. I hear you, but I disagree. I'm in charge. This is what we're going with as a sergeant can say, listen, I'm looking at what you're saying. I hear you, but I disagree. I'm in charge. This is what we're going with as a team, as a, as out of my office, that's what we're going with. And so I could see a world where there was a discussion between the chief medical examiner and obviously Deborah Radish. And ultimately they went with his decision because he looked at the body as well. He might've done his own analysis of the report and said, this is what's coming out of my office. Now, if there was a letter written by Deborah Radish or any type of form filled out by her,

where she divulged this information because she wanted a written report of her findings and her opinions, and that wasn't returned over to the defense. Then, yeah, clearly that's a clear Brady violation. But you're saying that it's it's it's speculated that Frida Black knew about this conversation, You have to turn everything over to the defense. Just like that one dude, I forget his name, but the first guy who kind of wrote like, oh, I think this looks accidental and then later changed his mind. That way the defense can now look at that dude and be like, hey, you changed your mind. Why did you change your mind? You know, you should know that the medical examiner, the person that the jury's going to look at who says like this absolutely was not an accident. This was absolutely blunt force trauma initially wrote to her boss and said, I don't know how comfortable I feel putting this on the actual like, you know, autopsy report. And he was like, just do it. And the prosecuting attorney knew about that. That's a Brady violation.

Like you don't get to decide what's material and what's exculpatory. You have to hand everything over during discovery and you don't have to bring their attention to it. Right. Like, you know, she wouldn't have had to have been like here, David Rudolph, just so you know, here's something that's really going to help you just throw it in. They give them 10 million boxes, man. You hope they don't find it. But if they, you know, you got to give them the chance to find it. And here is a specific sign along with, you know, you got to give them the chance to find it. And here is a specific sign along with, you know, the whole blow poke pictures where they're just like, this doesn't really fit our narrative. So we're going to just pretend we didn't see it or we're just going to

ignore it. And it's like shoddy. And it's like, once again, who's the bad guy here? Who's the bad guy? You're supposed to be like on Kathleen's side. How can you be on her side when you're consistently doing stupid shit that in eight years is going to get Michael Peterson and Alfred plea? It's two hours and a half into it. So I'm going to agree to disagree with you and move on. Yeah, let's let's end it. Let's end it. Jesus, guys, as always, we appreciate you guys joining us here.

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