Crime Weekly - S3 Ep108: Kathleen Peterson: The Other Man (Part 4)

Episode Date: January 20, 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: 1. HelloFresh Go to www.HelloFresh.com/crimeweekly21 and use code crimeweekly21 for 21 free meals plus free shipping! 2. PDS Debt PDS DEBT is offering free debt analysis to our listeners just for completing the quick and easy debt assessment at www.PDSDebt.com/crime. That’s P-D-S-D-E-B-T.com/crime. Take back your financial freedom today!

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Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are picking up with the Kathleen and Michael Peterson case. And I was just talking to Derek earlier. And I think after this

episode, we should really only have one more episode, which will wrap everything up. And then we can give our final thoughts. Because honestly, the more I learn about this case, the more disgusted I am with the prosecution and how they handled this case. Because at the end of the day, if Michael Peterson is guilty of doing what he did, we'll never know because they screwed up so royally and reached so hard. And they did things that just I think were unconscionable. And on that note, before we dive into the new stuff, I do want to address the conversation that Derek and I had at the end of the last episode, because at that point, I didn't have all the details of what I did believe to be potential Brady violations on behalf of the prosecution in the state. And give us a refresher,

Derek, what's a Brady violation? Well, it's essentially the lack of disclosure regarding evidence that could be designated as exculpatory, something that would maybe prove the innocence of the person currently charged and the prosecution, or as we're going to explain, the law enforcement agency, the police department deliberately not turning that information over for discovery so that the defense has an opportunity to bring it up in court. Exactly. So, you know, pretty bad, I would say, you know, that's not something that you want to be doing as the good guys, which is what you're supposed to be. And so I did some more digging. I found some more details and specifics. So I kind of wanted to start the episode with those details so we can all be on the same page, at least where

Maya had that. So this is from David Rudolph's website. And whatever you think of him, which it's not like he's a Jose Baez. He's a good lawyer. He's a good guy. He seems to have the right intentions in mind. But whatever you think of him, I can tell you he wouldn't be able to publicly say these things if they weren't true, especially considering he's a lawyer and he knows what could happen to him if he starts spreading around things that are not true. So I think we can be confident in their validity one way or the other. Now, he was writing this stuff after the appeal and before his client, Michael Peterson, was offered the Alford plea. So Michael Peterson, which we'll come to find out, he goes to trial. He gets found guilty of first-degree murder, and then he gets sentenced to life in prison. But then all this stuff starts to come

out, and they start to find out that Dwayne Deaver, the blood spatter expert, actually isn't as much of an expert as he said he was. And actually, he's also done some shady things on a bunch of other cases. So this comes to the judges that went over his first trial, Michael Peterson's first trial. It comes to the judge's attention, and he's like, ah, this makes me uncomfortable. And then other stuff started to come out. So basically, the conviction's overturned, and now the state has to decide, are we going to try this guy again? Like we're going to put him back on trial. So after the first trial and before any potential second trial happened, this is when David Rudolph is writing this stuff. And he said,

quote, as we waited to hear back from the DA after filing our motions, we began to look at the portions of the prosecution file we had never seen before. They were now available to us because of changes in the North Carolina discovery statutes. There were some significant revelations. For example, we learned from Frida Black's handwritten notes that Deborah Radish had originally not listed the cause of Kathleen's death as blunt force trauma, but rather simply as loss of blood. According to Black's notes, Radish said that her boss, the chief medical examiner of North Carolina, had insisted that she list the cause of death as blunt force trauma. This was something we could use to impeach Radish at any retrial. We also learned what we had long suspected. Deborah Radish had convinced Candace

Zamperini, who had originally commended her sister's relationship with Michael, and said there was no way that Michael would ever hurt Kathleen, that Kathleen had been murdered. There was a fax in the file from Candace to Radish thanking her for explaining why Michael was guilty. Not exactly the role of an impartial expert, and again, potential impeachment of Radish. But perhaps the most significant fact we learned was regarding the blowpoke. Thomas Dew had worked for the prosecution throughout the case. He had constructed the two-scale staircase that the prosecution had used to illustrate Dwayne Deaver's testimony. He had been present during Dever's experiments, and he had also been present when the police came back to the house in

June of 2002, pursuant to a search warrant to take measurements of the house. During that trip, the crime scene technicians Eric Kampen and Dan George had again searched the house. During this search, they had found what turned out to be the missing blowpoke in the basement boiler room, taken it outside to photograph it, and put it back where they found it, but rather in the garage where we found it more than a year later. Dew and Deaver were both there and witnessed this. At the time, the police did not consider the blowpoke significant. It clearly had nothing to do with the death. No blood, no dents, no evidentiary value. That, of course, all changed in May of 2003 when the prosecution decided the blow poke was missing and that it was the murder weapon. The fact that it had been found and

photographed by the police in June 2002 became extremely exculpatory evidence. It blew up the prosecution's theory. But we had never been told about this in discovery or given this photo or any report documenting the discovery, even though Campin and George had both testified at the trial. This was yet another clear violation of Michael's constitutional rights and might well have changed the outcome of the first trial, end quote. So David Rudolph is saying all of these things that he and Michael's legal team discovered End quote. He's also saying that if there would be another trial, they could be used and it wouldn't look good for the prosecution on top of the Dwayne Deaver stuff, which we're going to get into more detail in next episode. And this is ultimately why I believe Michael Peterson was offered the Alford plea after his first conviction was overturned because they knew that they messed up. The state did,

and they didn't want to take their chances with another trial. And also, I do think that Michael Peterson didn't want to take his chances with another trial. So basically, at this point, his reputation had already been destroyed. He'd already been sued by Kathleen's daughter, Caitlin Atwater, in court. He'd already, you know, declared bankruptcy. His reputation was kind of, you know, shot. I mean, even now, given the fact that all of this, if you actually look at this case, there's not a lot of evidence that he did anything, yet people will still say that he's 100 million percent guilty and they'll never let you talk them out of it. Even that, I mean, this guy, if he's not guilty, his life's pretty much over. There's going to be a good percentage of the population who never gives him trust or looks at him with the benefit of the

doubt again. So he said, well, I'll just take this Alford plea. I'm not going back to trial. And I would have done the same thing. So this whole blow poke thing especially is disgusting because what we have here is Dwayne Deaver and Thomas Dew were there. They saw it photographed. And then we have those two crime scene techs, both who, you know, testified at trial. They all knew about the blow poke. So it's very hard for me to believe that nobody would come forward and say anything to the DA or any member of the prosecution team at any point. I think that they did say something and that somebody was like, well, we've already climbed this hill and now we have to die on it. So let's just not talk about the blow poke anymore. And that's really shitty, to be honest,

when you're talking about a justice system that's supposed to help somebody determine whether they're guilty or innocent. Agreed. And a shout out to Brett from the prosecutors, right? Brett Talley for, I know you said earlier, you had given him a call to kind of, he's a, for you guys that don't know him, he's a lawyer and he's a practicing lawyer. And Stephanie had some questions and she cleared up some things for us. She called me earlier today. So thanks to Brett for giving us a little bit more information on Brady violations. And we did, we were debating back and forth whether the lack of disclosure of the internal conversations between the medical examiner's office, the fact that prosecution knew about those conversations would qualify as a Brady violation. And according to him, they wouldn't.

I'm going to go with his opinion over mine. So he said basically because what I called him for was about premeditation. We just kind of talked about the Brady violation. I called him up specifically about premeditation. What we had talked about as far as Brady violation is he said a Brady violation would be anything held back that's material or exculpatory or impeachable. So when you have David Rudolph saying, Deborah Radish said this, she said this, we could use this as an impeachable offense to bring up at the next trial. That's basically saying that's something that we could say to her, hey, you said this, but over here you said this. So which one is it? So she's proving her lack of credibility. She's a liar. Therefore, the jury can't trust her testimony going forward.

Exactly. And you can't do that in the trial if you don't know that she had a different opinion to begin with, because you weren't told that she had a different opinion to begin you. There's a lot of people that have been involved with this case. I would imagine, I think a reasonable person would assume that someone while they're putting their case together, remembered that photos of this blow poke was taken. If not the photos themselves being sitting, you know, sitting on the desk in front of them. And it does seem like there was a, an effort to just kind of be like, Oh, we screwed up there. Let's just kind of hope that the defense doesn't notice. Uh, and it wasn't until, like you said, after the conviction when these things came to light. And thank God they did because whether you believe Michael's guilty or not, he deserves a fair trial. And it doesn't appear that was the case, especially when, as you've said numerous times throughout the series, Stephanie, that this blow poke was a main character in one of the theories that they had. And the fact that it was kind of just they just moved off of it, hoping nobody would notice because of what they had

found. It does. It's it's slimy. It's definitely slimy when you're talking about someone's freedom. Yeah. And I feel like as soon as the jury heard like, oh, you know, this blow poke we've been talking about forever. It's not an issue anymore. Like it's not actually, you know, what we consider to be the murder weapon. That should have been something that really raised a red flag for the jury, but it really didn't seem to. And now that we're on the topic of the blow poke again, we can talk about premeditation because I was really struggling looking at the two separate motives that they had for Michael Peterson. One was money,

which would suggest a good deal of premeditation. And then one was, okay, Kathleen found out about his sexuality and he didn't want this to get out. He didn't want her to leave him. He didn't want his lifestyle to change. So he killed her, which makes it sound more like a crime of passion thing. And I was like, how can they come up with these two conflicting theories of what the motive is and use them both and nobody ever says, hey, those are two conflicting theories. So I asked Brett, how could they say it was premeditation? Because like I said, Michael Peterson was eventually charged with first degree murder. First degree murder suggests that there is premeditation. How can he be charged with that? And Brett said, premeditation doesn't have to be a thing of like weeks or months of

planning. It can be a split-second decision in somebody's head where they're fighting, and then this person says, you know, aka Michael Peterson says, I'm going to kill her because I can't let this get out, and I can't let my life change. I'm going to kill her. And I think that's incredibly hard to prove because how can you actually, you know, on either side, defense or prosecution, prove what's going through someone's head? But Brett did say, hey, if their blow poke theory was valid, that would suggest premeditation in the moment because Michael Peterson says, I'm going to kill Kathleen. And he has to actually make the decision to grab a weapon and use it on her. That being said, when the defense was able to prove, hey, he didn't use the blow poke to kill her. Here it is. And the police have known about it this whole

time. That should have taken the premeditation angle out or at least made it less likely in the jury's mind. Yet they charged him with first degree murder anyways, even though I feel that premeditation was never, never proved in this trial. So it just really seems that the prosecution did everything they could to make Michael Peterson as unlikable as possible, hoping that that would carry the very little evidence that they had against him in this case at the end of the day. Once again, not saying whether he did it or not, I still don't know myself, but I can tell you that never have I been more sure somebody didn't get a fair trial. I'm actually really disgusted by what went down here. Yeah, there are some things that are not good and shouldn't have happened. And as far as premeditation, I think what you said there is important because how do you prove what someone's thought was before carrying out an action? I think a lot of times, like Brett had said about the blow poke, you can use a weapon to prove premeditation. example of that would be guy walks in on his wife. She's cheating on him. In that moment,

he runs over to the bed and he beats her to death. That could be a crime of passion because in the act of beating her, he killed her and his intent might've been to kill her, but there wasn't an opportunity for him to step back and think about it. Now give the same scenario where a guy walks in on his wife, cheating on him. He goes downstairs, grabs his gun, has to load up the gun with bullets, goes back upstairs and shoots her. There was an opportunity to think about what he was doing. He took the time to load the gun to go back upstairs. That could be classified as a form of premeditation. So a lot of times the difference will be the use of a weapon as opposed to your hands. So like Brett said, in this particular case where, yeah, if the blow poke's being used,

you could look at that as a form of, I'm going to use this item as a weapon to kill her. But once that theory was kind of put to the side, where is the premeditation or how do you prove it? How do you prove what he was thinking in that moment if he did in fact kill her intentionally? So yeah, it all makes sense what you're saying. And I don't see how they way they viewed him the same way. And not necessarily that he was like talking to men, but that he may have been talking to anyone outside of the marriage. I think that really colored their perception of him because the defense did come in strong in their opening statement.

Like Kathleen and Michael have the perfect marriage. They love each other so much. They are soulmates. And then to hear that, I think that the jury felt betrayed a little bit by Michael and his defense team to be like, hey, you guys kind of painted this picture of this perfect couple, but that's definitely not the case, right? So can we believe anything you say? So I really think it was a lack of or loss of trust for the defense team that caused the jury to put more weight into what the prosecution was saying. And not only that, we'll get into it a little bit later, but you've got the prosecution witnesses who are from the crime lab and the medical examiner's office. lay people like us and, you know, people who make up juries look at these people as being more unbiased, you know, more like fair, not like paid by the defense team, when in reality, the medical examiner basically works for the prosecution. Okay, any experts like Dwayne Deaver, they work for the prosecution at the end of the day, but the people don't really see that the

same. They think like, oh, this is like the state medical examiner. She's un, but the people don't really see that the same. They think like, oh, this is like the state medical examiner. She's unbiased. I don't believe that the state medical examiner is unbiased. And I could list off a few cases and a few different trials where the state medical examiner wasn't unbiased. And later that their autopsy would get thrown out because they kind of just went with the flow of what the DA's office wanted. So I think that oftentimes we, the public, look at these experts that the prosecution bring in as having more legitimacy than the experts of the defense bring in. That's possible. I also want to weigh in on something else as far as Michael's concern and the trial. But before we do that, let's take a quick break. All right. So we're back from break. One

other thing regarding the trial that could have played a factor in it, just the human element. I was watching some footage from the trial itself as far as Michael's testimony. And to just put it bluntly, he doesn't come off as very likable. He seems theatrical at points. He seems like he's putting on a show. He may or may not be doing that. But just from the angle you're seeing where you have the jury, if I were sitting there listening to him, he's just not a good witness in the sense of he may not be able to help it, but he just doesn't come off as someone you're rooting for. I don't know how else to say it. And that shouldn't be a factor. But I think as humans, it is.

And if you're sitting there for days on end listening to this guy and you're just like, this guy's a bullshitter. I don't like him. That's going to play a factor, but I think as humans it is. And if you're sitting there for days on end, listening to this guy and you're just like, this guy's a bullshitter. I don't like him. That's going to play a factor. It's if you just don't find them, find them believable. And that may not be his fault. He may be telling the truth, but it just, just me watching it. I felt that way. He seems disingenuous. He seems like he's extra, like he's doing too much. Extra is a great way of saying it. Yeah. Yeah. He seems like he's extra. Yes. Like he's doing too much. Yeah, extra is a great way of saying it. Yeah. Yeah. He seems extra.

His hand gestures, there were some things that he was doing that would maybe suggest some type of deception. And that's from like an interrogator perspective. But even just as a normal person listening to him tell his side of the story, he's looking down a lot. He's looking off to the left. He's looking off to the right. It just seems like he's kind of laying it on thick and he doesn't come after someone who's looking

at you going, listen, I didn't do this. This did not happen. This is, he doesn't, he doesn't pack that punch. And that does happen in cases where even as if we have a witness or a victim in the case, they might be completely telling the truth, but when they get up on the stand, it's, it's intimidating for them. And they just don't, they're not as compelling as they were when we took their initial statement and that can, that can change the outcome of the case. So that's a situation where sometimes you don't have great witnesses, but in this particular case where he's the defendant, he's up there. He could have, he could have decided not to testify. He felt like it was going to help him. And it seems like in this case, it probably didn't help him. It probably hurt him.

He felt like it was going to help him because he considered himself to be that sort of like charismatic person that people are drawn to because that's always what he's been. That's why he wanted to go into politics. But he wasn't that on the stand when he was on trial for murder. He's already being looked with suspicion people are already closed off you do have to be more likable like um you know more like matthew mcconaughey and less i mean jesus we're not not many of us are matthew mcconaughey as far as his charisma but yeah i get what you're saying i mean jesus that's a scale that's something of matthew mcconhey? Okay. One of the most smoothest dudes on the planet, but okay. If you can be Matthew McConaughey on the stand, then do it. Yeah, that'd be nice. Because even Matthew McConaughey has the dramatics going,

but he does it in a genuine way. He's a good actor. Whereas somebody like Michael Peterson, who's been swimming in a small fish pond and he's always been able to, you know, attract the attention of anybody who's in his social circle. Now he's in a bigger pond with people who don't have any reason to like him. And he's wondering why he can't charm them. Like I said, do I think that Michael Peterson killed his wife?

I, I still don't know. I was wife? I still don't know. I was like, what are you about to say? I still don't know, man. I really wish that he'd gotten like a legitimate trial so that mistakes that they made, because of the lengths that they went to. And they ignored, I think, better judgment that would have told them like, hey, you know, maybe this isn't the way to go. Now, he worked on a jury, right, because the jury was like, this guy's a bad dude. He's talking to men behind his

wife's back. There's no way that she knew he was bisexual. And Brett and I actually kind of went back and forth because he's like, she could have known. And I'm like, I'm a woman, man. And I'll tell you what, like, if I had known my husband was bisexual and I found this out after we'd been married, like I would have told somebody, you know, I would have told my sister. I would have told like probably my sister. She's my best friend. You know, I would have told my sister and I would have been like, I don't know how to feel about this. I don't like that.

I didn't know about this right off the bat. And I would like to know about this going in to a marriage. I would have told somebody. And, you know, he's like, but some women just, you know, they do know and they don't say anything. And it's just like in the marriage and it's private. And so I guess it just does depend on who you are and what your boundaries are and what you're okay with. Maybe she knew before they were married. Who knows? Maybe she didn't know at all, which we're going to kind of discuss a little bit later. But let's dive into that stuff now. Let's dive into the new stuff now. Let's do it. All right. So to

kick off today's new stuff episode, I want to go back to what the prosecution would say was the alleged motive for Michael Peterson to kill his wife, Kathleen. The motive was two-pronged, and the first prong was money. So the state claimed that part of Michael's motive was Kathleen's $1.8 million life insurance policy, and although the defense argued that Michael did have money, and he had just signed a huge deal to turn one of his books into a movie, the state would bring out proof that the Petersons were having personal financial difficulties. An expert from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, Raymond Young, testified that every year for three years before Kathleen's death, the Petersons had been spending about $100,000 more than they were bringing in. And when Kathleen died, the couple was carrying more than $142,000 in credit card and credit line debts. And this was stretched out over 20 active accounts. Now, this is actually very important.

Credit card and credit line debts. Keep that in mind. It also looked like Michael's two sons, Clayton and Todd, were in debt. And the interest on their loans was so high that they didn't have the money to actually live on. So Michael had emailed his first wife, Patty, 11 days before Kathleen died, asking her if she would take out a $30,000 home equity loan to help out their sons because he felt that he couldn't bring this predicament to his current wife. He said, quote, It would be a huge relief off my shoulders because I am worried sick about them. that he couldn't bring this predicament to his current wife. He said, quote, During the trial, Michael's defense team pointed out that Raymond Young, who had examined every check and deposit ticket made for 1999, 2000, and 2001,

had counted checks that were written to buy stocks as expenses, but he hadn't counted the sale of those stocks as normal income. That's a problem. When you sell your stocks and you get money back, you should be counting that as income. Raymond Young had also not counted thousands of dollars that had been put into Kathleen's account by her employer, Nortel, which they regularly did to reimburse her business expenses. And the defense team gave their opinion that Raymond Young's numbers were misleading. And using Young's own figures of the Petersons' assets, mortgage, liabilities, and credit card debt, the defense team showed that the Petersons together had a combined net worth of more than $1.4 million. On the stand, Raymond Young admitted that he'd also reached that $1.4

million net worth figure. So basically, from my understanding, and I did call my own accountant because I was confused and I was like, explain this to me. And I didn't give him any details about what I was talking about, but I was like, hey, this is the couple. This is what they're looking at. This is what the forensic accountant's saying. What's happening here? So basically, Raymond Young was looking at all of the debt, including mortgages and car loans. And since Michael and Kathleen lived in an expensive house and they drove expensive cars, it would be expected that they would have over $1,000 in debt based on their lifestyle. It's what you would expect to see. If you're driving an $80,000 car, you're not paying that in cash. You're going to have that as a debt, technically, even though you're paying it off every month. And even Raymond Young acknowledged

that the couple was worth over a million dollars as far as assets and like money in the bank. So there actually really was very little financial motivation for Michael to kill his wife for the money, especially considering he'd just gotten word that the money was going to start coming in, you know, from his like book being turned into a movie. And Kathleen still had a job where she was making money every year and she was worth more to him alive than dead. It's not as if she'd been fired or even that she was on the chopping block to get fired. So it really seemed like weird timing when he had just found out he was going to have this book turned into a movie and she was still holding on to her job. The defense team also hired their own financial expert who had formerly worked for the FBI. And this expert examined the Peterson assets, including six rental properties, which

brought in $5,000 a month. They examined the incomes, savings and investments, tax forms and liabilities, such as car payments and credit card debts. And this expert said that their credit card debt was too high and they should pay some of it off. But the Petersons were financially healthy, more financially healthy than most. And my accountant said similar things. When you have a high mortgage and you have high car payments, you're obviously not going to pay those things off. It's going to look like a negative. But in reality, it's just normal. That's what you would expect many American families to have. You know, we are all in debt. Yeah. I think all this stuff is important. I will, I will tell you, we'll save opinions as far as whether we think he's innocent or guilty till the end, but I have come to a spot in this

where I not, and this just kind of reaffirms it. Yeah, they had debt, but I do not think for all the reasons you just pointed out that if this was a premeditated murder, if you want to call it that, that the motive was financial, that he felt like you said it best. She was worth more alive than she was dead. There was more reoccurring money to come in and it wouldn't make sense that that would be the reason to kill her, especially after just finding out about this potential movie deal. So if you're to believe that Michael did this intentionally, I think it might be more so about his extracurricular activities that she was made aware of, as opposed to it being a financial motive, which is the case a lot of the times where police, that's the angle they'll go with. But I think you would see more. I think you would have more being put on by the prosecution where they would prove that Michael was doing research,

not only online, but maybe in person with his financial advisors to kind of find out hypotheticals, right? What if this happened? Would we be, things like that. And it doesn't seem like that was a part of this, this, this prosecution's case. It was more so just their financials, which to me, yeah, they had debt. But as you said, a lot of people do nothing crazy to me. So do you think the fact that his sons, Clayton and Todd were, were not doing well financially and Michael had to email his ex-wife, their mother, Patty and say, listen, can you help them out?

I can absolutely not go to Kathleen with this. Do you think that's suspicious? Because some people would say, well, maybe he killed Kathleen to get this money to help his sons because he couldn't go to her with it. At the end of the day, I'm thinking, why should he go to her with it? She's not their biological mother. Why wouldn't he go to their mother first and say, hey, can you help your sons, our sons, before I bring this to my wife who has her own daughter to worry about and two adopted daughters and we got a lot going on? Do you think it's because some people use this as motive like, well, he couldn't bring it to Kathleen. so he just killed her for the insurance money to help his sons yeah no I don't have an I don't have an issue with him doing it for the reasons you just laid out if it came to a situation where my kids needed something I would probably go to Jana over the person I was with currently you know what I mean I would go to her and say hey listen this is our responsibility I'm not going to put that burden on the person I'm

with now my significant other even if we're married're married, even if she's close to my kids. I would obviously go back to Jana, especially if I felt like she could contribute. That to me doesn't come off as odd at all. I know some people will disagree, but yeah, I'm with you on that one. Yeah. And we don't really know the dynamics. Maybe Kathleen had helped the boys out financially before. In the past. Yeah, exactly. Good point. Yeah. And they'd gotten themselves back in a hole. And so any normal person at that point is going to say like, no, I'm not going to keep throwing money at this problem when it keeps becoming a problem.

So that's probably maybe why he didn't feel comfortable going to Kathleen because she'd already pitched in and helped before. We don't know the dynamics of that, but I can't also see like, oh, my sons are in a bad financial position. Let me just kill my wife and fix all of this. So they have money. Seems like a stretch. Seems like a stretch. Yeah. I feel like what we're looking at too as a potential, as far as how the murder occurred, if it was for financial reasons, I feel like it could be a little bit more calculated. I know that really doesn't make sense on the surface, but financial, you're going to be a

little bit more methodical, a little bit more surgical. I feel like this was aggressive. I feel like there was some passion behind this killing, whether it's premeditated or not, where this was, if he did this, he was inflicting pain. He was angry at the time when he did it. I don't feel like this was a calculated move where he decided in advance, this is what I'm going to do and this is how I'm going to do it. And if we take out the blow poke for a second, because I feel like we can get past that at this point, then we're looking at a situation where he was whacking her head, strangling her potentially first, but then whacking her head off the stairs repeatedly. It doesn't sound like the way you would decide to carry out a premeditated murder. It sounds like there's some passion there. There's something going on internally, some emotion.

So yeah, I feel it doesn't fit. Motivers, the means that it was carried out seems kind of contradictory. Yeah, if he killed her for money, it would be premeditated. And if this murder was premeditated, it was one of those split second premeditations that Brett and I had discussed earlier where it was like, okay, I'm doing this. Which doesn't really make it premeditated, right? Because the financial things you're knowing about going ahead of time. See, to me, because that's a good important point to dissect here, right? If you're under the camp that it's

premeditated, then these financial burdens have been weighing on him for a long period of time. So if he's thinking about doing this, it's not in that moment where he's deciding to do it as opposed to a situation where he's having a decent night. She confronts him about something and he decides when she confronts him, I'm going to kill her. That's still premeditation. But I think that more based on the way it was carried out and more falls in line with something that he wasn't aware of up until that moment. And the financial stuff was something he was obviously very aware of well before that night. Yeah. I think that they weren't in trouble financially. I think his sons were in trouble financially and it bothered him because he's a parent and he wanted to help them as much as he could. But he also wasn't going to do it at a cost to his marriage or to have a fight with his wife over helping his sons again. I think that's why he felt he couldn't go to her with it because

he just didn't want to burden the marriage with that. I 100% don't believe if Michael Peterson killed his wife, I don't believe it was premeditated at all because that scene was a mess. Like if you're going to preplan it, you think you would preplan it a little bit better than it was. I do think that the wine bottles and the wine glasses, they were not staged. They were actually there because they'd been drinking that night. And I think that if she did confront him about the second motive, which we're going to talk about in a minute, it was a crime of passion. It was, you know, they'd been drinking, your inhibitions are down when you have alcohol, things were said, he got angry, maybe he felt shame. Like I did read something, I believe it was his brother,

Bill, who said that their father had found out that Michael liked boys when he was really young and he beat the shit out of him. So maybe he felt like that flash of shame again and it kind of had him lash out. So I don't think he planned this because if he had planned it, I would hope that he would plan it better than this because this scene was a mess. It was – yeah, not great. It sounds like something happened in the heat of the moment, the way this scene was carried out. It was more – it not great. Sounds like something happened in the heat of the moment, the way the scene was carried out. It wasn't like he was going into the night planning it. Something flipped a switch if he did this intentionally.

Something was going good, and then within a second, it was going really bad. So let's examine the next motive, the other prong, where the state claims that Michael Peterson flew into a rage and killed his wife because she had found out his dirty little secret, that he was a bisexual man who spent his time on the internet looking at pictures of other men and talking to other men. And, you know, I've already made it clear in my opinion, this is a much stronger motive, but it also does take away a little bit of that premeditation angle that the prosecution really hung their hat on. So when the police were in the Peterson home during

that second search warrant, they found sexually explicit emails and pictures on Michael's computer, but more than that, they found that Michael or someone that they assumed was Michael had printed out some of these pictures and emails and they were keeping them inside a file in his desk alongside some of Kathleen's things, including a tax appraisal of the house that they lived in, Kathleen's cell phone bill from Sprint, and her flex benefit confirmation statement from Nortel. So it was Durham's assistant district attorney, David Sachs, who presented the evidence of Michael's sexuality to the judge, arguing that it should be allowed into trial and saying that it was the best rebuttal to the defense's claims that Michael and Kathleen had a storybook marriage. David Sachs said, quote, the fact that we brought the pornography

into the trial was to corroborate that this is where Peterson's interest was. The main thing was to show proof of marital infidelity because it was a possible motive for murder, but also because it would bust what the defense brought up in the opening statement about this being the ideal marriage and them being soulmates, end quote. But the thing is, the prosecution never did really present any proof that there had been an affair or an infidelity. They simply showed that Michael liked to surf the internet for male porn, usually military male porn. And, you know, he had spoken to a mal escort named Brent Wolgamott, a 28-year-old North Carolina State University chemistry student who I believe he was also in the army.

And he went by the name Brad on a website where men can find other men for conversations or more. And you actually have some personal experience with Brent, right? Yeah. Well, first off, the way you said that, you're wrong for that. You're wrong for that. And you know what you did there. But that aside, because this isn't a light situation, we've said it numerous times. I think everyone knows by now.

I was on a show called Big Brother before. Brent, he was the host of a very popular podcast. Rob has a podcast. Shout out to them. They're like the reality TV podcast. And Brent was a commentator on the house guests. I don't know if he's even still doing it, but he was doing it when I was on. And he was actually a supporter of mine.

I think for the most part, I'm sure he was critical of me at certain points, but I think I've been interviewed by him or by the team a couple times. I did not know this at the time. I did become aware of it when the Netflix doc dropped. I think that it started to get out there and like the big brother Twitter verse, but I've never spoken to him about it. I don't have like a personal relationship with him. I'm sure I could have reached out to him for this, but I didn't feel it was necessary. I think you kind of have it covered, but yeah, it's amazing. It's a small world that you wouldn't think that I would somehow have a tie to this. I guess you would call it that. Although it's very tenuous, tenuous. Yeah. It's yeah. But yeah, it's he's he's connected to it.

And he was a big part of the Netflix doc. And I think he's pretty open about it, talking about it. I've seen stuff on social. So he doesn't he doesn't hide away from it. And I think he was a critical part to this case based on what you're saying now. As far as motive, this is an angle that they were going with. And I think he was he was he was a key witness in that. So all jokes aside, because I'm sure you're loving this by the way loving loves you man

oh right i don't know i don't know we're gonna have to go back there's gonna be there's big brother fans in the comments i i he might be critical of me i think he obviously is appreciated the game i played but i don't know if he's a fan of me personally or not i don't know i think he's a fan i think he's a fan from what I could tell from what I could tell online. Were you researching it? Yeah. You're like, you know, you're like a daddy bear. He will know about this and he will 100% be commenting on it on Twitter. So we will find out whether he's a fan or not. I hope he will. Cause I want to say that I really, really appreciate Brent in this situation because he was upfront and he was

honest. And we're going to talk a little bit about it. But remember, he was a prosecution witness. So when he's testifying, he's brought in by the defense, but he still kept his integrity, even though they did, you know, especially Frida Black, man, she's just, listen, she's no longer alive. So I feel bad. I don't like to talk negatively about people who have passed, but she was just awful, awful during this trial. She made herself look bad. She was awful. And she kind of tried to like pull him in the dirt and he kept his integrity and he was honest about what had happened between him and Michael. So I'll talk a little bit about it and let you know. But basically, when he was asked in court what kind of services he performed, Brent said, quote, oh, wow, that's pretty broad. Basically, it's companionship for other men of legal age, end quote. And Frida Black was like, does that include sex? And he's like, yeah, you know, two adults can have sex and it's not like a crazy thing, even if they're both men, you know, because Frida Black was like very upfront in this, you know that Michael was on the internet like talking to other men in a sexual way. She was outwardly disgusted by this.

And she was like, the jury is going to be disgusted like I am. And she was just kind of a bitch. So he was like, yes, that can include sex or it can include dinner. You know, it's whatever they want. And I charge $150 an hour. And I have a long list of male clients from doctors to lawyers who pay me to spend time with me before going back to their straight laced married lives as husbands and professionals. So basically, Brent was saying, like, listen, some of my clients are straight men outwardly in the public eye, but with me, they are free to be themselves.

And a lot of my clients use me for that. And I get paid well for it. What's wrong with that? And basically, Michael Peterson and Brent, they began communicating via email in late August of 2001. And at that time, Brent was in college and also in the Army. And they exchanged about 20 emails between the end of August and the end of September. But the bulk of their communication, minus one email, was literally just in about a week period.

Michael emailed Brett on August 30th, and they talked about how hot Brett was and how he should contact a guy in Palm Springs who was known as the Porn King. And Michael said that Brett was perfect for the Porn King's films because he had that USMC soldier look. And Michael told Brent that he would be happy to guide him down any new path. And that really meant anything, whether the young man wanted to stay in college and pursue a career, or if he wanted to travel to Palm Springs and be in adult films. Brent even mentioned being interested in dentistry. And Michael told him he knew some people in the industry who could give him some pointers and get him started. So a lot of their communication did seem to be, I hate to say it, but almost like fatherly, like mentor,

mentee stuff, like an older guy trying to help a younger guy out. But yes, they did talk about sex. And Michael had written once, quote, you're not looking for a relationship and neither am I. We each have lives. I understand we're in a client relationship and I'm paying for the services. No problem. If we get together, I'll pay for the time. End quote. And Michael and Brent did make a plan to get together at an airport hotel on September 5th before Brent flew out of North Carolina to California. It seemed to be just a tentative plan and it never ended up happening. Brent said he was tired on that day. And so he just never reached out. And then, you know, 9-11 happened and he got shipped out with the army. So he wasn't actually able to contact Michael again until September 30th, at which point he was able to explain what happened.

But he never with a man. That's, you know, purely a transactional thing. But when the day came, he didn't really push the issue. He wasn't like blowing Brent up and being like, where are you? Why aren't you answering me? I'm at the hotel waiting for you. Where are you? Why aren't you answering me? I'm at the hotel waiting for you. Where are you? You know, it was probably something he just kind of like was playing around with when he was on the internet and maybe the day came and he was like,

I don't really feel super good about this. I'm not going to follow up. Like I kind of, you know, dared myself and tried it. But at the end of the day, I don't feel like this is something I can do. It didn't work out. Let me use this as a sign. You know, maybe it's not meant to be. Yeah. And as far as what Brenton was doing, that is the way around it. Right. Where you have individuals in this particular field where they're not, the clients aren't

paying for sex. That would be illegal. Right. So what they do is they, they charge them for their time to be present with them. And that could mean a lot of things. It could be a conversation. It may lead to sex, but cuddling,

it could be a lot of things. So the, it is not illegal to pay someone to spend time with you in your own, in a hotel room or in your own residence. That's not illegal. So that is the loophole. So a lot of times that's how these things happen where, Nope, we disagreed on a, on an amount for me to spend time with them.

That's it. Nothing illegal about it. I think they call it like the girlfriend experience. Well, in this case, the boyfriend experience. There you go. Yeah, exactly. And even going forward, Brent said that in his opinion, Michael seemed to have a lot of love and affection for his wife, Kathleen. David Rudolph asked Brent if Michael had said or done anything to make Brent feel like Michael didn't love his wife.

And Brent said, quote, to the contrary, in his email, unlike most of my clients, he indicated that they had a great relationship. Most clients don't want to say anything about their relationship. He indicated that he had a warm relationship with his wife and nothing would ever destroy that. End quote. Once again, keep in mind, Brent was a prosecution witness. And in one email, Michael Peterson had made it clear that he was bisexual and he was sexually attracted to men, but quote, I've got a dynamite wife who I love, end quote. So really, like I said, this seems to me like, you know, I think it would, I feel like it would suck to be bisexual or to be attracted to like, you know, somebody other than who

you're with and feel like you couldn't explore that because of, you know, somebody other than who you're with and feel like you couldn't explore that because of, you know, whatever society, whatever constraints society had put on you. And so you've got to have this sort of like outlet. And I think that talking to Brent for Michael was probably enough. It gave him a little ego boost. Like, yeah, this young guy is interested in me. Like he wants to meet up with me.

I can help him. Like maybe I can help him. Maybe I can form this relationship. But at the end of the day, I still think he didn't feel quite right about stepping out on Kathleen at the end of the day. That's in my opinion, because there's nobody that's come forward who's been legitimate, who's been like, yeah, me and Michael Peterson were doing the dirty deeds while he was married to Kathleen. No one. Well, and that's that's that's what's really important here.

Right. Because at the end of the day, if you're looking at this from, again, as a murder, when we're looking at motive, he wasn't even in our actual relationship with anyone. As far as we know, like you said, nobody came forward. So you would expect that if he was seeing someone and they were having an active relationship with each other more than just talking online, then yeah, maybe he wants to pursue that relationship. So he has to get rid of the first one. And instead of doing it the right way, sometimes people choose this route because they can get out of it and they can maybe get some financial benefit out of it as well. So yeah, that would make sense. He's in love with someone else.

He's pursuing whether man or woman doesn't really matter. He's in an active relationship with someone else and he's trying to remove himself from his existing marriage. But this doesn't on the surface doesn't seem like that. So you're going to go and kill your wife over the fact that you're watching some porn and you're talking to a guy online. I don't, I don't, I'm, that seems like a stretch for me. It does seem like stretch for me. over the fact that you're watching some porn and you're talking to a guy online, I don't, I don't, I'm, that seems like a stretch for me.

It does seem like stretch for me. And even going forward, like the whole, he killed her because she found out seems like a stretch. Cause I feel like even that's, you know, if you can work through, you know, your run of the mill affair, why can't you work through the fact that like, yeah, sometimes you like to look at porn on the internet and maybe you're not looking at boobs. You're looking at other stuff. You know, men look at porn on the internet. Like, I think I would have a problem if I found out like my husband was talking to an escort and trying to plan like, why are you shaking your head? Never looked at porn. Don't know what you're talking about. Don't generalize us. Okay. I don't look at porn. I repeat myself. Men look at porn on the internet. This is something that just you know is understood

No judgment, no judgment Not at all, but it's understood. I'm gonna look at porn, too We do. Yeah Putting it out there. That's fine. We weren't talking about women. Where we talking about women talk about both Everyone look everyone looks at porn people look at porn. There we go. There we go. That's fine. We weren't talking about women. Were we talking about women? Talking about both. Everyone looks at porn. People look at porn on the internet. There we go. There we go. And that's okay. All right. But it's not marriage ending. I mean, I guess in some marriages, if you're super religious or whatever, maybe that would be a deal breaker. I feel like I have to qualify everything because there's always going to be somebody who's like, actually, it did end my marriage. But listen, typically, it's not marriage

ending. I would have a problem if my husband was reaching out to escorts and planning something. But also, there's a discussion that happens. And then maybe he's like, yeah, I did. I feel like shit about it. But I didn't go through with it and I wouldn't have. And let's go to therapy or something. Right. It's not like, oh, you found out that I look at like men naked online. So now I have to kill you. Yeah.

What? Yeah. And that's what we'd be looking at here, where if it's premeditated, she confronted him about this and it was enough for him to feel like if she exposed this information to outside parties, it could affect him personally, professionally, whatever he thought. And that was enough for him to kill her. That's what, that's the leap you have to make that her exposing whatever limited stuff that she found, which probably would have just been emails, maybe a search history. That was enough for him to go, oh my God, no chance at recovering from this.

Yeah. I have to, I have to make sure the only person who knows my secret is no longer here to tell it. And that seems like a crazy leap because at the end of the day too, you're looking at the fact, well, I guess like the prosecution isn't worried that he, they're saying Michael's not worried that it's going to like get out necessarily, but Kathleen's going to say, I'm done. And she's the one making the money. So his quality of life is going to change. His book just got picked up to be turned into a movie. And who knows what would have happened from there? Now he's got the Hollywood contacts. He's in with that scene. He could have had more books turned into movies, but we know at least he's getting money from that. So she had a really big problem with it. At that point, he could have been like, listen, I love you, but this is who I am and I'm not going

to cheat on you, but I can't change who I am at my core. And if you have a problem with that, then I guess we shouldn't be together. And now I have my own money coming in and I don't technically need to depend on you financially. It just seems like a stupid time to kill your wife because she found out that you like to look at men naked and you talk to an escort. These are normal marital problems that many, many, many couples have solved and then remained together. And if they were as close as everybody around them made it seem as if they were, and I mean, you can kind of tell they did love each other. They seem to be very good with each other and have a good connection.

You would think at least there'd be some conversation where he'd be like, you know, go on your business trip. When you get back, we'll talk about it more. And if you really just can't do it, like there's nothing else I can say. But I don't see Kathleen going out there like posting in the paper like my husband is bisexual and didn't tell me he's talking to escorts. I think she would have kept that private. So it really would only be like their relationship that would be affected. You know what I mean? I'm like still struggling to see like any good motive. Well, this and we have to remind people this would be for premeditated murder. There's a difference. He could still have killed her

intentionally without any previous motive. It could have been something that happened in that moment that led him to killing her intentionally. So we're just covering the idea that there's something that happened that triggered this and he decided, I'm going to kill her because of this. It could have been just a fight that escalated and he got so angry, a crime of passion, where he started assaulting her. And as he's assaulting her, he's realizing what he's doing and the ramifications of that getting out. And he decides to take it further because he doesn't want her to eventually disclose what he did to her. But I just don't, I don't see any evidence that this is a violent man who makes a habit of lashing out violently and not having control of himself. There was never any incident

of that happening before. It could be the first time. I'm with you. You haven't presented anything that says that he has a pattern of this behavior, but maybe this was the final time where he snapped it's out of character which is out of character but he just something maybe it's the totality of everything we're talking about maybe his him questioning his sexuality maybe it's financial maybe it's some other things we haven't discussed maybe it's the kids having trouble and having to go to a previous spouse to reach out to help from her and that could be embarrassing and then he's fighting with politicians and all these other people. And then all of a sudden his wife says something in the moment, he's got a couple of drinks in him and he pisses,

she pisses him off. There's a argument that leads to get a little violent. And then as, as it gets violent, he's realizing he hurt her. And now he decides to go further with it because of what he's already done. Again, that's a lot of, that's a lot of what ifs. That's what I was just going to say. That's a lot of maybes, man. That's a lot of maybes to throw at me. And like, listen, you don't know how badly

I want to cave into the pressure and just be like, this guy's guilty of sin because people are yelling at me in the comments and people are not happy with the fact there's a lot of people. It's crazy to me how many people are just like right immediately like on, yeah, he definitely did it. No doubt about it. And that is because of the way the prosecution presented this and how many lies they put out as facts during this trial. Like that's what you guys don't understand. The whole red neuron things, people are like, oh, the red neurons. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind he did it. Those red neurons could happen just from trauma from her falling down the stairs. Like red neurons doesn't mean someone got murdered, but they made

it seem in the trial like the red neurons only happen when someone gets murdered. Like they presented that evidence and that information in such a biased, slanted, sensationalized way. And that's what everybody remembers. They don't remember him taking the Alford plea because he didn't get a second trial because he was too scared to go to a second trial because he thought he was going to get railroaded again, honestly. And like, I would love to say, hey, guys, I'm totally on board, like, because I don't want to I don't want people to, like, be mad at me, honestly. But I'm having a really hard time saying

even 50% of the way that he did this. I'm not even halfway there. I can't see a motive. And I don't, I really just, I don't see a motive. I don't. Well, I will tell you where I stand because we're halfway through this episode and we only got one to go.

I'll tell you where I'm leaning after we take a quick break. How about that? Take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right. So we're back from break. I'm foreshadowing a little bit here, but I will say for me, as I'm evaluating it, I'm having a hard time putting emphasis on expert testimony, Michael's testimony, because as you laid out at length last episode, you have Henry Lee going against, what's the other guy's name? I forget. It begins with a D. Dwayne. Dwayne Deaver.

Deaver? Yeah. Leave it to Deaver. They both have a different interpretation of the blood spatter. So I'm just like, you know what? Let me pull up the photos myself. And in looking at the photos, if you told me, draw what you would expect the blood to be like for a woman who accidentally fell down the stairs and bled out because her husband didn't get to her in time.

I would not draw a pattern like you see in those photos where most of the blood in my brain would be a pooling, would be leaking out of her head because, yeah, there could be some spray. But most of her injuries that were bleeding were in the back of her head and they were covered by hair. So the idea of spraying occurring to me seems unlikely. And so I would expect to see a crime scene where there would be a lot of pooling. There would obviously be a lot of blood. She bled out, but it would mostly be on the floor and on the stairs and not on the walls. And so for me as a non blood spatter expert, I have a hard time rationalizing the fact that if you go look at these photos, we're going to probably throw them up right here. Trigger

warning. It's for some of you, it may be tough to look at, but there's a lot of blood spatter on the walls, like a spray, like a high velocity spray. It's not really going in a linear pattern, but it's still droplets like a spray. And to me, that is more suggestive of some type of cast off, not necessarily from a weapon, but maybe from her head being bounced off the stairs multiple times. And the, the blood that's on her hair spraying onto the wall as she's being assaulted and being struck off the staircase multiple times. I'm not anywhere near 100%. You said 50. I would say 65 for me that he did intentionally kill her. But I do think if he did, it was a crime of passion where it was a physical assault where he might have pushed her or something and then proceeded to continue to do it because of what had already transpired and he couldn't stop himself.

And it may have been a case where he started to strangle her, which I think a lot of people do believe based on the cartilage damage. And he started to strangle her and then that wasn't working. So he escalated the level of violence. That's where I'm leaning right now. We still got more to go. But I can tell you that based on what you covered the first half, I'm nowhere near the fact that this guy intended on killing her this night. And one of the two reasons you laid out was the reason behind it. I just I'm not there at all.

Okay. Yeah. I made a note to myself to look back at those blood spatter photos. The photos. It's low. It's low to the ground, but I would say maybe a foot, foot and a half from the ground. There's some blood spatter on that one specific wall. If you're looking at the photos right now and there's droplets. And to me, like I said, if I were to draw the crime scene for someone who is bleeding out slowly over time, I would expect

the blood to be the majority of it to be on the floor or on the stairs. Now, maybe a blood spatter expert is going to come out and call me out for that. But I think that's what I would expect to see. And I feel like it's reasonable based on my understanding of cast off. But again, depending on who you talk to, I'm sure just like Henry Lee and Deaver, two quote unquote experts, two separate opinions. Well, what if she was attacked by an owl, man? Very good point. We haven't gotten there yet. It's a great point. We're going to talk about that next episode. Okay. Owl coming at you. I love owls, by the way. So cool.

You love owls? They're so cool. I was watching a video from one of my buddies who put up an owl box today on Instagram. And he finally had an owl show up. And it's so cool. He's got a camera inside of it. How big is the owl? It's pretty small.

Pretty small. So not like an owl that would attack a human. Not like the owl we're going to probably cover in this series. No, but like the small cute ones, man. I think they're cool looking. And they have such big personalities. I don't know if they're cool. Dude, I don't know if anybody remembers The Secret of NIMH.

Okay. Probably not many people, but it was a movie, a cartoon movie that I watched a lot when I was a kid. The Secret of NIMH. I've been terrified of owls since then because the owl was the villain. Okay. If you haven't watched The Secret of Nimh, check it out. Lots of cute mice and scary mean owls. So I'm going to have to check out the owl box because I need to reevaluate the way I look at owls because they terrify the shit out of me. Okay. Yeah. We're different ends of the spectrum there. Owls, man. They look at you with no soul in their eyes. They would do anything to you.

I think they look at you with curiosity. Like, what are you looking at? What's your problem? They would do anything to you. They look at you like they don't even know why you're there. I feel that too. They're like, why are you here? What are you doing? Do you want me to stare back at you? We're going to have a staring contest right now. I can do that. I could turn my head all the way around too. So even when you don't think I'm, I know you're there.

I know you're there. Yo, they can do that, man. They can. It's not even right. It's like the exorcist. See,

there's something, there's something real malicious about owls. I'm going to tell you right now. Pete is coming after us. Let's talk about another controversial figure that entered the fray. And this was a man named Dennis Rowe. So Dennis Rowe had been a childhood friend of Kathleen Peterson's. He'd grown up on the same street as Kathleen in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he'd also attended Duke University. So Dennis, for some reason,

inserted himself into this case, and he told the DA's office that he and Michael Peterson had been intimate together in the back of a sex shop. So basically, he said they had had sex in the sex shop. And he also provided a list of names of other men that he claimed had been sexually active with Michael Peterson. He pretty much said like, oh yeah, Michael Peterson's just running through the gay community. And if you want to know who he's been with, then ask this guy named Tyrone LaCour, who Dennis Rowe claimed Michael Peterson had also slept with. So Michael Peterson, he claimed to know who Dennis Rowe was through his wife, Kathleen, but he'd never had sex with him and he'd never heard the name Tyrone LaCour. So Rowe was actually never used as a witness during the

trial, most likely because they couldn't prove anything that he was saying, and on November 23, 2004, Dennis Rowe left his job in the IT Department of the United States Postal Service, claiming that he felt ill. Later that day, when a friend went by Rowe's place to check on him, they found him stuffed in a trash can. His head was covered by a plastic bag, his hands were tied behind him him and parts of his body were wrapped with duct tape. Dennis had been beaten and stabbed and his cause of death was ruled blunt force trauma. Actually, it turned out he had some similar injuries to Kathleen Peterson, most notably his head injuries, which were lacerations without skull fractures. And this initially raised questions as to whether or not the two deaths could have been connected. Like, maybe Michael Peterson went after Dennis Rowe for exposing him. But that didn't end up being

what happened here because for the next two days, police collected evidence from Rowe's house, including bloody handcuffs and bloody duct tape. And eventually, they decided that Dennis Rowe had been murdered by his roommate, none other than Tyrone LaCour. LaCour was already suspected of killing another man, Eric Pennebaker. In 2001, Pennebaker had also been Tyrone LaCour's roommate, and Tyrone had told responding officers that Eric Pennebaker had poured gasoline over his head and set himself on fire. And that death was eventually ruled as a suicide, although law enforcement believes that Tyrone got away with Pennebaker's murder, and then he did it again to Dennis Rowe. So Tyrone LaCour was finally arrested and charged with Dennis Rowe's murder in 2006

after two years on the run. And in January of 2009, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and then he spent 16 years in prison. But when he was released in June of 2020, at that time he was in his 60s, Tyrone LaCour continued to re-offend, and he was charged with two counts of second degree forcible sexual offense in Orange County in December of 2021. So what do these two guys have to do with Michael Peterson? Really nothing, but basically Dennis Rowe made it seem like they had something to do with him. And the question is, why? And I wonder, did someone like Tyrone LaCour, could he have gone in and hurt Kathleen Peterson? Peterson. He seemed kind of unstable and violent. But then again, we don't have any bloody footprints running away from the scene. So probably not an outsider. I think they kind of already ruled that out. But the question is, why did Dennis Rowe insert himself in this way when he was a childhood

friend of Kathleen's? Why would he do that knowing that nothing he was saying was true? Who knows? Sometimes you wonder why people do the things they do and most rational people can't explain it. And that's why. I wonder if it was because he was like, I want to make sure Michael Peterson goes away for this because he did this to Kathleen. To my friend. Yeah. So I have to somehow solidify the evidence against him, even though I'm not sure how, you know, claiming that Michael Peterson is sleeping with all these these guys in town is going to get him convicted of murder, especially when they find out it's not true. Right. Yeah.

No, I mean, it could be for the reason you just said. Pretty simple. Simple. Right. My friend was killed by this guy. Doesn't he might walk on it. I'm going to help. I'm going to do what for her, what she would have done for me by trying to help make this stick. It's not right. But again, if everyone

did what was right all the time, we'd be in a lot better position society-wise. Yeah, I agree. But still, it just doesn't make sense to me. But unfortunately, Dennis Rowe did become the victim of a violent crime himself by the same guy that he named. I wonder if Tyrone LaCour was like, you know, don't talk about my name in like these, you know, legal cases or something. Like, why would you bring my name up? And maybe that's what made him mad.

I don't know. But either way, Dennis Rowe is gone and Tyrone LaCour got out of prison and then, you know, kept hurting people. So here we are. Now, going back to Michael Peterson's computer activity, the thing that seemed the most suspicious to the prosecution was the fact that many files had been deleted by someone in the Peterson household. Todd Markley, a computer expert who worked for an Ohio-based company called CompuSleuth. Markley would later testify that someone, most likely Michael Peterson, had used a program called QuickClean to delete 2,500 pictures and files. Some of the files had been deleted on December 8th, and more files were deleted on December 11th, two days after Kathleen's death. Markley testified that during the week of Kathleen's death, Michael had basically tried to wipe the entire computer clean and then selectively reload

certain programs and emails back onto the computer. But this same computer expert, under cross-examination, admitted that if Kathleen had seen the pictures and used the computer after her phone call with Helen Presslinger, he couldn't see any evidence of it. The crux of the issue was the prosecution claiming that Kathleen had found the pictures and or the emails and confronted Michael, and during an argument that followed, she ended up dead. Now, Michael Peterson said that wasn't much of a motive considering Kathleen knew about his sexuality. She always had. He also made it clear that he'd never outright told her that he was bisexual. He said he and Kathleen didn't have conversations about his sexuality, but she would make comments here and there that let him know that she knew. I kind of want to go

back because as I was saying that, I was thinking about something. What if Kathleen didn't find the stuff on the computer? What if she found the stuff that was in the file that he'd printed out that he kept in his desk? What if she didn't find the stuff in the computer? It's possible. I personally think that Kathleen, I don't think this is even up for debate, was a very intelligent woman. Yes.

And based on what some other people have said, it wasn't this like dark, deep secret that Michael had an interest in men. Right. I feel like Kathleen, as intelligent as she was living with Michael, would probably pick up on this as well and would be aware of it. And maybe it would be something that wasn't spoken about openly. But as you just said, she might have made comments about certain times because obviously, whether it's a male or a female, who loves the idea of their spouse or significant other being attracted to other people when you're living under the same house with you. So I feel like it might have been this underlying issue that might have this resentment about this. And it might've been brought up in certain conversations. I personally don't feel like maybe something was necessarily

found out about that night that led to this. It could have just been a lot of things that were adding up and piling up. And when you started, they started drinking a little bit. Some of those thoughts that you had suppressed maybe came out and maybe they were having an argument, a discussion that turned into an argument. But like you said, it could have been this paper file, but this tangible item that she could have found in his desk and looked at, but it doesn't appear digitally she had found something. So I don't know if the night was going great. And then she found something that changed that, that altered the trajectory of the night, or she was just having multiple thoughts in her head and her heart. She got a couple of drinks in her. He was drinking a little

bit. Maybe some comments were made. Maybe they weren't as well received as they might be on other occasions. And an argument ensued. So maybe Kathleen knew, you know, deep down that he was bisexual, but maybe she didn't know that he was. You think she knew? I think she knew. I think she's smart enough. She she's a businesswoman, right? Like she she's someone who, again, she's a very intelligent person. And I feel like she's probably had to read people in the past based on where she's gotten to in her life, you know, based on some of the hurdles she had to jump through.

I feel like she would know her husband based on some of the comments he made or maybe she found the search history in the past. She could have been just surfing the internet on her own months prior and saw something, you know, that was searched for that wasn't her and said, you know, here we go. And like I said, other people were aware of it. So I don't see how she would be oblivious and not have any idea that this could be a preference of Michael's. So let me tell you how smart some people can be in life and how stupid they can be when it comes to love and matters of the heart i think that's really also something that needs to be taken into consideration because you can be completely like this badass you know business woman like kicking ass and taking names but then you go home and you know maybe you overlook some things because you don't have the time to deal

with it right now or maybe you could overlook them doesn't don't have the time to deal with it right now. You could overlook them. It doesn't mean you're not aware of them. Yeah. Yeah. You're not aware of them. Yeah. You could be in her professional life.

She might see something that's wrong and say, hey, this is wrong. But do you think there's a level of like denial or maybe like she knew he was interested in both men and women, but she didn't know he was actually like contacting people online, you know, and that kind of brought it to a whole new level. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't out there from what we know, sleeping with other people. So I feel like those cues that you would, whether it was a male or a female, if you're significant others cheating on you, there are things you'll see they're out late at night. They always come home smelling like someone else that, you know, whatever the traditional reasons are that you start to suspect that your significant other is seeing someone else.

It doesn't appear he was doing that. So other than some online conversations, some tech, whatever it was digital, there wasn't anything obvious to her that he was, he was cheating on her. So she, she might just think it was a fetish and he was looking it up online when she wasn't around. And he was, she may have said, Hey, I'm aware of it, but I'm not going to look too deep into it. I don't like it, but there, it could be worse, I guess. Okay. Listen, what he said in the staircase though, because it does make it seem like maybe he was out there doing something. So he, he said, quote, But that had absolutely nothing to do with not loving Kathleen or loving her less. End quote.

Doesn't that kind of sound like he's sleeping with other people when he's with her? It does. It does sound like that. Or it could be just what he was doing online. But something I did, I skated over something that you pointed out, which is incredibly important to the case, which is the fact that somebody forensically examined the computer after the fact. And it was clear based on their professional expertise that someone, we assume Michael, because Kathleen was no longer alive, went on and specifically deleted things like this that was incriminating.

And that tells me a couple of things and it gets speculation, but if it was premeditated and that was a reason behind it, you would think he would delete those things prior to the incident because he'd want to clean these certain situations up before police get involved because he knows police are about to get involved. It also tells me that possibly this whole situation was part of the argument. Maybe it was the initial part of it or maybe it was the final straw where it became violent. But something made him think about the fact that, oh man, when police start looking into this, this might lead them down a path that I don't want them to go. So after this happens, he's thinking about why it happened. Maybe it was spur of the moment, but he's reliving it and realizing a point of contention was his

extracurricular activities. And so he went back and tried to clean it up after the fact. So I do think this shows some sign of maybe this was more criminal than accidental, and it may give us some insight into what the argument might've been about on that night. Or, or bear with me because I mean, technically he did delete stuff before she died, right? He deleted stuff on the 8th. Right. And she died early in the morning on the 9th. So technically. Technically, you could have some form of premeditation or is he just trying to cover his tracks?

Like a lot of guys who watch porn and stuff. Not me, not me. Not you. But some guys who watch porn may delete it off their search history, may delete it off things because they don't want their wife going on the computer and finding out what they were looking at.

Yeah, I don't even bother. I don't bother to delete that off my search history because I feel like if my husband stumbled upon it, he'd be like, oh, that's great. You know, different strokes for different folks. You know, exactly. Exactly. But but check it out. Like, go down with me. We got two things that are that are in my head.

One, he knew he was innocent, but he knew they were suspecting him. So he was like, I got to get all this shit off because it's A, going to either look like a motive or B, if it doesn't look like a motive, it's going to be embarrassing for me. And I'm not ready to tell my truth and I'm not ready for this to be public. So I don't want it to come out in this way in like an investigation from the police or B, right? B, he did start deleting stuff on the 8th in anticipation, maybe not for killing her, but in anticipation for, you know, she had been suspicious of something. They'd already had a conversation about it and he didn't want her to start prying further and find more stuff. So maybe she'd already found something and he was like, okay,

she found something that made her mad. But if she like keeps looking for shit, she's going to find stuff that's going to make her more mad. So I'm just going to start deleting stuff so she doesn't find anything else because I don't want her to get upset and like, I don't want this to become a thing. So it could be completely innocent or it could be premeditation. Yeah. This is like a lot of the cases we do, right? Depending on what camp you're in, you can take the same piece of information and interpret it two different ways.

And that's welcome to the judicial system, right? It happened in this case, not by Stephanie and I, but by two qualified experts, if you want to call them that, you know, but two experts that were qualified by the court to testify as experts. And yet they both have differing opinions on one particular thing that I think most of us blood spatter would think, oh, that's a science, right? Nope. Wrong. Wrong. So yeah, when you talk about the behavior of a human being as, as it relates to something like this, pick your poison. And I mean, I was talking to Brett about that earlier and I was like, it kind of sucks because you've got all of these seasoned older guys in this kind of arena that they basically created. You've got the Henry Lees and the Warner Spitzes and all of them,

and they basically created this and laid the groundwork for younger people to come in and make this their career. And I feel like a lot of these older guys are screwing it up for everyone because now they're considered to be for hire experts and they're making the science work for whatever narrative whoever's paying the bill wants them to say. And you're screwing up this whole, which forensic blood spatter and all of this, all of these forensics can be very cool and very useful if used properly and looked at objectively. But when you start messing with it and flexing it and turning it and twisting it to make it fit a narrative, you're corrupting it and you're screwing everybody who's coming after you, which you've paved the way for them.

And now they have to deal with your bullshit because even Dr. Henry Lee, I love him, but he's had a bunch of cases overturned lately or a bunch of cases have been overturned because of his testimony in recent years. So you do have all this scandal and controversy with a field that could be so helpful to the criminal justice system if it was just used objectively and looked at as what it is and not a perfect science and not like a roadmap to the answer, because it's never going to be that. It's a helpful aid. It's not a complete map of how to get to the answer of what happened and who did it. So as you had mentioned previously, there did seem to be other people who were aware of Michael's sexuality.

So Michael's brother Bill claimed that he knew his brother was bisexual and he'd known since they were kids. Michael's ex Patty also claimed she was aware of this, and their son, Todd, said that he knew as well. The problem was the prosecution had no evidence that Kathleen was or wasn't aware of her husband's sexuality, even though her sisters vehemently claimed that there was no way Kathleen would have known and not said something or known and been okay with it. Either way, the prosecution had no proof one way or the other, and they also had no proof of an actual physical affair or infidelity. But despite that, I do think that this whole thing really influenced the jury in this case, as did the next bombshell, which was the death of Elizabeth Ratliff, the biological mother of Michael's two adopted daughters, Martha and Margaret. So we touched on this briefly in part one, but when Michael was living in Frankfurt, Germany with his first wife, Patty, he and Patty had become friends with Elizabeth and George Ratliff. And then when both George and Elizabeth died,

they also became the parents to the Ratliff's two young daughters. Now, Elizabeth was actually originally from Cumberland, Rhode Island, which is your stomping grounds, but she had left, I think what she was like in her early 20s, because she was passionate about music and culture, and she loved being able to go to museums and concerts and not have to worry about Western materialism and puritanical expectations that she'd experienced after being raised by nuns in a Catholic school. Now, we did already talk briefly about Elizabeth and George Ratliff, how they'd fallen in love, gotten married, had two daughters before George's sudden and unexpected death in 1983. Now, after

George's death, Liz became even closer to the Petersons and in a way more dependent on them for, you know, stability and help and emotional support. Michael helped her plan her husband's funeral, and she and her two daughters moved into a house right down the street from the Petersons. Because Michael and Liz had been always close and friendly, he sort of became like a proxy husband to her, a proxy male figure in her household. He would help her out when he could with repairs. He would take the garbage out, things like that. And Michael's ex-wife, Patty, said that the whole family would often share meals together with

Elizabeth Ratliff and her daughters so that Elizabeth would feel like she wasn't alone. And Patty said that Liz and Michael had a, quote, loving, almost familial relationship, end quote. However, everyone around Liz Ratliff could tell that she was devastated after her husband died and in a way she had lost her will to live. She went to Texas for her husband's funeral and it was there that she told her sister-in-law Connie that she wished to join George in death before even going back to Germany after his funeral. She asked the Petersons and other friends to remove her belongings from the

cottage that she shared with her husband because she felt like she couldn't go back there. And when her friends tried to console her and tell her that this too would pass, Liz would respond, you don't understand. He was the love of my life. It was around seven in the morning on November 25th, 1985, when a woman who had been working for Liz as a nanny arrived at the house and found Liz dead in a puddle of blood at the bottom of the staircase of her home. Now, this detail has actually been questioned because Michael's first wife, Patty, said there was nothing off about this scene when she walked in the next morning. She said nothing was out of place. Nothing was wrong except that Liz was no longer alive.

And she said there was no puddle of blood. Now, Liz's sister, Margaret Blair, said that Michael Peterson had called her to inform her of her sister's death the same day, and he said that Liz had accidentally fallen down the stairs. Michael told her that the night before Liz was found, she and the girls had gone to the Peterson home for dinner, and then he and his wife, Patricia, had walked Liz and the girls back to their house so they could help Liz get the girls ready for bed, put them in bed, and Michael would take out the trash. An autopsy was performed two days later on November 27th, and it was determined that Liz Ratliff had died from

quote, intracranial hemorrhage, cerebral brainstem secondary to von Willebrand coagulation abnormality. Scalp lacerations secondary to terminal fall. End quote. The investigation concluded there were no signs of foul play, and it was determined that Liz had suffered from von Willebrand's disease, a lifelong bleeding disorder in which your blood does not clot properly. Most people are born with this disease because it's genetic, but often they don't even know they have it for years

until warning signs such as heavy bleeding after a dental procedure are detected. Now, Patty, Michael's first wife, who was present when the German medical examiner arrived, said, quote, I was sitting here directly observing when the German medical examiner took the spinal tap and held the contents up so that he could view it. Even from this distance, I could see that it did not look clear. And that's when he made the statement right there by her body in my presence that she had died of a cerebral hemorrhage, end quote.

Now, from the original autopsy, it looked as if Liz Ratliff had suffered a stroke and died on the stairs. So basically, she had a stroke. She fell down the stairs. And in fact, I mean, there's evidence that she hadn't been feeling well for weeks leading up to this. She'd been complaining about headaches. And she'd actually made an appointment to see her doctor the following week. That was, you know, a date that happened after she died. And that was really all there was to it as far as the autopsy was concerned until Kathleen Peterson died and Liz's sister Margaret called Jim Harden, the DA in North Carolina, and told him that her sister had died in a similar way.

And she'd always found the death to be suspicious. So 18 years after being laid to rest, Elizabeth Ratliff's body was exhumed for another autopsy, but they didn't do the new autopsy in Texas. They didn't have the medical examiner there do it or a neuropathologist in Texas do it. In Texas, where Liz and her husband George were both buried, they had Liz's remains transported to North Carolina so that Deborah Radish could perform the autopsy, the same medical examiner who had done Kathleen Peterson's autopsy. David Rudolph, Michael Peterson's lawyer, had objected to this, and he had asked for an impartial third party to be involved, like a pathologist from Texas. But Deborah Radish did it instead, and she said that she found that Elizabeth Ratliff had not died from a cerebral

hemorrhage. She'd actually died from homicidal assault. According to this new autopsy, seven deep lacerations had been found on Liz Ratliff's head, and the lacerations were concluded to have been made by blunt force trauma. Now, David Rudolph, Michael's lawyer, he was not happy with any of this. And he was specifically not happy with the words homicidal assault that Deborah Radish had used to describe Liz's death, saying that he had gone through almost 300 autopsy reports of people who had died from blunt force trauma. Some of them had been purposeful, like actual murders. And he'd never seen that kind of inflammatory wording used. He said, you know, this isn't medical terminology. What you're saying here,

that's a closing argument. And honestly, I agree. I think this whole thing was ludicrous. It was unnecessary and performative. First of all, more than one person, more than one medical professional in Germany examined Liz and determined that she died from a stroke. And then almost 20 years later, how is Deborah Radish going to even have the slightest inclination of what happened to Liz? You know, the body's going to be decomposed. How are you going to be able to tell whether or not she died from a stroke? And if you were literally going to dig up the past, why not have someone in Texas do it so that you truly do have an unbiased person giving this opinion, this information? To me, it was because the prosecution didn't believe,

honestly, that Michael Peterson had anything to do with the death of Elizabeth Ratliff. It was a show that they were putting on. And basically, they did put on a show. They put Liz Ratliff's body on view for everyone to see. Her body was driven 1,200 miles from Texas to North Carolina in a police caravan with the press following and filming everything. They literally had someone guarding her body 24-7, night and day. They allowed the press to film the exhumation. They allowed the press to film the body being brought into the medical examiner's office in North Carolina. And if you were watching television at all in the three weeks leading up to the trial, all you would see was news about Elizabeth Ratliff, how similar her death was, and video of her body being exhumed under the watchful eye of law enforcement with the words,

Liz Ratliff killed as a result of homicidal assault, scrolling across the screen the whole time. And this was just days before jury selection began. And even during the trial, the prosecution said they didn't believe that Michael Peterson had killed Liz Ratliff. They just used her death as an example that he could have followed her death in Kathleen's murder. So I just, I don't understand. Like, this is so bad. You know what I mean? Why say, why have the second autopsy done and say that she died from homicidal assault and then say like, you know, we're not saying that Michael Peterson killed her. We're just saying he used her death as an example of what he could now do to Kathleen Peterson. But

then you have this autopsy done almost 20 years later, and you try to make it seem as if the same exact thing happened to Elizabeth Ratliff, even though the medical professionals at the time did not think that there was anything suspicious or any foul play. I actually have no issue with the reexamination of Liz's body because you could find a situation where you have someone we've had this i believe another peterson by the way drew peterson where you have and i don't know if that maybe i'm wrong you might know better than me but i thought they i thought they re-analyzed they did an autopsy on one of his previous wives bodies as well am i wrong in saying that for drew peterson yeah i have no idea about anything. If I'm wrong, I apologize.

But I know they've done this in previous cases. Maybe I'm wrong about that one. But I know that if you're trying to look for something that may suggest that this isn't the first time the person who's on trial has killed someone and you have these suspicious circumstances surrounding or similar circumstances, I should say, regarding a previous relationship. Yeah. Maybe you would want to, maybe you'd want to examine that just to maybe rule it out. As far as the, the protection of her body from the transport, the transportation that has to be done because she's a piece of evidence. So therefore there has to be a chain of custody. I actually don't mind. I can see the defense's problem with it, and I don't necessarily disagree with them, but I could see the reasoning behind having the same doctor perform the autopsy because they obviously have just done Kathleen's autopsy. which you've, you attacked earlier in this episode, as far as impartiality, is it really there? Is it not? But in a perfect, in a vacuum that doctor supposed to be impartial. So they're

the best person to say, okay, I just examined Kathleen's body and the injuries that I'm seeing on her are very similar to the ones I'm seeing on Liz now, 20 years later. And that's what you would expect in a perfect situation. But I absolutely see the issues with it as far as the defense is concerned. And I will say up until the point where you said they didn't try, they didn't say that he could have done this. It was just more of like an example. I would have been in the camp of, okay, maybe this is the second time he's carried out this act and he's trying to get away with it again. But it does seem a little confusing the way you're laying it out. It seems confusing the way you're laying it out. It seems confusing the way I'm laying it out. Well, as the way it was presented,

you're just relaying the information. You're just the messenger. I'm not killing the messenger here, but I mean, it seems confusing the way they laid it out, which you're then relaying to us. So I will say what Radish is relaying to us, if it's true, that is interesting that 20 years later, you have similar injuries and a similar manner of death. And the wording is a little inflammatory, but I was trying to remember, as you were saying it, like manner of death, cause of death, you'll usually have two, like it could be suffocation and then homicide, because obviously the death by another. Homicidal assault, I don't know if I've ever seen that phrasing, but so maybe that's what he's referring to. But I'm also not someone who's done 100 murder investigations either. Yo, seven lacerations, the exact same as Kathleen.

Like, come on, man. Are you saying you don't believe the examination or you believe it's too much of a coincidence? What do you what are you inferring? I don't believe the examination or you believe it's too much of a coincidence? What are you inferring? I don't believe the examination. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. I don't think that anything about Deborah Radish was impartial or unbiased.

Okay. I think the emails where she was trying to convince Candace Samparini that her brother-in-law was a murderer, show that she's not impartial. That's not her job. She should not be emailing back and forth with the victim's sister and being like, listen, I know you think your brother-in-law is a good guy, but let me tell you why he's not. And let me tell you why your sister was murdered. And let me tell you why Michael Peterson's the only one who could have done it. That's not what the medical examiner should be doing. Okay. Not at all. Agreed. So this is not an impartial person. She should not have done the autopsy on Elizabeth Ratliff. And I just find it hard to believe how you could even determine how somebody died 20 years after. I have to believe that there's only bones left, right?

I don't know how they would preserve the body, if it would allow skin tissue to still be present, or would it more be so the bones that she's examining where she's seeing those injuries? I'm with you. I'm not going to pretend like I know the answer to it. So I get it. You can do somewhat of an autopsy, right? You could see marks or indentations, maybe on the skull or things like that. You could see bone stuff, right? But like, are you really going to have access to all the soft tissue that you would, all the things that the medical examiners in Germany saw that were there to signify to them that it was a stroke are no longer going to be there. So you can't say like, no, she didn't die of a stroke. This is how she died. When you don't have like a full preserved brain to actually determine whether or not she died from a stroke. You don't have a full preserved brain after 20 years. There's no possible way. Do they even put the brain back in the head after like a burial? I don't think so.

I thought they removed the organs. Remember we did the Kendrick Johnson case and they had like, they removed the organs and then they put like a filling in the body. So you can't even examine her brain to say whether or not she died from the stroke. It could have been just her interpretation of the initial report it could have been her interpret yeah like what does that even mean her interpretation of the initial report that's not like something that's that's valid honestly i'm sorry you're not like an archaeologist you're not looking at caveman bones and trying to figure out like you know what caveman died from from what axe hitting his head because they do

that stuff you know like they do look at bones of cavemen and they're like this caveman died from what axe hitting his head because they do that stuff. You know, like they do look at bones of cavemen and they're like, this caveman died because this other caveman hit him with an axe on the head. And we can see that because of the marks on the skull. But what we do know about Kathleen's autopsy is that her lacerations were just on her scalp. They didn't go to her skull. So are we supposed to believe that Elizabeth Ratliff's scalp was still intact where you could see seven lacerations on her scalp and not on her skull? What's happening here? I guess this is a good mind. I don't know.

You were at the podium right there. I was just listening. So as I was going through this, I was just so frustrated by it because I don't like to see that happen, you know no matter what, even if they're guilty, that the cards will lie where they lie and the evidence will be presented. And then a jury of impartial people will make their decision based on that. And this is not what happened here. Like it was completely the whole like having someone guard her body 24 seven and then putting that on the news. It's just like very performative. And it's very much like let's sensationalist. You know, it's clickbait essentially. And to do that just days before jury selection, it's a problem because you're already coloring the belief system of what's supposed to be an impartial jury when the words scrolling across the screen are, you know, Elizabeth Ratliff died in homicidal

assault. And then, you know, Kathleen Peterson dies at the same way at the bottom of the staircase. But it wasn't exactly the same way. From what we can tell, Elizabeth Ratliff had a previous medical condition that's never talked about in any of these anti-Michael Peterson kind of scenarios. It seems like it might be just another case of, hey, we're going to throw something against the wall and see what sticks because obviously the jury member is going to hear it, whether they believe it or not, that's up to them. But it's just another thing for them to consider as they're making their decision. Yeah. So as I have come to find, as I go through this, the prosecution really didn't have a ton of solid evidence. So they had to make Michael Peterson completely unlikable. They had to make him look completely grimy to make the jury hate

him so that they would find him guilty. And honestly, the fact that Deborah Radish came up with these results from a body that had been dead and buried for most two decades, it makes me trust her even less than I did before, because I do think she was allowing herself to be pushed along by what her boss wanted and what the DA's office wanted. And I mean, I have, you know, I did a lot of research into the medical examiner's office that Deborah Radish would take over as chief medical examiner two years after Kathleen Peterson died. And they have lots of problems in that medical examiner's office, you know, people not being properly trained. What was the one thing I told you when the cameras went

off the other day where a man had been declared dead accidentally and then his wife was arrested for his murder because it turned out like he'd been shot by her or something and like the bullet was completely missed by the medical examiner that Deborah Radish was in charge of. So they're not perfect. They do make mistakes. And this medical examiner's office happened to make a lot of mistakes, so much to the point where there was a lot of media and press about it. So no, I don't trust what she says 100%, honestly. And we did talk about it earlier. We may view the state's medical examiners as an unbiased medical expert, but they do work for the state, just like the DA works for the state. So they do have an interest in being on the side of the

prosecution. That's why you never see them testifying for the defense. The state actually rested their case with Deborah Radish, telling the jury that she'd performed both autopsies, and she believed that both Kathleen Peterson and Elizabeth Ratliff were the victims of homicide. And then the jury found Michael Peterson guilty of first degree murder after four days of deliberation. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But that would change years later when information surfaced about Dwayne Deaver, the blood spatter expert, whose testimony had been essential and crucial in convincing a jury that Michael Peterson had beaten his wife to death. And that's where we'll pick up next time.

And we'll go over the owl theory as well. And then we'll wrap up because honestly, this case is just making me very angry and making me lose even more faith in the justice system. I will say one thing to be, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't. I don't necessarily disagree with you, whether it's true or not. I think the perspective is that the medical examiner is part of the prosecution, right? Like that's kind of they're on the same team. And by the way, the medical examiner is someone that the jury should be able to trust as anives out there as far as this is concerned. But I have personally had a case that I worked, Devin Schmidt, where the medical examiner was the reason that I believe someone got away with a murder. So because of their wording and because of their inability to make a decision as far as cause of death.

And we made a whole episode on it. So we'll cover that on this series on Crime Weekly as well. At one point, Devin Schmidt, oh, that case drives me nuts. But I don't necessarily, what I'm getting at is I don't necessarily disagree with you because I do think that jury members, especially someone who's not always in the judicial system would say, oh, well, this is the official doctor in this case. They have to be telling the truth, right? They're the ones that we're all supposed to be looking to for answers. And I'm with you. They can be mostly on the actions that can be verified. Phone calls, blood spatter, evidence that can be verified as well.

Blood spatter. I had a couple other things. I don't want to give it all away here. But some of the science, the red neurons, the injuries to Kathleen, things that can't really be manipulated. You know, you might interpret those injuries differently, but the injuries to her face and her back of her head, they're there. They're there for sure. The blood spatter patterns on the wall, they are there. And the actions of

Michael before, during, and after the night in question, the 911 call, actions he made in between, the decision to call back to let them know that she was no longer with them, that she was deceased. That is how I'm going to base my decision because a lot of this other stuff is noise. We really don't know who we can trust. Everyone has an agenda. So you got to go off the black and white information that you have, and it may be wrong. It may be right, but ultimately I think that's the best information we have. That's where I'm at. So I'm looking forward to part for the final part. This will be part five next week. That'll be the final part. So looking forward to five next week. That'll be the final part.

So looking forward to it was another great episode guys, as always the YouTube channel is doing really well. Audio is doing really well. Uh, we, if you haven't seen it already crime weekly news, we had a new episode just drop on the Wednesday before this, that you're seeing this. So if you want to check that out, we're covering, um, adventures with purpose. There was a a the founder of that of that youtube channel was just recently arrested for horrific crime if you want to learn more about it you can go check it out over there make sure you have your notifications on as well because we're going to be dropping those videos kind of randomly as soon as they're done being

edited so it's not really a schedule for crime weekly news as it is for our regular show that we're putting out. Anything else that I'm missing, Stephanie, that we wanted to cover or tackle? I don't think there's anything else. I always try to do like a little house cleaning at the end. No, I think we're good, right? We've been pretty like on top of things. Well, you have.

No news is good news. No news is good news. So I think we covered everything. As always, guys, stay safe out there. We will see you next week. Bye.