RedHanded - 329 - The Staircase: Michael Peterson - Part 2

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

The trial of Michael Peterson remains one of the most baffling we’ve ever come across. Red neurons, missing blood spatter and of course that pesky blow poke.What led the jury to land on the decision they made? Was evidence overlooked, or was this a cover-up? And finally, if Michael Peterson isn’t guilty, how and why did Kathleen really die?Follow us on social media:InstagramTwitterVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. Oh my god, I've forgotten who I am. It's because of all the STIs. It's been a long old year. But can I just clarify before everyone believes, like, they believe that I fucking take heroin, that I don't actually have a bunch of STIs. Because you guys will believe anything, apparently. So yes, I don't have that. But hello, and Merry Christmas, kind of. Yeah, Merry Christmas, kind of. It's so, so nearly the time for us to hibernate for two merry weeks. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Glorious.

We are contracted 50 weeks a year and we do them filled with joy. But we are very excited to have two weeks off. But do not despair, lovely red-handed spooky bitches. We will be off for the next two weeks but we will be back with a bang with and under the duvet on the 10th of january we're back with our very first shorthand of the year on the 9th of january and we're back with full fat red-handed on the 11th good research i didn't know any of that just looking at. Because my brain hasn't rotted from syphilis. So yes, Merry Christmas.

Merry whatever you are celebrating. And have a lovely time. Merry, happy Karen Maguire's birthday. Oh yeah, it's Hannah's mum's birthday. Oh, she's Karen McHugh now, actually. Oh, well. So yes, happy all of those things. And hopefully, if you are driving somewhere, you're on a long journey, you have got us to accompany you for the next however many hours we have to

talk about Michael Peterson and this case. But this week, we are going to start the episode by talking about Kathleen Peterson. Guys, you don't need me to remind you this is part two, go listen to part one, this will make no sense but let's start with kathleen she really was a very very remarkable woman i think sometimes that's like overstated especially in the world of true crime but kathleen was fucking amazing and the kind of person who was just like good at everything and like listening to some of her sisters talk kind of annoyingly good at everything was kathleen She was president of the debate team in high school. She was confident. She worked hard. She was even, Hannah get this, taking university level Latin lessons as a teenager. A dog. And she graduated her school as the number

one student in her class. And then she went on to become, this is i find so amazing such a great fact she became the first woman ever to be accepted onto and graduate from duke university's engineering program that's some serious business that is some serious business and duke university's youtube channel is the only reason i have a degree it is the harvard of the South, I believe. So yes, top tier work there from Kathleen. And she actually did her undergraduate degree in civil engineering and then did her postgraduate because she couldn't get enough of it in mechanical engineering. And she fucking kicked ass. When she entered the world of work, Kathleen just kept killing it. She became a hugely respective executive at Nortel, travelling all over the world with work, Kathleen just kept killing it. She became a hugely respective executive at Nortel,

travelling all over the world with work, winning awards and absolutely raking it in as Director of Communications. She even had a meeting room at Nortel HQ named after her. And I can't stress how big a company Nortel is. And there's literally a Kathleen Peterson meeting room. She's it. She's killing it. But no matter how busy she was at work, Kathleen earned the nickname the Martha Stewart of Durham, as we talked about last week. She cooked, she baked, she had a beautiful home where she'd regularly host all sorts of parties and events. And she even raised hundreds of thousands for local charities and public education. Kathleen even campaigned for a new sports stadium not to be built, and for the existing one to just be fixed up to avoid ticket prices

skyrocketing and becoming unaffordable for people in the area i think that's important to say because i think sometimes the petersons particularly you know because kathleen is definitely either a victim of murder or a victim of a horrible situation come across as being a bit out of touch being very rich like kathleen actively campaigned and raised money for public education she felt really passionately about education and like i said she was like very conscious of the fact of like if they built a new sports stadium all of the people in that area because Durham and North Carolina is not a super high income state she was like people should be able to go to this like she genuinely cared about people but I think most tellingly of all with Kathleen what really shows throughout

everything is her kindness. She took on four children that weren't hers and she raised them with love and so much compassion. All of Michael's children absolutely adored Kathleen and she seems to have been very much the glue that held that family together. Now, we can't do justice to all that Kathleen was. So I would actually highly recommend checking out episode 13 of the Beyond Reasonable Doubt BBC podcast. In that, they talk to Kathleen's sister, Candice. And I think that they just sat down to do that interview to kind of get some background colour on Kathleen.

They probably use a few soundbites here and there. But in the end, they actually end up releasing the entire interview with Candice. And it's almost just 45 minutes of her talking about Kathleen. And look, I don't want to sound crass, but it took a fucking lot of work to put these episodes together. And when I saw that, I was like, I don't have time to listen to this. I have time to skim through this, but I don't have time to. I ended up listening to the whole entire thing because it's just so, you just learn so much about Catalina as a person. And I think when you listen to it, you'll understand why. So now let's pick up where we left our story off last week. The trial of Michael Peterson was in full swing, but there were a lot of questions that no one seemed able to answer.

Let's discuss how Kathleen managed to bleed to death. If, as Michael claims, he stayed sat outside that night after Kathleen decided to head in, why didn't he come running when she fell? Kathleen surely would have screamed. How did he not hear? Especially when we know that Kathleen didn't just fall and immediately die. She lived and was conscious for at least a while after she was first injured. And we know that because there was blood on the bottom of her feet. She had at least tried to get up.

And possibly, according to the defence, she had tried to get up and then slipped on the slick of blood and hit her head again. So how had Michael Peterson not heard her? Well, the defence carried out a sound test, playing a recording of someone screaming from the stairs. And in the test, you can't hear the noise from the pool area. You have to remember this is a very big house. But when the police arrived, Michael was just dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. And the prosecution questioned at trial how he could possibly have

been sat outside by the pool for hours that December night, when the temperature was, according to them, a rather frigid 15 degrees Celsius or 59 degrees Fahrenheit. I mean, I wouldn't sit outside in 15 degrees in shorts, but it's not like it was minus four. No. I don't know. It's kind of like a non-starter for me, especially because the bigger question for me

is if Michael did beat his wife to death as the prosecution claimed, because remember, they're going for first degree murder, not like a crime of passion, he pushes her down the stairs. And the shorts and the t-shirt were what he had been wearing all night, as they also say because they say how he's outside wearing those. Why weren't his clothes covered in blood?

How can you beat someone to death, leave no skull fractures, no brain injuries and also get no blood all over your clothes? Now there was some blood on him. There was some blood on his shoes and also up the inside leg of his shorts on one side but we'll come back to this later. The question here is if that's all there was how could the prosecution claim that Michael Peterson had beaten Kathleen to death? Especially when they never ever discovered any bloody clothes or, of course, a murder weapon, despite searching the house and its surroundings. So they can't even point to any evidence pointing to the fact

that he disposed of bloody clothes before they arrived. We do have to point out that Michael not having more blood on him doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't kill Kathleen. After all, as Werner Spitz said, the evidence doesn't rule out Michael having pushed Kathleen down the stairs. Though, if he was trying to kill her, that doesn't really guarantee death. Unless, of course, you wait for the person to bleed out, which, according to the prosecution, is what Michael Peterson did. By the time the paramedics arrived, the claim was that a lot of the blood at the scene had dried.

Although we do have to mention that this particular point about the blood being dry was never written down in any contemporaneous reports or notes at the time by anybody at all. Police officers testified to this at trial, but how they were allowed to bring something up that they didn't have notes on from the night or any evidence of is a bit beyond me. They have hours and hours of footage from the scene that they filmed, loads of photos,

but in none of the photos and none of the video and none of the witnesses, anybody can back up with notes or actual video evidence that the blood was dry. They just say it, and they're allowed to say it, even though their notebooks don't say it from the night. I also feel like if you're murdering someone for life insurance purposes, or keeping your big secret, chucking them down a few stairs isn't particularly fail-safe, is it? No, nothing is guaranteed whatsoever

so either it's premeditated first degree murder like the prosecution say and he gets very lucky that kathleen dies she sustains just enough injuries that she bleeds to death he waits for her to bleed to death and then he calls the police and he's like oh my god my wife fell down the stairs or it's a crime of passion and he pushed her down the stairs and she died. And it was an accident and then he tries to cover it up. Or she fell. Or something else that we'll get to later. But you know what I mean? Like how are they using the evidence that they have and coming up with first degree murder? That's the big question for me. And it's not the only one. There are a lot of weird things about this trial,

a lot of questions that need answering, and as we'll go on to see, the North Carolina SBI, State Bureau of Investigation, didn't have many qualms at all about changing up their evidence to suit their story. But stick a pin in that one for now. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history.

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You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry.

Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Because now we have to talk about Elizabeth Ratliff. As we told you last week, Elizabeth, Michael's neighbour and friend, and mother of Martha and Margaret, was found dead at the bottom of her stairs in 1985 in Germany. She was found to have died of a cerebral hemorrhage. But Dr Deborah Radish, everybody's favourite Slovenian fucking nightmare, who did the post-exhumation autopsy, claimed that Elizabeth had died of a homicidal attack. How she came to this conclusion that Elizabeth had died of multiple blunt force traumas to the head after 17 years, and also, this is another crucial point, when Dr Deborah Radish

did the post-exhumation autopsy, she only had a third of Elizabeth Ratliff's brain tissue left because three different people had conducted the original autopsy on Elizabeth Ratliff it was one German and two Americans so parts of her brain had been sent to different people to assess for various things there was only a third of it even left so how the fuck is Deborah Radish saying with any certainty that Elizabeth Ratliff died of a homicidal attack resulting from several blunt force traumas to the head? Now, something I will point out that is very coincidental, again, is that Elizabeth Ratcliffe had seven lacerations on her head, the same number as Kathleen Peterson did. So again, everyone's like, oh, but I'm like, that is a very strange and inefficient way to try and be a serial killer. Yes, it is.

And it just feels like Michael Peterson is the world's unluckiest man. Yeah, or the most, like, magical serial killer we've ever come across. But more importantly, I think, than Dr. Deborah Radish coming to the conclusions that she did, is how Elizabeth's death was allowed to be brought into Michael's trial. This is a hugely controversial part of this story. Because in the US, there is something called the 404B rule. Now, I am not a lawyer, but... I am a lawyer.

Hanna is a lawyer. But this is the most simple explanation for this rule the 404b rule that i could find on the internet basically this is a copy and paste the 404b rule makes inadmissible most character evidence regarding crimes or acts for which no charges were filed but this rule should not be used to eliminate evidence of criminal activity committed So basically what it's saying is if somebody was accused of a crime or suspected of a crime and they never had criminal charges filed against them for that other thing, you cannot bring that other thing into another trial that they are undergoing. That is crystal clear in that statement. Hello? How was Elizabeth's death something that wasn't

even considered a crime, let alone one that Michael Peterson had ever been even suspected of, let alone charged with? How the fuck was that allowed to be brought up if he had even been arrested for elizabeth ratliff suspected murder but never been charged that wasn't allowed to be brought up but something was brought up that wasn't even suspected of being murder at the time it is shocking now you might think dear listeners like this is too much of a coincidence the elizabeth ratliff thing is too much of a coincidence. I cannot move past it. It doesn't matter. That never, ever, ever, legally speaking, should have been allowed to be brought up at Michael Peterson's trial. So feel how you want, but you have to stand firm that a fair trial is a fair trial and the rules

are there to prevent miscarriages of justice. So, I don't know, how could it ever be considered anything other than massively prejudicial that Elizabeth Ratliff's death was brought up at Michael Peterson's trial? Elizabeth, and I have to say this, even looked exactly like Kathleen. If you look up a picture of Kathleen Peterson and a picture of Elizabeth Ratliff, they look like they could be twins. This is all so prejudicial for Michael Peterson. But just to be clear, despite the prosecution's assertions at trial

that Michael Peterson had been having an affair with Elizabeth and that he killed her for the 70 grand life insurance that he got when he got his hands on her estate after he took on the girls, firstly, there's absolutely no evidence anywhere that Elizabeth and Michael were having an affair. People just say it. And I'm like, you can't just say things.

You can't just say things and make them true, yeah. Where is your evidence that they were having an affair? The prosecution even went as far as to get DNA testing done to check the paternity of the girls. And the rumour, by the way, that Margaret is actually Michael's daughter has never, ever gone away, even though it was proven conclusively to not be the case. Can I just pause a sec to say how sick that all is? Yeah.

Like, Martha and Margaret, whatever you think of Michael Peterson, whatever you think of Clayton, he's done a lot of weird shit, like trying to fucking, he built a pipe bomb and like put it in his university and stuff like this yeah that's a whole can of worms we can't even go into because we'll be here forever martha and margaret are so victimized and so traumatized throughout this entire thing and then the prosecution spreads a rumor that margaret is actually michael's child and she's proof that him and elizabeth were having an affair. There's like pictures all over Reddit of comparing Margaret to Todd

and to Clayton and to Michael's face. Like, look how similar she looks. Like, give it a fucking rest. The DNA proved that she wasn't Michael's child. And secondly, sure, Michael Peterson did get the life insurance and the Ratcliffe inheritance. But it wasn't that much money, especially when you considered that he took on two actual babies to raise.

And the girls also had wealthy relatives in the States, but Michael never tried to fob them off on these people either. And just in case people think that we're not right in saying this, the judge himself later admitted that the Elizabeth Ratliff incident should never have been allowed to be brought in court. So now let's move on to the bloody footprint. There was a footprint slash shoe print on the back of the trousers that Kathleen was wearing when she was found dead.

The prosecution claimed that this footprint came from Michael standing on top of her to finish the job when he was beating her to death. But not cracking any bones? Maybe. Maybe. But it could also just have come from him slipping at the scene because there's fucking blood everywhere and accidentally stepping on Kathleen when he's trying to check if she's still alive. And since the print wasn't smudged, it's a very clean print on the back of her leg, it seems unlikely that Kathleen was still moving or like conscious or wriggling and trying to get away from him at this point. So why would he have needed to

hold her down with his foot? And also Michael Peterson had taken off his shoes and socks when the police arrived. A lot of people point to this and say why did he take his shoes and socks off but i'm like people say that without explaining why that what like forensic countermeasure that is he says that he took it off because the floor was really slippery i would argue that you'd probably be less slippery in shoes maybe than in bare feet i don't know depends on the shoe i very often like if i'm on holiday and i'm wearing flip-flops and it's steep and it's sweaty i'll just take them off. Everywhere it says he was wearing tennis shoes, which I would probably say is like the equivalent of like what we would call plimsolls. So maybe, maybe.

But I still don't understand why taking them off, like what that would achieve. So I don't really know why he took them off. So that's the footprint. That's, you know, the whole Elizabeth Ratliff situation never should have been brought in. Let's get back to the 911 call that we played you guys last week. Let's hear it again. John 911, what's your emergency? 1810 Cedar Street, please.

What's wrong? My wife had an accident. She's still breathing. What kind of accident? She fell down the stairs. She's still breathing. Please. Is she conscious? What? Is she conscious? No, she's not conscious.

Please. How many stairs did you fall down? What? How many stairs? Stairs. How many stairs? What? What?

Calm down, sir. What? Calm down. No, 15, 20, I don't know. Please, get somebody here right away. Please, get somebody here. Okay, somebody's dispatching the ambulance while I ask you questions. It's off of... It's a force shield, okay? Please, please. Sir, somebody help me. Is this back in the Hello?

Tom 91, where is your emergency? Where are they? It's 18102. She's not breathing. Please, please, would you hurry up? Is that Ernie? Sir? Yes. Calm down.

They're on the way. Can you tell me for sure she's not breathing? Sir? Hello? Hello? Now, if you listen to most of the content out there on this case you will hear people taking this 9-1-1 call apart there are literally entire youtube videos that gone for two hours entire podcast episodes that just talk about the 9-1-1 call now i don't really see the point

of all of that it's interesting of course it course it is. Yes, that is true. But I don't think that people are all that good at analysing this sort of thing. When you hear it, for example, at the start, Michael Peterson sounds really out of breath. And people are like, it sounds so fake. It might well be fake, but I don't know that I can tell that it sounds fake. I think the opposite. The first time I listened to it, I was like, God, is that the most authentic sounding 911 call I've ever heard? Or am I just so desensitized now that I don't know? I really don't know. I think let's not focus on how he sounds. Let's focus on what he says. So the first thing he says when the operator picks up the phone

is he gives the address. He says 810 Cedar Street. Now he gives the address and he says, please. It sounds like he's really trying to get someone there fast. If I was trying to waste time and just make a 911 call so everyone could hear how upset I was, I would want the operator to coerce me to telling the address. Now you could say he's already waited two hours and left her bleeding at the bottom of the stairs. He knows she's dead and that's why he's doing it. He's a smart guy. I don't know. Sure. Okay, let's move on to the next thing. Some people point to the fact that he sounds frustrated when he's being questioned by the operator about how many stairs Kathleen fell down. And they say, look how angry he's got. It's because it's a question that he didn't have a scripted answer for it's an unexpected question and that's why he sounds frustrated and angry he's thrown off i know if i i'm i know that

this is complete conjecture and speculation but if i rang 9-1-1 and i was like my wife has fallen down the stairs and someone asked me how many stairs i would be like are you all right yeah like yeah what it doesn't matter how many stairs the point is that she's at the bottom of them and she's bleeding so i think people say he's he sounds frustrated because he's asking questions he's being asked a question he hasn't prepared for is showing his anger or you know he's trying to waste time by being because he's like huh what and it's like he's trying to kill time he's already given the fucking address why does he want to kill time now

on the phone with the operator? I think how many times of all of us as people who live in the world of true crime, how many times have we listened to emergency calls where we're like, ah, why is the operator asking that question? Why is the operator not showing more sympathy, more compassion,

more like, oh my God, are you okay? The point is the operators aren't trained to be nice to you. They are trained to get answers. And yes, as frustrating in that moment as it would feel to be asked how many stairs she fell down, the operators already dispatched somebody to come. That's true. They're asking you questions so they can try and establish what's happened. But Michael Peterson being frustrated or angry even by that question and not having an answer doesn't ring strange to me. No No I don't think so either. I think most of us in that situation would be like huh what which is apparently what people take issue with with the 911 calls.

People also don't like the fact that he hung up and then rung back. Would you stay on the phone? Would you hang up once you know help is on the way? I don't think it makes too much difference, especially when you take into account that he's already annoyed with the operator. But he does call back when no one had arrived just six minutes later. Why would you call back? He hangs up, I think, because he's like, I can't, I don't know what else to say. You said you've sent somebody. Let me just... And he does other things during that time.

Like he puts towels under Kathleen's head and things. So I don't know. One thing that is peculiar though, is that Michael never mentions how much blood there is at the scene. That is strange. There is a lot of blood at the scene and he never says, oh my God, there's blood everywhere. I feel like you would say that because you'd want them to understand how bad the situation is.

Also, Michael never seems to have even attempted CPR on his wife. However, saying that CPR isn't particularly successful out of a hospital setting. And he, being a Marine, may well have known that. He also would have known not to move Kathleen, and just to wait for professional help. I don't know. Like so much with this case, you can look at everything Michael does from opposing perspectives and come out with totally different conclusions. Then, like I mentioned, there are the bloody towels that were placed around Kathleen and under her head. Michael said that he did this to cushion her and also to try and control some of the bleeding,

or at least maybe soak it up. The police claimed that this wasn't Michael trying to make Kathleen comfortable, it was actually Michael trying to clean up the scene. Maybe. Maybe he was trying to destroy some of the evidence and wipe it away, as the prosecution stated at trial. But, again, if you've seen the crime scene photos, you will know that there is no way that a few towels were going to clean up that mess. And the police really, really screwed up the handling of the crime scene themselves.

Firstly, it was not secured properly on the night of Kathleen's death for hours. Neighbours poured into the house. Officers walked all over the place. The medical examiner, Dr Snell, even walked up and down the bloody staircase, spreading the blood around more. And what's more, the crime scene analyst, the blood spatter analyst who later comes in, I'm not giving him any, like, you know, cutting him any slack for the fuck-ups he does. But he wasn't even told that people had walked up and down the stairs in the blood when he first came and analysed the scene.

Also, Michael Peterson had thrown himself on top of Kathleen after the paramedics confirmed that she was indeed dead. He did this in front of police officers. And his son Todd had to drag him away. But that did move Kathleen's body, and it did transfer yet more of the blood onto Michael. Michael also washed his hands in front of the police, and no one stopped him. Later, the forensics teams would claim that bloody footprints had been found

using luminol leading from the staircase to the laundry room. I'd love a laundry room. Wouldn't it be the dream, honestly? But firstly, these footprints were never actually recorded. There's no pictures of the luminol that exist or the trail that they claim to have seen. And even if the footprints were there,

it easily could have been one of the officers because everyone's just tramping around everywhere. And somehow, again, without any notes or evidence from the scene, the prosecution were allowed to bring these magical footsteps up in court. It's shocking. It is shocking. They're just like, it's like they just look at it and they're like what's missing let's just say some shit and it kind of backfires in some ways

because they say the thing about the bloody footprints leading from the staircase all the way down to the laundry room but they then have to admit in court that they found no blood in the laundry room there was no blood in any of the sinks or in the washing machine or in the mop that was down there. So even if Michael Peterson had been the one who walked down there, there was absolutely no evidence that he had made any attempt to clean up the mess using the actual things in the house that you would use to clean up the mess. And just coming back to what you said about him washing his hands in front of the police, he had blood on his hands because he threw himself on top of Kathleen and then he

walks around the house in like quite a dazed state the paramedics actually wrote down in their notes that they thought Michael Peterson was clearly very upset again he could have been acting of course but he touches loads of things after he's got blood on his hands and then he washes his hands in front of the police and at trial they're like look his bloody handprints were on the cabinet his bloody handprints were on this bottle of like coke or whatever but i'm like that could have happened after when you were already there they were pointing at it to being like look he was killing two hours waiting for us sat around with bloody hands apparently i don't know it's so messed up so now coming back to the towels that were under Kathleen's head if Michael Peterson had been

trying to wipe away some of the blood even if he had managed to clean up some of the blood around Kathleen I don't really know that what that would have achieved and also it wouldn't have removed cast off blood from the ceiling which again like we mentioned last week just wasn't there there were also no marks in the wall like you might expect from the blow poke or any other weapon being wheeled up and down in such a narrow space that blow poke we'll come back to how we know this exactly but it was 40 inches long and the stairwell is 42 inches long are you going to wheel something that's basically the same size in there hit somebody multiple times and it doesn't leave a mark on the wall from you hitting the wall even once so he would have to be

like whack yeah whack it's so like you have to do so many mental gymnastics to believe that the bludgeoning is what happened now just to be clear what we mean by cast off just in case anybody doesn't know it's basically the blood spatter that would have been on the wall or the ceiling that would have come off the weapon as it delivered the blows to Kathleen's head. Dr. Henry Lee testified that there being no cast off pattern, if Kathleen had been beaten to death in such a confined space, would be incredibly odd. Enter the prosecution's blood spatter analyst, Dwayne Diva.

A man I hate. With every fibre of my being. And here's why. Diva theorised that if the killer had wiped the weapon clean in between strikes, there would be no cast-off pattern. What?

I can't even... It's so farcical. The idea that somebody would beat someone to death, just enough that they split the skin and let them bleed to death, but not enough to cause a skull fracture, and also wiped the weapon between every blow is unbelievable he says this in court who would do that nobody i just i can't nobody would do that nevertheless steve was on the stand for seven days giving his expert in inverted commas evidence and sharing the results of his Dexter-esque blood spatter experiments.

Experiments that he claimed proved that Michael Peterson had bludgeoned his wife to death. And we're going to tell you all about it later, but for now, it's blowpoke time. If you remember, the prosecution needed a weapon that could explain the injuries that Kathleen had sustained. And they had gone full force down the road of claiming that it was the blowpoke that Kathleen's sister had given her many years back. The prosecution had even purchased a replica and passed it around for the jurors to hold and feel. This was so they could see that it was hollow, therefore making it the perfect weapon to tear and split, but not fracture. Apparently. Yeah. The prosecution also claimed that the blowpoke would have been bent,

maybe even destroyed, after the attack so Michael had disposed of it. But, yet again, they had absolutely no evidence that this happened. Then, this is where we have yet another shock twist in this story. A couple of days before the trial was due to wrap up, Todd Peterson, Michael's son, actually found the fucking blowpoke in the family boiler room. It was there, just leaning against a wall covered in cobwebs, so it had clearly been sat there for a while. It wasn't missing. It had been missed.

Or had it? The whole thing looked incredibly fishy and people accused the Petersons of having planted this blow poke. The prosecution even stated that Michael had purchased three blow pokes during the trial. He said of course he had, he wanted to disprove their theory. But the fishiness backfired onto the prosecution because it later turned out that the police had actually found the blow poke during their initial search of the house.

They had even photographed it outside. So it had been taken out of whatever room it was in and snapped. This picture, as it turned out, was in the DA's files, but it had never been turned over to the defence during discovery. Clearly what happened was that when the police found the blowpoke, it wasn't bent up and covered in blood. So it was just ignored. And it was only much later when Candice suggested the blowpoke that she had given her sister might be a good fit for the murder weapon that the police even started to look for it. And they had clearly forgotten all about the one that they had already found in the Petersons' home and the picture that they had of it not looking bent or very murder weapon-y. Now I have to say that what we've just told you is a very generous version of events. A much less generous version of this situation might be that someone at the

police department or in the prosecution team did know that they had this picture of the blow poke and chose to exclude it from discovery. I mean isn't it a bit of a coincidence that this picture of the blowpoke and chose to exclude it from discovery. I mean, isn't it a bit of a coincidence that this picture of the fucking blowpoke was just one of the items excluded from the defence handover? I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America.

But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe

and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. Either way, it is shocking. The prosecution made such a big deal out of the blowpoke. And the fact that they hadn't handed over exculpatory material evidence is a huge deal. It's a very clear Brady violation.

But after the undamaged blow poke was found the prosecution just claimed that they never said it was definitely the blow poke it was just something like it even though they had handed out that fucking replica blow poke for all of the jurors to touch and feel and wave around give me strength It's like that sentence where the meaning changes when you stress a different word. I never said she took it. Or one of those grammar exercises where you take the comma out. Yes. So okay, that's blow poke done. Let's now move on to those red neurons that we mentioned last week. As we said, they form when the brain is struggling to function while not receiving the oxygen that it needs for hours. Therefore, according to the testimony of the prosecution's expert,

a University of North Carolina neuropathologist, these neurons found in Kathleen's brain proved that she had been lying at the bottom of the stairs alive for hours. This contradicted Michael's version of the night and how long he said he had been alone for. But according to the defense's expert, who was the former chief of neurology at Northwestern University, these red neurons could have developed in just 30 minutes rather than two hours when the victim has suffered a major trauma. And Dr. Lee also backed this up. So essentially, we have a situation that we see all the time in criminal cases, the battle of the

experts. The defense can pull up an expert that says one thing, the prosecution can pull up an expert that says something else. And this is honestly one of the biggest, biggest flaws in the kind of jury system that many countries follow, because you can basically find an expert to fit your version of events. And then you leave it to a lay jury to figure out which expert is more credible. How is a jury equipped to decide which of these experts is more credible, you know? It's ridiculous. I think all you can say at that point is this issue should have sort of become a neutral point. Because if you can find one expert who is credible, who says that it could have happened in 30 minutes, it should kind of become a bit of a moot point. But it didn't help in this

case that the prosecution's Freda Black was busy making comments constantly throughout the trial that the state's experts worked for the jury. But the defense experts, well, they are just paid guns for hire. She literally says this. She literally says this. And basically what she's doing here is undermining defense experts as just being willing to say whatever they need to or whatever they're paid to and saying that the state's witnesses are completely beyond reproach. So here she's referring to the likes of Duane Deaver and Dr. Deborah Radish. This would be a tactic that would later blow up very much in their faces though. So yeah, the trial went on and on and on for over three months, becoming one of the longest trials in North Carolina history. And finally, after four days

of deliberation, on the 10th of October 2003, the jury returned the verdict of guilty. Guilty of first-degree murder, and Michael Peterson was sentenced to life. In the staircase documentary, in the footage of the verdict being read out, even the prosecution looked shocked. Two years later, on the 10th of October 2005, Michael Peterson made his first appeal. It was unsuccessful. Another two years later, on the 17th of October 2007, he made his second appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court. And again, no luck. The North Carolina Supreme Court did rule that the search of Michael's computer was unconstitutional,

but not prejudicial enough for a new trial to be granted. And then four years later, in February 2011, Michael Peterson made a motion for a new trial based on some new and disturbing revelations that had come to light about one Duane Diva. The SBI agent and blood spatter analyst for the state and the only person Cerruti hates more than pandas. I can't stand him.

You just go look at his little weaselly face. It's never been a more punchable face than that of Dwayne Dever. Because it turned out that since 1993 until 2010, when he was eventually caught, Dever had been fabricating and concealing evidence in criminal cases that he worked on to suit the prosecution. He had been committing perjury for years as a state's expert witness and lab authority, and he had completely lied about his qualifications and level of experience on the stand at the Peterson trial. It all came out during an independent audit of the

SBI in 2010. They reviewed 228 cases and Dwayne Dever's years of lies were finally revealed. It turned out that in at least 36 of his cases, it could be proven that Dever had manipulated, hidden and lied about evidence. And he still couldn't come up with something better than he just wiped it in between. Ugh. The most talked about case was the 1993 conviction of a man called Greg Taylor. Greg was arrested after his truck was found parked near the body of a murder victim. And there was something on the front of this truck that Duane Deaver said was blood. This evidence was key for the state and absolutely pivotal

in the conviction. Until it finally came out that Duane Deaver had carried out more tests, more accurate tests, that had shown that the blood on Greg's truck was not even human. But Duane Deaver never turned in those test results. Greg Taylor was finally acquitted in February 2010. He had spent 18 years in prison. It's disgusting. At one point, Duane Deaver even says, I can tell just from a picture if something is blood or not.

This man is a narcissistic egomaniac who, honestly, the number of cases he was involved in that he lied about is unbelievable that he is not in prison today. And this sort of thing, on Dwayne Deaver's part, was shown to be a malicious pattern, not a one-off mistake. He also claimed to have written reports for 200 cases, worked on 500 and been at the scene of over 30 falls, but none of that was true. It was all bullshit. He'd never, ever worked on a fall case at all. He sat the Michael Peterson trial just like I've been at the site of countless fall cases and I've never seen anything like it. He's never been at one. And as far as being

a blood expert, he'd actually only done two courses on bloodstain analysis. I've basically done more than that. It's unbelievable. Now, I don't know if Michael Peterson killed Kathleen Peterson or not. If I'm honest, maybe he

probably did. I can buy the fact that he pushed Kathleen down or not. If I'm honest, maybe he probably did. I can buy the fact that he pushed Kathleen down the stairs. I really can. But that's definitely not good enough. As in the fact that we can't prove it. They cannot prove it. They do not have the evidence and that is not good enough for a criminal conviction. And there really isn't anything that ever made me believe that he did it, especially murder in the first degree, beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm not even totally satisfied, if I'm honest, that Kathleen was definitely, definitely murdered. Like, that is still a big question. I don't think the explanation anyone gives as to how she got her injuries makes total sense. But, I don't know, maybe the fall, maybe somebody pushes

you, could it happen, possibly, but first degree murder? I honestly don't know how the jury arrived at that conclusion. First degree obviously means that the murder was premeditated, willful, planned and deliberate. Malice aforethought. That is the definition of first degree murder. Now, of course, the prosecution don't have to show or prove motive like we already told you but given that their claims were that this was a planned attack their explanation of the motivation does feel important and honestly it was just all over the place. Was it money? Was it the emails

about the sex with men? If it was about the male escorts how was it planned if Kathleen only found out about the emails with Brad on the night that the murder had happened and that's what had caused the fight to break out how is that then planned now people will question how the murder was also premeditated in this case but there is a difference between planned and premeditated we've talked about this before premeditated could just mean that during the crime itself you had time to stop and think and change what you were doing, knowing that your actions would likely cause death and you didn't.

So it could still be premeditated, even if the argument had only broken out that night. But there's still questions. And there's no evidence that Kathleen's death was planned. The only evidence, and we use that word in the loosest possible terms, that the prosecution presented at trial that pointed at premeditation came from Dwayne Dever. He said clearly that this was a homicide and Dever claimed that the experiments he did

showed that Michael Peterson had stood over Kathleen Peterson and beat her a second time so he had time to stop and think after the first blow which could have been the spur of the moment he is the only person there that can provide any quote-unquote evidence that this was premeditated and diva claimed that this is how michael got blood spatter on the inside of his shorts even though the defense experts said that this blood likely got there

from Michael placing the towels under Kathleen and also throwing himself on top of her body after the police arrived. Like, it's not definite, but it's not unbelievable, you know. And he does that in front of the police. Dwayne Dever pointed at his experiments, but these were filmed and in no way reflect how a truly scientific experiment would be carried out. Instead of looking for what the evidence actually showed Deaver started out by looking for what he wanted to find basically the opposite of how you do

science. He essentially tries in his little experiments that are filmed to recreate the blood spatter at the scene trying to find a way in which a beating could occur and those marks could have been left he's working backwards he's trying to prove a scenario rather than open-mindedly looking at what could have happened it's insanity and you can go check out these videos they're on youtube there's clips of them in the documentary but you can find longer form footage of them elsewhere and in these videos of him conducting these experiments you can see Dwayne Dever striking a blood-soaked sponge to try and get the spatter to match the spatter at the scene as he hits, and he hits this sponge in a way that no one would ever hit someone they were trying to murder. He hits the sponge, which is meant to be Kathleen's head,

from I shit you not Hannah, 12 inches up. And also, he even stands in a completely unnatural way and holds the shorts open so that the blood can spray back onto his leg. It's crazy. And guess what? It takes him 40 attempts to recreate the spatter. And when he finally gets it, he and another SBI agent who is standing there do a little victory dance and high five. That's not science and that's not impartial. So there are big discussions going on about the problems with blood spatter analysis in general. There's actually a great multi-part article series out there by ProPublica,

which we will link in our sources below. And I just have to say the journalist who wrote that multi-part series for ProPublica went through more hours hours of bloodstain analysis than Duane Deaver ever went near. And basically the article talks about how blood spatter analysis has gained the credibility it has, but it's not actually really science. The results are often too dependent on the experience and the perception of the analyst, and a report published in 2009

by the National Academy of Science casts doubt on the whole discipline. And more studies since have shown an alarming level of errors. But that doesn't explain Duane Deaver. He purposefully lied and altered and hid evidence for years in multiple cases. In one case, a man was actually executed based on Deaver's evidence. He should be in prison for the rest of his miserable little life, but somehow he is not. And he even had the audacity to sue the SBI for wrongful termination when he was sacked.

I have no words. It's astonishing. I have no words for how I feel about Dwayne Diva. The man needs to be in prison. Ugh, right, enough talking about him because he makes me sick. He looks like a politician. Yeah, a weaselly little politician. A politician in the Sylvanian family world where he's a weasel.

So after all this came out, the whole Dwayne Dever debacle, and remember, Fredda Black was busy telling the whole court how the SBI and the state's witnesses, they are beyond reproach. They work for you, the jury. They work for the state. They work for justice, goddammit. Fuck everything. So after all this came out,

Michael Peterson, like I said, tried for another appeal. But the state claimed that Deaver's testimony wasn't what convicted Michael Peterson. But it absolutely fucking was. Like I keep saying, the only thing that came anywhere near to pointing at first-degree murder was Dwayne Dever's evidence.

The prosecution had also used Dever as their star expert witness. He testified for seven days at this trial. And Freda Black, one of the prosecutors, even said in her closing statement, if you believe otherwise, i.e. you believe that Kathleen wasn't beaten to death, you're just going to have to believe

that Dwayne Dever is a liar. He is. But that's like her closing statement at trial before it all comes out. And it's like, how much this bites them in the ass. So it's just shocking that afterwards they say oh well he wasn't even that important right right and the jury also said that he was the most convincing expert that they heard from so now on the basis that diva had misled the jury

and the judge michael peterson was granted a new trial and he was released from prison after having served almost a decade behind bars. He was released on a $300,000 bail and placed under house arrest with an ankle monitor. But nothing about the next stage of this process would be quick. Michael Peterson lived under house arrest for the next six years. Because now all of the blood evidence was tainted, and because it was also decided that since the search of Michael's computer, which had been seized back during the first search, was deemed to be unconstitutional and illegal, that evidence would not be allowed

at the new trial. So that's no gay porn and no emails with male escorts. And then, remarkably, the judge also conceded that the Elizabeth Ratliff evidence should never have been introduced at the first trial. So now the new trial would have to be done without any of these crucial talking points from the prosecution's side. So the prosecution obviously knew that without all of this, another trial and another conviction would be very difficult to land. So they offered Michael an Alford plea,

which is a plea that we've talked about before on this show, and it's essentially one in which a person is allowed to register a formal admission of guilt towards charges in criminal court while simultaneously expressing their innocence towards those same charges. Essentially, I'm not guilty but the state has enough evidence to convict me. But Kathleen's sisters were not happy with this at all. They said fine, we'll let him take the plea but he is not allowed to say that he is innocent. He has to stand up in court and say that he is guilty, admit to his guilt and then we will be okay with time served

and yeah it's tricky because then you're changing what the alfred plea actually would be now i totally understand the sister's rage this is not me trying to criticize them in any way i can absolutely understand their rage and caitlyn's trauma so i have no gripes with them doing what they felt they needed to do to get justice for Kathleen. Because also, if you look at it from their point of view, it just looks like he's still guilty, but the prosecution fucked up and they failed to convict him properly. And it was an unsafe conviction,

and now we're not going to pay the price for that man being allowed to go free. And so, yeah, I don't blame them. I blame the prosecution. And then, just to prove what a mess this all was, yet more information about the state's case came out. Remember the initial medical examiner who went to 1810 Cedar Street, Dr Snell? He had been told by police at the scene that they thought the husband had killed Kathleen because there was so much blood.

But Snell, despite hearing this repeatedly, wrote down that he thought the scene and Kathleen's injuries were consistent with a fall. Snell later changed his mind, however, even crossing out his initial findings and authorising a new cause of death, stating that he now believed that Kathleen had died of multiple blunt force impacts of the head, which is indicative of a beating.

And maybe you're thinking, well, he saw Kathleen at the scene and then when he got a closer look, he changed his mind. What's wrong with that? Well, quite a lot. It turned out that Dr Deborah Radish, the medical examiner who carried out the autopsy on Kathleen, had also initially recorded that there was no evidence of blunt force trauma, and she stated that Kathleen had died of blood loss.

Dr. Radish even sent a handwritten note to her boss, Dr. John Butts, Dr. Seymour Butts, the then chief medical examiner, saying this. But she was told no. Dr Radish was told to write down that Kathleen Peterson had died from blunt force trauma. It would appear that Seymour Butts was under pressure from the chief of police. So Dr Radish did as she was told and didn't think to mention that to anybody ever again. And this handwritten note from Radish to Seymour Butts was found in the defence files years later. And yet again, it had never been given to the defence as part of discovery. Dr Radish would go on to succeed John Butts as chief medical examiner years later.

It kind of seems like the way you climb that greasy pole is by doing what you're told. Yeah. So even after all this came out, the prosecution did not want to overturn the conviction because it would have made them look even more stupid and even more incompetent and corrupt. So what they did instead was lower the bar. And they offered Michael another Alford plea to the reduced charge of manslaughter. Michael didn't want to take this plea however. He wanted a new trial and he wanted to clear his name but his kids begged him to just take it and put everything behind him and finally move on. Because remember, it's been going on at this point for like almost two decades.

And so that's what Michael Peterson did. On the 24th of February 2017, Michael Peterson was released on time served and became a free man. 15 years after the death of Kathleen Peterson. It's exhausting just thinking about it. So we've been through the trial. We've been through the appeals. We've been through the appeals.

We've been through theories. We've been through all of this. But now I think we have to get to the part that you have all been waiting for. Hoot hoot! The owl theory. This theory was first pitched back in 2003, almost immediately after it happened. But it has slowly gained momentum ever since. Now when I first heard of the Michael Peterson story like because a lot of times Hannah and I will sort of

have like a vague idea about these big cases. When I was first aware of the Michael Peterson case I thought it was a guy who had definitely killed his wife and he had got off on a technicality and now he was out there spouting a bunch of nonsense about how a fucking owl had killed her. That's what I genuinely thought. But having done the research, firstly, I don't believe that Michael Peterson got off on a technicality. I don't know if he killed Kathleen or not, but he definitely didn't get off on a technicality. The state acted in a totally corrupt manner to get that conviction, and he did not have a fair trial.

Whether he killed Kathleen or not, I don't know. Did something else do it? I'm open to it. The fact is, one of three things happened that night. Kathleen fell. Kathleen was murdered by Michael or by someone else. Or, behind door number three, an owl did it. I feel like the owl is the butt of so many true crime jokes and like i kind of hate myself for thinking it was the owl but i kind of do think it was the owl let's talk about it we have to say that the idea that kathleen just fell and tore her head open very specifically like that it's possible but it's not very probable it feels like there just would have been other comparable examples for injuries like that

if that were the case. Doesn't feel totally believable. People fall over all the time. Why is there not another example of that? Option number two, murder. Just can't really see how Kathleen was murdered by being beaten. There was no cast off, no weapon.

What sort of attack could tear the skin like that but not fracture her skull? All of the stuff we've spoken about. Now, like we've said before, I definitely think she could have been pushed. That would explain the lack of weapon, the lack of cast off and the lack of blood on Michael. But the prosecution was so gung ho in going for first degree murder that they didn't look at that possibility. Either way, when it came down to it in court, I just don't think that the prosecution or the defence gave a really clear explanation of what happened to Kathleen in a way that anyone with a brain can get on board with.

So how did they manage to get that conviction? Dwayne Deaver definitely helped. But also the jury said that the amount of blood was the main reason they believed Kathleen was murdered. But, as Dr Lee explained, head wounds bleed a lot, a shocking amount. And there was also urine mixed into the blood as well, which made it look like there was a lot more blood than there actually was. Also, no one seems to mention that anti-anxiety medications

can thin your blood, and alcohol does that too. And Kathleen had been on those medications for months. So let's take a look now at the owl theory. And I have to say, I find it quite slash reasonably compelling. And before you all think I've totally lost my mind, let me explain. The owl did it scenario is essentially this. After Kathleen left Michael smoking his cigar outside by the pool, she headed inside. But instead of going to bed or going to check her emails, she decided to start putting up some Christmas decorations.

Now that might sound weird, but she and Michael had actually planned to spend the next day putting up Christmas decorations. And now Kathleen had to take that pesky work conference call instead. And guessing from Kathleen's very intense type A personality, she probably liked things done in a certain way. So let's just assume she heads inside. She's not that drunk. It's 0.07 blood alcohol level. She's like, I'll stick up some of the Christmas decorations. I know Michael will do wrong.

And then I'll go to bed and I'll get a head start on the whole situation. So she goes up. She's doing that. She's putting up her big old Christmas decorations outside from the front door when suddenly she gets attacked by an owl. The owl grabs at Kathleen's head scratching her scalp possibly thinking that these Christmas decorations she's putting up are in some way like predators or it feels under threat because of whatever and it scratches her scalp. Kathleen panics and confused she grabs her head and her hair wrestling with the owl to get it off her and in doing so she pulls out clumps of her own hair.

Now, to get very specific about it, Kathleen had 25 strands of her hair in one hand and 36 in the other. And crucially, while some of these hairs were definitely ripped out from the root, some had been cleanly cut. Had they been cut by the talons of an owl? So then Kathleen manages to free herself from the owl and she runs inside. She's already bleeding though and that explains the blood found

on the outside of the front door frame and the blood drops in the walkway from the main door into the house. That nobody ever explains. Yeah. Everyone just ignores it. Now, that blood could have come from Michael checking if the ambulance was there after he phoned 911, but blood drops would have meant that he was soaked in blood, which he wasn't. So if we stick with the owl theory, Kathleen's now inside the house and bleeding and in shock, and she runs upstairs wearing flip-flops and she falls. Michael doesn't hear any of this. Kathleen tries to stand up after her fall and slips and falls again, consistent with the blood on the bottom of her feet

and the two impacts that Dr Snell originally suspected. This also explains the deep, trident-like lacerations on Kathleen's head as having been talon marks marks because owls have talents. They do indeed. They can also sit with their legs crossed. What? Yeah. Google owl sitting crisscross applesauce.

Applesauce? Crisscross applesauce is what Americans say. Apple. I just said apple and typed owl. Owl sitting. Crisscross. Crisscross applesauce. That's fucking weird.

They are weird. Yeah. And they're dangerous. Oh, yeah. They are predators. They're vicious, yeah. I think people think, oh, it's a bird. They're predators.

It's a bird of prey. Yes. Yes. So, the owl theory also gives a reason for the pine needles found embedded in Kathleen's hand. It also turned out that on the hair in Kathleen's hand were microscopic owl feathers, consistent with the type of feathers that grow under the talons of an owl. I'm like, come on. It's the owl.

It's the owl. It's the owl. It's the owl. Look, if he did it, I don't want to be here being like. No, yes, fine. But it's really confusing. It's really fucking confusing. And, you know, let's give you the full context.

If you're sitting here thinking, a fucking owl, what are they talking about? because another man in the area also came forward and said he had been attacked by an owl and this attack was actually caught on camera so you can go watch it it is out there on the internet you can see this attack and it is vicious and this man claimed that when the owl attacked him it felt like being hit in the head with a baseball bat. I bet. And they are also flying down with intent to attack. It's not like it just winged you. It's like coming down to attack you. And this man actually ended up with claw marks on his head.

He had to go to hospital, but also tiny scratches near his eyes, very similar to the ones that Kathleen had that, again, no one could explain. Now, my issue with the owl theory, and I do have some, just so you all know that I am not completely insane, is why didn't Kathleen have beak marks on her hands, right? If she's trying to grab at her hair when the owl is attacking her head, why wouldn't the owl peck her hands? There are some abrasions on her hands, but, like, not that is attacking her head why wouldn't the owl peck her hands there are some abrasions on her hands but like not that many also why weren't there more feathers in some places i read there was only one microscopic owl feather in some places i read there was one that

was sort of broken up why weren't there more feathers also the question is why would kathleen run upstairs why would she run inside and upstairs i mean I guess you might think that being in the house is safer rather than running back out into the garden to try and get Michael where the owl could attack you again I could understand that I might stay inside but she was probably completely disorientated I find it easier to suspend my disbelief about those things than that he beat her yeah i do not believe that he beat her to death and the other thing people say is like well maybe the blood drops in the walkway and the blood on the doorframe which feels like it explains that kathleen was already bleeding and she came back into the house because it's her blood could point to an intruder who had

blood on them and that's why the blood drops were on the way out rather than on the way in but it still doesn't explain how this intruder killed her because you're back at the point of what murder weapon was used to carry out that attack and give Kathleen those particular injuries so yeah like I said I went into this thinking that Michael Peterson definitely did it and just got off on a technicality appeal but but that is definitely not the case. The prosecution lied and manipulated the situation and hid evidence. And the judge allowed information into the court that never should have been heard by the jury.

Kathleen deserves to be remembered. And if she was killed, she and her loved ones deserve justice. But justice has to be achieved fairly. The ends don't justify the means, even if Michael Peterson is guilty. The sanctity of the justice system and what it means to have a fair trial is important. And the state of North Carolina, in this case, trampled all over that right. I think there are lots of cases where you hear people throw that phrase around me,

like he might be guilty, but he didn't get a fair trial. People say that about Scott Peterson. He got a bloody fair trial. And like Michael Peterson did not get a fair trial. I think I'm with you. I can believe he pushed her. I can definitely believe that. But that would be a second degree murder manslaughter.

Yes. It's never first degree murder because you've acted in the spur of the moment and it's happened and you could regret that yeah afterwards but it's too late you've already killed this person the red neuron stuff of the defense expert gives me enough like reasonable doubt that she may have only laid down there for 30 minutes yeah or that he didn't leave her dying for hours so i could still believe the push theory i could still believe the push theory. I could still believe the fall theory. The lack of blood on him, the lack of cast-off pattern, the lack of weapon, these are all things that make me think she... And the lack of skull fractures, the lack of brain injury.

Kathleen Peterson was not beaten to death. At worst, Michael Peterson pushed her down the stairs. Or she fell and it was a horrible accident. Or the fucking owl did it. I think I'm team owl honestly i probably think i am as well which i know people are gonna think i'm insane but like i really urge people to look at the evidence on this and not get like like i said lost in the feeling of whether you like or dislike michael peterson because i think when you watch the documentary people have strong feelings about him,

whether you sympathize with him or whether you think of him as an unsympathetic character. I actually found him, I felt sympathetic towards him in the documentary, but I also know it was making me feel that way. But at the same time, as much as it was making me feel that way, it doesn't change the facts that make me question

the fact that he beat her to death. It doesn't change the fact that there was no cast-off pattern and yes is he glib is he a performer is he very confident yes that doesn't make you a murderer does he lie has he lied yes there's all the stuff about you know he didn't win the mayoral election that he ran for in Durham because it turned out that he had possibly fabricated some things about medals that he had won right the injury that had got him honorably discharged from the marines he said that he had got them on duty it actually turned out that it wasn't in Vietnam at all he got those injuries driving a truck and like getting into a truck accident in Japan so you know there were lies in there but, being a liar doesn't make you a murderer.

So you really have to look at the evidence. And at most it was second degree murder or manslaughter because he pushed her. And the state went for first degree, possibly because they did have a vendetta against him, as he said. So I don't know. But there you go. That's it, guys. I'm exhausted. So good thing it's the end of the year. That is it.

That's your last Red Handed for this year. So we hope you guys enjoyed it. We hope you had a very good year. Thank you for everything that you did for us as ever. We got the hat trick at the British Podcast Awards, Listener's Choice. It was honestly the most amazing thing ever. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you to everybody who came to our US tour. Oh God, yeah. Which was in fact this year. And stay tuned for loads more exciting things coming next year. We're really so pumped to tell you guys all about them.

But you're just going to have to wait a little bit. And Hannah's doing a big yawn. So go. It's my Christmas yawn. Enjoy your Christmas. Have a fabulous new year. And we will see you in January.

Goodbye. Toot toot. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows,

uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.