RedHanded - Episode 328 - The Staircase: Michael Peterson - Part 1

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

From the outside the Petersons had it all; the perfect family, a beautiful mansion and more money than they could spend. But on 9th December 2001 all that changed, when Michael Peterson claimed to have found his wife, Kathleen, dead at the bottom of their stairs.What followed would become a bizarre tale of strange family secrets, shocking revelations and a true crime case obsessed over like nothing before, or since.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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. 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. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to your end of year. I know. Red-handed class. Welcome, everybody. This is it, guys. This is the final red-handed class. Welcome, everybody. This is it, guys. This is the final two-parter of our red-handed journey here for 2023.

Yeah. And I just remembered this as I heard you say your own name, which I've obviously heard you do many, many times. I am always saying my name. Do you know or have you seen what YouTube has autocorrected your name to in the subtitles of our videos? Is it Soranti? No.

What is it? STI. STI? What? YouTube. Someone tweeted us this morning. Brilliant. To not a specific STI She's called me gonorrhea

Well Merry fucking Christmas From STI Let's start again Hello I'm STI Fuck off That is outrageous

Anyway We'll deal with that later For now we've got too much to deal with we've got quite a lot to deal with too many things almost like having a very vigorous sdi is how it has been to research this case because i could not stop it was relentless i said on under the duvet a few weeks ago that this was by far the hardest case I've ever had to research because it never ends. Every time you go onto Google and search the name Peterson in some combination of question, it is filled with articles that I've never seen before. And I'm like, how is this happening? Every other case you do, you hit a point where you've read

everything there is to read. Or you're coming across what you think are new articles but they're actually just repeating stuff you already have yeah so and i've also never seen a case where there are so many articles by reputable places that i feel like that must be worth reading right right right right so here we are after many a week researching this case we're ready to finally talk about it and I'm very excited for it to be fucking done. So one of the bazillion articles I did read whilst researching this case over the past month or so started with the line, if you've heard of Michael Peterson you probably have a strong opinion about whether or not he murdered his wife Kathleen. If that is true, which I do believe it is, then I think I am massively in the minority because after sitting with this case for weeks reading watching listening to everything I could get my

hands on I still don't know what I actually think so you can go into this two-parter guys because that is what it's going to have to be it's going to have to be the Christmas red-handed two-parter whatever happens over the next two weeks, you know that I... I'm not saying I'm not biased, but what I'm saying is I don't know what happened. I'm not trying to convince you of a point of view. I'm just going to tell you the story along with my non-SDI riddled friend, Hannah. Here's hoping. But what I do know, of all the things i don't know with this case what i do know

is that we do have a lot to get through because whether you know this case whether you think he's guilty or not it is massive and if you don't know this case well strap in because over the next two weeks we will be delving into one of the most obsessively discussed cases in the world of true crime. With all its twists and turns, bizarre coincidences, crime lab corruption, and an alternative theory to murder. Which I did originally write will leave your head spinning, but I didn't know if everybody would get the little gross pun that I was making. You need to go to prison. Prison. SDI prison. yeah you need to go to prison prison sdi prison so we'll just say an alternative theory to murder like one we haven't come across before an owl-a-bye maybe we could call it

i can't stand you so let's get into it michael and kathleen peterson had been married for 13 years and they lived in a beautiful mansion in the wealthy neighbourhood of Forest Hills, Durham, North Carolina. The Petersons had moved into this grand 11,210-square-foot extravaganza of a house in 1992. And, fun fact, in 1989, the house was used as the set for the film The Handmaid's Tale as the home of the commander. You can quite literally fit my house into that house ten times.

Just to put it into perspective for everybody. And the Petersons themselves lived up to their grand home. Michael was a Vietnam War veteran, author and columnist, while Kathleen was a successful executive at a telecoms company called Nortel. Nortel. Nortel. It's because it's like two words smashed together so it's Nortel. Michael and Kathleen were also well integrated into the local community. Michael had actually run for the mayor of Durham and Kathleen worked actively with all sorts of arts charities raising money for the American Dance Festival and the Carolina Ballet. Kathleen was affectionately known as the Martha Stewart of Durham

because she didn't pay her taxes. I'm kidding. Due to the fabulous parties that she threw, and also due to the fact that she did her own cooking, perhaps much to the shock of the other people in this area because they all have maids, I would assume. That she did her own cooking. Perhaps much to the shock of the other people in this area. Because they all have maids, I would assume. It's like the, like, play great.

Did you hear that she cooks her own? She cooks her own lasagna. But everybody is like, everyone fucking loves Kathleen Peterson. It's like, she is the one that throws all of the parties. The holiday party you want to go to is at Kathleen's house. They are, they are the party house. And she loves it. She throws massive parties. Kathleen's house. They are the party house. And she loves it. She throws massive parties.

She cooks everything. She decorates her house. She is through and through an entertainer, a host. And so the couple lived what people would call a lively and sociable life, along with their blended family of five children. It was Clayton, 27, Todd, 25, Margaret, 20, Caitlin, 19, and Martha, 18. So, thank grown-ups. So from the outside, the Petersons had it all, and then some. But then, tragedy struck. At 2.41am, the 9th of December, 2001, 911 received the following call from the Peterson home. It was Michael. Please, 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? How many stairs? How many stairs? Calm down, sir. Calm down. No, 15, 20, I don't know. Please, get somebody here right away.

Please. Okay, somebody's dispatching the ambulance while I ask you questions. It's a force shield, okay? Please, please. Okay, sir. Somebody help me. Is this back in the ambulance? Is she awake now?

Hello? Hello? Hello? So Michael Peterson, at that point, hangs up the call. And then six minutes later, he calls 911 again. Tom, 911, where is your emergency? Where are they? It's an 18102. She's not breathing.

Please, please, would you hurry up? Sorry? Sir? Tom, they're on the way. Can you tell me for sure she's not breathing? Sir? Hello? Sir? Hello? Hello?

And then he hangs up again. Paramedics arrived at the Peterson home at 2.48am. So within seven minutes of being called. But Kathleen was already dead. And the police were at the house by 3am, ready to question Michael. This is what he said about the timeline of events that day. Michael said that he had been to the gym. Then he and Kathleen had rented the movie America's Sweethearts at around 7pm.

And then they just hung out, having dinner and drinking. At 9.45pm, Christine Tomasetti, a friend of Todd Peterson's, so Michael's son, stopped by the house to pick him up for a party. Christine saw the Petersons enjoying a bottle of wine together and would later say that they seemed totally normal that evening. Someone then used the computer in Michael's study at 10.40pm. The user, Atwater, was the one that was accessed, which was Kathleen's married name from her previous marriage. So I think it's safe to say that this was most probably Kathleen logging on. Because we know Kathleen had left her computer at work, but she had an important conference call the next day and she was using her login.

And we know that she's still alive at this stage. Because a colleague of Kathleen, someone called Helen Presslinger, spoke to Kathleen on the phone shortly after this login. Helen said that she was going to send Kathleen some files for the meeting the next morning. At 11.53pm, the files arrived in the inbox, but they were never opened. According to Michael, around midnight, he and Kathleen took their glasses of wine and went down to the pool. And he said that they sat out there from around about midnight until 2am.

At this point, according to Michael, Kathleen decided that it was time to go to bed because she needed to prep for that meeting in the morning. 2am, the day before a big meeting is hard. It's tough because it's like, we'll go on to talk about the kind of state of not hell. Like it wasn't doing particularly great at the time. Stocks were plummeting. I think Kathleen was worried for her job. So that's probably the reason she's, you know, taking a very important conference meeting on a Sunday morning that was being planned.

But yeah, they're up until, according to Michael, they're up until at least 2 a.m. Kathleen then says she's going to bed. Michael said that he said goodnight to Kathleen, she went inside, and he stayed by the pool a little bit longer because he was smoking a cigar and he wanted to finish it. 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, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985,

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At just after 2.30am, Michael said he also then went inside. And this is when he found Kathleen, at the bottom of the stairs, covered in blood and barely alive. Quick point here. This house is a mansion. There is no other way to describe it. It's absolutely enormous. When you see pictures of it, you'll see a grand sweeping staircase.

That is the main staircase. That is not the one we are talking about the one we are talking about would have been used by the servants of the house back in the olden times when it was built and it's a very narrow back staircase that just leads up like to the bedrooms they were still using it but it isn't like the nice swish one it's just like a very narrow badly lit staircase that's at the back of the house. Michael Peterson told the police that he didn't know what happened, but he thought that Kathleen must have fallen down the stairs. And the initial medical examiner at the scene, Dr. Snell, agreed that this was likely what had happened. But the police were suspicious. The scene was an

absolute bloodbath, and they couldn't believe that a 48 year old woman had fallen down the stairs and died like that. If anybody listening hasn't seen the crime scene photos I'm not going to like suggest that you do it because it is honestly one of the most grisly like scene of crime photos that I've ever seen there is and that cannot be understated there is so much blood at the scene i'm looking at it now yeah and it is all over kathleen like there is just a lot of blood oh fuck yeah it's really bad yeah and so i do understand the police saying or the police thinking immediately when they see that she's not an elderly woman who's like slipped down the stairs she's a 48 year old woman who

was healthy who was active who was physically fit falling down the stairs and dying in that much blood i can understand why on first sight first view that is incredibly shocking and those pictures that you are looking at hannah and that that you just went, oh, fuck it, they are incredibly important to the entirety of this story. The police would also say that they thought it was weird that Michael went off on his own to his office and was heard mumbling to himself. And at 4.15am, someone did log on to his computer,

using Michael's login. Does this look odd when your wife is downstairs and dead? Yes, it does. But Michael could tell that the police were giving him the wonky eye, so at 5am he actually called his lawyer, who arrived at 1810 Cedar Street at 5.20am. So could Michael logging onto his computer, when the police were there, as weird as it might look,

just have been him trying to contact his lawyer. And I've seen people say that, and I think that is very plausible. You know, it's the early 2000s. I don't think he even had a mobile phone. He was just using the house phone to call the police. So you might not have all of your contacts readily at hand like we do these days. So maybe he was just logging into his computer to find his lawyer's number and again people would be like well why was he calling his lawyer so quickly

like again guys like we always do say if you do think that the police are going to question you interview they were already questioning him at the scene to get a lawyer but you do see a lot of people being like well he lawyered up so quick he must be guilty i hate that argument man we've said it in other episodes we've said this so many times like you can't use that as a stick to beat him with because he called a lawyer so anyway that could be a reason as to why he did this now those of you who know this case i hear you i hear you screaming at your phones at me, saying, but he deleted files off his computer. Yes, he did.

But Michael Peterson deleted files off his computer in the week leading up to Kathleen's death. And then, yes, he did delete some on the day she died, but at 3.30pm. So long before Kathleen died. And long before we know there was any problem if they had had an argument because people had witnessed them. Todd's friend who had come to the house said that they seemed perfectly ordinary, perfectly normal. I'm not saying that the file deletions are irrelevant, but he wasn't deleting files when the police were there, according to the evidence. But I promise we will come back to it. For now let's talk about

Kathleen and the injuries that she had sustained. Like I said anyone who's seen these police photos will know that the scene was an absolute mess it was a complete bloodbath there is no other word for it but this is because Kathleen had multiple deep lacerations to her scalp. And anyone who has ever had a head wound will know the head wounds bleed a lot. The only time I've had a head wound was when I was in Cambodia and I crashed that motorbike, cut my face up, and I only had to get three stitches in one and the other cut that I had, because I had like two cuts on my head. The other cut, they didn't even put stitches in. So three stitches. I looked like Carrie. Oh yeah, I believe it. Blood all over my face. And it wasn't just from the side that the cut was, it was all over my face. Like it was pouring down me. I caught sight of myself in, because like I was lying on the side of the road,

we had to like, my best friend was with me and she like flagged down these like lorry drivers who picked me up and put me in their lorry and drove me to the nearest hospital and when I was in the front of the lorry I looked at myself in the mirror and I almost had a heart attack it looked so much worse than it was head wounds generally do it looked so bad when I turned up at the hospital they dropped everything and took me straight in to be examined because they thought I was dying. But when they cleaned all the blood up, I just needed three stitches. So imagine Kathleen has seven deep lacerations to her scalp. That explains why there is so much blood loss. And also, we will talk about this in more detail next week.

She had also urinated herself. So there was a lot of urine mixed in with the blood, which made it look like there was even more blood than there was because it's diluted it and spread it around even more. That's why you should never run, if you're particularly funny about blood or whatever, if you cut your hand, for example, and you run it under a cold tap, which feels like the right thing to do, it actually just makes it look a lot worse than it is

because there's so much more because the water is diluted in the blood. Sure, sure, sure. Looking at the autopsy report for Kathleen Peterson, this is what the medical examiner, who carried out the procedure, Dr. Deborah Radish... Radish, Radish, like the vegetable. Honestly, whenever I picture Dr. Deborah Radish, and I've seen pictures of her, I've watched the documentary.

Just a little radish in a white coat. Yeah, well, I picture a little Slovenian family otter wearing a fucking lab coat. Okay, this is what Dr. Deborah Radish had to say. Kathleen had at least seven lacerations on the back of her scalp, several of which had slightly penetrated her skull. Although, and this is important, there were no actual skull fractures.

Kathleen did have some subarachnoid hemorrhaging on her brain, but she did not have any other hemorrhaging or contusions to the brain itself. And there was no brain damage at all. Both very important points. There is no brain damage and there are no skull fractures. And while Kathleen also had multiple abrasions and contusions to her face, particularly around her eyes, and she also had some on the back of her hands and arms, but none of them were very significant. Kathleen also had no foreign DNA under her fingernails, just her own blood.

Kathleen's neck, however, did show a fracture on her thyroid neck cartilage, which many people take to mean that she had been strangled, although there were no other signs of strangulation like bruising around her neck or petechial hemorrhaging. Which is like hemorrhaging in the eyes, which you would see if somebody has been strangled. Absolutely. Interestingly, the autopsy also found Kathleen's own hair in both of her hands. Many of these hairs had been pulled out from the root, and it appeared that she had pulled them out herself prior to her death. Kathleen also had her own blood on the bottoms of both feet and on her face,

and two pine needles embedded in her hand. Toxicology tests revealed that Kathleen's blood alcohol level was 0.07. I've seen some places 0.08, but it kind of makes not much difference because 0.08 and 0.07 are both under the legal limit to drive in North Carolina. So yes, Kathleen had been drinking, but she wasn't hammered by any stretch of the imagination. In that state, she could legally have gotten her car and driven around. Though it was also concluded in the toxicology report that Kathleen had diazepam,

cyclobenzaprine, and nicotine in her system. That sounds lovely. So this is explained by the fact that Kathleen had been smoking with Michael in the garden that night. And she was also on anti-anxiety medication and muscle relaxants at the time. In fact, she'd been on these for a few months. Because in September, remember this is happening in December, in September, when their youngest daughter Martha went off to university, the Petersons threw a big empty nest party.

At this party, Kathleen had a few too many drinks and jumped into the shallow end of the pool. Michael actually had to pull her out and it freaked everybody out because they thought she was dead. Oh God, I bet. But he pulls her out and she'd basically just hurt her neck and her back. Kathleen was prescribed the muscle relaxant and the Valium after this. And she actually wore a neck brace for a couple of months leading up until her death, basically.

So could the neck injury found in the autopsy have been from this incident? Very possibly. Like we said, a strangulation would have left other signs. And also a strangulation would have been much more likely to have damaged her hyoid bone, which was completely intact. The other thing worth mentioning was the presence of red neurons in Kathleen's brain. These develop when someone is still alive, but oxygen is failing to reach their brain tissue. And typically these take a while to develop.

We're talking a couple of hours. So they could point to the fact that Kathleen had been at the bottom of the stairs dying for at least two hours before she actually died. And if this is the case, then Michael's timeline of Kathleen going inside at 2am and him finding her at 2.30am doesn't match. Especially if the paramedics turn up at 2.48am and she's dead. And if you remember remember Michael said that Kathleen was still breathing on the first 911 call if the neurons had taken hours to form he's either lying or he's mistaken

but we'll have to come back to that next week much like many two-parters we do there's a lot of breadcrumbing in this episode I am very sorry but that's just how it has to be today. Because for now, we need to focus on the autopsy. Dr. Deborah Radish determined that

Kathleen's cause of death was severe concussive injury of the brain caused by multiple blunt force impacts of the head. Though it was noted that heavy blood loss may also have been a factor. And according to the autopsy, the verdict given by Dr. Deborah Radish was that Kathleen's fatal injuries were, quote, received as a result of a beating. That is literally what she writes down. And the box marked homicide, because they have little check boxes where it's like accidental, unknown, homicide, unknown homicide etc etc she ticks and circles homicide and she writes this was as a result of a beating and she uses the words severe concussive

injury of the brain even though there was no brain damage and even though there was no skull fracture and she says it was caused by multiple blunt force impacts to the head. I am labouring these points because they are very important. On top of this, the police, who already had Michael in their crosshairs, had made another couple of discoveries that they felt pointed to a motive. And this is where we bring in the sex and the money. Firstly, the police had uncovered the fact that Kathleen and Michael Peterson were in quite a lot of debt. That house was enormous.

Secondly, and much to the media's scandalous delight, on Michael's computer, investigators found thousands of images of gay pornography and numerous emails between Michael and male escorts discussing meeting up for sex. So, based on all of this, the autopsy and given that Michael Peterson was the only one home that night, the police moved quickly and Michael Peterson was arrested for the murder of his wife 11 days after Kathleen's death. Now, at first, all of Michael's children stood by him. Remember that big blended family we talked about? And this included Caitlin,

who was actually Kathleen's biological daughter from her previous marriage. And Caitlin actually even led on the press conferences when Michael is first arrested. And when the family were addressed by the media, she usually acted as the spokesperson, telling them that Michael would never, ever hurt her mother. And the feeling that Michael and Kathleen were a very happy couple seemed universal. Everyone who knew the Petersons said how in love they were.

Now, we're obviously not saying that just because you're in love with somebody doesn't mean you can't murder them but they seemed happy. Caitlin had even written an essay once saying the following. Michael stopped my mother's tears. My father, so that's Kathleen's first husband, tore her apart destroying her dignity and pride. Mike restored her. So as you can see, even Kathleen's own daughter has a very high opinion of Michael. No one had anything bad to say. No one could point to any red flags or incidents where Michael had been abusive or controlling or hurt Kathleen in any way. And Kathleen also had two sisters, Laurie and Candice Zamperini, and Kathleen was very close to them,

and she never complained about Michael. They seemed to have been genuinely happy. But when the autopsy results came out, Caitlin was horrified, and soon she joined her aunt, Candice Zamperini, Kathleen's sister, in supporting the prosecution. And now, Caitlin and Candice

said that Michael must have just manipulated them all for years. And if they hadn't seen any red flags from him, it was because he'd hidden his true nature from them. And we can't even begin to imagine the pain that Kathleen's family would have been going through. So we're not going to in any way criticise them for blaming Michael. But later on, it would transpire that Dr. Deborah Radish, the state medical examiner, had sat down with Kathleen's sisters and daughter and explained to them how Michael was guilty. And we know that because they literally sent Dr. Deborah Radish a fax to thank her for this. So already, right out of the gate, the little radish in a lab coat is hardly an impartial

expert. But again, we're going to come back to radish face next week. It's a breaded radish, a deep fried breaded radish you've got to look forward to. But yeah, like the idea that the state's like pathologists, the state's medical examiner would sit down and explain to the family, to the grieving family, to the grieving family of a potential victim, how exactly the man who was currently being investigated for this murder is definitely guilty. My God, the levels of like, already like, maybe corruption is too strong a word, but the levels of like already like maybe corruption is too strong a word but the levels of like issues here are incredibly ginormous so in january 2002 michael peterson was allowed out on bail as preparations for his trial began michael hired very aptly christmasemed named defense attorney, David Rudolph, to represent him. And in February 2002,

one of the many things that would go on to make this case as infamous as it is today happened. French filmmaker, with the most fucking French name I've ever heard in my entire non-French life, Jean-Javier de Lestrade and his team began filming the game changer of a documentary that is The Staircase. It is on Netflix. I watched it all. 13 episodes, 10 hours of this documentary I watched for this two-parter. And look, is it my favourite true crime documentary ever? No. Is it skewed towards the defence massively? Yes. Yeah, I have to hold my hands up and say that I never finished The Staircase. I would say 90% of people who have started The Staircase who I've spoken to said that they didn't finish it.

I think my mistake was watching The Jinx first and then expecting The Staircase to be as good. The thing is with The Staircase staircase what i will say about it is it is a completely different type of true crime documentary right in the jinx the big payoff is the big payoff yeah i'm not going to ruin it but you know it's a 10 year old documentary but you know what i mean there's like a big like oh my god moment in it and you really are jaw on the floor. Like, yeah. This documentary was intended to do something else and is a game changer in many ways because of how it is shot. And I'm not going to sit here and be like, go watch it. Definitely go watch it.

It's a slog. I found it a slog. Yeah. But parts of it were fascinating. The filmmakers had originally wanted the staircase to be a blow-by-blow account of the legal system from every angle, defence, prosecution and the judge. But the prosecution changed its mind and pulled out. So obviously, the filmmakers worked with whoever was willing to give them access. The defence. And my god, did they get access. Yeah, and I think, I think at times when I was

watching it, there's like courtroom footage or shots of the verdict being read out. And then like film footage of immediately after the verdict being read out, like, I wouldn't say backstage, but behind the scenes. And I genuinely thought at first, like, are these dramatisations? But no, the film crew were actually allowed to film everything. I have never, ever watched a documentary that has had the kind of access to a court case, to a trial of this high stakes ever before in my life. It is really, really eye-opening. Apparently, Lestrade got in touch with the defence team following an Oscar he had won for his previous film, Murder on a Sunday Morning. And Michael Peterson agreed because he said he wanted everything documented because he didn't believe that he was about to get a fair trial.

So, yeah, Michael Peterson is very much convinced from the start that he is going to be unfairly, unjustly treated by the legal system in Durham, North Carolina. His son actually says, I can't remember if it's Todd or Clayton, probably Todd because Clayton's not, that you're going to be sat at a crooked table. And the reason for this, the reason Michael thinks this, is because he had, during his time as a columnist in Durham, written some rather scathing articles about the DA and about the police force in that area. And he felt that they were therefore, in turn, out to get him. Now, how true all of this is in terms of law enforcement in North Carolina wanting to lock Michael Peterson up because of these articles, I don't know. There is a very famous book on this case written by a lady called Aphrodite Jones,

who is a true crime author. I read it and I found it incredibly biased, like everything on this case. But she basically says in there like, oh, the police in Durham didn't care at all about the articles he'd written. In fact, they loved it because they loved to hear their bosses getting skewered. No, they didn't. No, they didn't. Because he wasn't just talking about the top brass.

He was talking about all of them now michael peterson is not a local to north carolina or to durham he is a quote unquote as they often call him throughout this story a northerner him and david rudolph his defense attorney are constantly referred to as northerners and i think there is an element there of like or was an element there of people feeling a bit like who is this guy to come into our town and tell us that everybody in North Carolina including the police including the DA is a racist because that was the theme of the majority of Michael Peterson's articles was saying that the establishment in this town is corrupt it's crooked they're racist etc etc so could I see them taking umbrage with that for sure am I saying that that's why they tried to

prosecute him not necessarily do I think that's maybe why they made certain decisions like why they go after first degree murder possibly and yes I am going to be infuriatingly unclear about my opinion throughout all of this but yeah we just don't know we don't know but that's what Michael Peterson claims was the motivation for why they went after him. 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. 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 so coming back to the film that lestrade is making if i was michael peterson would i want someone especially as someone with an oscar cabinet a calling for more accolades. Would I want someone like that following me around, filming me, recording everything and putting me under a microscope if I had killed my wife? Probably not. It would be one hell of a double bluff. It would, wouldn't it? However, might I think I could outsmart anyone and everyone and just want to make the whole thing about me and place myself at the centre of all of that attention if I was some sort of big fat narcissistic wife murderer? Possibly yes.

Would I also be even more convinced of the fact that everything in the edit of this particular documentary would go my own way if I had a decades long love affair with the editor of said documentary? Maybe even more of a yes. So again, I don't know. I don't know what his motivation is. Because, yes, Michael Peterson did give the team access. So there were naturally going to be more on his side. Documentaries do better when they have a clear angle, like exposing a wrongful conviction or police corruption. And yes, Peterson also had a relationship with the film's editor,

Sophie Brunette, for 13 years, including the time when she was editing the documentary. We can't speak to Peterson's motives for doing the documentary or for Lestrade's angle, but we do have to be honest in saying that Lestrade shot hundreds of hours of film and only aired eight. So, you know, if you haven't seen it, go and watch the staircase if you must. But like anything, it is biased. Yeah. And just to be clear, it's like eight hours is what's filmed because Netflix commissioned two extra episodes that come out later that don't use the original footage. But yeah, the point you're making is very clear, Hannah. It's like, yes, they get all sorts of crazy access.

And yes, it makes it look like here's this very transparent view of the justice system at work but they have hours and hours and hours and hours of footage that they siphon through sift through and they cherry pick eight hours that they're going to use and they have a very clear Michael Peterson is not guilty angle because if I've learned anything in the seven years of true crime, is that a wrongful conviction story is a lot easier to sell. Yeah. For now, let's get back to the timeline. Later that year, on the 29th of October 2002, Saruti's birthday,

Caitlin, Kathleen's daughter, filed a wrongful death suit against Michael Peterson. And she was eventually successful and was awarded $25 million. The standards in a civil case like this are much lower than in a criminal case. So, although Caitlin won here, it didn't mean that it was a surefire thing that therefore Michael Peterson would be found guilty of murder at a criminal trial. But then, in June 2003, came probably the biggest bombshell of the entire investigation. Any other case, any of these particular bombshells, like the gay porn that they find, the debt they find, all of that would be shocking enough. In this case, it just keeps coming. So in June 2003, another death close to Michael Peterson was being re-examined by

police. Not in North Carolina, however, but 4,300 miles away in Darmstadt, Germany. But before I tell you what the hell I'm talking about, this is a good opportunity to fill in a little background on Michael Peterson. Long before he met Kathleen, back in the mid-60s, Michael had lived in Germany with his then first wife, Patty. He had been a captain in the Marines, but was already retired by this point and making a good living writing books about the war. And people always say, like,

Michael Peterson is like a failed novelist. He wasn't. His first two books did really, really well. And he was doing well enough that he could live a fairly good life just off the proceeds of his book. And during this time, Michael and Patty had two sons, Clayton and Todd. These Petersons were good friends with another American military family who lived out in Germany, the Ratliffs. George and Elizabeth Ratliff had two very young daughters, Martha and Margaret.

In 1983, shortly after Martha was born and when Margaret was just two years old, their father George died while on duty. And two years later, tragically, the girl's mother, Elizabeth Ratliff, also died. Both of the Ratliffs had said that in the eventuality of their deaths, they wanted the girls to go and live with the Petersons. So that's what happened.

But soon after, Michael and Patty separated, and Michael moved to the US with the two girls. And you will see it said that taking on the girls was a bit of a stressor for their marriage because Patty hadn't signed up for four kids. Though it is also suspected that Michael was cheating on Patty with men and with women and Patty found out about it. Yeah, so like you said, he goes to the US and he takes the two girls with him. Todd and Clayton stay with their mum in Germany. So once in the US, in 1986, Michael met

Kathleen, who already had her daughter Caitlin from her first marriage. A few years later Michael and Kathleen and their three girls all moved in together and after a few more years they were joined by Michael's two sons from Germany Clayton and Todd and it turns into this big old blended family that we told you about and they all lived together for the next 14 years and while the boys were close to Kathleen, they already had a mum, Patty. But for Martha and Margaret, Kathleen became mum in every possible way. Which is why it's all the more disturbing when you discover that the other woman whose death was now being re-examined by the police

was Martha and Margaret's biological mum, Elizabeth Ratliff. And how had she died? Well, doctors in Germany ruled that Elizabeth Ratliff had died of a cerebral haemorrhage. But she was found dead at the bottom of, you guessed it, the staircase of her house. And then there's the black cat. At the bottom of the Cedar Street mansion stairs, where Kathleen died, there hung a print of T.A. Steinlein's Chat Noir. You've seen it, it's in every Café Rouge in the country.

Elizabeth Ratliff's sister, Margaret Blair, who was actually the one to call the police about the connection between the staircases, said that the same print had hung at the bottom of Elizabeth Ratliff's staircase in her house in Germany, where she had died. And Margaret claimed that the print actually belonged to Elizabeth. Many on the internet who believe that Michael Peterson is some sort of serial killer of women using staircases as his weapon of choice, believe that the whole black cat thing is a sick literary nod on peterson's part to the edgar allen poe story the black cat which is a story about a man who murders

his wife on the stairs yeah i like i don't know what to say i was in two minds about even including it but i was like you know what let's just stick it in. But come on. It's very... If you push someone down the stairs, you do not know that they're going to die. If you are going to be somebody who murders people using stairs, it is not a foolproof method of murder. It's also such a common image. Yes, it is.

And it might well be the same image because Michael Peterson inherited the estate because he took on the girls. Yeah. So he might have just got the print and taken it to his new house. The idea that it's some sort of, because he's a writer, he's a psychopathic, narcissistic, literary murderer. It is quite nice now, isn't it? But, you know, we'll mention it because it's all over the internet. So yes, obviously, when Elizabeth Ratliff's death became known to the police in North Carolina, they were calling the Germans before they'd even finished picking their jaws up off the floor.

And after a miserable few weeks, eventually, Martha and Margaret, being the next of kin to Elizabeth, gave permission for their mother's body to be exhumed. Obviously, they didn't want to do this, as they fully believed that their adoptive father, Michael Peterson, is innocent in relation to the deaths of their biological mother and the woman they called mum, but they felt they had no choice in the end. And just to be clear, all those years ago,

17 years before she is exhumed, when Elizabeth Ratliff had died, there hadn't been any hint of suspicion of foul play. So we're not talking it's a cold case that they never solved and now he strikes again. It was never even suspected of being anything other than a horrible incident. Michael Peterson had been at the Ratliff home the night before Elizabeth died. A lot of people point that out. They say he was the last person to see her alive.

That may well be true. But after George Ratliff died, Elizabeth Ratliff actually moved next door to the Petersons so that they could help her with the girls. So Michael was over there quite a lot, like helping them, driving them around, doing chores, because he was retired. And it was actually, just to be clear, because again, people say that Michael Peterson was the one to find Elizabeth Ratliff's body. That's not true. Her nanny, or should I say,

the Ratliff's nanny, was the one to find Elizabeth's body the next day. And Elizabeth, like I said, was found to have died of a cerebral hemorrhage. And this was the opinion of three doctors who examined Elizabeth. Her death was even investigated by the US military police in Germany. And you can bet your ass if they'd found anything that made it look even slightly suspicious, they would have been all over it. Neighbours and friends also stated that Elizabeth had been complaining about headaches in the weeks leading up to her death. And also, it's very important to point out that Elizabeth hadn't been a well woman, she actually had a rare blood disorder. So, you know, I get it, it's a huge, huge, huge coincidence

that any prosecutorial team wouldn't be able to just look past. But what happens next is mind-blowing. Because now, Elizabeth, a whopping 17 years after she had been buried, was taken by a hearse from Texas to North Carolina. Why a hearse? Is that how they normally move them? I don't know. I would assume an ambulance. I would have thought so. Ambulances are really fucking expensive

in America, so maybe that's why. And she was driven in this hearse specifically to the examination table of Dr. Deborah Radish. The very same Dr. Radish who had conducted the autopsy on Kathleen Peterson. But we have to ask, why on earth

do they have to take the body 1,200 miles to a radish in a lab coat? They could have just used another pathologist, a third party impartial pathologist in Texas, where Elizabeth was buried. That's not going to hurt anything. In fact, it would help. If anything, it's going to be more objective. Exactly. And we're not desperately keen on the fact that the medical examiner who would have had to testify in court about Kathleen's autopsy also did the post-exhumation autopsy on Elizabeth. It makes things very complicated. It muddies the waters.

Get a fucking unbiased pathologist to do the autopsy in Texas. Do Elizabeth the dignity of just exhuming her, doing the autopsy and reburying her? Why are you dragging her across the country and then conducting this incredibly biased autopsy on this woman by the same woman who's going to have to testify in court about Kathleen? It is unbelievable that this was allowed to happen. David Rudolph also agrees with us and he requested that an unbiased pathologist carry out the autopsy. But it made no difference. Dr. Radish was given the job regardless. And Dr. Radish found that Elizabeth Ratliff had died in 1985 from blunt force trauma to the head in a homicidal attack, rather than of a brain hemorrhage whilst climbing the stairs which is what literally three other doctors said homicidal attack you can't like a pathologist's job is not to say things like

she died of a homicidal attack your job is to say she died of blood loss she died of a cerebral hemorrhage she died of this that or the other to me, when you come to the checkboxes, it's like, to me, it looks most likely that this would have been a homicide. To say she died of a homicidal attack, that is shocking. And don't you worry, the controversy around Dr. Deborah Radish is something we're going to come back to later on. And so, after a long and arduous pretrial period and an even longer and more arduous jury selection process, the trial of Michael Peterson began on the 1st of July 2003 in Durham, North Carolina. The prosecution's case was that Michael had murdered Kathleen

with a blowpoke after she had discovered that he was having affairs with male escorts. I did have to look up what a blowpoke was. Yes. So, yeah. The first article when you Google blowpoke comes up. Of course it is. What the hell is a blowpoke? The staircase. So just in case anybody's wondering what a blowpoke is, a blow poke is if you have an open fire it's basically an instrument that you would use to blow into the fire in order to relight embers

so it is a long cylindrical hollow metal implement that you would have in your house it's not like a fire poke which you might be thinking of it's hollow and it's a tube like piece of equipment so that's what they say it is. They say it's the blow poke. And yeah, like I said, they said it was because of the affairs that he had been having and she had found out about it. They also supposed that money had been a motivator. The couple, like we had said, had been in debt, roughly to the tune of $142,000 of credit card debt. The Peterson's were definitely spending more than they had coming in. Plus, their kids were in expensive private schools. And also the ones that were in uni, they were

still dependent on them. And even the adult children, Todd and Clayton, were in significant debt themselves and still financially dependent on Kathleen and Michael. Kathleen also had a $1.8 million life insurance policy on her, for which Michael was the beneficiary. So the prosecution claimed that on the night of the murder, Kathleen had gone into Michael's office and used his computer, something they claimed that she would never normally do because Michael wouldn't allow it. So many people out there, I listen to podcasts,

and I'm not like, you know, I'm not going to like drag anybody. Everybody has very different opinions, have very strong opinions about this. People this people like she never would have been allowed to use his computer I'm like really well then why would she have a profile on them precisely so some claim that Kathleen discovered emails from Michael to men that he was paying for sex and then she lost it she was furious that she had been working herself into the ground trying to save this family and hold it all together and this was a huge and horrendous slap in the face from her husband. So Kathleen confronted Michael who in turn not wanting his

big secret about being bisexual to get out and thinking about all that money that he would get if Kathleen died, he killed her. And as for the weapon, the prosecution stated that Michael must have used a blowpoke that Kathleen's sister had given her for Christmas one year because it was hollow. And because it was hollow, it would allow for the damage to Kathleen's head, as in the lacerations, but it wouldn't have been capable of actually fracturing her skull. They argue, I think that's bullshit. this is the problem for the prosecution right the prosecution go gung-ho down the line of first degree murder for first degree murder they can't say he pushed her they've got to say he beat her to death and to say you beat somebody to death but they've got no skull fractures or

brain injury or brain damage they need to point to a very specific murder weapon and say that's what he used because you couldn't give anyone a skull fracture with a hollow metal tube could you not of course you could exactly it's about how hard you hit like it's ridiculous and the prosecution have another problem the blow poke was missing so the prosecution couldn't point to it and say that it had kathleen's blood on it or that it was damaged after having been used to beat a woman over the head multiple times but we'll be doing more blow poking next week yeah and it's candace that comes to them they don't pull the blow poke out of nowhere because they don't even have they think the blow poke is missing so candace comes to him says i know what he used to do this it was that fucking blow poke

i gave to everyone in our family and then they're like candace you're onto something it must be that blow poke and it's missing so he must have got rid of it because it was so damaged after he used it to beat kathleen to death but like hannah said we'll come back to her. Now the defence on the other hand at the trial argued that Kathleen hadn't been murdered at all. She had died as the result of a tragic accident. They said that Kathleen had been drinking. She wasn't drunk but she'd been drinking. She was on muscle relaxants. She was wearing flip-flops and she'd slipped and fallen down that narrow dark staircase. I can also say that there's only one light at the bottom of the stairs, like in the corridor,

and then one at the very top of the stairs on the landing. So the staircase itself doesn't have a light on it. So it was dark and it was narrow. And they basically said that when Kathleen slipped and fell, she'd hit her head on the stairs and or the wall and died as a result of blood loss. Michael, according to the defence, had been out in the garden for the entire horrendous event and hadn't heard anything. And by the time he found

Kathleen, it was already too late. So let's now go through all of the points raised by each side. Firstly, we're going to start with the debt. It is true that the Petersons were in debt. Michael had been so worried about his boys that he had even phoned their mother, Patty, and asked if she might be able to take out a home equity loan to help them pay off their debts. And he told her that he just couldn't talk to Kathleen about it. And that might be because Kathleen felt like Todd and Clayton

were both in their mid to late 20s and probably should just have to figure it out on their own. And Michael had to go to Patty because he was retired. And while he was still writing, it wasn't always a guaranteed income. Yeah, like Todd and Clayton are like 25 and 27 by this point and still financially dependent on the Petersons. Yeah. And I think, you know, Kathleen has done an amazing job for almost, you know, a decade and a half. Although the boys still have their mother, essentially raising five kids in her home. And I

think she probably got to the end of her tether with all the stress she had at work, the debt they were in and just being like, look, we can't keep bailing them out. And other podcasts also sort of paint Michael Peterson as being very narcissistic, saying he didn't care about anybody else apart from himself. I think the fact that he's calling Patty and begging her to take out a home equity loan to help the boys I think shows that he's too indulgent of the children like I don't think he doesn't give a shit about them I think he's weak and he doesn't put in boundaries and say you need to now stand on your own two feet he bells them out constantly and he's not the breadwinner Kathleen is yes like Michael Peterson we do have to say like again people basically say that he's

a bum like he's a bum Kathleen earns all the money but we do have to say that he was retired and he had a pension coming in because he had been honorably discharged from the marines and therefore he had a disability pension coming in every month which we we'll talk about later. And also his book, the second book that he had sold, he'd got $500,000 advance for that. And $250,000 of that money he had put straight into the deposit of buying that mansion. So although he doesn't contribute in a more regular way, like Kathleen with her paycheck, he is by no means not contributing to the household, which I do find that some people who talk about this case make it sound like that i see because yes kathleen did have a great job

she made 150 000 a year which is about 330 000 in today's money but the economy wasn't doing great nortel stock was falling off a cliff and the company was in the thick of mass layoffs. Kathleen was worried that she was next and the Petersons absolutely could not afford for her to lose her job. So that life insurance, that £1.8 million, could have come in quite useful for Michael. The prosecution even linked this to Elizabeth Ratliff's death, so the debt, saying that after

Elizabeth died, Michael, who took on the girls, well, he had got his hands on the entire Ratliff estate. But to be honest, the amount that he got from the Ratliffs seems to have barely been enough to take care of the girls for a few years after their parents died. I think when people hear the word Ratliff estate, they're like, oh, the Ratliffs were not wealthy people. They didn't have that much money. They were just an ordinary family. And the girls never seemed to have gone without during their time living with the Petersons. They went to good private schools and expensive universities. So what did he really have to gain from Elizabeth Ratliff's death, financially speaking?

I think he was left 70,000 in cash when the Ratliffs died. And then he inherited, like, the house and whatever. But, like, come on. How expensive is it to raise kids? And they were babies. Margaret was two and Martha was, like, a few months old. So, again, am I going to murder somebody and then have to take on their two kids and raise them for the rest of their lives so I

can get my hands on like maximum, say 250 grand? No. If I was, I'd have dumped those kids. And he never did that. Also, Michael wasn't destitute. Like I said, he had the pension coming in from the Marines. And this pension actually gave him $45,000 a year. And remember, this is back in the early 2000s. In today's money, that's $75,000 a year coming in from just the pension. For a retired guy who was still working and still writing and still earning money from his books, that's not a bad income. So I don't think he was destitute by any stretch of the imagination. And yes, Kathleen may have been concerned

about losing her job, but also Kathleen, especially as we'll go on to discover next week, was a brilliant woman. She would have found a job somewhere else in the blink of an eye. And if she was worried about money, I think it is quite hard

to explain away the fact that she was deferring 80% of her annual income. So I had to look this up and it seems very specifically a North Carolina thing, or it might be just because of this fucking case and everybody googling it, but it seems that in North Carolina you can defer however much of your salary you want to avoid paying income tax on it. And she was deferring 80% of her salary. Wow. Would you be doing that if you were that worried about money? No. Exactly. 80%? Yeah. So the Petersons also owned multiple properties that brought in roughly around $5,000 every single month in rental income. So again, I don't know.

The fact that some places kind of make Michael out to seem like this sort of scrounger and Kathleen as the sort of breadwinner with this in a stable sense. I understand the breadwinner thing with Kathleen, but Michael Peterson definitely wasn't not contributing. And in the days leading up to Kathleen's death, but Michael Peterson definitely wasn't not contributing. And in the days leading up to Kathleen's death, Michael Peterson had also received some exciting news. Back in 1988, Michael had co-authored a book with a guy called David Permont called Charlie Two Shoes.

It's the story of an 11-year-old Chinese boy who's befriended by a company of US Marines. And in early December 2001, David had called Michael to tell him that a Hollywood film producer with the most Bond villain-sounding name we've ever heard, Stratton Leopold, was interested in turning Charlie Two-Shoes into a film.

And this wasn't just like pipe dream, top of the pipeline kind of chat. Stratton Leopold was like, this is happening. We're doing this. We're turning this book into a movie. That was going to bring in so much money for the Petersons. Absolutely. If it had worked out, it would have actually solved pretty much,

if not all, of the Petersons' money problems. So I'm not really 100% sure what Michael Peterson would have gained from killing Kathleen money-wise. Even if she'd lost her job at Nortel, Kathleen was a very talented woman. She would have just got another job. So it does seem quite short-sighted to kill Kathleen for life insurance. It's like killing the golden goose. It does seem that way, doesn't it?

Yeah. So then let's look at the second motive that the prosecution offered up if we believe that it wasn't to do with money and to do with debt and remember this is important to say as well the prosecution don't have to show motive they don't have to prove it they don't have to do any of that but it obviously definitely helps because as we've said multiple times on this show the best story at trial wins and if you are also going to be talking about the images and emails that they found on Michael's computer, then they feel like this is a clear motive, right? That's motive two.

They're talking sex. So at trial, the prosecutors, Jim Harden and Freda Black, would repeatedly refer to the countless gay male porn photos that they discovered on Michael's computer as filth. Freda Black is a very interesting woman. If you watch the documentary, you see a lot of her. Jim Harden and Freda Black are both Southern. They both like have that very like Southern accent, like they're going for it in court. They're definitely appealing, I think, to the jury more than somebody like David Rudolph is because he speaks in a very different way I do think that played a role in this and Freda Black

she constantly refers to the images found on Michael Peterson's computer as pure tea filth is that a phrase that people use it's not one-eyed pure tea like the letter t filth what does that mean I don't know. And I have to confess, when I read the script this morning, I thought you just typed it wrong. No, I don't know what that means. Is it pure trash? Maybe. But I don't, I've never heard that.

No, it must be a North Carolina thing. And that's why she's doing it, to really, like, you know, speak to the jury. So yeah, they claim that peterson was gay or bisexual and they claimed that he was desperate for the world not to find out and that because kathleen now knew what he'd been up to she was going to leave him and so now they're saying if she is the golden goose she was about to leave and that's why he killed her because he was like well the stable monthly income is going anyway i might as well kill you and take the $1.8 million in life insurance. And also he tried to kill her because he doesn't want the secret to get out, they claim.

So, you know, wrap it all together in a neat little sex and money bow is what they do. The defence claimed that Kathleen knew about Michael's sexual proclivities and that she was fine with it. And this got a bit confusing because Michael said at first that Kathleen knew about Michael's sexual proclivities and that she was fine with it. And this got a bit confusing because Michael said at first that Kathleen did know and then he later changed his story to, we haven't discussed it, but there was a silent understanding between us. Does that ring true?

Maybe, maybe not. It's impossible to know. So many people are like, she would never have been okay with this. She would have been totally okay. But it's like, there's no way to know. And you never, ever, ever, ever, ever know 100% of another person's relationship. The prosecution pointed to the fact that Kathleen had left her first husband after he had cheated on her.

So why would she put up with more cheating from her second husband? But let's put some context around these claims. Yes, Kathleen's first husband, father of her child, a physics professor, had cheated on her and that had ended their marriage. But Kathleen had also cheated in that marriage too. We're not sure which infidelity came first, but Kathleen wasn't as naive to the world as some people like to claim that she was. And again, like we have it on good authority from Caitlin, her daughter, that Kathleen was destroyed by the ending of her first marriage. So I'm not saying she wasn't completely devastated, but so many places kind of paint Kathleen as this

very like pure person who took her marriage vows very seriously. I'm not saying she didn't, and that she could never put up with cheating or anything like that. She never saw any grey area, it was black and white, you didn't cheat in a relationship and they leave out the fact that she was also cheating again like i said don't know which came first but there is that part of it also further context her first husband cheated on kathleen with his university students i know he would bring younger women i mean girls i'm gonna say fucking guys you're at university come on bringing these younger girls back to their house to have affairs is there a bigger slap in the face than that absolutely not michael and again i am not excusing what michael

did i am simply giving you guys the context. Michael, in his emails to the male escorts that he was messaging, said, and this is a quote that we can prove because the emails exist. He said, I'm married. I'm happily married with a dynamite wife. But I'm bi and I have an itch that needs scratching. Even the man with whom Michael Peterson was emailing,

a man named Brad Wolgamore, testified at the trial, saying that most men he saw were indeed married to women. But Michael was pretty much the only one he'd ever met in years of being an escort who talked openly and so positively about his wife. Apparently, Michael would tell Brad all the time how much he loved Kathleen. Michael had even used the home phone on occasions to call Brad. So he's not trying to be that secretive about it. And I don't really see what Brad's incentive would be to lie. No, no, I don't see that either. And any place that you do sort of go to learn about this case,

everyone always gushes over Brad. And it's not hard to see why if you watch the documentary and you get as far as the point that you watch the footage of Brad testifying in court he's very charming he's funny he's charismatic and yeah like when he testifies the jury's laughing even Martha and Margaret who basically spend the entirety of the documentary crying laugh when Brad is on the stand. But we do have to say that since all of this happened, since everything came out, Brad has come out and said that when he was giving evidence he was not okay and he was on a lot of drugs. Brad had struggled with opioid addiction for years and he also said that he actually felt forced into

testifying by the prosecution who were really going for this gay affair being the motive. But it kind of backfires on the prosecution a little bit because Brad's just like, I think Michael fucking loved his wife. I think he just sometimes needed to sleep with a man. And we're going to stick with Michael's sexuality for a bit. Michael's brother also claimed that it wasn't a big secret. He'd known that Michael was bisexual since they were teenagers. And it also claimed that it wasn't a big secret. He'd known that Michael

was bisexual since they were teenagers. And it also seems that Patty, his first wife, knew as well, because it seems like it was a contributing factor to the downfall of their marriage. And even the Peterson kids knew that their dad had books on homosexuality. They even used to steal these books from his office and hide them in each other's rooms and then call each other gay. Which is just like the most peak kid thing you could ever hear of but yeah like he literally has books on being gay in his office we're not defending what michael did a lot of people sway one way or the other to the absolute extreme with this point of the story down Downplaying the infidelity because it was with a man,

like somehow if it had been with a woman, it would have been worse. There's definitely a lot of people out there being like, well, he had to do it because he was bisexual and because he was sleeping with men, it's not really an affair. And I'm like, yeah, it fucking is. Yes, it is. Of course it is. If the other person knows that you have those sexual proclivities and is fine with you doing that, then sure, have at it.

But if you are secretly sleeping with somebody else, whatever their fucking sex is, it's cheating. Absolutely. And then on the other hand, you also have people implying that because Michael had an interest in men, he was much more likely to be a deviant killer. Yeah, like absolutely weaponising his homosexual tendencies, being like, oh, well, you know, he's sick. And I'm like, it's not one or the other, guys. Yeah, right. Like, things can be two things, as I've said before and I will say again. So, did Kathleen Peterson know that her husband was bisexual? No idea.

But we're not sure that they ever had an actual conversation about it. But Kathleen wasn't stupid. I think she knew. The kids are fucking hiding his books in their rooms. And calling each other gay in the house. Michael Peterson's brother definitely did know. Michael Peterson's brother also says that their parents knew. Patty knew.

Is Kathleen really the only one who didn't know? Again, I really, really don't know. Maybe, you know, people also see what they want to see. Maybe she ignored it. I definitely don't think they ever spoke about it. The more important question here is, does this serve as a motive? So does Michael Peterson being bisexual, sleeping with male escorts, does that serve as a motive? Maybe. I think we need to compare this to the likes of Scott Peterson and his case. In that case that we covered this time last year, Scott Peterson was having an affair with a woman.

So he lied to his wife Lacey and to his girlfriend Amber. And he sold Amber, his girlfriend, the dream. He was absolutely planning a life with her. Like we said in that episode, he wanted to start fresh. He wanted to get rid of Lacey and the pregnancy and the potential baby and all of that because he wanted to start anew. And to do that, he had to get rid of Lacey. In this case, however, it's not the same thing. We said even in the Scott Peterson case, just because somebody's a cheater,

just because somebody's a liar doesn't make them a killer. You really have to think what is to be gained by Michael Peterson killing Kathleen. And again, I'm not saying it's okay for a husband to sleep with men behind their wife's backs, but Michael Peterson didn't seem to want to get rid of Kathleen for a man. He seems to have been a selfish man, a weak man who wanted to have his cake and eat it too, but I don't know, he wasn't trying to start a new gay life. And there's also the big red flag of how the prosecution weaponized Michael's sexuality at the trial. Freda Black, like I said, she kind of continuously says, pure tea filth. She shouts that over and over again. And a lot of people take issue with this

and her repeatedly mentioning things like anal sex, saying that it was homophobic. And yeah, she probably was trying to sort of stoke something in a jury from a more conservative part of the US. There's no doubt about that. But the defense did claim that Michael and Kathleen's marriage was perfect. The defense said that. And when they said that, they did leave the door open for the prosecution to rebut that by saying, hey, how are you going to say it's perfect when he's going behind her back? Because you have no evidence that Kathleen knew as sleeping with men. So some people take a lot of issue with the fact that the bisexual stuff was brought up at all. I think the defense kind of fell into that trap by allowing

for it to be brought up and people say all the time when talking about this case if it had been a woman they never would have gone on about it so much i think they fucking would have need i bring up scott peterson amber fray again like i don't believe it's true that they only went on about it because Michael was sleeping with men. I think that added to the scandal. But I think an affair in a murder case, come on, it's always sex, money, revenge. So the most likely scenario, if Kathleen was indeed murdered by Michael, was that she had found out about Michael's paid-for affairs when she used his computer the night she died,

and she told him that she wanted a divorce. He may have been hopeful that the film deal would close, but that could take months to hash out, and Michael was desperate, and so, terrified his secret would get out, even though everybody in his life seems to already know, Michael Peterson killed his wife Kathleen. And of course to get his hands on the 1.8, to tide him over until the film deal goes through. But we've got a couple of problems with this theory.

First off, the state's own computer expert had to admit under cross-examination that the email her colleague sent to Kathleen was never opened. Yeah, so her colleague phones her and is like, I'm going to send you this file. She has that call at around 10.30. 11.50 something, the email comes through. Michael says by that point, he and Kathleen were getting ready to go sit by the pool and do their nightly drinking, which they did do on the regular. And they would be out there for the next two hours. That email her colleague Helen Pressling has sent was never opened. So when is Kathleen finding these emails? And also these emails to Brad from Michael were sent months before the night Kathleen died. So it would be pretty tricky for her to have accidentally found them. They're not going to be at the top of the pile. No. Helen's email is at the top of the pile and nobody opens that. And that's the only

thing Kathleen would have been looking for. Why would she go scrolling back through the inbox? But we don't actually need to ask why she would do this or do that because the prosecution could never prove that Kathleen ever saw the Brad emails. And if the whole oh my god you're sleeping with a man and cheating on me revelation had been the big fight that the couple had had that night that led to the murder, why didn't Michael delete all of the incriminating evidence on his computer? Because he didn't. He didn't delete any of it. He did delete some emails, financial ones pertaining to debts in the week leading up to Kathleen's death and even on the day itself. But why would you leave the other stuff if you're hiding probably was just like I don't want to look at that yes 100% it was 100%

I think like I don't want to look at these fucking emails about how much debt we're in and also some of the emails were Michael reaching out to like Patty asking for her to take out the home equity loan to help the boys and also Michael reaching out to Margaret and Martha's uncle. So Margaret and Martha's uncle was actually a very wealthy doctor who lived in the US. And Michael had emailed him saying, you know, I've raised the girls for this long. I have no interest in not continuing to raise them. But could you, being somebody with means, help me pay for their universities and help me pay for their schooling and the uncle agreed the uncle was like yeah sure no problem here's some money

but maybe michael deleted it because he didn't want kathleen to know because i think maybe him and kathleen were having arguments about the fact that he had brought a lot of children into this marriage and was putting a lot of pressure on the situation but it seemed like him trying to ease that pressure and find other ways to do it rather than sponging off kathleen not that i'm saying she felt that way because she also loved the girls like they were her own but he deletes these kind of emails he doesn't delete the gay pictures yeah or the emails with brad so why wouldn't he do that if that was the reason he killed her? But even more than this issue of why, more than this issue of why did he kill her, if he did, is to me the crucial question of how. How did Kathleen Peterson die? Her injuries are so odd.

She's got these deep lacerations to her skin, but no skull fracture or brain damage. The defense attorney, David Rudolph, pointed out to Dr. Deborah Radish at trial, and this is like one of the really good moments of the trial that they do capture on film, is he hands her a stack of 500 beating deaths in North Carolina over the years before Kathleen's death. It's like a stack of files. And in those 500 beating deaths that had taken place over the years, there wasn't a single case where someone had been beaten to death and there hadn't been a skull fracture and or brain injury. And Deborah Radish has nothing to say to that, really. No one can explain this. Neither side, I feel, had a good explanation for Kathleen's death. The prosecution said that Michael Peterson had beaten her to death with a blow poke, but the injuries don't really fit. You'd have to beat

somebody so carefully just to tear their skin but not break the skull. And also the question is, why would you do that? So that there would be some big question mark about how she had actually died? Like, no one would think that way if you were in a rageful, murderous rampage. No, you're not going to be tempering the force with which you hit them. Exactly. So that doesn't really fit. And the defense said that Kathleen fell down the stairs, but again, like, does it really fit? I don't know. In the documentary world famous forensic pathologist Ernest Spitz appears in episode one talking about Kathleen's injuries and he talks about his particular theory behind them. He says that when you first see the tears and splitting of the skin on Kathleen's skull you'll think think, oh my god, this woman must have been attacked. But according

to Spitz, you need to think of the head like a watermelon. And consider how a watermelon, that is spherical, may hit in several places, even after just one impact, with a flat surface. And especially with stairs, if you hit something round and large on some stairs it's going to hit in one impact multiple places and he says when that happens like it did with Kathleen's head according to him although she maybe hit her head once maybe twice the impact caused the skin on her head to split in multiple places like when you drop a watermelon onto a flat surface. And he says that the skull wasn't fractured and the brain was left undamaged because the impact simply split the skin.

I don't buy that. I can buy the thing of one impact on a spherical object causing multiple points of splitting. Yes. But again, it's very, very like, how is she hitting her head on the floor and then there's still no skull fracture. I don't know. I don't know.

But the wounds being head wounds, like we said, bled significantly. And because Kathleen wasn't helped quickly enough, although she did not brain damage or skull fractures, she sadly bled to death. And that's his theory. Crucially, though, Spitz never testified in court. Why is something that we couldn't really get to the bottom of, but it does seem that he refused to say one way or another what had actually happened. He said that he was willing to say that there was not enough evidence

to say if Kathleen had been murdered or not. Spitz said that after all, he couldn't be sure that she wasn't pushed down the stairs, for example. Yeah, so he's like, she could have fallen, but I can't say that's not murder because she could have also been pushed down the stairs. That could have led to the same injuries that I'm seeing. All he says is he doesn't think that she was beaten over the head. So his testimony wouldn't have been that useful. And he's an expensive man.

But the defence did present other experts who said that Kathleen's injuries were consistent with a fall. They explained that she likely fell because the staircase was narrow, just 42 inches. There was only a light at the top and at the bottom. She was wearing flip-flops and she'd been drinking. People argue that she could have driven, but those people are ignoring the Valium and the muscle relaxant that she had in her system, which would have made her feel a lot more drunk than 0.7%. A fall could have resulted in Kathleen hitting her head on the sharp crown moulding. There was, in fact, Kathleen's blood and hair on the moulding, which could indicate that that was the point of impact. Kathleen then hit her head on the floor again, resulting in two

blows but four impacts because she hit the stairs that had multiple angles to them and that is what led to the splitting of the skin on her skull. So the defence say she falls unconscious but then she comes to. Her blood is pooled all around her. And Kathleen tried to get up, which is how she got blood on the bottom of her feet. And then she falls again. She slips, possibly for the third time. And the blood smears on the doorframe could back up the fact that she was trying to pull herself up.

Yeah, because there's like her own blood smears from her hands on the outside of the doorframe at the bottom of the stairs. Like she's fallen down the stairs, hit her head and then tried to pull herself up and possibly slipped again. And the reason they say she had to be unconscious is there had to be enough blood on the floor for her to get it all over the bottom of her feet. And also the unconsciousness period could explain the red neuron development, even though the prosecution's experts say it would have taken a lot longer. So nothing perfectly explains it, but there's some explanations there. Now, the defence also brought out Dr Henry Lee,

again, a very, very highly regarded forensic pathologist. And Dr Lee, who, if you have seen the JonBenet Ramsey CBS documentary, is the one who likes to say panties. And Dr Lee was much more emphatic at trial. He took the stand and said that there was nothing to indicate that Kathleen had been attacked. Leave alone the lack of skull fracture, Dr. Lee pointed to the fact that there was no cast-off blood spatter on the ceiling of the staircase. If Kathleen had been bludgeoned, as the prosecution was claiming, there would have

been blood spray on the ceiling, according to Dr. Lee. Now the scene was incredibly bloody, so something repeatedly striking Kathleen's head and then being lifted up to do it again and again and again, leading to seven lacerations of the skin on the scalp, as the prosecution stated had been done with the blow poke, Dr Lee argued that there definitely would have been blood splashed above Kathleen's body, because every time you raise the blow poke covered in blood, you would have sprayed it on the ceiling. And there was a lot of blood sprayed around the staircase, but most of it was tiny little droplets and most of it was at ground level or just above, none of it was on the ceiling. Dr. Lee claimed that the 10,000 drops of blood spray

that were splattered all over the staircase came from Kathleen shaking or moving her head and from expiring. And he said that the expiration blood would have come not from internal bleeding, which only would have occurred had she had a skull fracture, but rather from the blood from her head wounds pouring down her face and then her coughing or breathing out that would have then led to that blood being sprayed onto the walls. Could this be the case? Very possibly but we just don't know. The defence also pointed out that some of Kathleen's hair was mixed into

the blood on the walls again suggesting that this is where the impact had occurred, and again the fact that there is blood in her hair. He says if she had just moved her hair, it would have again sprayed more blood around at a ground level. But it's still quite difficult to understand how one or two impacts falling down the stairs could split the skin into seven lacerations. As Werner Spitz said, if this was down to the watermelon hypothesis,

why were there no examples of comparable fall deaths that the defence could point to? They never bring out, they bring out the 500 cases of, like, beating deaths and say they all have skull fractures. Could they not find any falls that had resulted in similar injuries to Kathleen? If they did, they never brought them up at trial. And there weren't even banisters on the stairs that could have led to multiple sharp impacts. There was a mechanical chairlift with rails, which definitely could

have caused some damage. And we're not really sure why anyone isn't pointing to that. Rudolph mentions it in the series, but it never comes up again. So Kathleen's blood probably wasn't on it. Yeah, I think when you see the footage of the staircase, you're like, oh my God, there's like rails running down the side of the staircase for an old chairlift. I'm like, oh my God, you could have easily fallen and sliced your head on that. But the defence never bring it up, and I think it's because her blood wasn't on it. So, we don't know. Whether or not Kathleen was murdered is a huge question mark.

But one that we are not going to solve today. Because we are going to see you next week for part two, the conclusion of Red-Handed Does Staircase. And yes, we know that was a lot of information to take in. Well done. Go give yourself a Christmas treat. And we will be back next week with part two of this very, very long and convoluted case. And we will see you then. Bye. Goodbye. So, get this.

The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you a profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah.

Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you.

A message from the Ontario PC Party. 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. Claudian 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.