What did Michael Peterson do?
Michael Peterson is an American novelist who was accused of murdering his second wife, Kathleen Peterson, on the 9th of December 2001. Peterson called emergency services to report that he had found his wife unconscious in their home in Durham, North Carolina.
He claimed he had been outside by the pool and had come in to find Kathleen at the foot of the stairs. Peterson said she must have fallen down the stairs after consuming alcohol and taking Valium.
Peterson’s high-profile case became the subject of the French documentary mini-series, The Staircase, which began filming soon after Peterson’s arrest in 2001.
The medical examiner concluded that Kathleen had died from lacerations of the scalp caused by a homicidal assault. There were a total of 7 lacerations to the top and back of Kathleen’s head which were the result of repeated blows with an unknown light weapon.
The death of Elizabeth Ratliff
It wasn’t the first time Michael Peterson had been involved in the death of a woman at the bottom of a staircase. Elizabeth Ratliff, who was a friend of Michael Peterson and his first wife, Patty, died in Germany in 1985 with injuries to her head after a fall down the stairs.
Her death was investigated by both the German police and U.S. military police, and an autopsy concluded Ratliff died from an intracerebral haemorrhage due to a blood coagulation disorder known as Von Willebrand’s disease. The coroner determined the haemorrhage resulted in immediate death followed by Ratliff falling down the stairs after collapsing. The Petersons had dinner with Ratliff and her daughters on the night of the incident, with Michael staying to help Ratliff put the children to bed before going home. The nanny discovered her lifeless body the next morning. Peterson was the last person to see Ratliff alive.
Before Peterson’s trial, the Durham court ordered the exhumation of Ratliff’s body for a second autopsy. The Durham medical examiner found sufficient evidence from the results of the second autopsy to overturn the earlier findings and list Ratliff’s cause of death as “homicide.”
What happened during the trial?
Michael Peterson’s murder trial for Kathleen’s death became a media sensation as details emerged about the accused murderer’s private life. The prosecution attacked Peterson for his credibility after lies about his military career and his secret gay life, which they believed proved the Peterson’s marriage was an unhappy one. They suggested Kathleen had discovered his secret life as a gay man and wanted a divorce. They figured Michael Peterson’s motive in the killing was to cash in her $1.5 million insurance policy. The defence argued that Kathleen accepted Michael’s bisexuality and the marriage was very happy.
As for the murder weapon, the prosecution claimed it was a custom-made fireplace poker known as a blow poke. It had been a gift to the Petersons from Kathleen’s sister, but it was missing from the house at the time of the investigation. In an extraordinary twist later in the trial, the defence team produced the missing blow poke, which they claimed had been overlooked by police investigators in the garage.
Peterson was convicted of murdering Kathleen on the 10th of October 2003, after one of the longest trials in North Carolina history. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and was imprisoned at the Nash Correctional Institution near Rocky Mount.
What happened during the appeal?
After 8 years, Peterson was granted a new trial after the judge ruled a critical prosecution witness gave misleading testimony. He was released on the 16th of December 2011, with a new trial pending.
However, the trial never happened, and in 2017, Peterson submitted an Alford Plea to the reduced charges of manslaughter. He was sentenced to time already served, and he was finally a free man.
Where is Michael Peterson now?
Michael Peterson is 80 years old now, and he lives alone in a ground-floor apartment in Durham, North Carolina. He has sold the house he shared with Kathleen and has returned to writing, releasing 2 books detailing his side of the story in 2019’s Behind the Staircase and 2020’s Beyond the Staircase. He also took part in Netflix’s The Staircase, which released 3 new episodes in 2018 to include new information on the case, as well as including the French miniseries, in a combined 13-episode true crime series.
There was also a drama mini-series released in 2022, also titled The Staircase, starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette on HBO Max.
Read more: The Staircase Documentary review
What do you think of Michael Peterson’s case? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
That’s easy – show me ONE other person, a single ONE person that has been the last to see not one, but TWO people before they met their death on the stairs and that person is proven innocent. What’s that – There is nobody? Well, there you are.