A Forensic Files Murder That Went on a Binge
(“A Novel Idea,” Forensic Files)
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If Forensic Files got an annual performance review, it would always exceed expectations in telling a story in 22 minutes without making viewers feel cheated — but at the same time leaving them interested in finding out more.
Forensic Files produced “A Novel Idea” back in 2006, but any murder story that includes well-educated mansion owners plus a cheerful male escort on the witness stand is sure to be revisited many times.
Pop-culture phenom. Over the years, Dateline has continually covered the case of how writer Michael Peterson’s wife, Kathleen, ended up dead at the base of a staircase in their 14-room house. The NBC series most recently broadcast an update of “Down the Back Staircase” in 2017.
But public interest in the case didn’t really explode until the following year, when Netflix expanded and updated a documentary by French director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade to create a 13-part bingefest called The Staircase.
For this week, I looked into what’s happened to Michael Peterson since the Netflix series ended in 2018 and whether a theory that a rogue owl played a role in Kathleen’s death ever got any traction. But first, here’s a recap of “A Novel Idea” along with extra information drawn from internet research:
Full house. Michael Ivor Peterson graduated from Duke University, where he was editor of the school newspaper, then joined the Marines and earned silver and bronze stars for service in Vietnam.
As a young man, he divided his time between North Carolina and Germany. He and his first wife, schoolteacher Patricia Sue Peterson, had sons Todd and Clayton — then acquired two daughters, Margaret and Martha, when the couple’s friend Liz McKee Ratliff died. Ratliff had assigned Michael as guardian of her kids and left him her entire estate.
Michael later became a novelist, weaving his real-life experiences in the military into the plots of his books.
He and Patricia split up, and he began a relationship with his neighbor Kathleen Hunt Atwater in Durham, North Carolina, in 1992.
Brainy bunch. Kathleen Hunt grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and was so bright that she took advanced Latin classes at a nearby college while still in McCaskey High School, according to the Lancaster New Era newspaper. She graduated first in her class.
She was the first woman accepted into Duke University’s school of engineering. At the time of her death, she was a vice president at Nortel Networks at the company’s Research Triangle Park offices. She had a net worth of around $2 million, according to Forensic Files.
By the time Michael and Kathleen became a couple, his two daughters and Kathleen’s daughter from her first marriage, Caitlin Atwater, were already good friends.
Hosts with the most. Michael and Kathleen married in 1997. By then, one of Michael’s books, A Time for War, had made its way onto the New York Times bestseller list and generated enough cash to pay for the Colonial Revival-style house containing the now-famous staircase.
The couple combined their families into one household in the 5-bedroom 5½-bath abode in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Durham.
By all reports, Michael and Kathleen enjoyed a close, happy marriage and were sought-after guests on the local social scene. The New York Times would later describe Michael as having a “theatrical personality.” Kathleen was a live wire, too. The couple threw dinner parties for dozens of friends at their spread, which included a swimming pool with decorative fountains.
Horrifying discovery. But Michael hit a rough patch when he decided to run for mayor of Durham. It came out that a leg injury he said happened during battle actually came from a car accident. He lost the election.
Still, there was no serious drama until Dec. 9, 2001, when Michael Peterson made a desperate 911 call to report his wife had fallen down the stairs but was still breathing.
Kathleen was dead by the time first responders got there.
Michael said he and Kathleen were relaxing by their pool, and she went inside to work on the computer. He stayed outside to smoke for 45 minutes or so and found her at the bottom of the stairs when he came back in.
Charnel house. She had been drinking and was wearing floppy shoes, so she probably tripped, Michael told police.
But there was one circumstance that Michael Peterson couldn’t explain away.
The accident scene was a bloodbath — inconsistent with a tumble down the stairs. Homicide detectives were called to the Peterson residence.
They noted that Michael was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Investigators later brought in a forensic meteorologist who determined it was 51 to 55 degrees outside that night, a little too cold for beach clothes, which made investigators question whether he was really at the pool when Kathleen fell.
Son uncooperative. That part of the prosecution’s case doesn’t seem impressive. Everyone knows at least one wacky guy who wears shorts in cold weather. (And those investigators must have had money to burn — they could have looked online or asked an autistic savant to recall the temperature that evening.)
But other evidence pointed convincingly to Michael’s guilt. Paramedics said that Kathleen’s blood had congealed, suggesting she died hours before he called 911.
Todd Peterson, 25, was at the house when the police came but refused to talk to them, according to Forensic Files.
And it looked as though someone had tried to clean up blood from the wall near the stairs.
Not inebriated. The police found blood splatter between the legs of Michael’s shorts and his bloody footprint on Kathleen’s clothes, which suggested he was standing over her and beating her.
Although testing would later confirm that Kathleen had some alcohol in her system, it was nowhere near the stagger and face-plant level.
Oh, and one more little thing: Investigators found thousands of gay male porn images and hookup conversations on Michael’s computer.
Email trail. In one of his messages, Michael wrote that he was happily married to a “dynamite” wife but that he was “very” bisexual. Other online correspondence allegedly proved he was trying to hook up with men on the side, including a chipper prostitute called Brad.
Prosecutors would later contend that Kathleen stumbled upon the trove of photos and messages while using Michael’s computer — she had left her own machine at work that day. She confronted Michael about cheating on her, there was an argument, and he beat her to death with a fireplace implement, they alleged. He made a futile attempt to get rid of blood evidence and then called 911, the prosecution contended.
According to Power, Privilege, and Justice, which produced a 2004 episode about the case titled “Murder He Wrote,” Peterson went upstairs to work on the computer while police were still on the murder scene. Perhaps he was trying to delete some files.
Insurance jackpot. In addition to the salacious activity, investigators discovered evidence of financial woes in the family. Michael hadn’t generated any income in two years, and Kathleen was the mainstay.
The couple had three daughters in college and credit card debt of $142,000. The value of Kathleen’s Nortel stock had dropped from more than $2 million at its peak to $50,000.
But Kathleen had life insurance worth $1.2 million to $1.8 million, with Michael as the beneficiary.
Then, yet another bombshell came up. Investigators found out how Liz Ratliff, Margaret and Martha’s mother, died.
On Nov. 25, 1985, when Michael was living in Germany and married to his first wife, Ratliff turned up dead at the bottom of a staircase — just as Kathleen Peterson did 16 years later.
Missing murder weapon. Previously, Michael had told people Liz Ratliff died from a brain hemorrhage, never mentioning a fall on the stairs, according an interview with Kathleen Peterson’s sister, Candace Zamperini, on Power, Privilege, and Justice.
The authorities exhumed Liz Ratliff’s body in 2003 and discovered multiple scalp lacerations, similar to those found on Kathleen Peterson.
Ultimately, no charges involving Ratliff were brought, but North Carolina used the information about her death to strengthen the Kathleen Peterson case, which lacked a murder weapon. Police believed it was a fireplace blow poke that someone took outside to hide, leaving bloodstains on the door.
Nonetheless, all five of Michael’s children believed in his innocence at first. Caitlin Atwater, Katherine’s daughter from her first marriage, later switched sides.
Call-guy talks. Friends of Liz Ratliff, who lived on the same German military base as Michael and his first wife, testified about the bloodiness of the scene of her demise. A medical examiner testified that Ratliff’s cause of death was homicide via blunt force trauma.
And as if the trial needed more sordidness, Brad the hooker was called to the stand, where he congenially answered the prosecutor’s questions about his services. They ranged from simple companionship to “just about anything under the sun” sexually.
The defense, led by David Rudolf — the same lawyer who represented NFL player Rae Carruth in his murder trial — had some impressive courtroom drama to offer, too. Forensic expert Henry Lee gave a live in-court splatter demonstration to refute some of the blood evidence against Michael.
Team Michael also furnished a fireplace blow poke they said they found in the house. It had cobwebs on it but no blood, which appeared to snuff out the prosecution’s theory that the implement acted as the murder weapon.
He’s a SHU-in. Michael claimed that Kathleen had been suffering from blackouts due to stress. Nortel had forced her to lay off some well-liked employees, according to an AP account from May 22, 2002. Kathleen worried that she would lose her own $145,000-a-year job amid the downsizing, the AP reported.
Nonetheless, in the end, there was just too much evidence against Michael Peterson. His 2003 trial ended in a first-degree murder conviction and a sentence of life without parole.
Off he went to North Carolina’s Correctional Facility in Nash.
Corrections officers at the prison didn’t always find him as charming as his old dinner party friends did, and he earned some time in solitary for mouthing off, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.
Tide turns. A 2009 motion for a new trial based on the owl attack theory was unsuccessful.
Then, after serving eight years in prison, Michael got a huge break.
He won the right to a new trial after authorities discovered that “expert” prosecution witness Saami Shaibani had misrepresented his own professional credentials. And the happy hustler was off the table too — the seizure of Peterson’s computer messages was ruled unlawful, so Brad couldn’t testify again. Plus the death of Liz Ratliff in Germany was deemed inadmissible.
Irresistible deal. North Carolina released Michael Peterson on bond in 2011.
In 2017, the then-73-year-old avoided a second trial by taking an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter in return for six years of house arrest.
But there was no 9,429-square-foot palatial home with a redwood-paneled author’s study for Michael to return to. The family had sold the Cedar Street showplace, reportedly the largest house in Durham. Michael moved into a two-bedroom condo, according to reporting from Cosmopolitan on June 11, 2018.
Marked man. So what about the owl? The Cosmopolitan story includes information from ornithology experts who believe a barred owl could have tangled its claws in Kathleen’s hair and made the gashes in her head that prosecutors alleged came from a metal implement. Kathleen might have fallen down the stairs while struggling to extricate herself from the bird of prey’s talons, they opined.
Nonetheless, Michael Peterson’s lawyers never brought up the owl theory in the courtroom — it was too bizarre and potentially fodder for, well, hoots of laughter.
Instead, Michael laid the blame for his murder conviction on humans. The police were out to get him because he criticized them in columns he wrote for the Herald-Sun before Kathleen’s death, he told Dateline.
Time for a tome. So what’s happened to Michael Peterson since the 2018 Netflix series turned his story into an international entertainment sensation?
In April 2019, an extensive News & Observer story by Andrew Carter reported that Michael had written an e-book titled Behind the Staircase to exonerate himself, with any profits going toward charity. If Michael received any money for the literary effort, it would have to go toward a $25 million award Caitlin Atwater won against him, he said.
Michael also told the News & Observer that well-to-do friends from his and Kathleen’s napkin-ring and place-card days had deserted him. He did find himself a post-lockup girlfriend, however, in one of the editors of The Staircase. The couple lived together for a time after his release, he said.
Sociological errands. Also in 2019, Michael Peterson made a two-part appearance on Dr. Phil. Although skeptical, the TV psychologist gave Michael a chance to defend himself.
Michael told Dr. Phil McGraw that medical reports confirmed Liz Ratliff died of a stroke. He also explained that after Kathleen’s death, he engaged legal help immediately — a move that raised suspicion at the time — only because his son insisted upon it, calling in Michael’s lawyer brother, Bill Peterson.
A video accompanying the in-depth News & Observer piece gave Michael an opportunity to talk about his everyday post-prison life. He mentioned receiving a chilly reception from the primarily white upper middle class shoppers at Whole Foods. But at Target, a less affluent, more diverse crowd welcomes him because they know firsthand how unfair the law can be, he said.
Margaret, Martha, Todd, and Clayton also believe the justice system failed their father. Although I tend to agree with the prosecution that Michael Peterson is responsible for Kathleen Peterson’s and Liz Ratliff’s deaths, it’s still sweet to see the loyalty of his children and their willingness to accept him as he is.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
