175: The Neverending Staircase: The Death of Kathleen Peterson, PART 3

WEBVTT

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Southern for a true crime covers cases, they're not suitable for young listeners,

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and there may also be some explicit
language used. Listener discretion as advanced.

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The people who think you're guilty will
always think you're guilty. The people who

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think you're innocent will always think you're
innocent. Nobody is going to change their

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mind, so move on. Odd
Peterson said this to his father when he

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was trying to talk him into taking
the Alfred plea. Michael Peterson, who

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had spent nearly a decade in prison, had lost everything. He was now

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indigent, but more than that,
he had lost his wife. He had

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lost all that time with his children. He missed his first grandchild being born.

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He was as bout as beat down
as a man can get, and

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he still wanted to go back to
court. He still wanted to fight.

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He did not want to say he
was guilty, and his children had to

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beg him to end it. And
it wasn't posturing. This Alfred Plea was

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years after Peterson had won a retrial. When the first plea deals were offered,

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Michael said no, and David Rudolph
said, well then sorry, I

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can no longer defend you. It
wasn't because he would have to do it

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pro bono. It was because he
was so demoralized by the trial we were

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about to discuss. Rudolph couldn't emotionally
handle going back to Durham, a place

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he felt was so corrupt, a
place he felt was so bigoted. Michael

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Peterson, who had told him from
the beginning what Durham was, still wanted

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to fight. Maybe it was because
he had nothing left to lose. As

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Prosecutor Jim Harden said in his opening
statement, this is where the rubber meets

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the road. Ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to episode one seventy, The Never

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Ending Staircase, Part three. On
May fifth, two thousand and three,

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jury selection for Michael's trial began.
According to The Herald's Sun, it was

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one of the longest, most complex, and most highly publicized legal proceedings in

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Durham history. Everything about Michael's case
was abnormal. The unprecedented media attention,

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the inconsistencies in the police investigation,
the judge delaying his decision on whether or

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not to allow Liz Ratliffe's death as
evidence. Even the courtroom had to be

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set up with special adaptations. The
trial was going to be broadcast live nationwide

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on cable's Court TV. To help
transmit the signal, Court TV mounted a

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humongous satellite dish near the courthouse.
Jean Xavier de Lastrade's documentary crew was also

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filming Michael trial for the now infamous
docuseries The Staircase. To prepare for all

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the cameras, a wooden screen was
constructed between the jury box and the witness

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stand. The wood paneling allowed videographers
to view the front of the courtroom while

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still being obscured from jurors. They
didn't want to distract them. Even the

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trial schedule was different from most Durham
Court cases. Each day, jurors would

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be present from nine thirty am to
two thirty pm, rather than the typical

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nine thirty to five. This reduced
schedule expanded the pool of potential jurors to

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include people who couldn't stay in court
the entire day, Plus it helped the

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jurors stay engaged, which makes sense
a man's life was at stake, But

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people were pissy about the seemingly special
privileges that Michael Peterson's case received. They

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were confused as to why Michael,
a rich white man, received accommodations when

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other defendants did not. On the
one hand, that's what publicity will do.

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On the other, most murder trials
are not going to take months.

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This trial lasted five months when you
include jury selection and all the pre trial

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hearings, and the publicity was the
reason they needed such a large jury pool

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to begin with. On July first, two thousand and three, opening statements

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for Michael's trial began. The prosecuting
attorneys were District Attorney Jim Harden's junior and

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assistant da Freda. Black. Hardon
gave a thirty minute opening statement in which

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he claimed the following. Due to
bad financial decisions, Michael Peterson was neck

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deep in debt, specifically one hundred
and forty thousand dollars deep in credit card

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debt. But Michael was also the
beneficiary of his wife, Kathleen's one point

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four million life insurance policy, so
he Kathleen Peterson to death by the fireplace

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blowpoke, staged the scene as an
accident and called nine one one while pretending

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to be a tragically distraught husband.
Also, he could manage his expensive lifestyle

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with Kathleen's insurance payout. Michael's defense
attorney, David Rudolph rebutted these claims in

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his own eighty eight minute opening statement. Rudolph had a lot of ground to

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cover since he had no choice but
to face some really questionable evidence head on.

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First, he played the harrowing nine
one one call harrowing if you believe

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Michael, that is. Rudolph then
started by saying that Michael and Kathleen were

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the quintessential example of true love,
soulmates. He called their relationship idyllic.

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This would be a mistake as he
technically opened the door to Michael's character,

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which in this trial would be based
on his sexuality. You can see why

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it was important to show Michael Peterson
was not just a devoted family man,

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but a man who adored his wife
and could not have heard her, So

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what was really going on? Rudolph
faced the issues with the DA and law

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enforcement by saying outright that the Durham
authorities were out to get Michael. For

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two years, Michael wrote a bi
weekly column in The Herald's Son that frequently

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attacked the Durham Police Department and the
District Attorney's office. Michael accused them of

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racism, corruption and stupidity, and
as Michael said in interviews, when you

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make fun of people, they don't
like that, and they remember it.

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Rudolph also preemptively discussed Liz Ratliffe's death, the mother of Michael's two adopted daughters,

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in a contentious pre trial hearing.
When Rudolph was pleading with Judge Hudson

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to go ahead and rule on the
Ratliffe evidence so he could sid about his

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opening argument, Jim Harden objected and
said it would be malpractice for him not

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to discuss Liz Ratliffe because of the
media circus he claimed that Rudolph caused.

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To his credit, David Rudolph remained
calm but basically said, come on,

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the prosecution had Liz's body exhumed just
a couple of weeks before jury's selection,

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creating this circus, and now he
is blaming the defense for the media circus.

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Hudson still refused to rule on the
Ratliffe evidence before the trial, even

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though by now they had an autopsy. We will get into that more later,

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but the issue really should have stopped
here, actually before here. The

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poor woman should never have been exhumed
and treated like a box of evidence.

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The trauma this caused her Daughters was
devastating, but it was done now,

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and Rudolph had no choice. So
he established in his opening that Liz had

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absolutely died of a stroke a cerebral
hemorrhage, But he also directly called Jim

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Harden out in front of the jury. He explained that the entire exhumation an

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autopsy process was a ruse, a
smear campaign orchestrated by the prosecution, meant

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to taint the jury against Michael's character. In Rudolph's words, the district attorneys

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aimed to create a barrage of negative
publicity to prejudice mister Peterson's right to a

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fair trial, and Rudolph was adamant
that the prosecution had succeeded. The public

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had convicted Michael weeks before his trial
began. I understand his point, but

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he's also kind of already telling the
jury he's not sure they can be fair.

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According to the defense, Michael was
telling the truth about that night Kathleen

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had fallen down the stairs. She
was tipsy, though not totally incapacitated,

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after in jest a mixture of alcohol
and valum. After the initial fall,

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Kathleen tried to get up, but
she slipped in her blood and fell again.

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In doing so, she may have
struck her head against the staircase's metal

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chairlift multiple times. That was perhaps
why there was so much blood. This

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trial was a doozy. If you've
watched the famous Staircase documentary, you've had

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a taste, and I've given you
a big taste of the opening statements because

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they are the crux of the trial. But if I tried to go chronologically

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through the rest, I would bore
the shut out of you, or we

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would go freaking ten episodes. I
don't know about you, but I prefer

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my episodes a bit more bite sized, even if this one is as long

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as the last one. Sorry about
that. Still, there is a reason

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I rarely do series like these,
and I've never done seasons. I don't

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like living with things in my head
this long. What I did want to

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do was take you inside the lives
of the Peterson's so you would understand their

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family dynamic, so you would get
to know Kathleen. So many documentaries and

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podcasts skip that part. One of
the worst criticisms of the docuseries The Staircase

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is that Kathleen Peterson is portrayed not
much more than a victim and a gruesome

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crime scene. Anyway, that was
part one and part two. I took

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you step by step through the crime
scene and evidence. If you have not

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listened to the first two parts,
I really suggest you do. I think

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you get a much more balanced idea
of not only the Peterson's lives, but

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the evidence against Michael. I can
explain what came out in trial, but

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I think those episodes helped to put
you inside eighteen ten Cedar Street and grasp

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the magnitude of all that blood and
the consequences of how shocking the scene was.

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But for court, despite how long
this episode is, we are going

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to try and take it more simply. I will try to clarify and summarize

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in the most comprehensive and interesting way. Rather, we'll focus on addressing each

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of the main arguments one by one. We will look at the details and

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the problems with the state's case.
But don't think that I am just straight

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giving Michael a pass. I just
think you can achieve justice without playing dirty.

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I'm going to pause now for a
short commercial break. Burst up is

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Michael Peterson's financial situation was money a
motive to murder Kathleen? Remember the state

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doesn't have to prove motive, but
it sure does help, especially in complex

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yet completely circumstantial cases like this one. Michael and Kathleen did have a lot

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of credit card debt, as the
excution set, but saying Michael was in

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financial trouble was more than a stretch. According to Rudolph, the Peterson's were

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worth more than two million dollars even
after subtracting the credit card debt. He

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joked to the jury, all of
us would like to be in that much

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trouble, and I would agree.
And I also can't help but interject right

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here and say, for the record, rich people are not like you and

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me. They use credit cards when
they have a gold money clip filled with

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crisp hundred dollar bills in their pocket. I've seen it. I've worked for

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millionaires and I am related to one. They tend to toss their black American

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Express cards on restaurant tabs rather than
pay with the cash they have in their

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pocket or worse, a debit card. That's not how rich people pay.

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It's because they shop more, they
travel more, and they love their frequent

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Flyer miles. They might have the
money, but they love to gather the

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points and rewards from these cards,
and the Peterson's didn't just have the cards

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this way for show. They also
had three kids in college who they gave

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credit cards to for living expenses.
When you weigh that credit card debt of

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one hundred and forty three grand against
the two million they were worth, it's

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not that much now. That amount
is staggering to normal people. It's the

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price of a whole ass house in
parts of the US. But again,

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rich people are not like you and
me. Here's another example. The prosecution

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also tried to point out that Kathleen
was in danger of losing her high paying

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job. Around the time of her
death. Her employer, Nortel, was

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laying off thousands of people, and
the prosecution stated Michael had no salary,

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which was technically true in December of
two thousand and one, Michael was not

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earning an official salary because he did
not have a so called day job.

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If Kathleen had lost her job,
Prosecutor Jim Harden argued that the couple would

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have gone into a financial tale spend, and it did seem like money was

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tighter in the Peterson household. Kathleen's
sister, Candice, testified that Kathleen often

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complained about money struggles, and in
November of two thousand and one, Michael

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emailed his first wife, Patty about
their sons financial situations. Clayton and Todd

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were both struggling to pay their bills
because of their own credit card debt.

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Michael requested Patty's help in paying off
their boy's debt, saying he thought the

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boys had learned their lesson. These
boys were twenty five and twenty seven years

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old at the time. If anything, I think it's indicative of Michael's habit

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of spoiling his kids. Also,
in a separate email, Michael asked Martha's

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uncle for assistance in paying her college
tuition. Martha was attending an expensive private

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school in San Francisco. Margaret was
attending Tulane in New Orleans, but she

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was on a partial scholarship. The
prosecution argued that these emails showed that Michael

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was at the end of his financial
rope. I think you could argue that

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Michael was trying to tighten the finances
of the children he had brought to the

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marriage. He was trying to relieve
some pressure Kathleen might have been feeling in

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that email to Patty. Michael said
he simply could not approach Kathleen about helping

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the boys. Again, the prosecution
made this sound nefarious, but I think

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it's more simple. What if Kathleen
felt like Michael's grown sons needed to figure

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out their own problems. They had
three daughters in college just starting out,

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and Michael's sons were still party boys
who couldn't pay their bills. That's what

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this sounds like to me. If
Michael still wants to bail out the boys,

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he needs to go to Patty,
who is their mother, to do

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it. Kathleen raised Margaret and Martha
like her own daughters. They were very

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close in age to her daughter Caitlin, but Todd and Clayton were older.

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There was more of a stepparent relationship. And let's not forget how much grief

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Clayton had recently caused the family with
his stint in prison. Kathleen still stood

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by him just like Michael did and
helped support him, but I can imagine

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her patience was running thin. As
for asking the rat left uncle for help

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with Martha's tuition, well, why
not if he could afford it. The

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uncle was a doctor, Michael was
a novelist with some success, but not

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the kind of reliable wealth that a
doctor would be making. And the silliest

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part of putting this extremely friendly email
into evidence is the uncle's reply. He

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said, that sounds great. I
am now committing to five thousand per semester.

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They'll death do us part. That's
ten grand a year. He just

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committed to paying on his niece's education. Michael had taken on the expense of

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raising these young women their whole lives. Now they were attending expensive out of

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state colleges. It's not like he
was pulling them out of school if the

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rich uncle couldn't ship in, but
why not ask? And the uncle was

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happy to help. It also shows
that even though Margaret and Martha had wealthy

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blood relatives who could have taken them
in, Michael Peterson chose to accept his

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responsibility that George unless had given him
and raised the girls as his daughters.

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That doesn't sound like a man concerned
with his fortune. Rudolph explained that the

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prosecution was giving a wildly distorted view
of the Peterson's finances. Michael is repeatedly

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described as unemployed rather than a fifty
eight year old retired man with a pension

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from the Marines. His military disability
pension provided him with forty five thousand dollars

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a year, which is about seventy
five thousand today and a lot more than

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most people make. The North Carolina
median income right now is only about thirty

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thousand. The Peterson's also owned rental
properties, and according to Michael, they

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brought in around five thousand in cash
a month as well. Rudolf had to

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00:18:07.359 --> 00:18:12.200
exhaustively go through the state's ledger of
evidence pointing out these discrepancies. Also,

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Michael's last book paid for a great
portion of the house he owned with Kathleen.

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He got five hundred thousand for that
book and used half two hundred and

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fifty thousand as a down payment on
their mansion. So yes, you can

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00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:33.559
see forty eight year old Kathleen as
the breadwinner for her family because of her

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00:18:33.640 --> 00:18:37.640
day job. But I'm not sure
that characterization is completely fair. Michael did

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contribute financially, especially early on,
and the film rights to one of his

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books had literally just been sold,
and Kathleen felt so comfortable with their finances

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that she actually deferred eighty percent of
her nortel salary and bonus, meaning she

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didn't need it now and would rather
have it later. She may one hundred

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00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:04.119
and forty five thousand dollars a year
before bonuses. That's about a quarter million

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00:19:04.160 --> 00:19:10.759
today. She was deferring around ten
thousand dollars a month. And you imagine

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00:19:10.799 --> 00:19:15.279
being able to defer eighty percent of
your salary. It's an insane thought to

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00:19:15.359 --> 00:19:21.119
normal people. Even if you aren't
living paycheck to paycheck like so many people

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00:19:21.160 --> 00:19:26.119
have to, the idea of being
able to defer any of your paycheck is

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00:19:26.119 --> 00:19:30.680
still probably wild to you. Kathleen
was deferring eighty percent of her salary,

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00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:37.000
but bitching about bills to her sister. It was hard to understand. Well,

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Nortel stock was plummeting, and that
was hitting Kathleen's retirement hard. She

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00:19:41.720 --> 00:19:47.000
would still have her pension, but
her stocks were where she was really building

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00:19:47.039 --> 00:19:51.559
wealth for retirement. Her stocks had
been worth two million in September of two

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00:19:51.559 --> 00:19:56.640
thousand. Now they were worth around
fifty thousand, though I've seen differing amounts.

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00:19:56.759 --> 00:20:00.559
This was when the dot com bubble
burst, and Nortel wasn't the only

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00:20:00.599 --> 00:20:07.759
company reeling. Kathleen had also been
put on an optimization list, which meant

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00:20:07.920 --> 00:20:11.920
she was due to be laid off. Nortel, whose home office was in

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Canada, as I said, was
laying off thousands of employees. That Kathleen

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00:20:17.680 --> 00:20:21.880
was only on this list for three
days, and a co worker testified that

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00:20:21.920 --> 00:20:26.920
there was no evidence she ever knew
about this, But still she was very

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00:20:26.960 --> 00:20:30.400
stressed about work, tasked with laying
off her own staff, and I'm sure

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00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:37.279
extremely upset about the recent and extreme
loss in her stocks at Nortel, which

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00:20:37.359 --> 00:20:41.400
really sucks. It does, but
it doesn't mean they were poor. You

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00:20:41.480 --> 00:20:47.559
cannot say that a family who is
worth millions is in financial straits, even

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00:20:47.599 --> 00:20:52.640
if they had just taken a hit. So Michael wasn't on the brink of

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00:20:52.720 --> 00:20:57.440
losing everything. He was fine,
His family was fine, and he had

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00:20:57.480 --> 00:21:03.240
a community to lean on he needed
to, Like his ex wife Patty Martha,

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00:21:03.319 --> 00:21:07.359
and Margaret's uncle and his brother Bill, who was a successful estate attorney.

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The Peterson's would never want for anything. Rudolph fought hard against allowing the

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financial testimony in at all. It
was speculative evidence at best. The judge

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00:21:21.200 --> 00:21:25.599
overruled and said he could handle it
own a cross, and he did as

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00:21:25.640 --> 00:21:30.119
briefly and painlessly as he could,
even though it was my numbing testimony.

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00:21:30.599 --> 00:21:34.640
Andrea and I have tried hard to
keep it basic and not boring for you.

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00:21:36.920 --> 00:21:40.759
The main problem was that the state
was not showing cash flowing in and

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00:21:40.799 --> 00:21:47.039
out of the Peterson's five checking accounts
correctly. The state's financial expert, who

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00:21:47.079 --> 00:21:51.319
by the way, was also employed
by the SBI, was showing debts,

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00:21:51.680 --> 00:21:56.440
but not even normal deposits like when
Kathleen was reimbursed for travel. He gave

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00:21:56.480 --> 00:22:00.920
a big credit card debt number,
but did explain that it was spread over

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00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:07.279
twenty different lines of credit. Financial
testimony is grueling, and it really did

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00:22:07.319 --> 00:22:11.000
show what the state wanted it to. When you wonder why a trial goes

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00:22:11.039 --> 00:22:14.799
on like this for months, it's
this type of evidence that doesn't really go

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00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:18.839
anywhere, and yet Rudolf still had
to battle it out. He made a

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00:22:18.920 --> 00:22:25.039
motion of lemony about the financial evidence
that the judge overruled. But on the

256
00:22:25.079 --> 00:22:30.160
flip side, there's no denying that
Michael received a lot of money upon Kathleen's

257
00:22:30.200 --> 00:22:34.279
death twenty nine thousand from her four
oh one k, almost one hundred thousand

258
00:22:34.359 --> 00:22:38.880
from her pension, two hundred and
twenty three thousand in deferred income payouts,

259
00:22:40.279 --> 00:22:45.400
and one point four million and life
insurance, and the prosecution did prove that

260
00:22:45.480 --> 00:22:49.960
over the past several years that Peterson's
were in the red. For three years,

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00:22:51.039 --> 00:22:55.039
Kathleen and Michael had withdrawn at least
one hundred thousand more from their bank

262
00:22:55.079 --> 00:22:59.759
accounts than they had put in them. But they were not impoverished. They

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00:23:00.039 --> 00:23:04.480
had financial reserves if they needed them. It honestly sounds like they had been

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00:23:04.519 --> 00:23:11.279
careless with their finances because they could
be playing the credit and assets game rather

265
00:23:11.319 --> 00:23:15.960
than keeping a lot of cash.
The problems at Nortel were fairly new.

266
00:23:15.599 --> 00:23:19.480
It had happened in just the last
few months. It was enough to cause

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00:23:19.519 --> 00:23:23.960
her worry when she was an executive
who saw the layoffs and owned stock options.

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00:23:26.319 --> 00:23:30.680
But as Michael wrote in another email, and as Kathleen herself indicated to

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00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:33.960
friends, she was a fighter who
would see it through to the end.

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She was not giving up. If
anything, she was working harder. She

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00:23:37.759 --> 00:23:41.559
had always been driven to succeed,
and she hadn't worked her way up the

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00:23:41.640 --> 00:23:48.440
mail dominated corporate ladder at Nortel just
to give up now. By the way,

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00:23:48.880 --> 00:23:51.920
I got a comment from a man
who worked with Kathleen at Nortel.

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00:23:52.440 --> 00:23:57.079
He said she was a sweetheart but
a tough cookie. I love that it

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00:23:57.200 --> 00:24:03.480
tracks so simply with every thing I've
learned about Kathleen's character. She was smart

276
00:24:03.480 --> 00:24:07.359
as a whip, and she was
witty and warm. People really did adore

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00:24:07.440 --> 00:24:14.319
her. But now, let's talk
about finances as a motive for real.

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00:24:15.359 --> 00:24:19.000
If Michael was worried about the credit
card debt or whatever other financial stressors to

279
00:24:19.119 --> 00:24:26.319
prosecution believed, why would he kill
Kathleen. It is a short term solution

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00:24:26.519 --> 00:24:30.480
for a long term problem, if
you can even find a problem. The

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00:24:30.559 --> 00:24:36.119
state went to great lengths to prove
that the Petersons were living beyond their means.

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00:24:36.640 --> 00:24:40.559
They had wealthy tastes, and regardless
of the EBB and flow of finances,

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00:24:40.880 --> 00:24:45.000
they didn't change how they lived.
I guess they think Michael would pay

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00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:48.359
off those bills and live on her
death benefits for the rest of his life,

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00:24:48.799 --> 00:24:52.759
instead of continuing to amass wealth as
he and Kathleen were doing, instead

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00:24:52.799 --> 00:25:00.319
of continuing to enjoy the lifestyle he
and Kathleen were used to. It really

287
00:25:00.359 --> 00:25:04.000
doesn't make sense as a motive.
If anything, Michael's lifestyle would have had

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00:25:04.039 --> 00:25:08.519
to change dramatically after Kathleen's death,
he didn't make the kind of money she

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00:25:08.640 --> 00:25:15.759
did. Now, moving on from
the Peterson's finances, Kathleen's autopsy was yet

290
00:25:15.759 --> 00:25:22.519
another heated battleground for the trial.
Medical examiners found evidence of early acute eschemic

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00:25:22.599 --> 00:25:30.279
neuronal necrosis in Kathleen's cerebellum and cerebrum. Dear Internet, if I mispronounced that,

292
00:25:30.759 --> 00:25:37.119
spare me your emails. That was
hard. Basically, these are rare

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00:25:37.240 --> 00:25:42.400
red neurons in Kathleen's brain. Their
presence indicated that Kathleen's brain did not receive

294
00:25:42.480 --> 00:25:48.319
enough blood and therefore oxygen for a
significant period before her death. Let me

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00:25:48.440 --> 00:25:53.640
interject and apologize here. I forgot
to mention the red neurons in the last

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00:25:53.640 --> 00:25:59.240
episode when we went through Kathleen's autopsy. There was a lot of ground to

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00:25:59.279 --> 00:26:03.480
cover and forgot to go into it
because it is complicated. So here we

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00:26:03.519 --> 00:26:08.440
go. According to testimony from the
prosecution's expert, who was a University of

299
00:26:08.519 --> 00:26:15.039
North Carolina neuropathologist, these neurons proved
Kathleen may have been lying at the bottom

300
00:26:15.039 --> 00:26:22.000
of the staircase, barely alive for
hours. Those red neurons form as the

301
00:26:22.039 --> 00:26:26.960
brain is struggling to operate with less
oxygen. But according to the testimony of

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00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:33.359
the defenses expert, who was the
former chief of neurology at Northwestern University,

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00:26:33.640 --> 00:26:38.599
these red neurons could have developed in
only thirty minutes, particularly if it was

304
00:26:38.640 --> 00:26:45.400
caused by a major trauma like the
sudden blood loss Kathleen suffered thirty minutes.

305
00:26:45.519 --> 00:26:52.960
Fitzmichael's timetable of events several hours does
not so. As usual in big murder

306
00:26:52.039 --> 00:26:56.480
trials, we have a battle of
the experts, which is going to be

307
00:26:56.519 --> 00:27:00.920
a huge issue in this trial because
FREDA. Black, the instant DA working

308
00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:04.920
second chair to Harden, would make
really inappropriate arguments about the States experts,

309
00:27:06.440 --> 00:27:10.920
but we will get to that.
I think what is fair here is that

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00:27:10.960 --> 00:27:14.920
there's no way to prove whether or
not those red neurons were the result of

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00:27:14.960 --> 00:27:18.720
thirty minutes or three hours. It's
something that if I was a juror,

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00:27:18.880 --> 00:27:25.279
I would have to just set aside. There were reasonable explanations from legitimate experts

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00:27:25.400 --> 00:27:29.640
on both sides, but of course
that's up to how you feel about it.

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00:27:30.240 --> 00:27:34.000
I saw someone in the Facebook group
refer to these neurons and what they

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00:27:34.039 --> 00:27:37.960
had heard about them. On a
different podcast at the risk of saying I'm

316
00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:44.119
trashing someone else that other podcast did
not bother to also give the information.

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00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:48.519
The defense expert testified to You've got
to tell both sides or it's not fair.

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00:27:49.079 --> 00:27:52.720
I still set it's up to you, as it would be for a

319
00:27:52.799 --> 00:27:59.079
juror to decide. And now we
get to Kathleen's head injuries. If you

320
00:27:59.119 --> 00:28:03.759
haven't looked up a picture of Kathleen
Peterson's head lacerations yet, I say do

321
00:28:03.880 --> 00:28:07.759
it if you can stomach it,
because you will then understand a lot about

322
00:28:07.799 --> 00:28:14.319
this case. It is these photos
that changed Kathleen's sisters and her daughter Caitlin's

323
00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:19.240
minds about Michael. Up until Jim
Harden and Freda Black called them into their

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00:28:19.240 --> 00:28:25.160
offices and offered to show them the
autopsy and crime scene photos. They did

325
00:28:25.160 --> 00:28:30.400
not believe that Michael Peterson had murdered
their sister and mother. That is a

326
00:28:30.519 --> 00:28:37.319
very basic tenet of this trial.
And I can say it's unusual that prosecutors

327
00:28:37.559 --> 00:28:41.640
would want the family to see autopsy
photos, much less gruesome crime scene photos.

328
00:28:42.319 --> 00:28:45.799
They tend to go out of their
way to shield them, often warning

329
00:28:45.799 --> 00:28:49.240
them to stay away from court on
the days the photos will be shown.

330
00:28:51.480 --> 00:28:56.079
So why would Harden do this?
Really, the only reason is that it

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00:28:56.079 --> 00:29:00.440
would be much more difficult to prosecute
a man for the murder of his wife

332
00:29:00.440 --> 00:29:04.119
who had the support of his entire
family, including his stepdaughter and in laws.

333
00:29:06.400 --> 00:29:10.519
Andis was a passionate supporter of Michael
in the beginning. She was the

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00:29:10.559 --> 00:29:15.839
first one to call them soulmates until
she saw these photos. And he knew

335
00:29:15.920 --> 00:29:21.920
very well how difficult it is for
people who are not medical professionals to see

336
00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:27.519
these wounds and not have a visceral
reaction. It's just like all that blood

337
00:29:27.519 --> 00:29:33.480
at the crime scene. Seasoned law
enforcement were so disturbed they immediately thought murder

338
00:29:33.759 --> 00:29:38.880
rather than accident, and that became
tunnel vision, looking for proof of their

339
00:29:38.920 --> 00:29:45.079
suspicions instead of looking for the truth. Do you know that old saying when

340
00:29:45.079 --> 00:29:51.079
you hear hoofs, think horses,
not zebras Well, the sheer amount of

341
00:29:51.079 --> 00:29:56.559
blood in that staircase screamed zebras And
now the autopsy photos had the same effect

342
00:29:56.680 --> 00:30:04.119
on Kathleen's family. I cannot imagine
showing those photos to her daughter. Doctor

343
00:30:04.160 --> 00:30:10.640
Ferris Bandak, the former director of
the Head Injury Research Program at the National

344
00:30:10.720 --> 00:30:17.559
Highway Traffic Safety Administration testified that Kathleen's
injuries could have been the result of a

345
00:30:17.599 --> 00:30:22.319
fall. He said Kathleen could have
fallen backwards after walking partially up the staircase

346
00:30:22.440 --> 00:30:29.079
and stumbling. She had hit her
head against two surfaces as she tumbled down.

347
00:30:29.839 --> 00:30:33.319
Then Kathleen may have stood up,
only to slip and fall again,

348
00:30:33.839 --> 00:30:38.680
hitting her head twice more. The
two falls would produce four impacts, and

349
00:30:38.759 --> 00:30:45.160
even though there were only four impacts, doctor Bandak believed this could cause Kathleen's

350
00:30:45.160 --> 00:30:49.119
seven lacerations because of the way the
delicate skin of her scalp would tear.

351
00:30:51.400 --> 00:30:56.480
Another expert, doctor jan Leeztma,
who was the former chief of Neurology at

352
00:30:56.519 --> 00:31:02.160
Northwestern University, also determined that Kathleen's
injuries could have been from a fall.

353
00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:07.720
According to doctor Leizma, the lacerations
were consistent with Kathleen's head striking a flat

354
00:31:07.799 --> 00:31:14.400
surface like stair steps, and then
the skin of her scalp split, But

355
00:31:14.519 --> 00:31:22.240
the North Carolina Assistant pathologist, doctor
Debor Radish disagreed. Doctor Radish testified that

356
00:31:22.359 --> 00:31:26.440
Kathleen had most likely been beaten to
death and the perfect weapon to cause Kathleen's

357
00:31:26.480 --> 00:31:33.200
lacerations without fracturing her skull wore badly
damaging her brain. A fireplace blowpoke.

358
00:31:34.640 --> 00:31:38.640
Doctor Radish did not name this as
the instrument, but she did say the

359
00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:42.880
wounds were the result of a beating. It was the prosecution who chose the

360
00:31:42.880 --> 00:31:48.759
blowpoke, and they did not come
up with it on their own. Candas

361
00:31:48.839 --> 00:31:53.400
Zamperini, Kathleen's sister, had a
revelation about this blowpoke. She had given

362
00:31:53.440 --> 00:31:57.960
one to Oliver's siblings years and years
ago, before Kathleen and Michael were even

363
00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:04.200
together. A blowpoke is not like
a fireplace poker. You might be picturing

364
00:32:04.640 --> 00:32:08.200
a tough piece of iron that would
certainly make quite the murder weapon. A

365
00:32:08.279 --> 00:32:12.920
blowpoke is long and metal with a
hook on the end, but it is

366
00:32:12.960 --> 00:32:17.599
hollow and therefore somewhat flimsy. It
is meant for a person to literally blow

367
00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:24.799
through into a fireplace bestoke the flames. It is the exact flimsiness that caused

368
00:32:24.839 --> 00:32:30.359
the prosecution to grasp on to the
blowpoke as a murder weapon once Candice brought

369
00:32:30.359 --> 00:32:37.640
it to them. What else could
cause those lacerations on Kathleen's scalp without fracturing

370
00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:43.720
her skull or otherwise cause any traumatic
brain injury, and now the prosecution could

371
00:32:43.759 --> 00:32:50.279
say that the Peterson's blowpoke was mysteriously
missing. They searched that whole property and

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00:32:50.319 --> 00:32:54.400
couldn't find it. But to Michael
and his kids, it wasn't so mysterious.

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00:32:55.039 --> 00:33:00.599
They didn't remember it at all.
Margaret would go through hours hours of

374
00:33:00.599 --> 00:33:06.440
old video footage of Christmas's past looking
for the blowpoke at the fireplace and did

375
00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:10.720
not see it, but Candice insisted
she had seen it there and it had

376
00:33:10.759 --> 00:33:16.799
only recently gone missing. I'm going
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377
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There's no safelight simply safe. At
the beginning of Michael's trial, the prosecution

394
00:34:44.800 --> 00:34:49.800
conceded that no murder weapon was found
in the Peterson home. However, the

395
00:34:49.880 --> 00:34:55.880
prosecution was confident, based on Kathleen's
seven lacerations and zero skull fractures, that

396
00:34:57.039 --> 00:35:02.559
Michael had used a blowpote to kill
her. The prosecution obtained an exact replica

397
00:35:02.639 --> 00:35:08.679
of the blowpoke from Candice and then
referenced it frequently. They allowed the jurors

398
00:35:08.679 --> 00:35:15.239
to hold and examine it. It
was the perfect weapon follow light, the

399
00:35:15.400 --> 00:35:21.880
very specific kind of weapon required to
kill Kathleen without causing any skull fractures or

400
00:35:21.920 --> 00:35:27.159
brain damage. There were several dings
on the walls of the enclosed stairwell where

401
00:35:27.239 --> 00:35:31.840
Kathleen was found. The prosecution claimed
the marks were from Michael as he swung

402
00:35:31.880 --> 00:35:38.280
the fireplace blowpoke back and forth beating
Kathleen, he hit the walls, but

403
00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:43.719
the defense argued that these dings were
just normal wear and tear from a big

404
00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:47.639
family running up and down the back
staircase. They also pointed out how challenging

405
00:35:47.719 --> 00:35:53.119
it would be to kill anyone in
that stairwell with that blowpoke. The stairwell

406
00:35:53.320 --> 00:36:00.559
was only forty two inches wide,
the fireplace blowpoke was forty inches. Maneuvering

407
00:36:00.559 --> 00:36:04.920
it would be difficult. Also,
there was no blood spatter on the ceiling

408
00:36:04.960 --> 00:36:07.519
of the staircase as you would expect, and a beating death like this,

409
00:36:08.400 --> 00:36:13.280
a weapon would be raised over the
killer's head as he brought it back down

410
00:36:13.519 --> 00:36:17.280
each swing, creating blood spatter high
up. There was no cast off patterns

411
00:36:17.320 --> 00:36:22.440
indicating a beating either. But Dwayne
Deaver actually sat on that witness stand and

412
00:36:22.639 --> 00:36:29.360
explained that if Michael wiped off the
blowpoke in between the strikes to Kathleen's head,

413
00:36:29.920 --> 00:36:34.840
then there wouldn't be spatter, as
if Michael or any killer would stop

414
00:36:34.880 --> 00:36:38.079
between blows and clean the weapon.
You know, the weapon the police never

415
00:36:38.119 --> 00:36:44.519
actually found. In an effort to
find this alleged murder weapon, Michael's house

416
00:36:44.559 --> 00:36:51.440
was supposedly searched exhaustively. According to
Durham police testimony, fifty investigators and a

417
00:36:51.480 --> 00:36:57.119
train dog carefully went through every last
square inch of the Peterson home and grounds,

418
00:36:57.800 --> 00:37:02.519
and yet the alleged murder weapon overlooked. It actually wasn't. A decade

419
00:37:02.559 --> 00:37:07.360
later, a photograph of the missing
blowpoke that had been sitting in the DA's

420
00:37:07.440 --> 00:37:13.000
files was found. It had not
been turned over to the defense and discovery.

421
00:37:13.599 --> 00:37:16.800
That's a Brady violation and it's very
serious, But it's the tip of

422
00:37:16.800 --> 00:37:21.760
the iceberg we will get into.
For now. Think of it as the

423
00:37:21.960 --> 00:37:28.480
mysteriously missing blowpoke, as Prosecutor Jim
Harden had heart. In the last weeks

424
00:37:28.519 --> 00:37:32.079
of the trial, Michael's eldest son
Clayton, found the blowpoke in the Peterson's

425
00:37:32.079 --> 00:37:37.360
boiler room. It was covered in
dust, cobwebs, and dead bugs.

426
00:37:37.079 --> 00:37:44.239
Previously, the prosecution said that Michael's
blowpoke would be badly damaged after murdering Kathleen.

427
00:37:44.840 --> 00:37:50.159
It wasn't sturdy. Bashing it against
her skull seven times would definitely bend

428
00:37:50.199 --> 00:37:57.480
it. But Michael's newly discovered blowpoke
was in perfect condition, unbent. Clearly,

429
00:37:57.519 --> 00:38:00.039
no one had used it in quite
some time, certainly not to bludge

430
00:38:00.199 --> 00:38:06.760
someone to death, and it was
tested for blood and DNA it was negative.

431
00:38:07.159 --> 00:38:12.039
Nothing was on it. When Michael's
defense presented the newly found blowpoke to

432
00:38:12.079 --> 00:38:16.480
the jurors, the prosecutions swiftly changed
their tune. Michael Hatton killed Kathleen with

433
00:38:16.519 --> 00:38:22.360
a blowpoke. He had killed her
with something like a blowpoke. They had

434
00:38:22.440 --> 00:38:25.679
never said for certain it was the
murder weapon. They had just introduced it

435
00:38:25.760 --> 00:38:31.079
as the imaginary evidence and waved it
around the courtroom before letting the jury pass

436
00:38:31.119 --> 00:38:36.519
it around. No biggie, it
is a biggie. How do you enter

437
00:38:36.559 --> 00:38:40.039
a murder weapon into evidence when you
don't have one? Why did they need

438
00:38:40.079 --> 00:38:45.760
it? Because they needed to establish
that Kathleen was beaten to death rather than

439
00:38:45.800 --> 00:38:52.079
a fall. Were her injuries unusual
for a fall, sure, no doubt,

440
00:38:52.559 --> 00:38:57.639
but not necessarily unheard of. If
she only fell in those first few

441
00:38:57.639 --> 00:39:01.639
steps and popped her head against the
sharp crown molding, it's very possible it

442
00:39:01.679 --> 00:39:06.920
would cause a laceration, one that
would get bigger as she fell again in

443
00:39:07.000 --> 00:39:12.320
her own blood, hitting her head
again and causing another laceration, but not

444
00:39:12.519 --> 00:39:15.639
hard enough to crack her skull,
because she didn't fall down very many steps.

445
00:39:16.760 --> 00:39:22.039
And frankly, there are other ways
Michael could have caused those lacerations if

446
00:39:22.079 --> 00:39:27.639
the prosecution had wanted to show other
ways he could have killed her. But

447
00:39:27.719 --> 00:39:32.119
the prosecution was determined to portray this
as a brutal beating because that makes it

448
00:39:32.199 --> 00:39:38.079
first degree murder, not second not
manslaughter, not heat of passion, first

449
00:39:38.119 --> 00:39:45.280
degree. That's why it was their
only theory of the crime. And now

450
00:39:45.440 --> 00:39:50.000
we will move on to Elizabeth Ratliffe's
untimely death. Way back from nineteen eighty

451
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.559
five, the defense argued that Lizz's
death should have never been mentioned in Michael's

452
00:39:54.639 --> 00:40:00.119
trial. The prosecution argued that her
death fell under a cyphic rule of evidence,

453
00:40:01.239 --> 00:40:05.599
the four O four B rule,
stating that evidence from a past,

454
00:40:05.840 --> 00:40:12.159
similar and suspicious circumstance could be entered
into the trial even if the defendant was

455
00:40:12.199 --> 00:40:15.719
considered innocent at the time. It's
the kind of thing you see on fictional

456
00:40:15.760 --> 00:40:21.559
crime shows all the time, Your
honor, This evidence is admissible to show

457
00:40:21.599 --> 00:40:25.000
a pattern, but it's not actually
as easy as it looks on TV.

458
00:40:27.599 --> 00:40:32.599
But after Judge Hudson allowed Liz Ratliffe's
death to be used as evidence in Michael's

459
00:40:32.599 --> 00:40:38.760
trial, the argument yet again became
another battle of the experts. I went

460
00:40:38.840 --> 00:40:44.760
over Liz's death in the last episode, but to briefly recap, she died

461
00:40:44.800 --> 00:40:47.960
from a cerebral hemorrhage. She fell
down the stairs when this stroke like event

462
00:40:49.000 --> 00:40:53.280
occurred, and she did in her
injuries from the fall. The reason Michael

463
00:40:53.400 --> 00:40:59.000
was now a suspect was because of
the strange coincidence of the two women dead

464
00:40:59.039 --> 00:41:02.000
at the bottom of a stair case. Michael had also seen Liz the night

465
00:41:02.039 --> 00:41:07.679
before. Liz and her girls had
dinner with Mike, Petty and the boys,

466
00:41:07.159 --> 00:41:10.599
and then he walked them home.
They only lived a few doors down,

467
00:41:10.960 --> 00:41:14.840
and he helped Liz get the girls
to bed, He took out the

468
00:41:14.880 --> 00:41:19.480
garbage, and he left things he
had been doing to help her since her

469
00:41:19.559 --> 00:41:23.920
husband had died. Because Liz was
really struggling. When the nanny came the

470
00:41:23.960 --> 00:41:29.000
next morning, she found Liz at
the bottom of the staircase. She had

471
00:41:29.039 --> 00:41:32.199
thought she was still alive because her
body was warm. She ran screaming to

472
00:41:32.239 --> 00:41:37.719
the Peterson's for help, and Michael
ran over, but Liz was gone.

473
00:41:37.159 --> 00:41:40.960
She was likely warm from the heated
flooring, but she had not been dead

474
00:41:42.000 --> 00:41:45.679
long. A doctor was sent to
the home in Germany, which was per

475
00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:51.119
German law for an unattended death.
The doctor found that Liz was not yet

476
00:41:51.159 --> 00:41:54.599
in rigor mortis, so he performed
a spinal tap on her and found blood

477
00:41:54.639 --> 00:41:59.800
in the fluid, which is an
indicator of that type of hemorrhage or anneur

478
00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:05.119
in. Then her body was taken
by the Army for a full autopsy and

479
00:42:05.239 --> 00:42:09.159
a section of her brain more than
half was sent to the Armed Forces Institute

480
00:42:09.159 --> 00:42:15.760
of Pathology, who reviewed the autopsy
as well as her brain tissue and confirmed

481
00:42:15.800 --> 00:42:21.079
her death was from a cerebral hemorrhage. The US Army investigator who was at

482
00:42:21.119 --> 00:42:24.760
the scene of Lizza's death in Germany, testified that Lizza's death was not a

483
00:42:24.840 --> 00:42:30.199
homicide. He explained that he did
not observe anything that would lead him to

484
00:42:30.199 --> 00:42:37.519
believe that Ratliff died by other than
natural causes. The German police also agreed

485
00:42:37.679 --> 00:42:43.639
that Lizza's death was natural, but
the Durham DA decided to exhume Elizabeth Ratliff

486
00:42:43.960 --> 00:42:49.159
and make sure the findings were correct. Disregarding the expert opinions of German and

487
00:42:49.400 --> 00:42:55.719
American doctors. Doctor Debora Radish,
the assistant forensic pathologist for the prosecution,

488
00:42:57.800 --> 00:43:02.800
stated she thought Liz died from blunt
trauma, just like Kathleen. She actually

489
00:43:02.800 --> 00:43:08.239
wrote homicidal attack in her notes,
which is improper. You can check a

490
00:43:08.280 --> 00:43:12.840
box for manner of death, but
you are not supposed to use that kind

491
00:43:12.840 --> 00:43:17.119
of language in the notes. But
doctor Radish could not be certain Liz had

492
00:43:17.159 --> 00:43:22.880
not died from another cause like a
fall or a stroke. Only about a

493
00:43:22.960 --> 00:43:27.840
third of Liz's brain tissue was left
after the autopsy over eighteen years ago,

494
00:43:28.559 --> 00:43:32.880
and yet Radish's testimony that it was
a homicidal attack was given as fact by

495
00:43:32.920 --> 00:43:38.840
the state. The prosecution used Liz's
death to establish that Michael may have known

496
00:43:38.880 --> 00:43:45.199
how to stage a stairway accident,
one just like Kathleen's. What is so

497
00:43:45.239 --> 00:43:51.840
sad is that the prosecution could have
made this argument without exuming a human being,

498
00:43:52.360 --> 00:43:58.000
disturbing her final resting place and greatly
upsetting her daughters who had just lost

499
00:43:58.079 --> 00:44:01.719
their adoptive mother. All they had
to do was bring up this coincidence.

500
00:44:02.360 --> 00:44:07.159
That is enough for most people even
today, who debate it online without even

501
00:44:07.199 --> 00:44:13.760
really knowing the facts of Liza's death. It's disgusting to me, And if

502
00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:16.320
you want to call me biased for
that, that's fine, but I urge

503
00:44:16.320 --> 00:44:21.119
you to hold that thought until the
end of this episode. I may surprise

504
00:44:21.199 --> 00:44:27.159
you. It is possible to believe
the mention of the Liz ratlife coincidence is

505
00:44:27.199 --> 00:44:30.480
fair under the four O four B
rule without needing to exhume her body,

506
00:44:31.239 --> 00:44:36.800
especially if you were just suggesting that
Michael got the idea from her death.

507
00:44:37.800 --> 00:44:42.039
But at any rate, it's difficult
to comprehend why Michael would kill Liz.

508
00:44:42.960 --> 00:44:46.159
As a result of her death,
the state claimed Michael gained only seventy thousand

509
00:44:46.159 --> 00:44:52.519
dollars through life insurance, and at
Liza's explicit request, Michael raised her two

510
00:44:52.599 --> 00:44:58.000
daughters. Michael has also denied that
Liz had life insurance. It was the

511
00:44:58.039 --> 00:45:02.039
money left over after her husband,
George had died in combat and what the

512
00:45:02.119 --> 00:45:08.119
things in her estate were worth in
court, David Rudolph's second chair on Mayher

513
00:45:08.639 --> 00:45:15.400
said it was thirty five thousand regardless, also explained on the last episode just

514
00:45:15.519 --> 00:45:20.079
how far that much money would go
in raising two little girls just a little

515
00:45:20.079 --> 00:45:25.719
bit over two years, not to
mention the emotional responsibility of raising these girls.

516
00:45:28.119 --> 00:45:31.840
Margaret and Martha Ratliffe were the very
heart of Michael's trial. They sat

517
00:45:31.920 --> 00:45:37.679
behind him every day, never wavering
in their support of the man they called

518
00:45:37.760 --> 00:45:43.840
dad, the only father they remembered, and despite their trauma and suffering,

519
00:45:44.280 --> 00:45:49.599
the DA's office pushed for DNA tests
to prove who their parents were and exhumed

520
00:45:49.719 --> 00:45:53.440
their birth mother. And to make
matters worse, this was not just a

521
00:45:53.440 --> 00:46:00.480
competition of experts. The prosecution put
up a parade of Liz Ratliffe's friends traveled

522
00:46:00.480 --> 00:46:05.159
from Germany to talk about a death
scene eighteen years prior. They did say

523
00:46:05.199 --> 00:46:07.880
they saw blood, and there would
have had to have been blood. The

524
00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:13.440
doctor and other authorities said Liz was
lying in a pool of blood, but

525
00:46:13.599 --> 00:46:17.000
not like the scene of Kathleen's death. Otherwise you can be sure the army,

526
00:46:17.400 --> 00:46:22.199
if not the German authorities, would
have photographed the scene. One woman

527
00:46:22.280 --> 00:46:27.760
named Cheryl, who did say she
saw the blood, also explained the severe

528
00:46:27.800 --> 00:46:32.119
headaches Liz had been suffering before her
death. She had made an appointment with

529
00:46:32.199 --> 00:46:37.559
a doctor because the headaches were so
bad. She also suffered from a blood

530
00:46:37.559 --> 00:46:43.639
disorder called von Willebrand, in which
your blood doesn't clot properly. That's why

531
00:46:43.679 --> 00:46:49.920
her official autopsy stated it was a
cerebral hemorrhage event combined with her underlying health

532
00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:57.599
problems. The nanny named Barbara also
testified, basically explaining how hysterical she had

533
00:46:57.599 --> 00:47:01.360
been and how upsetting it was to
find body, and that her focus had

534
00:47:01.360 --> 00:47:05.960
been to get the little girls out
of the house without them seeing their mother

535
00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:12.239
on the floor. Then a woman
named Amy Beth testified she and her husband,

536
00:47:12.519 --> 00:47:15.159
a major in the army, ran
over to Liz's when she got word

537
00:47:15.199 --> 00:47:21.559
of her death. Amy Beth had
emailed with investigator Art Holland before coming to

538
00:47:21.599 --> 00:47:27.400
America to testify and never said anything
about the death being foul play. She

539
00:47:27.559 --> 00:47:31.119
also did not even mention Michael Peterson
as she described the scene that day,

540
00:47:31.519 --> 00:47:37.920
even though she knew she was answering
Holland about the Peterson investigation. Now on

541
00:47:37.960 --> 00:47:44.880
the stand, she tearfully said she
had always suspected Lise was murdered. David

542
00:47:44.960 --> 00:47:50.239
Rudolph let his second chair, Tom
mayher cross examine Amy Beth. He made

543
00:47:50.239 --> 00:47:53.960
her look extremely foolish. Mayhe didn't
even stand up. He leaned back in

544
00:47:54.000 --> 00:48:00.199
his chair and fired questions at her, mildly but pointedly. What and you

545
00:48:00.239 --> 00:48:04.199
go to the police. The German
police are scary, She said, Your

546
00:48:04.280 --> 00:48:07.320
husband, a major in the US
Army, was there. Why didn't he?

547
00:48:07.840 --> 00:48:09.119
Well, he said, if a
house was on fire, you'll let

548
00:48:09.159 --> 00:48:14.039
the fireman put it out. So
then when would you jump into help with

549
00:48:14.079 --> 00:48:17.519
the fire? Well, I am
now do they have telephones in Germany?

550
00:48:17.639 --> 00:48:22.960
Yes, you didn't write anything about
foul play or Michael Peterson in your statement

551
00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:28.440
to investigate or Holland why is that
I am only just now remembering after seeing

552
00:48:28.440 --> 00:48:32.480
all my old friends again. I'm
having flashbacks. You're having flashbacks, he

553
00:48:32.599 --> 00:48:38.559
said, I'm obviously paraphrasing, but
it is how ridiculous she sounded. This

554
00:48:38.599 --> 00:48:44.000
woman sat there and lied and was
caught in her wies with Mahar's quiet but

555
00:48:44.079 --> 00:48:47.800
scathing questions. It would be comical
if they were not discussing the death of

556
00:48:47.840 --> 00:48:52.719
a woman who had been exhumed after
Amy, Beth, Cheryl, and the

557
00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:57.480
nanny all flew in to testify against
Michael, even though they had never reported

558
00:48:57.599 --> 00:49:04.719
anything suspicious to German or American authorities
when their good friend actually died. I

559
00:49:04.800 --> 00:49:08.039
will never understand how the Liz Ratliffe
evidence was allowed in or at the very

560
00:49:08.119 --> 00:49:13.400
least, why they were allowed to
exhume her and drive her in a hearse

561
00:49:13.559 --> 00:49:17.199
to North Carolina to have Debora Radish
do an autopsy eighteen years after she was

562
00:49:17.280 --> 00:49:22.639
buried. How could they think this
autopsy would be more accurate much less fair?

563
00:49:23.880 --> 00:49:29.679
What gives them the right to second
guest German and American authorities who ruled

564
00:49:29.719 --> 00:49:37.599
the death natural. I'm going to
pause now to hear a word from today's

565
00:49:37.639 --> 00:49:45.840
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566
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569
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574
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575
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576
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577
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slash Southern. And now I'll discuss
the argument we all knew was coming Michael's

594
00:51:59.519 --> 00:52:07.159
cheating and therefore his bisexuality. Several
weeks into Michael's trial, Judge Hudson ruled

595
00:52:07.239 --> 00:52:12.199
that the evidence from Michael's computer would
be allowed in court, namely the gay

596
00:52:12.239 --> 00:52:19.079
pornography and suggestive emails from Michael to
another man. This was a controversial decision.

597
00:52:20.280 --> 00:52:24.800
David Rudolph knew that Michael's bisexuality would
probably by us the jurors, but

598
00:52:24.840 --> 00:52:30.320
according to Judge Hudson, the risk
was worth it. After all, the

599
00:52:30.360 --> 00:52:35.360
evidence was now relevant. The defense
had stated that Michael and Kathleen's marriage was

600
00:52:35.400 --> 00:52:42.440
idyllic. The prosecution was allowed to
rebut that argument and Michael's infidelity with men

601
00:52:42.840 --> 00:52:47.360
could imply that his marriage was not
actually the fairy tale of soulmates. As

602
00:52:47.440 --> 00:52:52.800
Prosecutor Fred of Black sat and her
closing argument, according to the persons that

603
00:52:52.920 --> 00:52:57.559
know her well, including most especially
her sister, she would have been infuriated

604
00:52:57.599 --> 00:53:01.360
by learning that her husband, who
she truly loved, was bisexual and having

605
00:53:01.400 --> 00:53:06.599
an extramarital relationship, not even with
another woman, but with a man,

606
00:53:07.119 --> 00:53:12.719
which would be humiliating and embarrassing to
her. Additionally, Judge Hudson felt the

607
00:53:12.719 --> 00:53:19.360
computer evidence helped the prosecution establish a
potential motive. The prosecution painted this picture

608
00:53:19.400 --> 00:53:22.559
for the jury. Michael was cheating
on Kathleen with men, so he was

609
00:53:22.599 --> 00:53:28.519
clearly unhappy in his marriage. When
Kathleen saw the evidence of that cheating on

610
00:53:28.599 --> 00:53:34.039
Michael's computer, she confronted him.
She was upset about his infidelity and secret

611
00:53:34.079 --> 00:53:38.039
gay affairs. As the state put
it, Michael outraged by being caught and

612
00:53:38.360 --> 00:53:45.599
motivated by his financial stress, killed
Kathleen. Let's be clear that Kathleen found

613
00:53:45.639 --> 00:53:50.079
Michael's gay stuff. Motive is a
theory, not a proven reality. There

614
00:53:50.159 --> 00:53:55.079
was literally no evidence that Kathleen Peterson
accessed the computer, Michael's gay porn,

615
00:53:55.599 --> 00:54:00.480
or his emails to another man before
her death. As of eleven p m.

616
00:54:00.519 --> 00:54:05.159
On the night of her death,
Kathleen spoke to her Nortil colleague Helen

617
00:54:05.480 --> 00:54:08.960
on the phone. Helen had called
with the bad news of an early morning

618
00:54:08.960 --> 00:54:15.239
conference call the next day on a
Sunday that Kathleen had to take. Helen

619
00:54:15.280 --> 00:54:20.199
needed to send her a document to
review. Kathleen had not brought her laptop

620
00:54:20.280 --> 00:54:24.199
home because she wasn't supposed to be
working, so she gave Helen Michael's email

621
00:54:24.199 --> 00:54:30.519
address. Hellen testified that she heard
no signs that the Petersons were fighting.

622
00:54:30.599 --> 00:54:37.559
Following their conversation, Hellen sent Kathleen
and email, but a computer expert testified

623
00:54:37.840 --> 00:54:43.280
that Kathleen did not open Helen's email. In fact, on cross examination,

624
00:54:43.880 --> 00:54:49.320
the state's computer expert was forced to
admit that no one had accessed that computer

625
00:54:49.719 --> 00:54:53.679
since four p m. That afternoon, long before Michael and Kathleen had drinks

626
00:54:53.679 --> 00:54:59.719
and dinner long before Helen had called
Kathleen to tell her about the conference call.

627
00:55:00.840 --> 00:55:07.280
So how did Kathleen discover Michael's bisexuality
and cheating. Well, the state

628
00:55:07.400 --> 00:55:10.639
claimed that she did somehow get into
his email and found the emails to the

629
00:55:10.840 --> 00:55:16.880
escort Brad from months earlier. Kathleen
would have had to scroll through months of

630
00:55:16.880 --> 00:55:22.119
Michael's emails defined his communications with Brad. Why would she do that if she

631
00:55:22.199 --> 00:55:27.239
was just looking for her co worker's
email, That is, if she magically

632
00:55:27.320 --> 00:55:31.480
accessed the computer that night, even
though the state's own experts said it had

633
00:55:31.519 --> 00:55:37.440
not been touched. Over the years, Michael has persistently claimed that Kathleen knew

634
00:55:37.440 --> 00:55:44.440
of his bisexuality and that she knew
of Michael's sexual trysts with men. According

635
00:55:44.440 --> 00:55:49.920
to Michael, Kathleen understood it was
just sex. This was never proven,

636
00:55:50.199 --> 00:55:55.519
and obviously Michael had every reason to
lie about this. In Michael's favor,

637
00:55:55.960 --> 00:56:00.280
he called a mail escort three times
on a phone bill under Kathleen's name,

638
00:56:00.880 --> 00:56:05.719
so she may have known. It
doesn't appear that he was trying very hard

639
00:56:05.719 --> 00:56:09.920
to hide it. It's on phone
bills, it's in undeleted emails, and

640
00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:15.199
let's talk about these emails, those
that Michael sent to the escort known as

641
00:56:15.239 --> 00:56:20.800
Brad. These emails also worked in
his favor. Although he was arranging to

642
00:56:20.840 --> 00:56:24.679
pay for sex with Brad, he
maintained how much he loved Kathleen. Michael

643
00:56:24.719 --> 00:56:30.199
wrote, unmarried, very happily to
a dynamite wife. And as I said,

644
00:56:30.559 --> 00:56:35.760
which is really important. These emails
from Michael to Brad were months old.

645
00:56:36.239 --> 00:56:38.840
Michael Hatton reached out to Brad in
quite some time, and due to

646
00:56:38.880 --> 00:56:45.159
some scheduling conflicts, Michael and Brad
had never even met in person. But

647
00:56:45.079 --> 00:56:50.119
even if Kathleen had gotten to those
emails, she would have seen a proposition

648
00:56:50.199 --> 00:56:55.159
for sex, not a romantic relationship. Would it have hurt maybe, probably

649
00:56:55.480 --> 00:57:00.800
even But you know what, you
cannot prove she saw that emails or knew

650
00:57:00.840 --> 00:57:05.880
anything about it, because she never
accessed his email that night. Also for

651
00:57:05.960 --> 00:57:09.800
the record, Brad the escort was
one of the most engaging witnesses at trial.

652
00:57:10.480 --> 00:57:16.239
He explained that most men who hired
him were married and that their wives

653
00:57:16.320 --> 00:57:22.360
often knew they were bisexual, and
typically those men complained about their wives.

654
00:57:22.679 --> 00:57:27.599
They didn't talk about how much they
loved them. When asked who his clients

655
00:57:27.639 --> 00:57:32.559
typically were, Brad said usually professionals
because his rates weren't cheap. Doctors,

656
00:57:32.679 --> 00:57:37.960
attorneys, and one judge, which
caused Judge Orlando Hudson to speak up and

657
00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:44.760
say not this judge, which had
the courtroom howling with laughter. I don't

658
00:57:44.760 --> 00:57:49.079
believe the state did a good job
trying to use Michael's bosexuality as a motive.

659
00:57:49.679 --> 00:57:52.960
They couldn't even find one witness who
had slept with him to testify.

660
00:57:53.960 --> 00:58:00.840
But I do believe they succeeded in
prejudicing the jury. I don't think anyone

661
00:58:00.920 --> 00:58:05.760
can look at it with twenty twenty
three eyes and not see how homophobic and

662
00:58:05.840 --> 00:58:10.840
prejudicial it was to Michael's case.
Jim Harden was careful with his words and

663
00:58:10.920 --> 00:58:15.920
he didn't raise his voice much.
He left the wet work to Fretta Black.

664
00:58:16.320 --> 00:58:22.480
Bretta became a dubious celebrity. She
dressed like she was going to church.

665
00:58:22.880 --> 00:58:25.719
Not business suits, but a lot
of frilly dresses, and she had

666
00:58:25.719 --> 00:58:30.840
a loud, thick Southern accent that
she used to her advantage. One of

667
00:58:30.880 --> 00:58:36.480
the most famous lines in this trial
as her repeatedly calling the evidence on Michael's

668
00:58:36.480 --> 00:58:42.639
computer, pure tea filth. She
repeated it over and over, pure te

669
00:58:43.000 --> 00:58:47.639
filth. She showed the jury photos
and said that is hardcore porn. And

670
00:58:47.719 --> 00:58:52.119
I don't mean to offend you,
she says, but Brad did say they

671
00:58:52.119 --> 00:58:57.760
were going to have anal sex.
She constantly put these ideas into the juror's

672
00:58:57.760 --> 00:59:02.440
heads. Now, the juror would
later insist that they didn't consider Michael's sexuality,

673
00:59:02.800 --> 00:59:07.599
but come on, would they really
admit to that? How could they

674
00:59:07.719 --> 00:59:13.159
not come away from the trial with
a certain idea of Michael Peterson's character When

675
00:59:13.159 --> 00:59:17.960
Freda kept saying pure te filth,
hardcore porn and showed them the printed out

676
00:59:19.000 --> 00:59:24.119
photos of porn. No, the
jury said they believed the blood evidence and

677
00:59:24.239 --> 00:59:30.760
that they particularly liked Duane Deaver,
which is astonishing to me. Watching that

678
00:59:30.800 --> 00:59:36.840
man's testimony as like watching paint dry. We do know later that he lied

679
00:59:37.000 --> 00:59:39.519
a lot, but for now I
can tell you that out of a six

680
00:59:39.559 --> 00:59:46.760
thousand page transcript, Deaver's testimony and
cross made up a thousand pages. And

681
00:59:46.960 --> 00:59:52.559
as much as Freda's closing argument was
homophobic, she also relied very much on

682
00:59:52.599 --> 00:59:59.760
another inappropriate tactic. She repeatedly took
shots at the defense expert witnesses, while

683
01:00:00.239 --> 01:00:06.000
over and over that the state's experts
worked for them the jurors. They didn't

684
01:00:06.039 --> 01:00:09.280
make extra money to testify, she
said, as the defense experts who were

685
01:00:09.320 --> 01:00:14.960
paid to come and testify did.
She made fun of them for traveling around

686
01:00:15.039 --> 01:00:19.079
and giving speeches. Dwayne Deaver wasn't
allowed to do that, she said.

687
01:00:20.199 --> 01:00:24.400
The men she made fun of were
world renowned forensic pathologists. It's by people

688
01:00:24.440 --> 01:00:29.840
paid to hear them speak. It's
why they are always allowed to give expert

689
01:00:29.880 --> 01:00:34.760
testimony. I'll get to that more
in the end during the appills and where

690
01:00:34.760 --> 01:00:37.559
they are now. But as far
as trial testimony went, Breta made a

691
01:00:37.599 --> 01:00:44.440
lot of errors that I'm sure she
later regretted. But now let's address all

692
01:00:44.480 --> 01:00:50.480
things blood related. Two paramedics testified
that the blood around Kathleen's body was dry,

693
01:00:51.039 --> 01:00:52.800
but as I have said before,
they did not write it in their

694
01:00:52.800 --> 01:00:59.599
reports. One of the paramedics didn't
mention the dry blood to investigating officers until

695
01:00:59.639 --> 01:01:04.400
his an interview. I'll spoil the
ending of the dry blood debate for you.

696
01:01:05.079 --> 01:01:09.039
Eighty witnesses were cross examined. The
trial lasted sixty three days. Spread

697
01:01:09.079 --> 01:01:13.559
over three months. Even a video
of the crime scene was shown to the

698
01:01:13.639 --> 01:01:19.079
jury, and it is still unclear
if the blood was dry. That's another

699
01:01:19.159 --> 01:01:22.440
thing I saw debated in the group. I never said Kathleen was still bleeding.

700
01:01:22.880 --> 01:01:27.920
I said that her clothing was so
saturated that the blood dripped as they

701
01:01:27.960 --> 01:01:32.360
put her in a body bag.
Then there's the sheer amount of blood.

702
01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:38.599
The prosecution stated that the blood was
on Kathleen, under Kathleen, beside Kathleen,

703
01:01:39.000 --> 01:01:45.519
it was all over. They also
said luminal tests showed footprints leading away

704
01:01:45.559 --> 01:01:50.519
from Kathleen's body to the kitchen and
laundry room. I talked about this luminal

705
01:01:50.559 --> 01:01:54.000
testing in Part two. Dan George, the crime scene expert who did the

706
01:01:54.039 --> 01:02:00.280
testing, did not take any photographs
of the alleged luminal response, did not

707
01:02:00.360 --> 01:02:05.199
draw a diagram, nothing, not
until sixteen months after the fact for the

708
01:02:05.280 --> 01:02:12.760
purposes of Michael's trial, and even
then the diagram was considered incomplete. Michael's

709
01:02:12.800 --> 01:02:17.360
bloody shoeprint was also found on the
back of Kathleen's pant leg. The defense

710
01:02:17.480 --> 01:02:22.239
argued that this could have occurred when
Michael was attempting to help Kathleen. They

711
01:02:22.239 --> 01:02:28.079
asserted that since the footprint was not
smeared, it was made when Kathleen wasn't

712
01:02:28.119 --> 01:02:34.920
moving. However, the prosecution claimed
that Michael could have kicked Kathleen without smearing

713
01:02:34.920 --> 01:02:40.920
that bloody shoeprint. Okay, so
where was the corresponding bruise. Kathleen did

714
01:02:42.000 --> 01:02:45.400
have some small bruises and abrasions,
but not the type you get from someone

715
01:02:45.519 --> 01:02:52.239
kicking you. At one point,
Michael's bloodstained khaki shorts were held up for

716
01:02:52.280 --> 01:02:57.519
the jury to consider. The prosecution
argued that they were bloody because Michael had

717
01:02:57.519 --> 01:03:02.280
bludgeoned Kathleen, but the fence disagreed. They argued that authorities put the shorts

718
01:03:02.280 --> 01:03:08.639
in the bag without photographing them or
otherwise recording the staining pattern. There was

719
01:03:08.679 --> 01:03:14.800
a chance that the shorts stains had
been transferred in the bag, meaning that

720
01:03:14.880 --> 01:03:20.400
they no longer reflected anything valuable about
the December ninth crime scene. The blood

721
01:03:20.440 --> 01:03:23.400
could have been from Michael's attack just
as easily as it could have been from

722
01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:29.679
him cradling his dead wife. Remember
how I told you that Michael threw himself

723
01:03:29.679 --> 01:03:36.039
on Kathleen's body in front of several
police officers and his son Kathleen's clothes were

724
01:03:36.079 --> 01:03:39.559
still dripping blood when she was removed
from the scene, and we don't think

725
01:03:39.639 --> 01:03:45.119
it's possible that's how Michael got this
one tiny splatter in his shorts, either

726
01:03:45.199 --> 01:03:50.920
from this incident or even from when
he was putting towels under her head trying

727
01:03:50.960 --> 01:03:55.079
to help her. The blood being
inside the pant's lag of his shorts is

728
01:03:55.119 --> 01:04:00.119
what really swayed the jury, and
they believed Duane Dee as to how it

729
01:04:00.159 --> 01:04:04.679
got there. He showed a video
of hitting a styrofoam head with a paint

730
01:04:04.679 --> 01:04:10.440
soaked sponge that he was standing over
as he hit the head something like thirty

731
01:04:10.440 --> 01:04:15.039
six times too, even though Kathleen
only had seven lacerations. He's actually holding

732
01:04:15.119 --> 01:04:19.119
his pant leg as he hits the
sponge, and he's not even standing in

733
01:04:19.159 --> 01:04:25.599
the mock stairwell. No blood spatter
expert would say this was a legitimate experiment.

734
01:04:26.159 --> 01:04:30.199
He was trying to prove it was
possible to splash blood inside the shorts.

735
01:04:30.840 --> 01:04:34.800
That's not how you conduct an experiment. You don't do the experiment trying

736
01:04:34.840 --> 01:04:39.920
to create a certain outcome. You
do the experiment to see what would have

737
01:04:39.920 --> 01:04:46.159
happened naturally. Experts would later completely
disavow Deaver's methods. And then there's the

738
01:04:46.199 --> 01:04:50.679
matter of Michael's dark blue shirt he
was wearing that night. This was also

739
01:04:50.760 --> 01:04:58.400
covered extensively by SBI agent Dwayne Deaver. Judge Hudson allowed Deaver to testify as

740
01:04:58.400 --> 01:05:03.760
a blood spatter expert, but Deaver
didn't have blood spatter analysis qualifications. His

741
01:05:03.840 --> 01:05:11.559
bachelor's degree was in zoology. His
most recent training in advanced blood spatter analysis

742
01:05:11.639 --> 01:05:15.559
was a course he took over fifteen
years prior in nineteen eighty eight, and

743
01:05:15.840 --> 01:05:24.880
that course's instructor allegedly falsified her qualifications. But Deaver had been an SBI agent

744
01:05:24.960 --> 01:05:28.920
for eighteen years, which had to
count for something, right. He was

745
01:05:28.960 --> 01:05:32.840
the go to man on blood stained
pattern analysis. He had even trained other

746
01:05:32.960 --> 01:05:39.800
officers in the same skill set for
over a decade. Deaver's expert testimony was

747
01:05:39.840 --> 01:05:45.199
allowed by the judge, as it
had been in sixty prior cases. Deaver

748
01:05:45.360 --> 01:05:48.719
testified that he couldn't be certain if
there was blood spatter on Michael's dark blue

749
01:05:48.760 --> 01:05:56.039
shirt. He claimed that blood spatter
analysis was a visual practice, so since

750
01:05:56.039 --> 01:06:00.920
the shirt was dark, Deaver simply
couldn't see the blood. The insinuation by

751
01:06:00.920 --> 01:06:05.000
the prosecution was clear. Although Deaver
couldn't see Michael's bloody shirt, the blood

752
01:06:05.039 --> 01:06:10.440
was there in the prosecution's eyes.
It had to be. It would be

753
01:06:10.519 --> 01:06:15.000
nearly impossible for Michael to beat Kathleen
to death without bloodying his shirt. But

754
01:06:15.119 --> 01:06:21.000
when Michael's defense attorney David Rudolf cross
examined Deaver, some crucial information was revealed.

755
01:06:21.840 --> 01:06:28.559
Deaver had used an alternate light source
test known as lumalite on Michael's shirt.

756
01:06:29.360 --> 01:06:32.599
No blood was found. That's a
big win for Michael. If michael

757
01:06:32.639 --> 01:06:38.119
shirt wasn't bloody, then the jurors
could reasonably doubt that he killed Kathleen.

758
01:06:38.800 --> 01:06:44.599
But Michael's defense attorney Rudolf had no
idea about the lumalite test until this exact

759
01:06:44.679 --> 01:06:49.480
moment. In cross examination, Deaver
claimed he gave the lumolite test report to

760
01:06:49.519 --> 01:06:56.840
the prosecution, but the prosecutors looked
as surprised as Rudolf. To be clear,

761
01:06:57.519 --> 01:07:00.760
the prosecuting attorneys have to turn over
all of their evidence to the defense,

762
01:07:01.159 --> 01:07:05.280
regardless of whether it is helpful to
them or not. So what was

763
01:07:05.360 --> 01:07:11.960
Dwayne Deaver describing when he gave the
prosecution a report that could help prove Michael

764
01:07:12.039 --> 01:07:16.599
was innocent, and then the prosecution
buried it, or that he never gave

765
01:07:16.639 --> 01:07:21.239
it to them because it didn't fit
their theory. It's not just sketchy,

766
01:07:21.559 --> 01:07:29.159
it's unconstitutional, a Brady violation.
Mistrials have been determined over less, but

767
01:07:29.960 --> 01:07:35.159
Judge Hudson refused a mistrial here.
I'm going to pause now for a short

768
01:07:35.199 --> 01:07:54.719
commercial break. Deaver also provided extensive
testimony on the blood spatters surrounding Kathleen's body.

769
01:07:55.119 --> 01:07:59.880
In his professional opinion, the blood
spatters were caused by blows to Kathleen's

770
01:07:59.880 --> 01:08:05.079
head, specifically by a fireplace blowpoke, as I told you. Deaver also

771
01:08:05.159 --> 01:08:12.360
testified about video recorded experiments he did
for the investigation. In these experiments,

772
01:08:12.400 --> 01:08:16.520
Dever simulated Kathleen's head by dousing a
sponge in red paint and attaching it to

773
01:08:16.560 --> 01:08:20.640
a styrofoam head. Then he put
the star foam head through a series of

774
01:08:20.680 --> 01:08:26.760
maneuvers to see what blood spatters would
happen. Michael's attorney, David Rudolph,

775
01:08:26.840 --> 01:08:32.319
was flabbergasted by the lack of scientific
protocol exercised in these experiments. The styrofoam

776
01:08:32.359 --> 01:08:36.920
head was not the same weight or
shape as Kathleen's. The maneuvers Deaver put

777
01:08:36.920 --> 01:08:43.520
the starfroom head through were wholly unrelated
to how Deaver said Michael had killed Kathleen.

778
01:08:44.000 --> 01:08:47.760
For example, Deaver dropped the styrofoam
head from over twelve feet in the

779
01:08:47.800 --> 01:08:53.680
air, but no one was arguing
that Kathleen swan dove from the top of

780
01:08:53.720 --> 01:08:58.960
the staircase. He also stomped on
the head repeatedly, but again no one

781
01:08:59.079 --> 01:09:03.600
was arguing that Aathleen's head had been
stomped on, and by Deaver's own admission,

782
01:09:04.039 --> 01:09:08.680
they exaggerated the amount of blood that
would be found in that situation.

783
01:09:09.760 --> 01:09:15.439
World renowned forensic scientist doctor Henry Lee
appeared as an expert for Michael's defense.

784
01:09:15.439 --> 01:09:20.399
He was stunned at Duane Deaver's so
called experiments. Doctor Lee had been to

785
01:09:20.439 --> 01:09:26.960
the scene, examined photographs taken by
the State and Michael's clothing. He testified

786
01:09:27.000 --> 01:09:30.000
that the blood spatters were not consistent
with a beating, citing that there were

787
01:09:30.039 --> 01:09:34.920
far too many points of origin.
The spatters could instead be caused by a

788
01:09:34.960 --> 01:09:40.840
person moving, trying to get up, falling and doing so again. In

789
01:09:40.880 --> 01:09:45.520
the process, Kathleen might have shaken
her bloody hair, spattering blood on the

790
01:09:45.560 --> 01:09:48.439
wall. She may have coughed up
blood. She may have flailed her hands

791
01:09:48.479 --> 01:09:53.600
out trying to catch herself, Lots
of little movements that would have sprayed blood

792
01:09:53.720 --> 01:09:59.279
everywhere. She falls once and sits
up. Blood runs down her face into

793
01:09:59.319 --> 01:10:02.760
her eyes and mouth. She is
disoriented, houghing and trying to shake it

794
01:10:02.800 --> 01:10:08.479
off. Most people can't see it
that way because they picture her lifeless body

795
01:10:08.520 --> 01:10:13.439
and photos. Her face is dark
white, but Michael said that he wiped

796
01:10:13.479 --> 01:10:17.600
blood from her face as he was
putting the towels beneath her head. Additionally,

797
01:10:18.079 --> 01:10:24.479
Rudolph explained that none of the blood
spatters could be effectively examined. As

798
01:10:24.520 --> 01:10:28.439
we explored in detail in Part two, the police allowed the crime scene to

799
01:10:28.439 --> 01:10:33.359
be contaminated. Unknown people roamed the
Peterson house freely, including one woman,

800
01:10:33.640 --> 01:10:39.279
a couple, and a drunk man. As a result, Kathleen's blood had

801
01:10:39.319 --> 01:10:45.279
been disturbed numerous times by wandering strangers, by Michael, by his son Todd,

802
01:10:45.760 --> 01:10:49.079
by the medical examiner, by a
photographer. The bloody towels placed under

803
01:10:49.159 --> 01:10:55.880
Kathleen's head were moved onto a new
stair step. Even the emergency workers who

804
01:10:55.920 --> 01:11:02.079
removed Kathleen's body dripped blood in new
places. Rudolph vehemently argued that all analyzes

805
01:11:02.119 --> 01:11:08.840
of Kathleen's blood patterns were ineffective.
There was no way possible to determine what

806
01:11:09.039 --> 01:11:14.800
had caused certain blood droplets to be
in certain places. After hours of heated

807
01:11:14.840 --> 01:11:19.880
cross examination, a crime scene technician
testifying on behalf of the prosecution even agreed

808
01:11:19.920 --> 01:11:25.319
that the scene was contaminated, so
contaminated, in fact, that it would

809
01:11:25.319 --> 01:11:30.279
be challenging to draw conclusions from it. Plus, Michael's shoes and socks had

810
01:11:30.319 --> 01:11:35.239
little to no blood. According to
Rudolph's cross examination of crimescene technician Dan George,

811
01:11:35.600 --> 01:11:41.199
that was unexpected. If Michael had
beaten Kathleen to death, much more

812
01:11:41.199 --> 01:11:45.720
blood would have been on his shoes. Overall, the defense asserted that the

813
01:11:45.800 --> 01:11:50.840
police had mishandled the investigation so badly
that none of the prosecution's evidence should be

814
01:11:50.880 --> 01:11:58.840
considered valid. But the prosecution contended
that the investigation wasn't mishandled. In fact,

815
01:11:59.199 --> 01:12:02.239
they said the police handled a crime
scene in a routine and thorough manner.

816
01:12:02.960 --> 01:12:09.119
According to the prosecution, crime scenes
have never been perfectly contained. That's

817
01:12:09.159 --> 01:12:13.600
the dream, but it's not how
real police work happens. They admitted that

818
01:12:13.640 --> 01:12:17.800
for thirty minutes the crime scene was
not secured. They said that the delay

819
01:12:17.880 --> 01:12:24.720
happened because the police initially treated Kathleen's
death as an accident. Somehow, a

820
01:12:24.800 --> 01:12:29.039
leading officer was told that a woman
fell out of her wheelchair and down some

821
01:12:29.119 --> 01:12:32.840
stairs. Therefore, it took a
while for the police to realize this was

822
01:12:32.880 --> 01:12:39.600
a crime scene. But this didn't
actually check out with police protocols. A

823
01:12:39.720 --> 01:12:45.039
Durham Police Department supervisor told the court
that all scenes that involve a death are

824
01:12:45.079 --> 01:12:49.159
immediately considered a crime scene, and
even though this supervisor arrived at the Peterson's

825
01:12:49.199 --> 01:12:54.760
home at two fifty am, the
house was not blocked off with yellow crime

826
01:12:54.760 --> 01:12:59.359
scene tape until three thirty am.
But a different police officer said that crime

827
01:12:59.399 --> 01:13:04.039
scenes can be secured without putting up
crime scene tape. There were other arguments

828
01:13:04.359 --> 01:13:10.800
presented, of course. At one
point, prosecutor Harden told the jury Kathleen's

829
01:13:10.880 --> 01:13:16.560
larynx had been crushed, indicating strangulation, but it hadn't. Defense attorney Rudolph

830
01:13:16.600 --> 01:13:21.960
explained that her thyroid cartilage was injured, not her larynx, and there were

831
01:13:21.960 --> 01:13:28.720
no other signs of strangulation. Plus
this injury may have been caused a few

832
01:13:28.720 --> 01:13:34.680
months prior during a pool accident.
Another time, Rudolph accused prosecuting lawyer Harden

833
01:13:34.920 --> 01:13:41.840
of leaking information about Michael's sexuality to
the press. Harden denied it, but

834
01:13:41.920 --> 01:13:45.840
it was all over the papers and
the weeks before the trial started. It's

835
01:13:45.880 --> 01:13:51.479
pretty obvious that Michael's team didn't do
that. Once, an expert witness referred

836
01:13:51.520 --> 01:13:57.640
to a small evidence container in which
an important sample was supposed to be held

837
01:13:57.880 --> 01:14:02.680
a metallic fleck located in Kathleen's pooled
blood, but the fleck was missing.

838
01:14:03.560 --> 01:14:06.880
I guess that fleck would matter if
they were saying that it came from the

839
01:14:06.880 --> 01:14:13.239
blowpoke. But again, how are
we talking about evidence that cannot be physically

840
01:14:13.399 --> 01:14:18.600
entered into evidence. A meteorologist testified
that due to the eighty five percent humidity

841
01:14:18.720 --> 01:14:23.520
and fifty degree weather, it would
have felt fairly cool on the night that

842
01:14:23.600 --> 01:14:29.399
Michael and Kathleen were allegedly relaxing by
their pool. They brought in a freaking

843
01:14:29.520 --> 01:14:33.359
meteorologist to dispute the thought that Michael
and Kathleen may have walked down to their

844
01:14:33.399 --> 01:14:39.439
pool to smoke. I told you
before that not many people even knew Kathleen

845
01:14:39.520 --> 01:14:43.359
smoked. But if you want proof, nicotine was in her talk screen.

846
01:14:44.920 --> 01:14:48.039
What is so strange about a couple
who would not want cigar and cigarette smoke

847
01:14:48.119 --> 01:14:53.520
in their house. What is so
strange to go enjoy the outside of your

848
01:14:53.560 --> 01:14:59.239
home, especially the Peterson's pool area, nestled in the foliage, but cleared

849
01:14:59.279 --> 01:15:02.199
of trees so the sun could come
through in the day and the stars at

850
01:15:02.279 --> 01:15:06.800
night. The pool was not closed, the fountain was running, and Michael

851
01:15:06.840 --> 01:15:11.720
said they decided to go down there
and sit in the lounge chairs and smoke.

852
01:15:12.359 --> 01:15:15.159
They loved to watch and listen to
the fountain as they talked and smoked.

853
01:15:15.800 --> 01:15:21.600
Really, why is this so unbelievable? Well, the prosecution needs it

854
01:15:21.640 --> 01:15:28.279
to sound preposterous because it's Michael's story. It is his story of how he

855
01:15:28.319 --> 01:15:32.920
didn't see Kathleen fall but came in
and found her. But by the end

856
01:15:33.399 --> 01:15:39.880
these arguments weren't given much weight.
No one was contending that Michael strangled Kathleen

857
01:15:39.960 --> 01:15:45.479
to death. Michael's bisexuality was public
knowledge no matter how it happened. The

858
01:15:45.600 --> 01:15:49.960
state had rested its case. After
all, the Liz Ratliff testimony. They

859
01:15:49.960 --> 01:15:55.560
did not call one witness who said
that the Peterson had a strained or bad

860
01:15:55.600 --> 01:15:59.439
marriage, and if there was some
one willing to say that, they would

861
01:15:59.439 --> 01:16:04.039
have been called. David Rudolph asked
for the weekend to decide about his direct

862
01:16:04.079 --> 01:16:11.000
evidence. The big decision was whether
or not Michael should testify. Michael wanted

863
01:16:11.079 --> 01:16:15.640
to, and even the jury consultant
said he should. The only thing the

864
01:16:15.720 --> 01:16:20.680
defense had brought to the jury so
far was scientific testimony. They needed to

865
01:16:20.800 --> 01:16:27.760
humanize Michael, but Rudolph counseled against
it. It's hard to blame him.

866
01:16:27.920 --> 01:16:31.720
Most lawyers do not want their clients
to testify. It's very risky, even

867
01:16:31.760 --> 01:16:36.880
with someone who is genuinely innocent.
No, they had found the blowpoke.

868
01:16:38.439 --> 01:16:42.720
That was what they rested on.
Rudolph felt he had poked enough holes in

869
01:16:42.800 --> 01:16:47.159
all of the prosecution's case, the
finances, Kathleen, discovering Michael's affairs,

870
01:16:47.439 --> 01:16:53.880
and now, most importantly, he
had the mysteriously missing blowpoke, the blowpoke

871
01:16:54.079 --> 01:16:59.000
that the state had based their whole
theory of the murder on. For weeks

872
01:16:59.039 --> 01:17:02.439
now, media out had called the
prosecution's case weak. They didn't have a

873
01:17:02.479 --> 01:17:06.880
confession, they didn't have a murder
weapon, and they didn't have any eyewitnesses.

874
01:17:09.119 --> 01:17:14.199
As The Herald's son wrote, the
case rests almost entirely on circumstantial evidence.

875
01:17:15.680 --> 01:17:18.880
Maybe Michael did kill Kathleen, but
based on the arguments presented to the

876
01:17:18.960 --> 01:17:26.239
jury, could they be certain beyond
a reasonable doubt. On October tenth of

877
01:17:26.279 --> 01:17:30.159
two thousand and three, after deliberating
for four days, the jury announced that

878
01:17:30.239 --> 01:17:36.039
Michael Peterson was guilty. Before his
sentencing, Michael stood up in the courtroom.

879
01:17:36.079 --> 01:17:41.760
He turned to face his family sitting
behind him. They were devastated.

880
01:17:42.399 --> 01:17:47.079
Martha and Margaret were silently sobbing.
The judge had warned the entire room that

881
01:17:47.159 --> 01:17:53.199
he would arrest anyone who made outbursts. When Michael was asked if he wanted

882
01:17:53.239 --> 01:17:57.279
to say anything before he was sentenced, he didn't. He chose to turn

883
01:17:57.359 --> 01:18:02.319
around and tell his children repeatedly that
it was okay, Everything would be okay.

884
01:18:03.199 --> 01:18:09.600
Then Judge Hudson sentenced Michael to life
in prison without parole. After the

885
01:18:09.680 --> 01:18:14.560
normal time in a holding jail for
the transition, Michael was incarcerated at the

886
01:18:14.640 --> 01:18:20.720
nash Correctional Institution in Nashville, North
Carolina. In interviews with the Herald's Son.

887
01:18:20.920 --> 01:18:27.119
Jurors attributed much of their decision to
Kathleen's injuries. They could not imagine

888
01:18:27.199 --> 01:18:33.039
Kathleen receiving such severe lacerations from a
mere fall. They were also compelled by

889
01:18:33.079 --> 01:18:41.880
those rare red neurons. They believed
the prosecution's expert testimony that the red neurons

890
01:18:41.920 --> 01:18:45.640
meant Kathleen had lain at the bottom
of the stairwell for hours. They were

891
01:18:45.680 --> 01:18:51.039
probably also influenced by paramedics saying that
the blood was dry, even though that

892
01:18:51.199 --> 01:18:59.640
was not really proven. But in
Michael's autobiography Behind the Staircase, he attributed

893
01:18:59.720 --> 01:19:04.560
his conviction to two main factors.
First, his bosexuality. After all,

894
01:19:04.960 --> 01:19:10.680
he was standing trial before a conservative
Southern jury in the early two thousands.

895
01:19:11.239 --> 01:19:16.479
A bisexual, cheating husband did not
garner much sympathy, And according to Michael,

896
01:19:16.760 --> 01:19:21.319
the second fatal flaw in his case
was Rudolph's assertion that Kathleen had fallen

897
01:19:21.359 --> 01:19:27.600
down the stairs. It pushed the
question of his trial from did Michael beat

898
01:19:27.680 --> 01:19:32.159
Kathleen to death to did Michael beat
Kathleen or did she fall? Once Rudolph

899
01:19:32.159 --> 01:19:35.960
claimed Kathleen fell, he had to
prove it, and that meant that the

900
01:19:36.039 --> 01:19:41.359
jury was evaluating two scenarios, not
one. It was more for them to

901
01:19:41.439 --> 01:19:45.680
handle and more for them to disbelieve. I don't agree with him. Any

902
01:19:45.720 --> 01:19:50.079
defense attorney will tell you they have
to give an alternate story for the jury

903
01:19:50.119 --> 01:19:55.680
to consider. They are not required
to. All they are required to do

904
01:19:55.840 --> 01:19:59.920
is prove reasonable doubt to the jury. But it's foolish to think you can

905
01:20:00.079 --> 01:20:03.800
rest your case without telling the jury
what you think happened. And what else

906
01:20:03.800 --> 01:20:09.479
could they say? Michael thought his
wife fell, there was no evidence of

907
01:20:09.520 --> 01:20:15.319
an intruder. There was nothing else
to do. I also think this jury

908
01:20:15.359 --> 01:20:18.720
did not like David Rudolph. He
tended to be long winded. He did

909
01:20:18.760 --> 01:20:24.399
not sound like a local. A
mock jury that a jury consultant put on

910
01:20:24.479 --> 01:20:29.119
before the trial said they thought Rudolph
came off as slick, not sincere.

911
01:20:30.560 --> 01:20:33.279
By the end of the trial,
Rudolph listened to his team as they told

912
01:20:33.319 --> 01:20:36.920
him that the jury was not with
him, that the jury did not like

913
01:20:38.159 --> 01:20:43.439
him. So when he gave his
closing argument, he apologized if he came

914
01:20:43.479 --> 01:20:47.119
off as abrasive or unlikable, and
implored the jury not to take it out

915
01:20:47.119 --> 01:20:53.479
on his client. Something else.
I found really interesting. One juror named

916
01:20:53.560 --> 01:21:00.199
Kelly was interviewed for another podcast,
and she accused Rudolph's investigator Ron Durrette of

917
01:21:00.319 --> 01:21:04.640
staring at the jury in a menacing
way, trying to intimidate them, which

918
01:21:04.920 --> 01:21:12.800
is ridiculous. Jarrette was a former
policeman and private investigator. He was watching

919
01:21:12.840 --> 01:21:16.520
the jury to help Rudolf to look
and see what parts of testimony the jury

920
01:21:16.600 --> 01:21:21.359
seemed to believe. That's why he
was watching them, and I can throw

921
01:21:21.359 --> 01:21:26.439
it back and ask why she was
watching the people at the defense table instead

922
01:21:26.439 --> 01:21:31.039
of paying attention to the testimony.
Michael's defense teams submitted their first appeal on

923
01:21:31.119 --> 01:21:36.279
October tenth of two thousand and five, two years after his conviction. They

924
01:21:36.359 --> 01:21:42.640
reasoned that the court should not have
admitted his bisexuality or Liz Ratliffe's death as

925
01:21:42.680 --> 01:21:48.079
evidence, among other arguments. This
first appill was denied. On October seventeenth

926
01:21:48.119 --> 01:21:53.000
of two thousand and six, Michael
appealed again, this time to the North

927
01:21:53.039 --> 01:21:58.960
Carolina Supreme Court. His second appill
was also denied. It would be four

928
01:21:59.039 --> 01:22:04.640
more years home Michael made any other
legal advancements. Interestingly, the North Carolina

929
01:22:04.680 --> 01:22:10.960
Supreme Court did rule that the third
police search warrant for Michael's computer, which

930
01:22:11.079 --> 01:22:15.520
was the key to the bisexuality arguments, was unconstitutional, but in a two

931
01:22:15.560 --> 01:22:19.640
to one decision, they did not
find it prejudicial enough for a new trial,

932
01:22:21.199 --> 01:22:26.520
But in February of two eleven,
Michael submitted a motion for a new

933
01:22:26.560 --> 01:22:30.520
trial. After his trial, in
two thousand and three, evidence came to

934
01:22:30.600 --> 01:22:38.159
light against one of the prosecution's key
experts, SBI agent Dwayne Deaver. Apparently,

935
01:22:38.439 --> 01:22:43.560
since nineteen ninety three, Deaver had
been falsifying, concealing, and altering

936
01:22:43.600 --> 01:22:49.159
evidence to support the District Attorney's office. Whatever the prosecution needed to hear in

937
01:22:49.239 --> 01:22:57.880
court, agent Deaver provided regardless of
the facts. He committed perjury repeatedly over

938
01:22:57.920 --> 01:23:03.039
the years, and its severely acted
many people's lives, including Michael Peterson's and

939
01:23:03.720 --> 01:23:10.600
the case that blew Diver's deceit wide
open, Greg Taylor. In nineteen ninety

940
01:23:10.600 --> 01:23:15.600
three, Greg Taylor was convicted of
murdering a woman in Raleigh. His vehicle

941
01:23:15.680 --> 01:23:19.920
was discovered near the woman's dead body. During his trial, Deaver explained that

942
01:23:19.960 --> 01:23:26.720
there was blood in Taylor's vehicle,
and consequently Taylor received life in prison.

943
01:23:27.840 --> 01:23:32.640
But here's the catch there was no
blood. Taylor was wrongfully convicted. When

944
01:23:32.640 --> 01:23:39.159
an independent audit of the SBI called
into question the lab's work in two hundred

945
01:23:39.159 --> 01:23:45.880
and twenty eight criminal cases, Duane
Deaver's lies were revealed. He had withheld

946
01:23:45.920 --> 01:23:50.000
a second, more accurate test that
found the substance in Taylor's truck was not

947
01:23:50.319 --> 01:23:57.479
blood. After spending seventeen years in
prison, greg Taylor was freed and exonerated

948
01:23:57.520 --> 01:24:03.600
in February of twenty ten. Dever
was involved in many many cases over his

949
01:24:03.640 --> 01:24:09.760
two decade career, including one in
which he perjured himself and a man was

950
01:24:09.840 --> 01:24:15.039
executed on that evidence. How he
was not prosecuted for any of this is

951
01:24:15.079 --> 01:24:18.600
beyond me. That man should be
in prison for what he did, and

952
01:24:18.800 --> 01:24:26.119
Deaver did heavily impact Michael's conviction.
During Michael's trial, Deaver testified for seven

953
01:24:26.199 --> 01:24:31.359
days, and nearly half of the
district attorney's closing arguments were dedicated to Deaver's

954
01:24:31.439 --> 01:24:38.640
testimony, his credentials, his evidence, and his opinions. In prosecuting Attorney

955
01:24:38.680 --> 01:24:44.640
FREDA. Black's closing statements, she
said that agent Deaver's testimony was obviously central

956
01:24:44.720 --> 01:24:48.399
to this case. In one of
the most ironic lines of the trial,

957
01:24:48.960 --> 01:24:54.920
Fretta said, when talking about Diver's
findings, quote, if you believe otherwise,

958
01:24:55.000 --> 01:24:58.439
well you're just going to have to
believe that Duane Deaver is a liar.

959
01:25:00.079 --> 01:25:04.039
She praised him and the rest of
the SBI as unimpeachable, which is

960
01:25:04.079 --> 01:25:09.640
incorrect. We obviously know that now, but you are not supposed to make

961
01:25:09.680 --> 01:25:14.720
that argument in the first place.
And David Rudolph repeatedly objected as she harped

962
01:25:14.720 --> 01:25:21.760
on this idea. But Judge Orlando
Hudson sat there mesmerized overruling Rudolph every time

963
01:25:21.800 --> 01:25:30.359
as he enjoyed Freda's performance. But
back to this certain unconstitutional argument, both

964
01:25:30.399 --> 01:25:34.840
sides have expert testimony, and it's
not fair to imply that the state's employees

965
01:25:34.880 --> 01:25:41.000
are more trustworthy or tried and true, as Freda kept hammering, tried and

966
01:25:41.199 --> 01:25:45.720
true, because they work for us, she intoned. Not only did Dwayne

967
01:25:45.760 --> 01:25:50.159
Deaver lie on the stand, Freda
Black stood up and hammered home the idea

968
01:25:50.399 --> 01:25:56.640
that all SBI agents worked for the
jury and that defense experts were just paid

969
01:25:56.680 --> 01:26:03.319
performers. And there's more new evidence
found in two eleven revealed that back in

970
01:26:03.399 --> 01:26:10.199
December of two thousand and one,
doctor Deborah Radish had not actually determined Kathleen

971
01:26:10.279 --> 01:26:15.600
died of blunt force trauma. She
was pressured into changing her expert opinion for

972
01:26:15.640 --> 01:26:19.399
the autopsy by the then Chief medical
Examiner, John Butts, her boss.

973
01:26:20.279 --> 01:26:25.720
This was found in Freda Black's written
notes on the case. She had apparently

974
01:26:25.760 --> 01:26:32.359
gone to Freda about her concerns.
Radish had originally found that Kathleen exanguinated bled

975
01:26:32.439 --> 01:26:39.680
out as I said before, and
ruled it accidental or rather undetermined. Her

976
01:26:39.760 --> 01:26:43.920
boss, doctor Butts, pressured her
into changing it to blunt force trauma and

977
01:26:44.079 --> 01:26:47.960
manner of death as homicide. Doctor
Butts was under pressure from the Durham Police

978
01:26:48.000 --> 01:26:54.119
chief. And now we know how
everyone's backs get scratched in these offices.

979
01:26:54.840 --> 01:26:59.399
Like a good soldier, Radish changed
her opinion. Years later, she became

980
01:26:59.479 --> 01:27:03.359
Chief meta Examiner of North Carolina,
replacing her boss, doctor John Butts.

981
01:27:04.119 --> 01:27:10.000
And there was a photo of the
blowpoke. The police had found it in

982
01:27:10.039 --> 01:27:15.800
the original searches, photographed it and
put it away. Evidently people forgot about

983
01:27:15.840 --> 01:27:18.399
it, but there had to be
at least one person who remembered that photo.

984
01:27:18.600 --> 01:27:24.800
Once the blowpoke became such a big
deal, otherwise, why was that

985
01:27:24.880 --> 01:27:30.640
photo not entered into the discovery given
to Michael's defense. None of this was

986
01:27:30.720 --> 01:27:35.319
found in two eleven. David Rudolph
initially kept fighting for Michael. He won

987
01:27:35.399 --> 01:27:40.960
the new trial, but plea negotiations
fell apart and he left the case in

988
01:27:41.000 --> 01:27:46.039
twenty fourteen. He said he was
emotionally spent. Michael's new attorney was making

989
01:27:46.039 --> 01:27:51.600
emotion for dismissal based on Duane Deaver, but also because the evidence had been

990
01:27:51.640 --> 01:27:59.319
improperly stored and new DNA testing was
not possible in twenty sixteen, but Michael

991
01:27:59.359 --> 01:28:03.159
lost this motion. Judge Hudson felt
that the new DNA testing would not have

992
01:28:03.239 --> 01:28:09.319
helped the defense. David Rudolph did
attend this hearing in support of Michael,

993
01:28:09.640 --> 01:28:13.479
and it was obvious to him that
the new DA did not really want to

994
01:28:13.520 --> 01:28:15.800
try the case again, but they
would have to come up with a compromise

995
01:28:16.159 --> 01:28:21.680
that would satisfy Candice and Laurie,
Kathleen's sisters, who had stayed very involved

996
01:28:21.720 --> 01:28:27.640
and would not have stood by for
a complete dismissal of charges. So Rudolph

997
01:28:27.680 --> 01:28:32.119
decided to get involved again. He
felled two motions, one to suppress all

998
01:28:32.199 --> 01:28:38.920
evidence from the third search that had
been deemed unconstitutional and appellate court meaning all

999
01:28:38.960 --> 01:28:44.920
the gay pornography and emails, so
Michael's sexuality could not be brought in and

1000
01:28:45.079 --> 01:28:50.720
he felt emotion asking Hudson to reconsider
his ruling on the Ratliffe evidence. During

1001
01:28:50.760 --> 01:28:56.279
a requested conference, Hudson made it
clear to prosecutors that the search would be

1002
01:28:56.319 --> 01:29:00.399
out and said he was seriously reconsidering
the Ratliffe evidence. Now, he had

1003
01:29:00.439 --> 01:29:04.000
not ruled on this yet. It
was just a conference, but it was

1004
01:29:04.119 --> 01:29:09.920
enough for the New DA to push
an Alford plea to Kathleen's family. I

1005
01:29:09.960 --> 01:29:13.439
think the Ratliffe evidence is some of
the worst of what happened in this case.

1006
01:29:13.880 --> 01:29:15.600
I can't tell you how many times
I've seen people bring it up,

1007
01:29:16.119 --> 01:29:19.800
and as you know, it especially
irritates me when they continue to say she

1008
01:29:19.960 --> 01:29:25.199
was his first wife. It kills
me that it wasn't turned over on a

1009
01:29:25.279 --> 01:29:29.840
pill. But appellet judges often deferred
to trial judges, and they did it

1010
01:29:29.920 --> 01:29:33.760
in this case. Hudson was there
for all the evidence and there were enough

1011
01:29:33.800 --> 01:29:40.439
coincidences in their opinion. It took
the Duane Deaver explosion to win a new

1012
01:29:40.479 --> 01:29:45.079
trial, and at least now Hudson
had come around on the Ratliffe evidence,

1013
01:29:45.600 --> 01:29:47.960
and I think he pretty much had
to side with the appellate court now on

1014
01:29:48.000 --> 01:29:54.880
the illegal search. So therefore Michael's
bisexuality was out. Without these two parts

1015
01:29:54.920 --> 01:29:58.800
to the case, he could have
gotten an acquittal. As I have said

1016
01:29:58.840 --> 01:30:01.840
before, it is my easier to
win an acquittal than a new trial,

1017
01:30:02.159 --> 01:30:09.560
and actual exoneration is like a legal
unicorn. So Hudson reversing himself is incredible.

1018
01:30:10.840 --> 01:30:13.960
David Rudolph said that while they were
waiting for the DA to come back

1019
01:30:13.960 --> 01:30:16.560
with a plea deal, he went
back over the whole case file. There

1020
01:30:16.560 --> 01:30:20.640
were parts of the file never made
available to him before, but due to

1021
01:30:20.720 --> 01:30:27.600
changes in the North Carolina Discovery statutes, now he had everything. He had

1022
01:30:27.640 --> 01:30:31.159
the photo of the blowpoke, proving
that the police in DA had known they

1023
01:30:31.199 --> 01:30:35.920
had it all along. He now
had Freda's notes about Debora Radish, and

1024
01:30:36.119 --> 01:30:42.079
worse, he found a facts in
the file from Kandas Samporini to Debora Radish,

1025
01:30:42.119 --> 01:30:46.760
thanking her for explaining quote how Michael
was guilty. He says on his

1026
01:30:46.840 --> 01:30:53.479
website he had long suspected Radish of
this. I already found it unseemly that

1027
01:30:53.560 --> 01:30:58.399
they showed the autopsy and crime scene
photos to her daughter and sisters right after

1028
01:30:58.520 --> 01:31:03.159
Kathleen's death to get them on their
side. But now Rudolph found something else

1029
01:31:03.199 --> 01:31:09.079
he could use to impeach Radish because
she was not an impartial expert. But

1030
01:31:09.199 --> 01:31:13.079
still Michael and David didn't believe they
could get a fair trial in Durham.

1031
01:31:13.560 --> 01:31:17.800
They were both too disillusioned by all
this corruption, and Michael's children begged him

1032
01:31:17.840 --> 01:31:23.520
to take the Alfred plea and end
all of their misery. To his credit,

1033
01:31:23.880 --> 01:31:26.680
he fought long and hard because he
did not want to say he was

1034
01:31:26.720 --> 01:31:30.640
guilty, even after spending over eight
years in prison. You would think most

1035
01:31:30.640 --> 01:31:35.560
people would jump at the plea to
make it all end. But here's the

1036
01:31:35.640 --> 01:31:41.720
thing. Maybe Michael's guilty, maybe
he's innocent, But at the end of

1037
01:31:41.760 --> 01:31:45.520
the day, his case was an
example of failure. Failure on the part

1038
01:31:45.560 --> 01:31:51.520
of the investigating police officers to secure
the crime scene, failure of investigative procedures,

1039
01:31:51.920 --> 01:31:57.119
failure on the part of the justice
system for using corrupt SBI agents,

1040
01:31:57.680 --> 01:32:01.239
failure on the part of the DA
and the Medical Examiner's Office for acting improperly,

1041
01:32:02.199 --> 01:32:06.399
and failure on the part of Judge
Hudson for allowing a completely unrelated death

1042
01:32:06.680 --> 01:32:13.159
to be entered into the trial as
evidence. After he took the Alfred plea,

1043
01:32:13.439 --> 01:32:16.680
Michael was sentenced to a maximum of
eighty six months in prison. He

1044
01:32:16.680 --> 01:32:21.479
received credit for time previously served,
which was ninety eight months. So on

1045
01:32:21.560 --> 01:32:27.880
February twenty fourth, twenty seventeen,
seventy four year old Michael Ivor Peterson was

1046
01:32:27.920 --> 01:32:31.840
released. In an interview with an
Associated Press reporter, he explained why he

1047
01:32:31.880 --> 01:32:38.520
took a guilty plea despite maintaining his
innocence. He explained that even though Duane

1048
01:32:38.560 --> 01:32:42.760
Deaver was gone, he didn't trust
the culture of corruption in the Durham Police

1049
01:32:42.760 --> 01:32:46.680
Department and District Attorney's office. He
told the journalist, I don't believe they

1050
01:32:46.680 --> 01:32:53.600
would play fair. In Michael's autobiography, Behind the Staircase, he wrote that

1051
01:32:53.640 --> 01:32:57.279
he did not know for sure how
Kathleen died, but he really thought she

1052
01:32:57.359 --> 01:33:00.399
fell. It was as simple as
that. But there are some people who

1053
01:33:00.439 --> 01:33:05.640
believe, and believe passionately, that
they know exactly how Kathleen died. And

1054
01:33:05.760 --> 01:33:11.000
according to them, it wasn't a
simple slip down the stairs, and it

1055
01:33:11.079 --> 01:33:15.479
wasn't Michael Peterson. It was an
owl. And you know what, the

1056
01:33:15.560 --> 01:33:21.239
owl theory makes a surprising amount of
sense. I'm going to pause now for

1057
01:33:21.319 --> 01:33:34.479
a final commercial break. Several raptor
experts examined pictures of Kathleen's head lacerations and

1058
01:33:34.600 --> 01:33:39.920
they concluded that these injuries could be
caused by the talons of a raptor,

1059
01:33:40.359 --> 01:33:45.159
specifically an owl, a barred owl. After Michael's trial in two thousand and

1060
01:33:45.159 --> 01:33:50.680
three, there was a video recorded
raptor attack only twenty three miles away from

1061
01:33:50.720 --> 01:33:56.800
the Peterson home in Durham, and
there were also reports of raptors living in

1062
01:33:56.840 --> 01:34:00.359
the woods near the Peterson home.
Keep in mind, raptors include hawks,

1063
01:34:00.560 --> 01:34:05.520
eagles, falcons, and owls.
They're bigger birds with hooked beaks and sharp

1064
01:34:05.600 --> 01:34:11.000
talents, and they were known to
frequent the same area where the Peterson's lived.

1065
01:34:12.279 --> 01:34:15.960
So here's the owl theory. On
that late night in December of two

1066
01:34:15.000 --> 01:34:18.720
thousand and one, after saying good
night to Michael, Kathleen did not go

1067
01:34:18.800 --> 01:34:24.000
directly to bed. Instead, she
started to set up her Christmas decorations,

1068
01:34:24.439 --> 01:34:28.800
as she did every year. After
all, Kathleen and Michael had planned to

1069
01:34:28.840 --> 01:34:33.840
do the decorations the next morning,
but since Kathleen had an unexpected conference call,

1070
01:34:34.000 --> 01:34:38.720
she wanted to get a head start. As she was putting out these

1071
01:34:38.760 --> 01:34:44.319
decorations, which were which were white, fake reindeer, and owl swooped down

1072
01:34:44.439 --> 01:34:48.800
and attacked Kathleen, grasping onto her
head. It either thought the decorations were

1073
01:34:48.880 --> 01:34:55.000
prey or she was, but either
way it struck her. Suddenly, after

1074
01:34:55.079 --> 01:34:59.039
freeing herself from the clutches of the
owl by desperately grabbing at her hair,

1075
01:34:59.560 --> 01:35:04.039
Kathleen was disoriented and in pain,
bleeding profusely. She ran back into the

1076
01:35:04.079 --> 01:35:08.960
house. As she did that left
a bloody handprint on the frame of the

1077
01:35:09.000 --> 01:35:13.960
door and drops of blood on the
front walkway. Then she fell attempting to

1078
01:35:13.960 --> 01:35:16.760
go up the stairs. People wonder
why she was trying to go up the

1079
01:35:16.800 --> 01:35:21.119
staircase after this. Well, at
the top of the staircase was a linen

1080
01:35:21.119 --> 01:35:28.479
closet, and she probably wasn't thinking
clearly. While the owl theory was born

1081
01:35:28.560 --> 01:35:31.279
in two thousand and three, around
the time of Michael's trial, it gained

1082
01:35:31.359 --> 01:35:35.840
steam in two thousand and eight.
Larry Pollard, a neighbor of the Peterson's

1083
01:35:36.119 --> 01:35:41.279
who also happened to be, a
lawyer, led the charge. In August

1084
01:35:41.359 --> 01:35:44.319
of two thousand and eight, he
held a press conference in front of the

1085
01:35:44.399 --> 01:35:49.399
Durham County Courthouse. During the conference, Pollard explained the owl theory. He

1086
01:35:49.600 --> 01:35:56.399
used a taxidermied owl posed midflight to
demonstrate the danger of their sharp talents.

1087
01:35:57.520 --> 01:36:03.199
He also referenced the twigs and other
fragments found on Kathleen's body. Additionally,

1088
01:36:03.319 --> 01:36:08.479
strands of Kathleen's hair were in her
hands as if she was pulling at the

1089
01:36:08.479 --> 01:36:13.359
owl's talons that were entangled in her
hair. And we're not talking about a

1090
01:36:13.359 --> 01:36:16.199
few hairs. There were twenty five
in one hand and thirty six in the

1091
01:36:16.239 --> 01:36:20.439
other. Some were pulled out by
the root, some cut off sharply.

1092
01:36:21.520 --> 01:36:27.279
The state had always contended the ones
cut off sharply supported the blowpoke theory,

1093
01:36:27.479 --> 01:36:30.760
which was now debunked. Even if
she was using her hands to shield her

1094
01:36:30.760 --> 01:36:34.560
head from a beating, why was
she pulling her own hair out like that.

1095
01:36:35.920 --> 01:36:42.199
Not only did the owl's razor sharp
talons explain the lacerations on Kathleen's scalp,

1096
01:36:42.479 --> 01:36:45.640
the attack explains the blood drops found
outside on the walk and the blood

1097
01:36:45.640 --> 01:36:50.880
smear on the door. The DA
tried to explain the lacerations from a beating,

1098
01:36:51.319 --> 01:36:56.319
even though her skull was not fractured
and she didn't suffer traumatic brain injury.

1099
01:36:56.920 --> 01:37:00.720
It was more like knife wounds than
a beating, but he couldn't explain

1100
01:37:00.800 --> 01:37:03.199
it in any other way, so
it had to be a beating, and

1101
01:37:03.279 --> 01:37:06.720
the DA didn't even try to explain
the blood outside or on the door.

1102
01:37:09.159 --> 01:37:13.600
Michael's defense attorney, David Rudolph,
explained that he could not use the owl

1103
01:37:13.640 --> 01:37:16.439
theory in the two thousand and three
trial, not because it was unrealistic,

1104
01:37:16.880 --> 01:37:21.800
but because he only discovered it a
few days before his closing argument. It

1105
01:37:21.840 --> 01:37:27.359
was too late to be entered as
evidence, but Rudolf agreed that there was

1106
01:37:27.399 --> 01:37:32.520
some real credibility to the theory.
In March twenty seventeen, after Michael's Alfred

1107
01:37:32.560 --> 01:37:36.279
plea, he asked the court to
give him the feather fragment evidence so it

1108
01:37:36.279 --> 01:37:42.680
could be tested. He had an
expert identify if the feather fragments were even

1109
01:37:42.800 --> 01:37:47.520
from an owl. They were,
According to ABC, an expert in analyzing

1110
01:37:47.560 --> 01:37:55.079
microscopic fragments determined that the feathers found
near Kathleen grow under the talons of an

1111
01:37:55.079 --> 01:38:01.079
owl when owls attacks something they leave
behind, these small particle feathers. Larry

1112
01:38:01.119 --> 01:38:05.079
Pollard did submit a brief on Michael's
behalf, asking for a new trial for

1113
01:38:05.279 --> 01:38:10.720
the owl theory. It just never
saw the inside of a courtroom. If

1114
01:38:10.760 --> 01:38:14.640
you've ever seen the Dateline special on
Michael's case, you've seen a man who

1115
01:38:14.680 --> 01:38:17.680
had been attacked by an owl and
it was called on security footage. It's

1116
01:38:17.720 --> 01:38:23.319
in season twenty five on Peacock now
if you want to watch it. He

1117
01:38:23.439 --> 01:38:26.720
said it felt like he got hit
in the head with a baseball bat and

1118
01:38:26.800 --> 01:38:31.119
he had scratches and bruises near his
eyes, just like Kathleen did. Also,

1119
01:38:31.840 --> 01:38:35.640
I'm going to encourage you to watch
the HBO Max series based on the

1120
01:38:35.680 --> 01:38:41.720
Staircase documentary. I know it sounds
crazy, but hear me out. First

1121
01:38:41.760 --> 01:38:45.720
of all, and this is a
spoiler. The series shows three different scenarios

1122
01:38:46.039 --> 01:38:51.119
of how Kathleen could have died an
accident, an owl, a murder,

1123
01:38:51.800 --> 01:38:56.520
and I am here to tell you
that when you see the three theories actually

1124
01:38:56.560 --> 01:39:02.439
acted out, it is extremely effective. All three scenarios look plausible. And

1125
01:39:02.560 --> 01:39:06.520
if you know this case well or
you were just learning about it, it's

1126
01:39:06.520 --> 01:39:12.479
hard to picture what really happened to
Kathleen? Why would blood run down the

1127
01:39:12.479 --> 01:39:15.039
front of her face? Why did
she stand up and slip in her own

1128
01:39:15.079 --> 01:39:20.319
blood? If you watch this you
can see it. I know it's fictionalized,

1129
01:39:20.680 --> 01:39:25.800
but I also know how difficult it
has been for over two decades now

1130
01:39:26.119 --> 01:39:30.880
for people to visualize what could have
happened to Kathleen. This is also my

1131
01:39:31.000 --> 01:39:35.119
way of telling you that though I
am now finished with the Peterson Case,

1132
01:39:35.520 --> 01:39:40.960
there will be one more part.
Art four is going to be about the

1133
01:39:41.000 --> 01:39:45.520
pop culture of the Peterson Case.
You may have wondered why I didn't mention

1134
01:39:45.560 --> 01:39:50.079
the documentary much, and that's why
I plan to talk about the docuseries and

1135
01:39:50.199 --> 01:39:56.680
the HBO fictional series, and the
books and smaller documentaries and some podcasts about

1136
01:39:56.680 --> 01:40:00.159
the case. There was even a
short lived NBC sick based on the case.

1137
01:40:01.439 --> 01:40:06.880
I still don't know if Michael killed
Kathleen. Despite all the corruption from

1138
01:40:06.920 --> 01:40:13.680
the Durham officials, it is still
a possibility. Despite the affable, relaxed

1139
01:40:13.720 --> 01:40:17.720
man you see in the docuseries,
he could be, as many have suggested,

1140
01:40:17.920 --> 01:40:24.880
a sociopath or a narcissist. There
are a million reasons why a likable

1141
01:40:24.960 --> 01:40:30.600
guy could do abhorrent things, or
maybe you think he's not likable, you

1142
01:40:30.680 --> 01:40:34.279
find him to be an insufferable asshole. That doesn't make him a murderer.

1143
01:40:35.479 --> 01:40:40.800
That's another thing that kind of kills
me about this case. I think it's

1144
01:40:40.960 --> 01:40:45.880
entirely possible that Michael did kill Kathleen, but he didn't beat her to death,

1145
01:40:46.239 --> 01:40:49.520
And I don't think there was a
financial motive, nor was it about

1146
01:40:49.560 --> 01:40:55.640
his sexuality. It could have been
about any mundane thing, which means it

1147
01:40:55.720 --> 01:41:00.800
probably wouldn't be first degree murder.
Think about it. Michael and Kathleen are

1148
01:41:00.840 --> 01:41:05.399
smoking and drinking and talking. Kathleen
is stressed about her conference call and other

1149
01:41:05.479 --> 01:41:11.199
work issues, while Michael just wants
to bask in his book Option Glory.

1150
01:41:11.760 --> 01:41:15.560
They argue, she walks away,
unlike you, Michael, I have to

1151
01:41:15.560 --> 01:41:20.199
get up for work tomorrow. Now. He's mad and trying to argue with

1152
01:41:20.239 --> 01:41:26.960
her. He follows her inside,
still arguing, and as she tries to

1153
01:41:27.000 --> 01:41:30.239
walk up the stairs, he grabs
her arm. She falls. She hits

1154
01:41:30.239 --> 01:41:34.880
her head and it's bad. Michael
runs to get towels to help, and

1155
01:41:34.960 --> 01:41:39.960
as he does, she comes to
and tries to stand up, getting blood

1156
01:41:39.960 --> 01:41:43.399
on the bottom. Of her feet
and then falling and hitting her head again.

1157
01:41:44.720 --> 01:41:47.680
All that blood could have been from
her hitting her head just right on

1158
01:41:47.720 --> 01:41:51.399
a sharp edge. I told you
that it looks like the skin pulled back

1159
01:41:51.399 --> 01:41:57.720
from a peach, hitting her head
again, tearing that skin further. But

1160
01:41:57.840 --> 01:42:01.079
that's not first degree murder, not
even second degree. That would be closer

1161
01:42:01.119 --> 01:42:04.960
to a kind of man slaughter if
it was an accident, but then Michael

1162
01:42:05.039 --> 01:42:10.520
lied, or maybe it was worse. He yanked her down the stairs in

1163
01:42:10.640 --> 01:42:15.920
anger. That thyroid cartilage injury she
had is more often seen in car accidents

1164
01:42:16.000 --> 01:42:21.319
from seatbelts. What if Michael grabbed
her sweatshirt and yanked hard enough to not

1165
01:42:21.399 --> 01:42:27.159
only injure that cartilage but pull her
down the stairs where she hit her head

1166
01:42:27.439 --> 01:42:31.800
on either the chairlift or crown molding
as she fell. Then he panics and

1167
01:42:31.920 --> 01:42:35.800
runs for towels to help. She
sits up and tries to get up,

1168
01:42:36.239 --> 01:42:43.640
falling again. But that is still
probably second degree murder. He killed her

1169
01:42:43.720 --> 01:42:46.119
in a fit of rage. He
didn't load a gun, he didn't go

1170
01:42:46.199 --> 01:42:49.720
find a blowpoke to beat her with. It was a stupid fight, but

1171
01:42:49.880 --> 01:42:56.399
he did strike out an anger.
But then he lied, either one of

1172
01:42:56.439 --> 01:43:01.640
these scenarios for murder make much more
sense than a beating death. Police were

1173
01:43:01.680 --> 01:43:05.960
set on it being first degree murder, no matter what Michael said. But

1174
01:43:06.079 --> 01:43:12.319
what about the prosecution. They got
lucky in his trial, only charging him

1175
01:43:12.319 --> 01:43:16.479
with first degree murder and only giving
one possibility of that night that Kathleen was

1176
01:43:16.520 --> 01:43:21.159
beaten to death. Think about Casey, Anthony, while you ponder what I

1177
01:43:21.239 --> 01:43:28.520
just said. It was truly a
gamble. They could have put more charges

1178
01:43:28.560 --> 01:43:31.880
on the bill. They could have
explained these scenarios to you like I just

1179
01:43:31.960 --> 01:43:36.479
did, and maybe Michael Peterson would
have gone to prison for the right crime.

1180
01:43:38.560 --> 01:43:43.680
Instead, they launched a homophobic attack
with a very weak motive. I

1181
01:43:43.720 --> 01:43:47.760
don't think for a second that Michael
killed Kathleen for her insurance money, and

1182
01:43:48.560 --> 01:43:54.640
I don't think she knew about his
bisexuality. I do think Michael lies.

1183
01:43:55.640 --> 01:44:00.680
But the police and the medical examiner
and the DA worked hard to prove it

1184
01:44:00.760 --> 01:44:05.680
was a premeditated murder. They exhumed
Elizabeth Ratliffe and basically tried him for two

1185
01:44:05.760 --> 01:44:11.159
murders. They hid evidence, the
photo of the blowpoke, the note about

1186
01:44:11.159 --> 01:44:15.680
Deboradish, the lumelite test on Michael's
shirt, and we could go a dozen

1187
01:44:15.800 --> 01:44:20.119
episodes on the SBI corruption scandal that
Deaver was a part of. Before the

1188
01:44:20.279 --> 01:44:26.640
SPI scandal broke, it was common
practice that prosecutors and other superiors, including

1189
01:44:26.720 --> 01:44:31.439
law enforcement, were giving reports on
SBI agents, reports that commended or penalized

1190
01:44:31.479 --> 01:44:42.000
their work, reports that decided commendations, promotions raises. These scientists professional futures

1191
01:44:42.119 --> 01:44:46.199
were tied to their conviction rates.
They worked closely with the police, the

1192
01:44:46.239 --> 01:44:53.479
pathologists, and medical examiners, and
of course the district attorney's offices. When

1193
01:44:53.520 --> 01:44:57.800
we talk about corruption and our systems
like this, it sounds like something you

1194
01:44:57.840 --> 01:45:01.720
watch on television that won't happen to
me if I go to court. It's

1195
01:45:01.760 --> 01:45:06.840
also what makes FREDA. Black's argument
about how the SBL works for us all

1196
01:45:06.880 --> 01:45:13.359
the more egregious. They didn't work
for juries, they didn't work for defendants,

1197
01:45:13.720 --> 01:45:16.479
and so they damn sure didn't work
for victims. If your loved one

1198
01:45:16.560 --> 01:45:23.239
was murdered, wouldn't you want the
right killer behind bars. The scandal brought

1199
01:45:23.279 --> 01:45:28.399
about a complete overhaul. It was
long overdue. There is a new States

1200
01:45:29.319 --> 01:45:32.039
There is a new state forensics lab
that is not tied to the DA's office.

1201
01:45:32.560 --> 01:45:36.800
Their careers are not dependent on the
DA. They are still employed by

1202
01:45:36.800 --> 01:45:41.439
the state, but it is a
separate office, so there is no conflict

1203
01:45:41.439 --> 01:45:47.600
of interest and this kind of systematic
corruption isn't likely, and forensic testing is

1204
01:45:47.680 --> 01:45:53.920
ever evolving. Hair and fiber evidence
no longer holds the same weight it did

1205
01:45:53.960 --> 01:45:59.279
in court. Bite marks are considered
junk science, and blood spatter is slowly

1206
01:45:59.359 --> 01:46:03.680
being looked at more carefully as well. If the Innocence Project had not gotten

1207
01:46:03.680 --> 01:46:09.520
involved in Greg Taylor's case, Michael
Peterson would still be in prison, even

1208
01:46:09.520 --> 01:46:14.279
though Debor Radish did have a crisis
of conscience and finally admitted she was pressured

1209
01:46:14.279 --> 01:46:18.920
into changing her opinion, but Freda
didn't tell anyone, and Deborah kept quiet

1210
01:46:18.960 --> 01:46:24.960
too, and then she was made
Chief Medical Examiner of North Carolina. She

1211
01:46:25.079 --> 01:46:28.319
did what her boss told her to
do and now she has his job.

1212
01:46:30.000 --> 01:46:33.159
So who did all this nonsense fall
on? You would think someone would be

1213
01:46:33.199 --> 01:46:39.920
responsible for this utter shit show.
Well not Jim Harden. He was made

1214
01:46:39.920 --> 01:46:45.119
a superior court judge and just retired
at age sixty six. Judge Orlando Hudson

1215
01:46:45.199 --> 01:46:50.399
carried on in his courtroom as usual
until retirement, but not FREDDA After her

1216
01:46:50.399 --> 01:46:55.760
short lived fame from the Peterson trial, Freda Black probably thought she would be

1217
01:46:55.800 --> 01:47:01.279
set at the DA's office, except
now her name appeared and appeals documents highlighting

1218
01:47:01.359 --> 01:47:08.199
her improper arguments. For whatever reason, the appeals courts didn't think her behavior

1219
01:47:08.600 --> 01:47:15.079
was prejudicial enough to grant Peterson a
new trial. I heartily disagree, because

1220
01:47:15.119 --> 01:47:18.119
they work for us, don't they? She works for us? Isn't that

1221
01:47:18.119 --> 01:47:25.199
what Freda told us? Her egregious
antics and homophobic attacks may not have won

1222
01:47:25.279 --> 01:47:28.560
Michael a new trial, but they
sure followed her around for the rest of

1223
01:47:28.600 --> 01:47:32.680
her career. It is her name
on those appeals making an improper argument,

1224
01:47:32.960 --> 01:47:39.520
not hardness appeals. Anyone can see. They're on my website. They quote

1225
01:47:39.520 --> 01:47:45.119
her entire closing argument. It is
painful. So where did Freda land?

1226
01:47:45.840 --> 01:47:49.239
After two dwis. She wound up
working for a dry cleaners after she was

1227
01:47:49.279 --> 01:47:55.640
fired from one DA's office, and
she ran for office unsuccessfully twice herself.

1228
01:47:56.800 --> 01:48:00.399
She died at the age of fifty
seven of n stage liver disease due to

1229
01:48:00.439 --> 01:48:08.640
chronic alcoholism. She became a hated
figure to the LGBTQ community, but at

1230
01:48:08.680 --> 01:48:13.680
the end of her life she attended
a church who welcomed the queer community.

1231
01:48:13.800 --> 01:48:17.680
It would seem she tried to make
amends. She would probably be more sad

1232
01:48:17.720 --> 01:48:23.159
and sympathetic to me now if I
hadn't just watched her on the Dateline Special,

1233
01:48:23.600 --> 01:48:28.920
ghoulishly smiling as she talked about how
well preserved Liz Ratliffe's body was.

1234
01:48:30.199 --> 01:48:33.279
Liz was not just a corpse for
her trial. She was a human being.

1235
01:48:35.119 --> 01:48:40.119
But hey, Jim Harden became a
superior court judge, and these days

1236
01:48:40.159 --> 01:48:45.560
he's retired at sixty six years old
and probably enjoys his golf and his grandchildren.

1237
01:48:45.119 --> 01:48:50.159
The good old boy club never changes
for some people. Michael's lawyer,

1238
01:48:50.279 --> 01:48:55.680
seventy three year old David Rudolph,
is still practicing in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1239
01:48:55.800 --> 01:49:00.640
He is still a very well respected
attorney and often gives talks about Michael's

1240
01:49:00.640 --> 01:49:04.520
case. He is a big fan
of the owl theory. Now. Michael's

1241
01:49:04.520 --> 01:49:09.079
first wife, Patty, thought of
a heart attack in July of twenty twenty

1242
01:49:09.079 --> 01:49:12.920
one. She was seventy eight years
old at the time of her death.

1243
01:49:12.960 --> 01:49:18.159
She and Michael lived together platonically.
Their son Clayton told reporters they were companions

1244
01:49:18.439 --> 01:49:23.960
they took care of each other.
Clayton is now forty nine years old and

1245
01:49:24.000 --> 01:49:29.680
lives in Baltimore. Forty seven year
old Todd, Michael's youngest son with Patty,

1246
01:49:30.279 --> 01:49:33.680
seems to have some major issues recently. I don't know how much stock

1247
01:49:33.760 --> 01:49:38.479
to put into it because he took
the videos down. But not long ago,

1248
01:49:38.720 --> 01:49:42.880
he posted some videos accusing his father
of killing his mom, Patty,

1249
01:49:43.520 --> 01:49:48.159
Kathleen, and Les Rattlet. He
seemed very paranoid and off in these short

1250
01:49:48.239 --> 01:49:53.680
videos. I hope he gets or
got the help he needs. He had

1251
01:49:53.720 --> 01:49:58.319
always supported his father before, so
I think this was very strange. Not

1252
01:49:58.439 --> 01:50:01.000
that he can't change his mind,
but he did take the videos down.

1253
01:50:02.079 --> 01:50:06.199
He has not commented since, and
neither has Michael, so who knows.

1254
01:50:08.560 --> 01:50:13.039
Forty year old Martha Ratliffe, the
youngest of Michael's adoptive daughters, is a

1255
01:50:13.079 --> 01:50:17.399
psychotherapist in Utah, and forty one
year old Margaret Ratliffe, the eldest of

1256
01:50:17.439 --> 01:50:24.439
Michael's adoptive daughters, is an actress
and producer in California. She has just

1257
01:50:24.600 --> 01:50:30.119
worked as executive producer on a documentary
called Subject. It's about people who appear

1258
01:50:30.159 --> 01:50:34.960
in documentaries. The ethics of it
all and what happens to them. Forty

1259
01:50:34.960 --> 01:50:40.159
one year old Caitlin Atwater, Kathleen's
daughter from a previous marriage, won a

1260
01:50:40.199 --> 01:50:44.640
twenty five million dollar wrongful death lawsuit
against Michael in two thousand and eight.

1261
01:50:45.279 --> 01:50:48.880
It is doubtful that she collected a
penny, though she did successfully sue Nortel

1262
01:50:49.239 --> 01:50:54.960
for the payouts they gave to Michael
right after her mother's death. Today,

1263
01:50:55.119 --> 01:51:00.720
she lives in the Washington, DC
area. It hurts my heart that Caitlin

1264
01:51:00.880 --> 01:51:05.520
and Margaret and Martha never spoke again. These sisters lost their mother and each

1265
01:51:05.520 --> 01:51:12.399
other. Michael Peterson will be eighty
years old this October. He lives a

1266
01:51:12.479 --> 01:51:15.520
quiet life. One of my Facebook
group members said they saw him in Target

1267
01:51:15.640 --> 01:51:20.159
not long ago. There really isn't
much more to his story except for the

1268
01:51:20.239 --> 01:51:25.960
way it lives on in pop culture, not just the HBO series, but

1269
01:51:26.079 --> 01:51:30.319
in so many ways. I hope
you'll join me for that episode. It

1270
01:51:30.399 --> 01:51:33.720
will be way shorter, but I
think it's really interesting how much this case

1271
01:51:33.800 --> 01:51:39.079
has seeped into our culture. I
like to study big cases like this,

1272
01:51:39.680 --> 01:51:44.960
but I rarely like to cover them. But we are officially at the end

1273
01:51:45.039 --> 01:51:50.960
of Kathleen Peterson's case, and sadly
we're left with more questions than answers.

1274
01:51:51.000 --> 01:51:56.199
I have come to think of Michael
Peterson as a cipher. He is what

1275
01:51:56.359 --> 01:52:00.479
you want to see. If you
think he is a murderer, there's nothing

1276
01:52:00.520 --> 01:52:04.920
anyone can do to change that.
My only wish is that you see that

1277
01:52:05.039 --> 01:52:09.800
he did not get a fair trial, and if the State of North Carolina

1278
01:52:10.079 --> 01:52:14.439
could not convict him the ethical way, then they should have dropped the charges.

1279
01:52:15.560 --> 01:52:19.800
The only person who truly knows what
happened on the night of December ninth,

1280
01:52:20.079 --> 01:52:26.479
two thousand and one is Kathleen Peterson, because I'm not even sure Michael

1281
01:52:26.520 --> 01:52:32.600
really knows anymore. All we're left
with is speculation, endless speculation about Michael

1282
01:52:32.600 --> 01:52:38.439
Peterson that will have us arguing about
this case forever. It's like so many

1283
01:52:38.479 --> 01:52:45.119
other famous unsolvable cases. Now you
truly get to choose your own ending here.

1284
01:52:45.640 --> 01:52:48.800
I hope you will join me for
the pop culture portion of this series.

1285
01:52:49.319 --> 01:52:54.000
I could have sprinkled it throughout these
episodes, but the more I thought

1286
01:52:54.039 --> 01:52:57.279
about it, the more I thought
I needed to stick to only the facts

1287
01:52:57.359 --> 01:53:01.520
and block out the cacophony of the
Michael Peter Show, for which I admit

1288
01:53:01.720 --> 01:53:06.399
I am now a contributor. I
will give you a taste. It is

1289
01:53:06.439 --> 01:53:11.840
what made me want to cover Michael's
case in the first place. I listened

1290
01:53:11.840 --> 01:53:15.920
to an interview with Colin Firth,
who played Michael in the HBO series.

1291
01:53:15.600 --> 01:53:19.880
He said he was really only given
one direction from the showrunners. They told

1292
01:53:19.920 --> 01:53:25.199
him to watch the documentary, read
and do whatever research he wanted to,

1293
01:53:25.640 --> 01:53:30.239
and then decide for himself if Michael
was guilty or innocent and play the part

1294
01:53:30.359 --> 01:53:35.199
that way. It's genius. I
love it. I love that even the

1295
01:53:35.239 --> 01:53:42.600
showrunners weren't really sure and they didn't
want to influence their actor. There is

1296
01:53:42.680 --> 01:53:46.680
really no way for anyone to be
sure, which sends home my point.

1297
01:53:47.399 --> 01:53:53.479
Michael Peterson is a cipher. You
can project on him guilt or innocence,

1298
01:53:54.199 --> 01:54:00.239
but you will never really know.
Southern Fred True Cry as hosted and produced

1299
01:54:00.279 --> 01:54:04.960
by me Erica Kelly. Today's episode
was researched and written by me and Andrea

1300
01:54:05.039 --> 01:54:10.319
Marshbank, and of course all editorial
opinions are my own. Mother of God,

1301
01:54:10.600 --> 01:54:15.880
this was seventeen thousand words and the
longest episode I've ever recorded. Southern

1302
01:54:15.880 --> 01:54:18.079
Fred's original music is by Rob Harrison
of the Gamma Radio and the original graphic

1303
01:54:18.119 --> 01:54:20.960
artist by Kali Horner. If you
have any case suggestions, please go to

1304
01:54:21.000 --> 01:54:25.119
my website and click on the listeners
suggestion tab. This is the best way

1305
01:54:25.119 --> 01:54:28.000
for me to get those little known
cases. Y'all always send me. Please

1306
01:54:28.000 --> 01:54:31.119
remember I do not accept suggestions on
social media private messages. With three platforms

1307
01:54:31.119 --> 01:54:33.880
to manage, that is very overwhelming
for me. I hope you understand,

1308
01:54:33.920 --> 01:54:38.479
but please come join our Facebook group, Southern Fred True Crime Fans Discussion group

1309
01:54:38.520 --> 01:54:42.039
where we swap recipes, worship Dolly
Parton, and share memes. I'm much

1310
01:54:42.079 --> 01:54:45.840
prefer spending my social media time and
our lovely group. We do, of

1311
01:54:45.840 --> 01:54:48.439
course discuss true crime, not just
Southern fraud, but all kinds, but

1312
01:54:48.479 --> 01:54:53.760
it is still very much a Southern
lifestyle group. Our group is a safe

1313
01:54:53.800 --> 01:54:56.199
of fund corner of Facebook, and
by god, we mean it when we

1314
01:54:56.279 --> 01:55:00.399
say no shitasses allowed. It's not
just a motto, it's how we run

1315
01:55:00.439 --> 01:55:03.359
the group. If you enjoyed today's
show, please don't forget to subscribe and

1316
01:55:03.439 --> 01:55:08.319
tell a friend, or rate and
review on iTunes. I'm also on all

1317
01:55:08.439 --> 01:55:14.479
large platforms like iHeart Stitcher, Spotify, and now Amazon and Audible. Thank

1318
01:55:14.520 --> 01:55:18.239
you so much for your patience and
waiting for this last episode and until next

1319
01:55:18.239 --> 01:55:21.359
time, Thanks so much for listening. Y'all. Take care,