176: The Pop Culture of the Michael Peterson Case

WEBVTT

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Southern fred True crime covers cases that
are not suitable for young listeners, and

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there may also be some explicit language
used, but there's no need for a

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trigger warning on this episode, although
I might cuss a bit. This one

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is about the pop culture phenomena that
was spawned by the Peterson case. I'm

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going beyond the documentary The Staircase,
to other documentaries, the twenty four hour

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news cycle, several books, podcasts, think pieces, and so on.

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The only warning you need here is
for spoilers. The HBO Max series premiered

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almost a year ago, so no
whining. Have y'all missed me, because

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I sure missed you. Now on
with the show. In December of twenty

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and ten, French filmmaker Jean Xavier
de l'estrade had no idea what was coming.

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A few months earlier, in September, he had attended the premiere of

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his first documentary, called Murder on
a Sunday Morning. In it, Lestrade

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covered the case of Breton Butler,
a black teen who was wrongfully accused of

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murder in Jacksonville, Florida. Already, Lestrade's documentary was receiving rave reviews.

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There were rumblings that he had a
real shot at an oscar next spring.

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The season director wasn't getting his hopes
up, though he preferred to focus on

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his work. Of course, Lestrade
did believe his documentary was good and he

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was ready to make another one,
but this time he wanted a different true

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crime story, the exact opposite true
crime story. Not a black teen,

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but a white man, established wealthy, someone prepared to pay handsomely for the

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best criminal defense lawyer money could buy. And that someone would be the now

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infamous Michael Peterson. Finally, Welcome
to episode one seventy six, the pop

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Culture of the Michael Peterson Case.
One note before we start, I apologize

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if I mispronounce any French names.
I've also seen the director referred to as

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Dullestrade instead of just Lestrade in print, but not audio saw him going with

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brevity. Dude. Jean Xavier Dullestrade
did win the Best Documentary Academy Award for

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Murder on a Sunday Morning in March
of two thousand and two. It was

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his ninth feature film, and by
March Lestrade was not sitting on his laurels.

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He had already chosen his next subject
and had already begun filming, he

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searched over three hundred criminal cases before
he and his producing partner Dennis Ponsett found

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what they thought was the perfect one, fifty eight year old Michael Ivor Peterson.

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Lestrade was the executive producer for the
whole series and Poncett on a few

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episodes, but co producer Alison Lucchac
or Lucchack was the one actually tasked with

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scouring the American criminal dockets for the
perfect case, and then after the Staircase

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team chose Peterson. She had the
enormous responsibility of fostering trust not only with

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Michael's team, but with a judge
and prosecution, all with a newborn baby.

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I'll discuss her important role more when
we get to the HBO series.

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She is officially credited with producing two
episodes of the original eight, but suffice

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it to say her role was much
larger. Editor Scott Stevenson edited five of

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the original eight episodes, along with
Sophie Brunette, who worked on the whole

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series. Brunette's involvement later caused scandal
because she and Michael were later involved in

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a thirteen year romantic relationship, but
the relationship did not begin until after he

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was convicted, and Sophie began writing
to him in prison, which means she

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did not know him personally during the
first eight episodes. She only saw him

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in the tapes. Again. I'll
get into her part more with the HBO

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series because all of the people I
just mentioned had huge issues with how the

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HBO producer writing team used their source
material. But let's start with the Staircase

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documentary because arguably we wouldn't be here
now without it. A Vietnam War veteran

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turned novelist accused of murdering his wife
in their ten thousand square foot mansion in

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an old southern city already sounds like
the blurb on the back of a great

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paperback mystery. The mansion was already
a bit famous in its own right.

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It was used as the commander's house
in the original The Handmaid's Tale movie,

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which premiered in March of nineteen ninety
two, years before Michael and Kathleen moved

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in with their kids and ninety two. As I told you, Michael's first

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wife, Patty, had initially refused
to divorce Michael. She finally signed the

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papers in the fall of ninety six, and in June of ninety seven,

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Kathleen Hunt Atwater floated down the grand
front spiral staircase to become Kathleen Peterson.

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This was not the staircase she died
on. That was the narrow back staircase

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originally used for servants in the five
bedroom, six bath mansion that was built

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in nineteen forty. It is a
very beautiful house. You can see why

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the filmmakers chose it with its white
columns, balconies, intricate details inside and

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out, not to mention the gorgeous
pool area. It definitely looks like the

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home of someone powerful, like Alfred's
commander in The Handmaid's Tale. Sorry,

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I could wax poetic about this house, the film, and especially the book

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for Hours. Margaret Atwood is my
favorite author. You may have noticed I

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used quotes from her often in my
cold Opens. I wrote three college papers

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on this book alone. Anyway,
while eighteen ten Cedar Street may have simply

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been home to the big Peterson clan
to the rest of Durham, it is

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what we see an incredibly beautiful,
majestic southern mansion, and it would be

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the home base of Lestrade's documentary.
The new film was called suspicions in French

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and the Staircase in English. Filming
began almost immediately after Michael's indictment in late

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December of two thousand and one.
Lestrade was captivated by Michael's case. He

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liked that it was unclear. While
Michael seemed sincere, he also felt secretive.

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Did Michael Kilcathleen. Lestrade was intrigued
as he started looking into the case,

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considering it for his documentary. He
met with the Durham District attorneys Jim

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Harden and Fred of Black, and
according to Lestrade, within the first fifteen

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minutes of the conversation, Harden and
Black asserted one very clear sentiment. Michael

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Peterson was evil. Lestrade was taken
aback because the prosecuting attorneys didn't just professionally

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believe Michael was guilty. They were
personally certain, and not because of their

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case evidence, but because of their
gut instinct about Michael's character and their eyes.

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There was no question that Michael had
killed Kathleen and he deserved to be

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punished. Lestrade also captured the media
hysteria around Michael's case through the eyes of

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Michael, David Rudolph and team,
and also his children. It's not like

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they had any choice in this media
circus. Equally, Margaret would later point

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out the kids didn't have any choice
in the documentary. Michael chose for the

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whole family, not that they would
have refused. They worshiped their father,

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which is also a huge part of
the narrative of The Staircase. Could this

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man, whose family stood so fiercely
behind him have killed their mother. For

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over a decade, Lestrade's team chronicled
Michael Peterson's case with over eight hundred hours

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of material, Lestrade transitioned his standalone
documentary film into an episodic series. There

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was simply too much to cover,
and by the end of it, Lestrade

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realized that he had no conclusion for
Michael's case. He didn't know if Michael

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was guilty of murdering Kathleen. That
is why he did not intend to telegraph

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to the audience whether or not he
believed in Michael's innocence. But one thing

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Lestrade did feel certain of the district
attorney's hate for Michael stemmed from his bosexuality.

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Many years after his groundbreaking docuseries The
Staircase came out, the French director

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would explain when the prosecution discovered that
he was cheating on her with men.

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In a way, he betrayed their
community, their values. It was much

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more about who he was and where
he was living than anything else. Or

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maybe, as Michael told his team
emphatically in the documentery, this is Durham.

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It's dirty, it's corrupt, it's
small. Or maybe it was an

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even broader cultural problem, as Rudolph's
jury consultants set on camera, this is

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not California, not New York.
This is the South. We Southerners may

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not appreciate that generalization, but the
fact is the South is comprised of conservative

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red states. Remember when Michael was
convicted, same sex marriage was still illegal

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in North Carolina, Not to mention, sodomy was not decriminalized until two thousand

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and five, His sexuality was literally
against the law. I don't think it's

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fair to say the jurors were not
at least unconsciously biased against Michael. After

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Freda Black's aggressively homophobic trial conduct,
one juror told a BBC podcast that they

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were not swayed by asexuality. Maybe
Freda's over the top performance turned them off

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and they did ignore it, but
they were also still Southern jurors in a

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state where it was against the law, and Michael Peterson was presented as a

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man cheating on his lovely wife,
who was also a pillar of their community.

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Michael won one of his appeals early
on about information found in his computer.

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His sexuality should never have been presented
as evidence. But it's not like

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the leagues had not already done the
damage. You cannot put the cat back

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in the bag, so to speak. But here's the thing. We can

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say it was Durham, or it
was the South, but it was also

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intrinsically American. The Peterson case was
always going to be famous. People obsessed

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over it the way we have recently
over the Murtalk case, or even OJ

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Simpson, which is a more even
comparison considering the time frame, though Peterson

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had not reached OJ's level of fame. Obviously, the Murtalk case happened in

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the age of social media, but
O. J. Simpson literally ushered in

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the age of the twenty four hour
news cycle beginning in nineteen ninety four.

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I admit I was obsessed. I
had been a longtime lover of true crime

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by then. I've often told you
that my mama let me watch those movies

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of the week or mini series based
on true crimes back in the eighties.

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I watched Fatal Vision with her,
and then she took me to buy the

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book. I watched The Burning Bed
with her and discovered a rule. Ironically,

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she often showed my dad out for
letting me watch horror films, and

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to this day I love horror films
and books too. Also to this day,

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I searched YouTube for those old TV
movies. They're like comfort food to

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me, in the way some of
you fall asleep to forensic files. So

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by the time I was twenty years
old and O. J. Simpson dominated

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the airwaves and the headlines, I
was married for the first time and in

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college. Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman
were murdered two days after I got married

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while I was on my honeymoon.
A year and a half later, I

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watched every minute of the trial.
I recorded it on my VCR if I

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was in class or at work,
and when the verdict was announced, I

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think it was my first real brush
with injustice. It felt like a punch

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to the gut. And if you
think he's innocent, you're a few years

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late to come yell at me.
About it. I covered that case in

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a joint episode with the Trashy Divorces
podcast, It's in My Feet if you

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were interested. Two years later,
I was up studying in the middle of

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the night listening to MSNBC, the
newly minted twenty four hour cable channel,

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when news a Princess Diana's car accident
broke. I'm going to pause now for

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a short commercial break. By the
time Kathleen Peterson died, the twenty four

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hour news cycle was as much a
part of our lives as Facebook, Instagram,

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and Twitter are today. The talking
heads covered the case Gavel to Gavel

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as it was on Court TV before
it ever became a documentary. One of

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the loudest talking heads, as usual, was Nancy Grace. She shows up

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in the staircase speculating that Michael must
have changed his shirts at one point.

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That's the kind of speculative journalism that
is irresponsible. There was no evidence that

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Michael changed his shirts. Absence of
evidence is not evidence, meaning because there

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were no bloodstains on Michael's shirt does
not mean that he changed shirts. If

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he was going to do that,
why not change his shorts those did have

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bloodstains or get rid of his shoes
and socks. It's absurd. There is

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another on air correspondent who was talking
to Nancy Grace that pisses David Rudolph off

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so badly he appears to call in
a favor to the network to complain about

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her. He basically says he expects
this of n But this correspondent named Jean,

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who was answering Nancy's questions about the
supposed footprints, and Lumino saying something

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like we have to assume his bloody
footprints were cleaned up. At this point

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that wasn't said in court, No
one suggested it. Rudolph's point was that

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this woman sat through the trial and
should be correcting Nancy. But let's face

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it. Who corrects Nancy Grace on
air and lives to tell about it.

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But back to my earlier point,
Michael's sexuality or adultery, as sum just

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saw it, was already a huge
part of the story and the documentary,

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Rudolph says, it's coming in we
have to face it. But on the

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subject of the press, Lestrade also
shows how David Rudolph works the press corps.

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Outside of the courthouse. We see
Rudolph and hardened spar over who is

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the one actually creating the media circus. And I've said before I believe we

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tend to expect defense attorneys to you
the press, but we don't always see

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the prosecutions so blatantly try their case
in the media. The way Durham prosecutors

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did leaking autopsy results weeks before it
was supposed to have been completed, is

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just one example. There are many
more that I've already covered, but it's

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interesting to watch Rudolph. He walks
a tightrope of being righteous and also having

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to brush off rude questions while remaining
amiable. It is worth noting that after

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Michael's trial in two thousand and seven, who David Rudolph remarried, He went

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through a divorce during the trial and
began a relationship with a journalist named Sonia

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Phifer. They are still together today. They are now partners in his law

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firm and also have a podcast of
their own called Abuse of Power. They

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use their platform to educate people about
flaws in our justice system. Canda Samporini

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testified angrily about Phifer. Apparently she
interviewed Candace under the guise of being sympathetic

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and implying she believed Michael was guilty. Candice didn't know she was seeing David

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Rudolph. Of course, then Feiffer
told Candice she believed Kathleen did fall down

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the stairs. Candice called this journalism
misconduct in court. Allegedly, Michael was

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also angry when he found out about
the relationship. I doubt Rudolph's relationship did

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any harm to Michael's trial. The
press in general did, But how would

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Rudolph really make that a part of
his argument without seeming hypocritical. I missed

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seeing David Rudolph speak last year at
Crime Con, but I also missed Henry

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Lee and John Ramsay and other people
I had really wanted to see our love

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being on podcast row. But I
swear this year I am going to make

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time to see a few speakers.
Speaking of Crime Con and Nancy Grace,

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I've met her. She is the
classic and on air personalities and that she's

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nothing like she is on TV.
She is tiny and sweet and gracious and

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truly a delight to meet in person, but watching her on TV, I

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usually want to strangle her. Interesting
side note, since this is a pop

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culture episode, if you've seen the
movie Gone Girl, you'll notice there is

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a Nancy Grace type TV journalist who
makes the husband's life miserable. Then when

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the wife shows up and the husband
played with irony by Ben Affleck, is

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proven innocent, she's all hugs and
kisses. Let's be friends now. I

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thought it was a great character,
and now having met Nancy, I love

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those scenes and gone girl even more. It's nothing personal, she tells him,

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just business. Nancy Grace is basically
playing a character. I don't think

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any of us hate her for her
coverage of taught Mom otherwise known as Casey

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00:17:51.279 --> 00:17:56.599
Anthony, but otherwise let's just say
she's not everyone's cup of tea, and

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I think her persona is exactly why
her fans love her. Sorry for the

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sidebar here pun intended, but I
thought it would be fun to talk about

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Nancy not only in her coverage of
the Peterson case, but as a pop

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culture icon. But back to the
twenty four hour news cycle, it is

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safe to say Rudolph not only knew
how to handle the press, but could

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00:18:18.359 --> 00:18:22.880
often make it work in his favor. Not every journalist covering the case was

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a Nancy Grace type, and frankly, by the end of the case.

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Serious legal pundits truly felt it would
be a hung jury, if not an

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00:18:30.519 --> 00:18:37.720
acquittal. Most professionals didn't believe the
state had proven their case. If anything,

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00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:41.160
they had ended up with egg on
their face with the discovery of the

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00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:45.160
blowpope. But the jury isn't made
up of professionals. It's made up of

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00:18:45.160 --> 00:18:51.799
everyday men and women. So the
professionals were shocked. The public at large

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00:18:51.920 --> 00:18:56.920
was probably split and how it felt
depending on where they were from. From

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what I can tell, locals overwhelmingly
believed he was guilty. Some have come

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00:19:02.359 --> 00:19:06.200
to change their minds, but many
have told me that they couldn't even stand

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00:19:06.200 --> 00:19:10.000
to watch the Staircase. They had
it in their faces too much at the

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time and had no interest. I
don't blame them. Local cases like that

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00:19:14.960 --> 00:19:19.559
are exhausting when you live there.
The original eight episode Staircase premiered in the

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fall of two thousand and four in
the UK and on the Sundance Channel in

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America in April two thousand and five, and it was a fairly niche endeavor.

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The Sundance Channel was not what it
is today, but the docuseries was

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00:19:33.599 --> 00:19:40.720
very respected and won a Peabody Award
and when I say niche or niche potato

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00:19:40.880 --> 00:19:45.759
potato, It's true. It was
not mainstream entertainment the way documentaries are now,

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00:19:47.240 --> 00:19:51.799
but it was a cult classic for
true crime buffs. Margaret Ratliff said

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00:19:51.839 --> 00:19:56.680
the only time she was recognized before
the documentary went on Netflix was when the

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family took a skiing trip to Denmark. The Staircase was the only thing in

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00:20:00.319 --> 00:20:06.000
English playing on the TVs at their
hotel, so every morning the family was

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00:20:06.039 --> 00:20:10.960
stared at when they went down for
breakfast. And then in twenty eighteen,

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00:20:11.359 --> 00:20:17.599
Netflix bought The Staircase and Margaret's life
went upside down. All the kids felt

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00:20:17.599 --> 00:20:22.279
that way and each dealt with it
in their own ways. Suddenly the small

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00:20:22.319 --> 00:20:30.319
documentary was available worldwide to one hundred
and eighty million viewers. Martha buried herself

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00:20:30.319 --> 00:20:36.400
in her work, Caitlin Atwater and
Clayton Peterson did the same. All three

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00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:41.759
are very private. As I said, Todd Peterson remained active on social media

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and seemed to turn on his father, but I think he's been quiet for

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00:20:45.400 --> 00:20:48.599
a couple of years now. Margaret
was in the film world by then.

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00:20:49.119 --> 00:20:53.559
She wanted to be a documentarian and
said that The Staircase cost her a job

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00:20:53.640 --> 00:20:59.559
with Netflix when they found out that
she was that Margaret Ratliff. She goes

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00:20:59.599 --> 00:21:03.720
by these days, and I'll discuss
her more or later when we talk about

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00:21:03.720 --> 00:21:08.480
her new documentary. But back to
the Staircase. As I and many reviewers

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00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:14.960
have said, Lestrade attempts to be
unbiased but doesn't always succeed. Like when

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00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.000
Michael takes the Alfred plea and the
judge orders his immediate release, the director

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00:21:19.039 --> 00:21:23.400
comes out from behind the camera and
hugs Michael. When asked about this,

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00:21:23.920 --> 00:21:29.240
Lestrade explained that he was happy for
Michael, but he does understand how that

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00:21:29.279 --> 00:21:33.079
can make the docuseries appear biased.
I think it's to his credit though,

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00:21:33.119 --> 00:21:37.160
that he left that bit in.
He easily could have cut it out.

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00:21:37.559 --> 00:21:44.920
But Lestrade also pointed out that the
Staircase docuseries appeared biased because neither the prosecution

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00:21:45.119 --> 00:21:51.039
nor Kathleen's family would work with him. To this, Lestrade said, it's

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00:21:51.039 --> 00:21:55.319
difficult to be an objective observer,
especially when the other side doesn't want to

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00:21:55.359 --> 00:22:00.119
participate. And to that point,
I will agree and counter with Diane Fanning's

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00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:06.480
book Written in Blood. I have
read countless true crime books in my life,

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00:22:06.559 --> 00:22:10.000
and I would say, it's very
rare for a book to come off

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00:22:10.079 --> 00:22:15.559
so strongly against the accused. Within
the very first pages, Fanning obviously hates

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00:22:15.640 --> 00:22:21.559
Peterson. She calls his crying while
his dead wife is still lying on the

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00:22:21.599 --> 00:22:26.519
floor catterwauling. She even seems hostile
to Todd Peterson right off the bat.

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00:22:27.480 --> 00:22:32.200
Now, obviously, true crime books
are going to have a point of view.

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00:22:32.759 --> 00:22:36.519
Hell, I have a point of
view. Often to my detriment and

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00:22:36.720 --> 00:22:41.319
my iTunes reviews, some people think
podcasting should just be a just the facts,

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00:22:41.359 --> 00:22:47.359
ma'am exercise, And to those boring
folks, I say, read Wikipedia

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00:22:47.400 --> 00:22:51.000
and be done with it. I
have no interest in hearing or reading about

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00:22:51.039 --> 00:22:55.039
a case where the writers have no
opinion, So I'll make the show I'll

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00:22:55.079 --> 00:23:00.480
want to listen to. Having said
that, Fanning makes no effort at least

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00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:03.240
begin the book with a little mystery. She wants you to know straight off

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that she thinks Michael is guilty,
and not just guilty, despicable. She

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00:23:08.200 --> 00:23:14.519
cannot stand him, much like the
prosecution. After I read her book,

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00:23:14.880 --> 00:23:18.480
there was a lot from it that
could have been some very juicy background in

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00:23:18.519 --> 00:23:22.000
my episodes if I want to decide
it. But here's the thing. First

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00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:26.920
of all, it's difficult to trust
everything she wrote. I'll give you some

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00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:30.960
examples, but just in general,
if she cannot hide her hate for Michael,

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00:23:30.079 --> 00:23:33.640
even in the beginning, it's hard
to see how she could be objective

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00:23:34.759 --> 00:23:41.640
and journalistically. She wasn't objective.
She only talked to the prosecution, Kathleen's

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00:23:41.680 --> 00:23:47.039
sisters and Elizabeth Ratliffe's sisters, who
by then had completely turned on Michael,

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00:23:47.559 --> 00:23:52.240
and fair enough, that is certainly
their right. But the problem is the

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00:23:52.319 --> 00:23:56.759
stories they told Fanning, and that
she then repeated in her book, are

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00:23:56.880 --> 00:24:03.519
extremely inflammatory and hurtful to Margaret and
Martha. They have never publicly confirmed these

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00:24:03.519 --> 00:24:10.599
tales about themselves as children and as
teens growing up with Michael. I can't

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00:24:10.599 --> 00:24:14.599
help but think of my own ants. I don't care what the situation was,

283
00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.400
they would never tell such private and
hurtful stories about me. The ratliff

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00:24:19.440 --> 00:24:23.799
ants did it in their hatred for
Michael, evidently without any concern for the

285
00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:30.240
nieces they supposedly loved. When I
was working on the background episode, I

286
00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:37.279
was aware of Margaret and Martha's feelings
about the fictionalized HBOS show. Margaret's work

287
00:24:37.319 --> 00:24:41.039
on that new documentary about people who
appear in documentaries is even more telling.

288
00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:48.359
The point is those stories are extremely
personal, and what's more painful whether they

289
00:24:48.359 --> 00:24:52.519
are true or not, whether they
are exaggerations or not. So I chose

290
00:24:52.559 --> 00:24:56.799
not to share them. There are
some other odd problems in the book that

291
00:24:56.880 --> 00:25:02.400
I noticed, things like what Handas
must have told Fanning that didn't match what

292
00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:07.119
we see her do on screen in
the staircase, mainly about Kathleen's grave.

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00:25:08.039 --> 00:25:11.759
Also, she and Laurie are in
at least one episode, so they did

294
00:25:11.839 --> 00:25:18.160
participate some. There are also scenes
from the courtroom that don't seem to match

295
00:25:18.200 --> 00:25:22.039
what we found on our research,
and scenes that are certainly colored by her

296
00:25:22.039 --> 00:25:26.519
opinion, like she will think the
defense has messed up when it was actually

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00:25:26.559 --> 00:25:30.799
a point they just won. Sometimes
it's just little things, but enough to

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00:25:30.839 --> 00:25:36.759
make you wonder. Obviously, you
can read the book for yourself and decide.

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00:25:37.200 --> 00:25:40.720
Those are just my thoughts, and
I rarely give them about other people's

300
00:25:40.759 --> 00:25:47.720
work. Speaking of I listened to
a BBC podcast called Beyond Reasonable Doubt about

301
00:25:47.720 --> 00:25:52.000
the Peterson Case that was published in
September twenty seventeen. I thought that it

302
00:25:52.039 --> 00:25:56.640
looks professional. It's long, form, much more long form than what we

303
00:25:56.680 --> 00:26:02.680
are used to, with some twenty
episodes and features interviews in every episode from

304
00:26:02.759 --> 00:26:07.480
different people associated with the case,
one of those as a local Durham journalist

305
00:26:07.640 --> 00:26:12.279
nicknamed Gaspo. I think that should
have been my first red flag. They

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00:26:12.319 --> 00:26:18.920
also taught Diane Fanning as the ultimate
Peterson case expert. First of all,

307
00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:22.480
the host of that show and his
crew ambushed Michael at his home after he

308
00:26:22.559 --> 00:26:27.880
declined an interview. He said he
had been told about the podcast and listened

309
00:26:27.920 --> 00:26:33.359
to the first few episodes and felt
it was unfairly one sided. He was

310
00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:38.359
especially pissed about Fanning being deemed the
expert on his case, and he has

311
00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:41.839
a point. She didn't talk to
the defense, she did not talk to

312
00:26:41.880 --> 00:26:47.480
his children, she didn't talk to
him. How was she an expert as

313
00:26:47.519 --> 00:26:52.440
this show keeps calling her if she
won't look at both sides. He also

314
00:26:52.559 --> 00:26:56.839
took issue with her calling him a
narcissist and a psychopath. To his knowledge,

315
00:26:57.119 --> 00:27:02.480
she didn't hold any higher degrees in
psychiatry or psychology, he in toned,

316
00:27:03.200 --> 00:27:07.640
and he's for sure got a point
there. But back to that ambush.

317
00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:11.039
He had declined through his lawyer after
checking out the first episodes. He

318
00:27:11.119 --> 00:27:15.440
didn't just give a plane no,
and he did not ignore the request.

319
00:27:15.119 --> 00:27:19.119
Michael is not only reasonable. I
think it's fair to say he enjoys some

320
00:27:19.200 --> 00:27:25.359
of the attention He's given many interviews
over the years, but he felt the

321
00:27:25.359 --> 00:27:30.079
podcast was unfairly biased against him.
So while would he agree to participate,

322
00:27:30.519 --> 00:27:34.799
I don't blame him. And then
he and his family did choose to participate

323
00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:41.119
in a dateline episode, which made
this BBC podcaster phil that Peterson now owed

324
00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:47.839
him an interview, so he asked
again. He again received a polite decline,

325
00:27:48.400 --> 00:27:52.200
so he showed up at Michael's apartment. That's some tacky tabloid journalism,

326
00:27:52.240 --> 00:27:56.400
if anything, and Michael was pissed. But as angry as he was,

327
00:27:56.519 --> 00:28:00.200
he calmed down and agreed to an
interview, but not right there on the

328
00:28:00.279 --> 00:28:06.839
spot, not being blindsided, he
scheduled it for the next day so he

329
00:28:06.839 --> 00:28:11.359
would have time to listen to the
rest of the episodes, and he had

330
00:28:11.400 --> 00:28:17.319
the same criticism. The podcast interviews
only people from the prosecution and Kathleen's family.

331
00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:21.880
The host did point out that David
Rudolph, Michael's attorney, talked to

332
00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:26.880
them, but as Michael said they
portrayed him as this slimy defense attorney,

333
00:28:26.119 --> 00:28:30.880
a showman. He is repeatedly called
not the very respected trial lawyer he is,

334
00:28:32.440 --> 00:28:36.240
and then cut off a lot of
what he was saying. I could

335
00:28:36.240 --> 00:28:40.960
spend the next ten minutes listing David
Rudolph's accomplishments, and he doesn't even get

336
00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:45.279
a full episode on this show.
And in the episode devoted to Duane Deaver,

337
00:28:45.519 --> 00:28:49.839
I thought, finally we'll hear some
fair reporting. They acknowledged the problems,

338
00:28:49.880 --> 00:28:52.880
but pretty much gave the last word
to Nancy Grace of all people,

339
00:28:53.240 --> 00:29:00.960
who declared Duyne Deaver's actions irrelevant.
The jury had originally said they found Deaver's

340
00:29:00.960 --> 00:29:07.680
testimony the most compelling. It was
his testimony about his own experiments that supposedly

341
00:29:07.720 --> 00:29:12.440
proved premeditation. He used that old
string test you see on TV. Dexter

342
00:29:12.559 --> 00:29:17.279
does it a lot. I think
it's useful in gun related deaths, but

343
00:29:17.359 --> 00:29:21.319
I can't see how you can prove
it in a fall or alleged attack without

344
00:29:21.319 --> 00:29:26.039
a weapon. See what I mean? They needed a weapon to make this

345
00:29:26.240 --> 00:29:32.000
make sense anyway. Deaver used points
in mid air where he said Michael raised

346
00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:37.839
the blowpoke and then struck Kathleen.
Years later, criminologists testified that this was

347
00:29:37.880 --> 00:29:41.440
absurd. You don't find points of
origin in the air like that unless you

348
00:29:41.480 --> 00:29:45.440
are talking about a gun. Now, the juror who was interviewed by the

349
00:29:45.480 --> 00:29:51.880
BBC backed away from Deaver, insisting
he didn't sway the jury much. She

350
00:29:51.960 --> 00:29:56.839
said it was all that blood to
give Diane Fanning her due. She did

351
00:29:56.880 --> 00:30:00.519
say that the jury was biased about
Michael's sexuality. She came from the South

352
00:30:00.680 --> 00:30:06.119
and called it the old world.
She said his idea of an open marriage

353
00:30:06.400 --> 00:30:10.759
would not be accepted in their society. Now, she didn't say biased,

354
00:30:11.079 --> 00:30:15.920
but just gave it as a reason. But then she called the French documentary

355
00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:19.559
team biased and said she spoke to
a few jurors and insisted they said his

356
00:30:19.599 --> 00:30:25.759
sexuality did not matter to them.
So I guess she was just acknowledging that

357
00:30:25.799 --> 00:30:30.079
the jury was inherently biased against his
lifestyle because of their world view in the

358
00:30:30.119 --> 00:30:34.519
South. The jury spoke to the
press together after the verdict and said it

359
00:30:34.559 --> 00:30:41.240
was the physical evidence, not the
Ratliffe evidence or michael sexuality that convinced them.

360
00:30:41.720 --> 00:30:45.440
Tom Mayhir, part of Rudolph's team, said that while they may not

361
00:30:45.559 --> 00:30:51.599
have officially deliberated about Ratliffe or the
gay stuff, as everyone kept calling it.

362
00:30:51.920 --> 00:30:56.759
The jury was tainted by these issues, but one juror admitted that she

363
00:30:56.799 --> 00:31:00.759
did think about the Ratliffe evidence,
and Pennington said, quote, I wondered

364
00:31:00.759 --> 00:31:04.759
how the same thing happened repeatedly,
so I'm thinking it did have a bearing

365
00:31:04.799 --> 00:31:10.839
in my mind. But this wasn't
the decision the jurors made. Another mail

366
00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:15.000
juror kind of chuckled and said they
weren't there for the Ratlift case. The

367
00:31:15.079 --> 00:31:21.400
BBC podcast did play Michael's short words
outside the courthouse after he was released,

368
00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:27.559
before setting up the next episode entitled
Alfred Schmalford after what Candice Samperini famously called

369
00:31:27.599 --> 00:31:33.359
the Alfred plea Michael took. They
couldn't have telegraphed their bias more clearly.

370
00:31:33.519 --> 00:31:38.480
The reason I decided to call out
this podcast specifically because it certainly wasn't the

371
00:31:38.519 --> 00:31:44.599
only biased one, is because of
how they ambushed Michael. When defendants are

372
00:31:44.599 --> 00:31:47.920
in the midst of a trial,
they are used to the press camped out

373
00:31:47.960 --> 00:31:52.480
on streets near their homes and by
the courthouse. Should they jump a man

374
00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:56.480
fifteen years after his case went to
trial, he served eight years and took

375
00:31:56.480 --> 00:32:00.279
an Alfred plea. He served his
time. As far as the justice system

376
00:32:00.359 --> 00:32:06.720
is concerned, even if others don't
agree, he doesn't owe anyone an interview,

377
00:32:07.039 --> 00:32:09.839
And even if he does give interviews
to other outlets, that still doesn't

378
00:32:09.880 --> 00:32:15.960
mean he is required to say yes
to every interview, certainly not to ones

379
00:32:15.119 --> 00:32:20.519
he knows or by used against him. He was a seventy five year old

380
00:32:20.559 --> 00:32:23.240
man trying to walk from his car
to his apartment door. What kind of

381
00:32:23.279 --> 00:32:28.200
shit is that? I guess If
you think he is guilty, which this

382
00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:32.680
podcast most certainly posits, then it's
open season on him. Right wrong.

383
00:32:34.359 --> 00:32:38.000
I don't personally know any podcasters who
would behave this way, and I've been

384
00:32:38.039 --> 00:32:43.359
at this for over five years.
I have true crime podcaster friends all over

385
00:32:43.400 --> 00:32:47.079
this country and other parts of the
world. None of us operate this way.

386
00:32:47.960 --> 00:32:52.880
We do not believe it's ethical.
You contact your subject through proper channels.

387
00:32:52.920 --> 00:32:57.240
Either they will or they won't talk
to you, and you take that

388
00:32:57.359 --> 00:33:01.759
decision and move on. I think
this speaks to a larger issue of journalism

389
00:33:01.759 --> 00:33:07.279
and podcasting. Let's face it,
we are only starting to become mainstream and

390
00:33:07.480 --> 00:33:12.599
even now. Most of the time
it's to make fun of us. Side

391
00:33:12.599 --> 00:33:15.400
note. One of the reasons I
loved the show poker Face is how it

392
00:33:15.480 --> 00:33:21.960
made the true crime podcaster a heroine. Sorry spoiler alert, but that show

393
00:33:22.039 --> 00:33:27.880
ended over a month ago, so
no crying and now I'm going to pause

394
00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:32.519
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trial. This is a story that digs

403
00:34:10.880 --> 00:34:15.119
into the injustice of the justice system
and a young life caught in the middle.

404
00:34:15.519 --> 00:34:20.320
We say innocent until proven guilty,
but where do we draw the line

405
00:34:20.320 --> 00:34:25.199
between due process and cruelty to hear. This four part series follow Generation Why.

406
00:34:25.400 --> 00:34:30.559
Wherever you get your podcasts, You
can listen ad free on the Amazon

407
00:34:30.679 --> 00:34:37.480
Music or Wondering app. This show
is sponsored by Better Help. The biggest

408
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changes in my life happened in my
forties. I found a deeper self confidence

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than I had ever known. Getting
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410
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especially because we're always growing and changing. Discovering my self confidence gave me

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412
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off your first month. That's better Help

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Help dot Com slash Southern. After
Michael's conviction, Lestrade sent the first eight

423
00:35:52.360 --> 00:35:58.840
episodes of the Staircase to Michael's attorney, David Rudolph. Rudolph needed to review

424
00:35:58.880 --> 00:36:04.159
them before their public He had to
ensure that no information that came out in

425
00:36:04.199 --> 00:36:08.440
the documentary would hurt Michael's appeals.
As per Less trod, nothing about the

426
00:36:08.440 --> 00:36:14.679
documentary was changed, not one single
sentence. And while I can see why

427
00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:20.239
people believe it is biased towards Michael's
innocence, I don't really feel that way

428
00:36:20.280 --> 00:36:24.000
myself. I think less Drade showed
things about Michael that he didn't have to

429
00:36:24.719 --> 00:36:30.320
and that did not make Michael look
innocent. In one scene in the documentary,

430
00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:37.440
Michael's reaction to finding out about a
man named Dennis Rowe is particularly interesting

431
00:36:37.480 --> 00:36:43.599
to me because he seems like he's
lying. Dennis Rowe is the gay man

432
00:36:44.039 --> 00:36:47.800
who gave a statement to the prosecution
saying he had sex with Michael Peterson a

433
00:36:47.800 --> 00:36:53.800
few times, but who the prosecution
never called to testify. Lots of people

434
00:36:53.880 --> 00:36:59.079
think Michael seemed like a liar in
the documentary. That's fine. I go

435
00:36:59.159 --> 00:37:01.559
back and forth. I do think
you can tell small eyes and not be

436
00:37:01.639 --> 00:37:07.039
a murderer, and that's what this
felt like. He did not want to

437
00:37:07.079 --> 00:37:12.679
be associated with Dennis Roe for whatever
reason. His laugh is overdone at this

438
00:37:12.840 --> 00:37:16.320
part, whereas he feels much more
genuine in other parts. On the same

439
00:37:16.360 --> 00:37:22.519
topic of his sexuality, You're shitting
me, he exclaims, in a high,

440
00:37:22.639 --> 00:37:28.039
false sounding voice, nothing like his
softer, more measured way of speaking

441
00:37:28.079 --> 00:37:31.960
on camera. And it's not that
he doesn't usually curse. He does all

442
00:37:31.960 --> 00:37:37.159
the time. I would wager that
Michael's favorite cuss word is the F word.

443
00:37:37.239 --> 00:37:42.199
No, it's the sound of his
voice here, somewhat strangled and caught

444
00:37:42.199 --> 00:37:45.440
off guard, a secret he didn't
think would get out, and in the

445
00:37:45.599 --> 00:37:51.840
end it didn't. Except in the
documentary, the prosecution did not call Dennis

446
00:37:51.920 --> 00:37:57.920
Row to testify. There is speculation
that Roe had relationships with many prominent Durham

447
00:37:57.960 --> 00:38:01.400
men and that's why he was drawn. It's definitely the reason given in the

448
00:38:01.559 --> 00:38:06.960
HBO series, though we have no
way of knowing if that's true. But

449
00:38:07.079 --> 00:38:10.519
it's interesting in light of the fact
that people accused Lestrade of being biased.

450
00:38:10.960 --> 00:38:15.840
He simply could have had his editor
cut this part out. Once Roe was

451
00:38:15.880 --> 00:38:20.519
not called to testify, Lestrade gave
reasons about things he left out of the

452
00:38:20.559 --> 00:38:24.079
documentary, like the Owl theory.
For instance, he said he didn't include

453
00:38:24.119 --> 00:38:28.920
it because it was not brought up
in court. He said he only used

454
00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:32.920
the evidence that was used against Michael
a trial, So if that's the case,

455
00:38:34.320 --> 00:38:37.920
he could have cut the Dennis Row
scene, but he didn't. I

456
00:38:37.960 --> 00:38:42.559
think it shows he thinks Michael lies
too, and he wanted his film to

457
00:38:42.679 --> 00:38:46.679
capture it. And if an HBO
behind the scenes episode is to be believed,

458
00:38:47.280 --> 00:38:52.800
Michael was hiding something that he eventually
admitted to Lestrade, put that in

459
00:38:52.880 --> 00:38:59.480
your back pocket because it's pretty explosive. And also, sorry if I've confused

460
00:38:59.519 --> 00:39:02.239
you about the owl theory. I
know there is a very short episode that

461
00:39:02.320 --> 00:39:07.920
addresses it now on Netflix, but
that was tacked on after the theory gained

462
00:39:07.360 --> 00:39:13.400
such popularity on social media and then
in the press. Lestrade never wanted to

463
00:39:13.519 --> 00:39:16.599
use it before, but I guess
by popular demand. He threw us the

464
00:39:16.639 --> 00:39:22.599
scraps of an episode that is literally
only three minutes long. There are a

465
00:39:22.599 --> 00:39:27.039
few more things I want to talk
about concerning the documentary before we move on.

466
00:39:27.880 --> 00:39:31.800
One is that the prosecution and judge
did originally agree to participate with Lestrade

467
00:39:31.800 --> 00:39:37.679
and crew. They change their minds
pretty quickly, but there are early interviews

468
00:39:37.679 --> 00:39:42.719
with Harden and Fred of Black.
Basically they are talking about their argument to

469
00:39:42.760 --> 00:39:47.719
get Michael's sexuality included as evidence.
It appears that Lestrade never got an interview

470
00:39:47.719 --> 00:39:53.400
with Judge Hudson. One reason why
is that the prosecution intended to subpoena the

471
00:39:53.440 --> 00:39:59.480
tapes as discovery. The filmmakers did
not want their work used against Michael.

472
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:04.440
In order to avoid turning over the
tapes, they shipped them overnight after every

473
00:40:04.519 --> 00:40:07.880
day of filming. They would have
been doing this anyway, as editor Sophie

474
00:40:07.880 --> 00:40:14.880
Brunette and Scott Stevenson both remained in
France, but now it was imperative that

475
00:40:14.920 --> 00:40:19.280
the tapes did not get into the
prosecution's hands, so they shipped them overnight

476
00:40:19.400 --> 00:40:24.960
daily and there was some participation from
the family that is arguably more substantial than

477
00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:30.760
the short interviews Harden and Black gave. The scene I mentioned where Laurie and

478
00:40:30.840 --> 00:40:35.880
Candas go to Kathleen's grave is one, and also the cameras follow them when

479
00:40:35.880 --> 00:40:39.960
they go to Duke University to scour
writings that Michael had donated, as many

480
00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:45.880
published authors do for their alma maters. They were looking for references to death

481
00:40:45.960 --> 00:40:51.440
and violence. They also joked that
a sexuality should have been obvious. But

482
00:40:51.559 --> 00:40:55.119
one scene in the documentary really stands
out. There was a cameraman who rode

483
00:40:55.159 --> 00:41:01.280
with investigator Art Holland to go and
film the exhamation Elizabeth Ratliffe's body. Now

484
00:41:01.519 --> 00:41:07.440
we know that Hardin decided to exume
Ratliff only a few weeks before trial,

485
00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:12.639
it seems like it would have been
long after the prosecution decided not to participate,

486
00:41:13.719 --> 00:41:19.159
and yet they let this staircase cameraman
along for the ride. Interestingly,

487
00:41:19.639 --> 00:41:23.559
Holland gave a little talk about how
the prosecution had learned of Michael's alleged hot

488
00:41:23.599 --> 00:41:30.719
temper, particularly after talking to Ratliffe's
family. One can only assume that these

489
00:41:30.760 --> 00:41:36.519
are the same stories the Ratliff's sisters
gave Diane Fanning. But again, neither

490
00:41:36.599 --> 00:41:40.679
one of them testified for the prosecution. If Michael was so bad, if

491
00:41:40.679 --> 00:41:45.119
they really believed he was this horrible
man with a murderous temper. Why didn't

492
00:41:45.119 --> 00:41:52.199
they testify, because it's difficult to
believe they didn't to spare their niece's feelings

493
00:41:52.519 --> 00:41:58.280
when they did tell Fanning these stories. It's curious to me that Durham prosecutors

494
00:41:58.320 --> 00:42:04.039
gave the staircase team this access,
like they approved of documenting the exhumation,

495
00:42:05.039 --> 00:42:08.920
maybe to try and show their side
was being completely open and on the up

496
00:42:08.960 --> 00:42:14.559
and up about this grizzly endeavor.
Maybe if their m E hadn't done the

497
00:42:14.639 --> 00:42:19.360
autopsy, it may have looked that
way. I told you I felt that

498
00:42:19.400 --> 00:42:23.840
the BBC podcast was problematic for a
few reasons, and I have felt strange

499
00:42:23.880 --> 00:42:30.239
breaking the code and naming the podcast, But it felt silly to play coy.

500
00:42:30.320 --> 00:42:34.000
It would have been worse to talk
about all of the podcasts I listened

501
00:42:34.000 --> 00:42:37.280
to It's against the Rules in my
Facebook group, but I had to go

502
00:42:37.360 --> 00:42:43.440
with my gut on this. There
were too many podcasts to ignore this category

503
00:42:43.480 --> 00:42:49.960
altogether, and this one had the
best examples and interviews. One interview they

504
00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.559
scored was with a juror, Kelly
Colgan. She felt that Rudolph was trying

505
00:42:54.599 --> 00:42:59.280
to weave a web, as she
put it, to draw her in but

506
00:42:59.440 --> 00:43:05.960
respect how Jim Harden didn't try to
use emotion only fact she chose to ignore

507
00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:10.000
Fred of Black's histrionics. I guess. She also said that finding out that

508
00:43:10.079 --> 00:43:15.840
Duane Deaver's behavior and other trials is
what got Michael a new trial was disappointing,

509
00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:22.800
ma'am. It wasn't his behavior in
other trials. He lied in Michael's

510
00:43:22.800 --> 00:43:30.559
trial. He conducted discredited experiments after
lying about his experience and how many experiments

511
00:43:30.599 --> 00:43:35.960
he had ever actually conducted, which
was three, the last one eleven years

512
00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:40.079
before his experiments for Michael's trial.
He also said he had been to something

513
00:43:40.119 --> 00:43:46.079
like fifteen falls. He had never
even been to one. He also conducted

514
00:43:46.119 --> 00:43:51.480
a test on Michael's shirt that he
either failed to give to the prosecution or

515
00:43:51.519 --> 00:43:54.559
they hit it. Either way,
it's a Brady violation. There was no

516
00:43:54.639 --> 00:43:59.800
blood on his shirt. By the
way, whether or not you believe in

517
00:43:59.840 --> 00:44:02.639
my Michael's innocence, it drives me
nuts when people say he got off on

518
00:44:02.679 --> 00:44:07.079
a technicality. If that was your
life hanging in the balance, I think

519
00:44:07.079 --> 00:44:13.519
it would feel more substantial than a
paperwork issue. And this was before all

520
00:44:13.519 --> 00:44:16.760
the other details came out later,
Like Debora Rattish changing her ruling in the

521
00:44:16.840 --> 00:44:22.400
autopsy and the fact that the blowpoke
had been logged and photographed in the original

522
00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:30.239
search, but that photo went mysteriously
missing until new legislation was passed and David

523
00:44:30.320 --> 00:44:35.639
Rudolph was given pretty much the entire
file from the prosecution and he found it.

524
00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:40.480
The blowpoke was not mysteriously missing,
as the prosecution kept hammering during the

525
00:44:40.559 --> 00:44:45.960
trial, but the damn photo was. But back to jerk Kelly Colgan,

526
00:44:46.599 --> 00:44:51.800
she said she didn't need a blood
spatter expert, and then the host wraps

527
00:44:51.880 --> 00:44:55.679
up her interview saying, Kelly is
clear that it wasn't the Ratliff evidence,

528
00:44:57.079 --> 00:45:01.320
it wasn't Michael's bisexuality, It was
the blood evidence that swayed the jury.

529
00:45:01.440 --> 00:45:07.800
Then how did Dwayne Deaver not matter? And the jury as a whole was

530
00:45:07.880 --> 00:45:13.360
interviewed right after the trial and said
that Deaver's testimony was important in their deliberations,

531
00:45:13.880 --> 00:45:17.039
and you can see in court they
are riveted when watching him, even

532
00:45:17.079 --> 00:45:21.320
if the rest of us are falling
asleep or trying to keep our eyeballs in

533
00:45:21.360 --> 00:45:25.559
our heads. Kelly is the same
juror who accused Ron Jarette of staring at

534
00:45:25.559 --> 00:45:31.039
the jury menacingly trying to intimidate them. I mentioned this in part three,

535
00:45:31.119 --> 00:45:37.960
and it's absurd. Jarette was Rudolph's
investigator and trial consultant and was watching the

536
00:45:37.039 --> 00:45:43.719
jury to see how they responded to
different witnesses. I promise I am almost

537
00:45:43.800 --> 00:45:47.440
done with this podcast thing, but
one last thing. Jim Harden was interviewed

538
00:45:47.440 --> 00:45:54.519
extensively and still defended Duwayne Deaver.
He also called David Rudolph the epitome of

539
00:45:54.559 --> 00:46:00.079
the zealous advocate, as if that's
a bad thing, before saying he and

540
00:46:00.199 --> 00:46:05.800
I have a very different idea about
the rules of professional conduct and how one

541
00:46:05.880 --> 00:46:13.760
complies with those, and that's probably
all I should say. That's rich considering

542
00:46:13.760 --> 00:46:19.079
how Harden conducted himself during Peterson's trial, or I guess how you could say

543
00:46:19.119 --> 00:46:22.199
he left Fred to do the wet
work and break the rules of professional conduct.

544
00:46:22.800 --> 00:46:28.480
It's still his trial, and it
was his office officially hiding evidence.

545
00:46:29.559 --> 00:46:34.079
Jim Harden was a good old boy
with Durham connections. David Rudolph might have

546
00:46:34.159 --> 00:46:37.360
been a well paid, high profile
attorney, but no one could argue that

547
00:46:37.400 --> 00:46:42.679
he had any sort of questionable connections
in Durham. The way we know that

548
00:46:42.840 --> 00:46:47.400
Harden did, and the prosecution leaked
so much to the press that I felt

549
00:46:47.400 --> 00:46:52.280
one of Rudolph's only real mistakes was
not asking for a change in venue.

550
00:46:52.159 --> 00:46:57.719
But the final thing about this whole
podcast is that it premiered before we found

551
00:46:57.719 --> 00:47:01.400
out the extent of the corruption in
Jim Harden's office and the Durham PD,

552
00:47:02.760 --> 00:47:07.960
before we knew that Deboratus changed her
opinion, before we knew that Harden and

553
00:47:08.039 --> 00:47:13.960
Black made Brady violations, and withholding
evidence, it would be nice to hear

554
00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:19.280
this podcast and a few others go
back now and revisit the case knowing what

555
00:47:19.400 --> 00:47:23.920
we know now. The BBC podcast
came out after the Deaver scandal and they

556
00:47:24.000 --> 00:47:29.360
still were not fair. So I
guess that's my problem. You don't have

557
00:47:29.440 --> 00:47:32.679
to like Michael Peterson. You are
welcome to still argue his guilt, but

558
00:47:32.840 --> 00:47:39.199
anyone still defending Dwayne Deaver at this
point should be ashamed of themselves. And

559
00:47:39.239 --> 00:47:44.719
I will say that it's possible that
most people on Michael's team refused to be

560
00:47:44.800 --> 00:47:49.159
interviewed, but I don't think so. Why wouldn't the host defend the team

561
00:47:49.559 --> 00:47:53.679
and say they were asked When Michael
complained it was one sided, and Deaver

562
00:47:53.920 --> 00:47:59.000
by then was working at a drug
store for nine bucks an hour after his

563
00:47:59.119 --> 00:48:01.480
fall from grace, when he should
have been sitting in a jail cell for

564
00:48:01.519 --> 00:48:07.679
all the lives he ruined in his
eighteen year career at the SBI. There

565
00:48:07.760 --> 00:48:12.559
is a funny scene in the HBO
series when Michael is finally out awaiting his

566
00:48:12.599 --> 00:48:16.239
new trial and goes into a Walgreens
and to Wayne Deaver is working the register.

567
00:48:16.679 --> 00:48:21.159
When he checks out, the two
men just stare at each other.

568
00:48:22.320 --> 00:48:25.360
Deaver did work a minimum wage job
after he was fired, but he also

569
00:48:25.440 --> 00:48:30.920
fought back, suing the SBI for
his job and back wages. The courts

570
00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:36.719
found he should have just gotten at
emotion and a ten percent wage decrease for

571
00:48:36.800 --> 00:48:40.599
what he did, and ordered the
SBI to pay thirty four weeks of back

572
00:48:40.639 --> 00:48:46.079
wages, but said they were right
to fire him for the perjury. It's

573
00:48:46.119 --> 00:48:51.000
insane to me that he got paid
for that. There are a few articles

574
00:48:51.000 --> 00:48:55.760
that place him in Texas per LinkedIn, but he's gone private now but offsidetracked

575
00:48:55.760 --> 00:49:01.440
again. There were no podcasts or
think pieces date Line in twenty twenty episodes

576
00:49:01.920 --> 00:49:07.239
until after the Alfred Plea and Netflix
picked up the Staircase. There was Diane

577
00:49:07.239 --> 00:49:13.400
Fanning's book and Aphrodite Jones, which
I didn't read. I understand it was

578
00:49:13.440 --> 00:49:17.159
also pro guilt, but less detailed, so I decided not to. But

579
00:49:17.199 --> 00:49:22.280
Michael said she did visit him in
prison and agreed that a book would be

580
00:49:22.320 --> 00:49:27.039
one sided if the author only talked
to one side. I did, however,

581
00:49:27.079 --> 00:49:30.719
read Michael's book Behind the Staircase.
I had thought I would skim the

582
00:49:30.760 --> 00:49:35.960
book and was surprised to be drawn
in. He writes about his childhood,

583
00:49:36.440 --> 00:49:39.239
some experiences in the military, and
the bulk of the rest of it is

584
00:49:39.280 --> 00:49:45.440
about his time in prison. I
hate war books and only read prison books

585
00:49:45.440 --> 00:49:50.000
for research, but this one didn't
feel like research. I do think he

586
00:49:50.079 --> 00:49:54.400
obviously embellished parts. I don't think
the Italian mafia was looking to protect him

587
00:49:54.400 --> 00:49:59.840
once he got inside, but other
parts do ring true. I do think

588
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:02.679
people liked him, and not just
for clout. He went out of his

589
00:50:02.719 --> 00:50:07.639
way to be helpful and kind to
others. I have to say I believe

590
00:50:07.719 --> 00:50:10.440
him on that. As an elderly
man in prison, he had to be

591
00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:15.360
careful. You can get thrown in
the hole or solitary for keeping your own

592
00:50:15.360 --> 00:50:21.360
bottle of ibuprofen in your cell,
and he admitted that he hated teaching and

593
00:50:21.440 --> 00:50:25.920
helping people get their GEDs. Most
x cons will say that was a rewarding

594
00:50:25.960 --> 00:50:31.440
experience, but he didn't bullshit about
it. I appreciate that candor. He

595
00:50:31.480 --> 00:50:35.719
does have a very lyrical way of
writing, and I can see how he

596
00:50:35.760 --> 00:50:40.039
got book deals. I'm not sure
if I doubted this or just felt uninterested

597
00:50:40.079 --> 00:50:44.920
because they're war books. But I
did get sucked in and read his book

598
00:50:44.960 --> 00:50:47.679
in a day. It made me, sheepishly feel like a book snob.

599
00:50:49.119 --> 00:50:53.199
It wasn't high literature, but he
kept me interested. I appreciated how he

600
00:50:53.199 --> 00:50:58.280
spoke of Kathleen. He didn't try
to make her a saint. There was

601
00:50:58.360 --> 00:51:01.800
no doubt she was a good person, but he didn't deify her. In

602
00:51:01.840 --> 00:51:07.079
fact, he surprised me by comparing
her to Sophie Brunette, the French editor

603
00:51:07.079 --> 00:51:13.239
of The Staircase that he had a
thirteen year relationship with. First of all,

604
00:51:13.480 --> 00:51:17.000
yes, he wrote about Sophie and
their relationship. It wasn't a secret

605
00:51:17.000 --> 00:51:22.280
as some people have implied. She
began writing to him about a month after

606
00:51:22.360 --> 00:51:28.159
he went to Nash Correctional Prison,
they were a meeting of intellectual minds.

607
00:51:28.159 --> 00:51:32.800
She sent him literature, hyebrow stuff
like Proost and Voltaire, and this is

608
00:51:32.800 --> 00:51:38.639
where he compared her to Kathleen.
Kathleen definitely wasn't into Proust. She was

609
00:51:38.679 --> 00:51:44.679
into math. She was raucous.
She was blunt and funny and could have

610
00:51:44.719 --> 00:51:51.440
a confrontational personality. Sophie was all
softness. He was adamant that they were

611
00:51:51.519 --> 00:51:55.519
intellectual equals. Kathleen was a brilliant
engineer. After all, they were just

612
00:51:55.639 --> 00:52:04.400
complete opposites and personality types. Aliked
this characterization of both women. People often

613
00:52:04.440 --> 00:52:08.920
say Kathleen isn't humanized in much of
the media surrounding the case, but some

614
00:52:08.960 --> 00:52:15.039
of the funny stories he told about
his brash, spitfire of a wife are

615
00:52:15.079 --> 00:52:21.360
more humanizing than things her family told
Diane Fanning about her. She sounds hilarious

616
00:52:21.679 --> 00:52:25.920
and brave. She hated sexiest men, complaining often about the men she worked

617
00:52:25.960 --> 00:52:30.079
with. She sounds like someone I'd
want to have a drink with. She

618
00:52:30.239 --> 00:52:35.119
definitely sounds like someone you would want
to know socially or as a neighbor.

619
00:52:35.800 --> 00:52:42.840
Not only kind and generous, but
genuinely fun Sophie Brunette was and is beautiful

620
00:52:42.920 --> 00:52:47.800
in looks and soft in personality.
She is not in the Staircase documentary obviously,

621
00:52:49.280 --> 00:52:53.719
and I think that HBO Max series
does her a huge disservice. Sophie

622
00:52:53.760 --> 00:53:00.639
said of her character on HBO.
Quote, despite Juliet Benoshe's wonderful, I

623
00:53:00.760 --> 00:53:06.840
look rather crazy, manipulative, stupid
and pathetic, she told Variety. I

624
00:53:06.960 --> 00:53:10.519
have to agree she is a shrew
by the final episode, and that's not

625
00:53:10.559 --> 00:53:16.840
at all how Michael saw her.
Michael wrote about Sophie describing her as my

626
00:53:16.960 --> 00:53:22.280
only real friend in prison, the
only one I confided in and revealed my

627
00:53:22.360 --> 00:53:27.280
fears too. She was definitely his
life preserver, as he called her,

628
00:53:27.920 --> 00:53:31.840
and she took care of him when
he was out awaiting retrial. Remember he

629
00:53:31.880 --> 00:53:37.840
wore an ankle monitor for almost three
years. Michael doesn't write too much about

630
00:53:37.840 --> 00:53:42.639
the trial or even the people involved
very much. I told you before that

631
00:53:42.719 --> 00:53:46.960
he actually wrote about what he thought
David Rudolph's mistakes were the big one being

632
00:53:47.360 --> 00:53:52.480
that he said it was a fall
instead of just relying on reasonable doubt.

633
00:53:52.039 --> 00:53:55.400
Once he said there was a fall, he had to prove it. But

634
00:53:55.480 --> 00:54:00.679
as I said before, Rudolph was
too good an attorney to not give an

635
00:54:00.679 --> 00:54:06.119
alternate story, whether or not it's
legally required. It's what juries need.

636
00:54:07.159 --> 00:54:10.119
Michael may have written more about his
trial and appeals in his second book,

637
00:54:10.559 --> 00:54:15.280
Beyond the Staircase. I admit I
didn't read this one. I skimmed a

638
00:54:15.280 --> 00:54:21.119
bit and realized he was revisiting his
prison time and put it down. I

639
00:54:21.159 --> 00:54:24.960
did read a review later that said
he included four chapters of a fiction novel

640
00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:30.599
in the middle of the book before
discussing his first book, the Documentary,

641
00:54:30.639 --> 00:54:35.360
and a few other things anything that
was not to do with his current private

642
00:54:35.400 --> 00:54:39.000
life. But there is another new
book out that I can't wait to tell

643
00:54:39.039 --> 00:54:44.719
you about. It's a whole book
about the owl theory. Sit type and

644
00:54:44.800 --> 00:54:50.360
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677
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Southern Fried. I have to tell
you I like the owl theory a lot,

678
00:57:16.199 --> 00:57:21.000
but I didn't always. I used
to roll my eyes when people mentioned

679
00:57:21.039 --> 00:57:24.559
it, but even before I read
the book Death by Talons by Titty Smith,

680
00:57:25.199 --> 00:57:30.280
I really came around to the theory
in my own research. To me,

681
00:57:30.760 --> 00:57:35.920
it explains what has always been unexplainable
in Kathleen's death. If it was

682
00:57:35.960 --> 00:57:39.880
a beating, why wasn't her skull
fractured or at least some serious contusions or

683
00:57:39.960 --> 00:57:45.159
hematomas on her brain? There was
no traumatic brain injury. I think it's

684
00:57:45.199 --> 00:57:50.039
more likely to not have those injuries. In a fall. You can pop

685
00:57:50.039 --> 00:57:52.880
your head against the corner of a
door frame and get blood gushing from your

686
00:57:52.920 --> 00:57:58.960
scalp. There's no one saying,
much less any proof that Kathleen would have

687
00:57:59.000 --> 00:58:02.599
fallen from the top of the staircase, which would obviously cause more damage.

688
00:58:04.159 --> 00:58:07.880
But she just fell on the last
few stairs. I've probably mentioned this before,

689
00:58:08.119 --> 00:58:12.880
but I am a huge klutz.
As I'm writing this, I just

690
00:58:12.960 --> 00:58:16.360
cussed out the plantation blinds in my
living room for yet another cut and bruise

691
00:58:16.719 --> 00:58:22.159
because I walked by too close.
My husband just calmly asked if I was

692
00:58:22.199 --> 00:58:25.559
bleeding. He's used to it.
I have fallen more times than I cared

693
00:58:25.599 --> 00:58:30.480
to admit, especially on stairs.
We just moved and my old house was

694
00:58:30.519 --> 00:58:35.760
a year older than the Peterson's house. I had a dark, narrow staircase

695
00:58:36.079 --> 00:58:42.000
with the exact kind of landing the
Peterson's had. I recorded the first episode

696
00:58:42.079 --> 00:58:46.880
of this series as the last episode
in my old studio, and superstitiously,

697
00:58:47.320 --> 00:58:52.159
I swear as I left, I
just knew I was going to fall down

698
00:58:52.159 --> 00:58:55.320
those stairs. I was in the
house by myself. I had my hands

699
00:58:55.360 --> 00:59:00.480
full. We do stupid shit like
this all the time, and I know

700
00:59:00.599 --> 00:59:05.079
better, but we do it out
of habit, just like jogging upstairs and

701
00:59:05.119 --> 00:59:08.079
flip flops. I used to joke
about how many times I had fallen up

702
00:59:08.119 --> 00:59:14.480
the stairs, and we all know
headwinds bleed worse than other surface level cuts.

703
00:59:15.079 --> 00:59:19.239
It's astonishing how much blood can come
from banging your head on a surface.

704
00:59:19.840 --> 00:59:22.159
I should know. I once bent
down to pick up my dog's water

705
00:59:22.199 --> 00:59:28.000
bowl and popped up oblivious to the
corner of the kitchen counter it was under,

706
00:59:28.239 --> 00:59:31.800
and knocked myself sideways. I yelled
for help, more mad than hurt,

707
00:59:32.280 --> 00:59:37.239
but it looked like a crime scene. My problem with the theory of

708
00:59:37.280 --> 00:59:40.559
a fall in the Peterson case has
always been the wounds on Kathleen's head.

709
00:59:42.360 --> 00:59:45.920
I do think you can hit your
head once and the skin will split like

710
00:59:45.000 --> 00:59:51.920
that, but I have trouble believing
it would happen twice. It's two perfect

711
00:59:52.119 --> 00:59:55.920
trident marks, like the three claws
of a bird of prey, and there

712
00:59:57.079 --> 01:00:00.440
is the beginning of a third mark
on the left side of her scalp,

713
01:00:00.960 --> 01:00:04.559
like the owl tried to latch on
but missed, and then tried again,

714
01:00:04.840 --> 01:00:07.840
and that's when the two perfect tridents
were made, when the owl clutched onto

715
01:00:07.920 --> 01:00:14.639
Kathleen's head and did not let go. Also, all the small scratches on

716
01:00:14.719 --> 01:00:17.920
her face and around her arms and
hands, Smith felt like they came from

717
01:00:17.960 --> 01:00:23.440
the owl's beak fighting with Kathleen and
a death grip. I'll put the photo

718
01:00:23.480 --> 01:00:29.000
of Kathleen's scalp in the Facebook group, but not wide on social media.

719
01:00:29.159 --> 01:00:31.880
I don't feel that's appropriate, but
it's easy to find if you're not in

720
01:00:31.920 --> 01:00:37.519
the group, and it's on the
link I'll provide in show notes. And

721
01:00:37.639 --> 01:00:40.880
I admit I am not one hundred
percent certain I could see how this happened

722
01:00:42.199 --> 01:00:46.199
if I had not watched that Dateline
episode that actually showed an owl attack,

723
01:00:46.920 --> 01:00:52.000
as well as the fictionalized HBO series
which definitely shows it as a possibility,

724
01:00:52.239 --> 01:00:57.400
which I know. I know it's
fiction, but when you can see a

725
01:00:57.480 --> 01:01:00.840
possibility along with what happened to the
guy on state line, it doesn't seem

726
01:01:00.880 --> 01:01:06.480
so silly. I am going to
post a video with all three scenarios in

727
01:01:06.519 --> 01:01:10.639
my Facebook group. Even though these
will be the fictional reenactments of three theories.

728
01:01:12.119 --> 01:01:15.639
I still don't think it's appropriate to
put it across social media, but

729
01:01:15.760 --> 01:01:21.519
it is on YouTube too. Initially
I thought Titty Smith's book Death by Talents

730
01:01:21.599 --> 01:01:24.199
would be another skim read for me. I do have to speed read or

731
01:01:24.239 --> 01:01:29.639
skim and research sometimes. I thought
it would be too much conspiracy theory and

732
01:01:29.760 --> 01:01:34.960
not enough substance. Nope, he
did an amazing job. Smith, who

733
01:01:35.039 --> 01:01:38.199
is from New Zealand, watched every
minute of court once it was up on

734
01:01:38.239 --> 01:01:45.239
YouTube. He poured over appeals,
He researched owl attacks, he researched falls

735
01:01:45.280 --> 01:01:50.719
and beatings. It is really well
done. First off, he acknowledged how

736
01:01:50.800 --> 01:01:54.639
maligned Larry Pollard was. I think
we are all so familiar with the owl

737
01:01:54.679 --> 01:02:01.440
theory that we don't really remember or
know how ridiculed this man was publicly over

738
01:02:01.480 --> 01:02:07.559
this idea he raised. He brought
it to David Rudolph right before closing arguments,

739
01:02:07.760 --> 01:02:12.360
so it was too late. Rudolph
now believes in the owl theory instead.

740
01:02:12.360 --> 01:02:15.320
If he had gone back to trial
again, he would have used it

741
01:02:15.360 --> 01:02:20.800
in Michael's defense. If you don't
know or remember, Pollard was the Peterson's

742
01:02:20.800 --> 01:02:24.760
next door neighbor, not neighbors like
most of us have because their properties were

743
01:02:24.800 --> 01:02:30.840
so large, but still their closest
neighbor. He was a hunter, and

744
01:02:30.960 --> 01:02:37.039
he understood birds of prey, but
particularly barred owls b A r R ed,

745
01:02:37.599 --> 01:02:42.679
not barn owls, which nested in
the trees on their properties. He

746
01:02:42.800 --> 01:02:45.960
felt Michael was innocent, but it's
not like they were best friends, just

747
01:02:46.119 --> 01:02:52.519
good neighbors. He was sad,
but life goes on. Until he saw

748
01:02:52.559 --> 01:02:57.239
the photos of Kathleen's scalp, the
wounds he came to be certain were caused

749
01:02:57.280 --> 01:03:01.800
by an owl's talons. In his
book, Smith printed several headlines, most

750
01:03:01.880 --> 01:03:07.800
from the Durham Herald's Son and one
from Raleigh News an observer making fun of

751
01:03:07.880 --> 01:03:13.960
Larry Pollard and former Congressman Nick Galafanachus, who he teamed up with trying to

752
01:03:14.000 --> 01:03:17.840
get some one to listen about the
owl theory. Galafanachus was a professor at

753
01:03:17.920 --> 01:03:22.039
Duke at the time, and it
was always Larry's passion about the theory that

754
01:03:22.199 --> 01:03:28.199
led the charge. Nick just tried
to help boost the signal. Imagine the

755
01:03:28.280 --> 01:03:31.880
moxie it takes to get up every
morning, read those headlines and still not

756
01:03:32.039 --> 01:03:37.880
let it go. Imagine the fortitude
and belief in yourself to face that and

757
01:03:37.000 --> 01:03:43.199
keep going for someone who is not
family or even a close friend. But

758
01:03:43.360 --> 01:03:47.719
Pollard is a lawyer and believed strongly
that an injustice happened in this case because

759
01:03:47.719 --> 01:03:52.880
it was an owl attack. That's
why he won't let it go. Titty

760
01:03:52.960 --> 01:03:59.320
Smith heartily agrees. His theory is
summarized in one sentence, Michael was railroaded.

761
01:04:00.039 --> 01:04:04.119
He believes that the police in da
had already considered an owl attack and

762
01:04:04.320 --> 01:04:10.400
purposely hit evidence of feathers at the
scene. He thinks that someone in charge

763
01:04:10.599 --> 01:04:14.679
simply said get rid of them.
They felt in their gut that this was

764
01:04:14.719 --> 01:04:18.119
a murder and the owl feathers would
just give fuel to the defense. His

765
01:04:18.360 --> 01:04:23.159
proof, He says, you can
see owl feathers in the video the police

766
01:04:23.199 --> 01:04:28.000
made at the scene. He asks
why would they begin filming outside and walk

767
01:04:28.079 --> 01:04:31.039
through that way, if not to
document the blood drops and feathers. He

768
01:04:31.119 --> 01:04:35.199
also notes something I don't think anyone
else caught. There is a break in

769
01:04:35.239 --> 01:04:41.079
the video. They stopped filming and
then began again. If you do that

770
01:04:41.119 --> 01:04:45.920
with official evidence, you were supposed
to log why it was never questioned,

771
01:04:45.760 --> 01:04:50.039
and he made a really good point
that I myself danced around when discussing the

772
01:04:50.119 --> 01:04:55.920
evidence, but I never thought to
emphasize it the way he did. I

773
01:04:56.079 --> 01:05:00.800
complained that the crime scene technicians did
not collect the towels under Kathleen's head,

774
01:05:00.400 --> 01:05:05.840
or the paper towels or her flip
flops or Michael's glasses. In court,

775
01:05:06.000 --> 01:05:11.000
they gave the lame excuse that the
glasses didn't have blood on them. I

776
01:05:11.079 --> 01:05:14.679
thought it was just really messy crime
scene work, and I guess it still

777
01:05:14.760 --> 01:05:18.880
can be. Titty Smith thinks there
is a more nefarious reason. If they

778
01:05:18.920 --> 01:05:24.199
collected that evidence, they would have
to test it and would likely have found

779
01:05:24.239 --> 01:05:28.400
evidence of an owl, whether it
would be feathers or DNA. If they

780
01:05:28.480 --> 01:05:32.719
ran a test, they would find
it. The police did not collect one

781
01:05:32.800 --> 01:05:39.119
thing around Kathleen's body. They took
stuff from all over the house. Silly

782
01:05:39.159 --> 01:05:43.320
things from rooms that had nothing to
do with her death. They took Todd's

783
01:05:43.320 --> 01:05:46.320
clothes along with Michael's, even though
he showed up at the scene in front

784
01:05:46.320 --> 01:05:51.639
of paramedics, but they didn't take
any of the objects directly around Kathleen.

785
01:05:53.119 --> 01:05:58.400
That I just listed all of the
sudden that doesn't feel messy or lazy.

786
01:05:58.880 --> 01:06:03.360
It feels purpose. And the original
photographer, Angie Powell, who was a

787
01:06:03.400 --> 01:06:08.920
bit green at the time, agrees
with Smith, calling it forensics one o

788
01:06:09.079 --> 01:06:13.639
one. She said it had to
be deliberate. Smith says, if you

789
01:06:13.760 --> 01:06:17.400
analyze frames of that video, you
can see the feathers. I would suggest

790
01:06:17.519 --> 01:06:21.679
going to the Wild Blue Press website
and look at the photos. I'll have

791
01:06:21.800 --> 01:06:26.480
that link in my show notes and
we will also have some photos on my

792
01:06:26.559 --> 01:06:30.760
website. Smith even thinks there was
a feather on Kathleen's ear visible in the

793
01:06:30.840 --> 01:06:35.159
video. He also said that there
are white droppings on the bottom of the

794
01:06:35.239 --> 01:06:41.639
stairs and landing that are never explained, and that it's what's called mutes or

795
01:06:41.920 --> 01:06:46.159
bird droppings or frankly, bird shit, and if you look at the photos

796
01:06:46.360 --> 01:06:50.199
you can see it. I think
I always assumed it was where a Candice

797
01:06:50.199 --> 01:06:55.119
had tried to clean up. I
meant to mention that in an earlier episode,

798
01:06:55.480 --> 01:06:58.320
but it was kind of disputed,
so I let it go. At

799
01:06:58.320 --> 01:07:02.559
the time, she gave Diane Fanning
an emotional story about trying to clean up

800
01:07:02.599 --> 01:07:08.079
her sister's blood before her mother arrived. She said she was scrubbing with a

801
01:07:08.119 --> 01:07:13.199
sponge and saw red tinted water dripping
down her arm and realized it was her

802
01:07:13.239 --> 01:07:17.760
sister's blood. She got sick and
stopped. Her story was disputed by the

803
01:07:17.800 --> 01:07:23.440
Peterson's longtime housekeeper, who said that
Candice ordered her to clean up the blood

804
01:07:23.719 --> 01:07:29.280
and she refused. I think both
can be true. Candice tried, stopped,

805
01:07:29.320 --> 01:07:32.320
and then told the housekeeper to clean
it up. But it certainly poses

806
01:07:32.320 --> 01:07:38.679
a problem for anyone trying to conduct
scientific tests in that area. Afterwards,

807
01:07:39.199 --> 01:07:42.800
it had been released by police,
but the defense had not yet had a

808
01:07:42.880 --> 01:07:45.519
chance to look at it. When
they got to the house. They boarded

809
01:07:45.599 --> 01:07:50.239
up that stairwell to protect it,
but maybe the damage was already done.

810
01:07:50.880 --> 01:07:55.639
But anyway, I'm not going to
reargue this case like that. At this

811
01:07:55.760 --> 01:07:59.920
point, I don't really believe you
can prove what happened to Kathleen by studying

812
01:08:00.079 --> 01:08:04.400
the blood spatter. I did my
best and other episodes to explain what experts

813
01:08:04.440 --> 01:08:09.679
believed and who I thought was the
most credible. It's not Duane Deaver,

814
01:08:09.840 --> 01:08:13.719
is all I'm going to say about
that now. But one thing that bothers

815
01:08:13.760 --> 01:08:17.600
me is Smith reports that Da Jim
Harden refused to meet with Larry Pollard.

816
01:08:18.439 --> 01:08:24.279
He publicly said the theory was absurd, that there was absolutely no evidence to

817
01:08:24.319 --> 01:08:30.199
support any owl attack. I guess
he is ignoring the over fifty hairs from

818
01:08:30.199 --> 01:08:34.359
her own head clutched in Kathleen's hands
with pine needles, and he refused to

819
01:08:34.399 --> 01:08:40.199
look at the microscopic bird feathers found
in those hairs, even though the evidence

820
01:08:40.279 --> 01:08:45.399
log from the scene did include one
feather. The prosecution never tried to explain

821
01:08:45.479 --> 01:08:49.359
this. Hardon further said of the
theory, it's one of the most ridiculous

822
01:08:49.399 --> 01:08:55.680
things I've ever heard. But apparently
his office did agree to meet with Larry

823
01:08:55.720 --> 01:08:59.920
Pollard, and Harden ducked out a
back door as he came in to say

824
01:09:00.159 --> 01:09:03.720
up. That's cowardly and rude if
he agreed to the meeting, and I

825
01:09:03.760 --> 01:09:08.479
guess he didn't want to think of
the possibility that he got it wrong.

826
01:09:08.920 --> 01:09:14.159
He'd already hidden evidence, why should
he entertain any other alternate theories? A

827
01:09:14.199 --> 01:09:18.039
trial should be about finding the truth, but we know it's really about who

828
01:09:18.039 --> 01:09:23.239
tells the better story, and Jim
Harden was not about to mess with his

829
01:09:23.319 --> 01:09:30.000
win. Speaking of alternate theories,
Titty Smith acknowledges all of them, though

830
01:09:30.000 --> 01:09:32.439
he doesn't believe this was a fall
because of all of the owl evidence.

831
01:09:32.840 --> 01:09:38.319
He studied the statistics and said,
quote, a fall is six times more

832
01:09:38.359 --> 01:09:42.439
likely than a homicide, which is
kind of what I said when I told

833
01:09:42.479 --> 01:09:45.079
you how common they are, but
Smith put it much better than I did.

834
01:09:45.960 --> 01:09:50.600
Another alternate theory Smith provides that also
made me smacked the side of my

835
01:09:50.720 --> 01:09:56.800
head is that what if Michael got
blackout drunk? We know basically from what

836
01:09:56.960 --> 01:10:01.479
Kathleen's talk screens showed that she was
not really wrong, tipsy maybe and on

837
01:10:01.600 --> 01:10:06.720
valume. But did Michael finish both
bottles of wine and champagne and then go

838
01:10:06.800 --> 01:10:13.399
to bed? There was something else
I missed In the original episodes. Michael

839
01:10:13.479 --> 01:10:17.159
told the paramedics and the first people
on scene something like he came down to

840
01:10:17.199 --> 01:10:23.159
turn off the pool lights and found
Kathleen. After that, he changed his

841
01:10:23.279 --> 01:10:28.600
story and then told the exact same
story and never wavered. They were both

842
01:10:28.680 --> 01:10:31.199
drinking down by the pool. He
stayed out there while she came in,

843
01:10:31.600 --> 01:10:36.119
and then he found her. Why
the two stories. I meant to put

844
01:10:36.199 --> 01:10:41.439
it in because it's a point in
the guilty column, simply by possibly being

845
01:10:41.560 --> 01:10:45.600
a lie. I promise it was
not intentional. At the time, I

846
01:10:45.680 --> 01:10:50.720
remember thinking maybe they misunderstood Michael,
that he had said something about the pool

847
01:10:50.760 --> 01:10:55.359
lights, like he stayed down there
and then turned everything off and came in.

848
01:10:56.199 --> 01:11:00.399
Since he never changed his story again, it didn't seem too important and

849
01:11:00.479 --> 01:11:06.399
I completely forgot my apologies. Smith
posits that Kathleen didn't drink much because of

850
01:11:06.399 --> 01:11:12.159
her conference call the next day,
but Michael, celebrating the film option of

851
01:11:12.279 --> 01:11:17.279
his book, finished the wine and
champagne by himself. Now I also know

852
01:11:17.399 --> 01:11:21.359
drinkers. They have a tolerance,
so I didn't think much of it.

853
01:11:23.000 --> 01:11:28.960
But champagne can sneak up even on
daily wine drinkers. Smith thinks he went

854
01:11:29.000 --> 01:11:31.800
to bed before Kathleen, and then
he woke up at around three am,

855
01:11:32.359 --> 01:11:36.399
thirsty as hell with the beginnings of
a hangover, so he decides to go

856
01:11:36.479 --> 01:11:40.479
down and get a drink. Of
water and make sure the pool lights were

857
01:11:40.520 --> 01:11:45.079
turned off, and then he found
Kathleen. But Michael is smart and he

858
01:11:45.159 --> 01:11:49.800
thinks on his feet. As Smith
put it, quote, I cannot remember

859
01:11:49.840 --> 01:11:55.079
what happened throughout most of the night
of my wife's death is perhaps the worst

860
01:11:55.119 --> 01:12:00.840
alibi imaginable. That's true, but
it explains the time that Kathleen may have

861
01:12:01.039 --> 01:12:05.960
actually lain there for a couple of
hours before being found. Remember the debated

862
01:12:06.000 --> 01:12:11.119
red neurons. Maybe he had even
kicked off those shoes before he went to

863
01:12:11.199 --> 01:12:14.840
bed, and that's why they were
off. I don't know, but I

864
01:12:14.920 --> 01:12:20.119
know another possibility. There is no
one angrier than a blackout drunk. If

865
01:12:20.159 --> 01:12:24.880
Smith is going to theorize about a
black out night for Michael, who then

866
01:12:25.000 --> 01:12:30.399
innocently changed the story because he didn't
think the police would believe him, then

867
01:12:30.479 --> 01:12:33.800
we do have to consider the opposite
that he got in a fight with his

868
01:12:33.880 --> 01:12:39.319
wife when he was black out drunk, maybe shoved her in the stairwell and

869
01:12:39.439 --> 01:12:44.079
then went to bed. Then he
woke up and found her, remembering pieces

870
01:12:44.119 --> 01:12:47.479
of what happened, and tries to
help her. I still believe that if

871
01:12:47.479 --> 01:12:53.439
Michael did kill his wife, it
was not premeditated and therefore not first degree

872
01:12:53.520 --> 01:12:58.640
murder. I think the towels and
paper towels around her were his genuine effort

873
01:12:58.720 --> 01:13:02.119
to try and help her. That's
probably one of my biggest irks with the

874
01:13:02.199 --> 01:13:08.199
prosecution. They got the theory of
the case all wrong. I could go

875
01:13:08.239 --> 01:13:12.159
on and on about the owl theory, and particularly about this book. I

876
01:13:12.279 --> 01:13:15.640
read it in one sitting on my
phone with a copy the publisher provided me.

877
01:13:16.600 --> 01:13:19.840
Oh, and I have to say
this, I wish his name was

878
01:13:19.880 --> 01:13:26.000
Teddy Smith instead of Teddy Smith with
two d's. I don't necessarily snicker when

879
01:13:26.039 --> 01:13:30.279
recording or writing, but I'll need
to mark this explicit just for his name

880
01:13:30.319 --> 01:13:33.359
alone. I hate saying that about
someone's name, but I know people will

881
01:13:33.439 --> 01:13:39.720
hear a different meaning in that word. But moving on, I've got several

882
01:13:39.760 --> 01:13:44.000
copies of his book Death by Talents
that I'm going to give away in my

883
01:13:44.119 --> 01:13:47.279
Facebook group and on Patreon. I
don't want you to think it's a cheap

884
01:13:47.319 --> 01:13:50.800
ploy to get you to Patreon,
so I am going to make that a

885
01:13:50.880 --> 01:13:56.239
giveaway for people who have already been
patrons, but you still have a chance

886
01:13:56.279 --> 01:14:00.479
if you join the group. I
also found some really cool hourings online.

887
01:14:01.079 --> 01:14:04.520
It's not like they were crazy expensive. They are just a little bit of

888
01:14:04.520 --> 01:14:11.479
trinket for the owl theory enthusiasts.
And hey, before I forget speaking of

889
01:14:11.520 --> 01:14:15.199
things, I forgot to tell you
in prior episodes. I meant to follow

890
01:14:15.279 --> 01:14:17.960
up on that black Cat poster I
told you about an episode two of this

891
01:14:18.119 --> 01:14:24.600
series, the shot Noire poster that
was framed and hung in the stairwell in

892
01:14:24.800 --> 01:14:30.039
court. One of the Germany friends
talked about how they recognized this poster and

893
01:14:30.159 --> 01:14:33.680
it was so eerie because Liz had
the exact same one, and how twisted

894
01:14:33.720 --> 01:14:40.199
it was that Michael put it in
the staircase or something. Really trying hard

895
01:14:40.239 --> 01:14:45.079
to make this as villainous as possible. There are some really dumb parts in

896
01:14:45.079 --> 01:14:49.000
this trial. Rudolf had the witness
pulled the Peterson print out of the frame

897
01:14:49.359 --> 01:14:55.239
and show it was a reprint done
in nineteen ninety seven that Kathleen had purchased.

898
01:14:55.600 --> 01:14:59.600
It had nothing to do with Liz. It's a really popular poster.

899
01:15:00.520 --> 01:15:03.720
Can you imagine wasting time on this
stuff in court? They needed a stricter

900
01:15:03.840 --> 01:15:08.920
judge. But anyway, I didn't
want to welch on my promise to explain

901
01:15:08.960 --> 01:15:12.640
that poster. I guess it's pop
culture too, if you think about it.

902
01:15:13.279 --> 01:15:15.640
So let's pay some bills and I'll
be right back and we can finally

903
01:15:15.680 --> 01:15:19.920
get to the fictional show. I'm
going to pause now for a short commercial

904
01:15:19.960 --> 01:15:29.640
break. I should have said fictional
shows just then, but I didn't want

905
01:15:29.680 --> 01:15:33.680
to confuse you. Or you may
remember I told you there is a sitcom

906
01:15:33.720 --> 01:15:39.159
based on this case. It's called
Trial and Error. And I am going

907
01:15:39.199 --> 01:15:44.279
to hell without even a handbasket to
write in because I did laugh. In

908
01:15:44.319 --> 01:15:48.079
my defense. John Lethgow plays the
Michael Peterson character. For crying out loud,

909
01:15:48.720 --> 01:15:55.159
he is always hilarious to me.
The true crime mockumentary, as Indy

910
01:15:55.239 --> 01:16:00.159
Wire dubbed it, came out in
March twenty seventeen, even before The Staircase

911
01:16:00.239 --> 01:16:03.920
was on Netflix, which was June
twenty eighteen. The writers had seen the

912
01:16:03.960 --> 01:16:10.159
documentary and just got the idea.
The second season was based on Robert Durst

913
01:16:10.560 --> 01:16:15.039
or the Jenks documentary on HBO.
I think it's a bit more tasteful because

914
01:16:15.039 --> 01:16:20.199
it has Kristin Chinelweth playing the filthy
rich Robert Durst character. She has killed

915
01:16:20.239 --> 01:16:26.079
her husband much like Durst. Is
suspected of killing his wife. It's funny,

916
01:16:26.319 --> 01:16:30.479
but not nearly as much on the
nose. I was surprised a second

917
01:16:30.479 --> 01:16:34.640
season got picked up. I guess
on the power of Lithgow alone, because

918
01:16:34.640 --> 01:16:40.159
it's not like now when everyone watched
The Staircase and would get all the first

919
01:16:40.199 --> 01:16:45.319
seasons jokes. But season two came
out in July twenty eighteen, right after

920
01:16:45.399 --> 01:16:49.119
Netflix bought The Staircase. Still,
I bet they were kicking themselves for not

921
01:16:49.199 --> 01:16:54.800
waiting a year for the first season, and season one is uncomfortably close.

922
01:16:55.960 --> 01:17:00.880
Like I sincerely hope none of the
family members have seen it. They even

923
01:17:00.960 --> 01:17:04.880
named his late wife Margaret, which
is so dumb, except it's fun to

924
01:17:04.920 --> 01:17:10.319
hear Lythgow say her name over and
over. I don't know. Like I

925
01:17:10.359 --> 01:17:13.960
said, I did laugh at parts, but it was honestly a bit too

926
01:17:14.000 --> 01:17:16.960
absurdest comedy for my taste. I
don't think I would have laughed if I

927
01:17:17.039 --> 01:17:21.399
wasn't in on the joke, but
maybe because Lythgow, damn it, I

928
01:17:21.520 --> 01:17:26.880
love that guy. But anyway,
there were only two seasons. They are

929
01:17:26.960 --> 01:17:30.079
on Amazon Prime if you're interested in
a seat next to me in Hell.

930
01:17:31.119 --> 01:17:35.119
So now let's get to the big
cahuna. The reason I actually got interested

931
01:17:35.159 --> 01:17:42.000
in covering Peterson in the first place. The HBO fictionalized version of the Staircase.

932
01:17:43.079 --> 01:17:46.800
It's not like the original documentary didn't
have its detractors. One big issue

933
01:17:46.840 --> 01:17:51.600
people always have as Kathleen is objectified. She is a murder victim and a

934
01:17:51.640 --> 01:17:57.960
pool of her own blood or magnified
to horrific proportions in court props. She

935
01:17:58.119 --> 01:18:01.439
is not the vibrant, loving person
that we have learned about through other mediums,

936
01:18:02.319 --> 01:18:08.960
and HBO definitely wants to remedy that
deficit. Tony Colette plays the Kathleen

937
01:18:09.079 --> 01:18:14.479
character. It doesn't feel right to
say Colette plays Kathleen because it also doesn't

938
01:18:14.479 --> 01:18:17.840
feel right to call Kathleen a character, which all the actors do, and

939
01:18:17.920 --> 01:18:23.880
they're behind the scenes bits for the
most part, they remove themselves from the

940
01:18:23.920 --> 01:18:29.079
real people and talk about their characters
and interviews. While she is this dynamic,

941
01:18:29.159 --> 01:18:33.399
loving woman, she is mainly played
as thoroughly stressed out by money,

942
01:18:33.640 --> 01:18:39.640
by her never ending responsibilities to the
children and to her husband, who is

943
01:18:39.680 --> 01:18:45.119
a man child. She plays it
bitter. Colin Firth plays Michael, and

944
01:18:45.279 --> 01:18:50.119
I have thoughts this feels like blasphemy, but Colin did not convey Michael's charm.

945
01:18:50.800 --> 01:18:55.840
I know many of you find him
to be insufferable, but many others

946
01:18:55.840 --> 01:19:00.319
found him very charming. He's the
clueless dad who tells the same story worry

947
01:19:00.359 --> 01:19:03.279
over and over and goes on too
long, who walks around with a pipe

948
01:19:03.359 --> 01:19:09.119
quoting Shakespeare. He might be pretentious, but he's witty and had a sense

949
01:19:09.159 --> 01:19:15.039
of humor. Even Candace admitted that
and found him entertaining. But his portrayal

950
01:19:15.079 --> 01:19:19.439
in the documentary is something Candace Samborini
had a huge problem with. Once they

951
01:19:19.439 --> 01:19:24.439
were back in court for the retrial
and she got to make another impact statement,

952
01:19:25.119 --> 01:19:30.479
she was pissed. She thought inappropriately
Michael joked around too much, and

953
01:19:30.560 --> 01:19:34.359
she said he threatened her and Caitlin, I do remember Michael saying, what

954
01:19:34.479 --> 01:19:39.239
a bitch about her wants? And
does she ever shut up? But he

955
01:19:39.319 --> 01:19:43.640
was on trial and got heated about
something. She said, it was just

956
01:19:43.760 --> 01:19:48.000
talk. Let me be clear,
I don't blame her. You don't blame

957
01:19:48.079 --> 01:19:53.880
her, And in the end Michael
did not blame her. In his book,

958
01:19:54.199 --> 01:19:58.840
he felt badly for her. He
understood her wrath. He thought if

959
01:19:58.880 --> 01:20:01.319
someone had murdered one of him his
siblings, he would have reacted the same

960
01:20:01.359 --> 01:20:06.399
way. What he said in the
documentary and has often said since, is

961
01:20:06.439 --> 01:20:11.920
that the way Candice has held on
to her anger and hatred is unhealthy.

962
01:20:12.479 --> 01:20:15.800
He told his kids that, despite
his conviction, he didn't want that for

963
01:20:15.840 --> 01:20:19.840
them. I respect that, and
I feel the same way for her.

964
01:20:20.439 --> 01:20:27.039
Her anger and pain is palpable.
I want that poor woman to find peace.

965
01:20:27.720 --> 01:20:31.960
She's given interviews to date Line saying
she felt Catharsis after the Alfred plea,

966
01:20:32.039 --> 01:20:36.880
and said something similar on that BBC
podcast. But she doesn't sound better.

967
01:20:38.359 --> 01:20:42.479
She sounds bitter. I feel like
Kathleen would want her to be happy

968
01:20:42.920 --> 01:20:46.479
and move on with her life.
I know I would if my sister was

969
01:20:46.520 --> 01:20:53.399
in that purgatory of pain because of
me. She is played brilliantly by Rosemary

970
01:20:53.439 --> 01:20:57.960
DeWitt in the series. One thing
the series does that I really do not

971
01:20:58.159 --> 01:21:03.079
like is go back and forth in
time with little warning or notification. Sometimes

972
01:21:03.119 --> 01:21:08.319
we are just supposed to figure it
out about how Gray Michael's hair is or

973
01:21:08.399 --> 01:21:12.760
which bet he wakes up in.
Playing with timelines and points of view as

974
01:21:12.800 --> 01:21:16.800
a trope of thrillers in novels and
in film It's always been around in some

975
01:21:16.880 --> 01:21:20.640
form, but it feels like it's
gotten so much more popular over the last

976
01:21:20.680 --> 01:21:26.640
decade or so. Every novelist wanted
to write the next Gone Girl, and

977
01:21:26.720 --> 01:21:30.840
for that matter, every director wanted
to make the next Gone Girl film.

978
01:21:30.520 --> 01:21:34.279
But it doesn't work here. It's
too jarring. I think they could have

979
01:21:34.319 --> 01:21:40.800
cut back and forth more judiciously and
it would have worked fine. Now,

980
01:21:40.920 --> 01:21:44.840
it's just irritating to be in one
scene and then pulled out to a different

981
01:21:44.880 --> 01:21:48.640
ear in different place, with no
warning. I think their point is the

982
01:21:48.720 --> 01:21:53.800
more things change, the more they
stay the same. It did work with

983
01:21:53.880 --> 01:21:59.399
Candice's victim impact speeches. Her hairstyle
is different enough that you know what they're

984
01:21:59.399 --> 01:22:03.720
doing and it is powerful. But
back to Colin Firth, I told you

985
01:22:03.760 --> 01:22:09.119
in one episode that a director told
him to watch the documentary or do his

986
01:22:09.119 --> 01:22:14.079
own research and decide if Michael was
innocent or guilty and play him that way.

987
01:22:14.880 --> 01:22:18.000
I'm going to guess he went for
guilty for many reasons, but also

988
01:22:18.399 --> 01:22:23.279
he's really just written that way.
They also go out of their way to

989
01:22:23.319 --> 01:22:28.119
portray him as a bully. In
one scene when his brother talks about needing

990
01:22:28.119 --> 01:22:30.600
to fly home, for a bit, and Michael argues that he needs him.

991
01:22:31.239 --> 01:22:35.399
The brother says those magic fighting words, It's not all about you,

992
01:22:36.520 --> 01:22:42.520
it is all about me. Michael
roars, He's on trial for his life

993
01:22:42.960 --> 01:22:46.880
and until it's over, it's about
him. Perhaps this is a Michael that

994
01:22:46.960 --> 01:22:51.520
people saw off camera, but it's
not what we ever saw. There is

995
01:22:51.560 --> 01:22:57.520
also a particularly cruel scene later in
the series when the family goes to a

996
01:22:57.560 --> 01:23:01.680
Mexican restaurant after Michael has been released
to await his new trial. He is

997
01:23:01.720 --> 01:23:09.079
so grouchy and mean to his children
that Todd played by Patrick Schwartzenegger, orders

998
01:23:09.079 --> 01:23:13.800
a double tequila shot after having been
sober for a few months. So this

999
01:23:13.880 --> 01:23:17.800
series is pretty much saying that he
drove his sober son to drinking. He

1000
01:23:17.880 --> 01:23:21.880
had been pissed at Todd for a
while because Todd once forgot to put money

1001
01:23:21.880 --> 01:23:27.399
in his commissary account in prison.
Todd had always been the golden boy,

1002
01:23:27.720 --> 01:23:30.439
the favorite. Clayton is the fuck
up, as they put it, and

1003
01:23:30.640 --> 01:23:34.439
frankly, he was a fuck up. We know he spent time in prison

1004
01:23:34.840 --> 01:23:41.319
for what Michael just wanted to blithely
call college pranks, but he has changed

1005
01:23:41.359 --> 01:23:44.840
by this time. His dad is
in prison, and he puts the commissary

1006
01:23:44.880 --> 01:23:49.920
deposits on auto withdrawal and his account. Now Clayton is the golden Boy and

1007
01:23:50.039 --> 01:23:55.920
Todd is out in the cold.
Michael barely looks at him. I don't

1008
01:23:55.960 --> 01:24:00.159
remember this from Michael's book. Maybe
I forgot or missed something, but I

1009
01:24:00.239 --> 01:24:04.479
certainly don't remember him bad mouthing any
of his children. At this same dinner,

1010
01:24:04.680 --> 01:24:09.760
he calls Margaret Margie the martyr,
not for the first time in this

1011
01:24:09.840 --> 01:24:14.279
series either. Again, I don't
remember that from Diane Fanning's book either.

1012
01:24:15.479 --> 01:24:18.640
I do wonder if this Todd stuff
is related to how he went off the

1013
01:24:18.720 --> 01:24:23.520
rails on social media. As I
told you, he turned on his dad,

1014
01:24:24.039 --> 01:24:27.319
and to me, in the videos
I saw, he did seem like

1015
01:24:27.359 --> 01:24:31.119
he was on something or drinking.
And there's plenty of partying with Todd and

1016
01:24:31.159 --> 01:24:34.880
Clayton in the series as well.
But even though Clayton is the one with

1017
01:24:34.960 --> 01:24:41.199
the past, it's Todd we see
doing coke and drinking to blackouts. But

1018
01:24:41.399 --> 01:24:45.239
no one connected to HBO would have
been at that Mexican restaurant or told anyone

1019
01:24:45.279 --> 01:24:51.960
about it. It's all fiction,
and I would say it's damaging in my

1020
01:24:53.079 --> 01:24:58.800
worldview of true crime cases being fictionalized, it's the dialogue they're supposed to be

1021
01:24:58.840 --> 01:25:03.880
imagining, or they are cutting and
combining characters or scenes for time. What

1022
01:25:04.039 --> 01:25:11.000
showrunners Maggie con and Antonio Campos have
done here is use a pattern and then

1023
01:25:11.039 --> 01:25:15.760
cut it to pieces on the wrong
kind of cloth. As great as Tony

1024
01:25:15.840 --> 01:25:20.520
Colette is, we really don't see
much of Kathleen's reported warmth her intelligence.

1025
01:25:21.279 --> 01:25:28.039
We see stress and her temper and
exhaustion. And while Kathleen was arguably going

1026
01:25:28.079 --> 01:25:31.319
through a lot at the time,
no one has characterized her that way in

1027
01:25:31.319 --> 01:25:36.760
the series. If anything, this
Kathleen is cold, especially to her sister.

1028
01:25:38.680 --> 01:25:43.119
Candice has publicly said that Kathleen wasn't
just her sister, but also her

1029
01:25:43.119 --> 01:25:48.079
best friend. I was left feeling
there was competitiveness bordering on jealousy between the

1030
01:25:48.119 --> 01:25:53.880
sisters after Fanning's book, and that
is definitely how the show played it,

1031
01:25:54.359 --> 01:26:00.520
a really contentious relationship. Like maybe
that's why Candice became such an advocate for

1032
01:26:00.680 --> 01:26:05.479
her sister, because she felt bad
about their adversarial relationship. That's my guess.

1033
01:26:06.119 --> 01:26:09.640
Like I said, you get a
sense of it in the book,

1034
01:26:09.840 --> 01:26:15.000
but nothing like this that Thanksgiving scene
was complete fiction and it was really ugly.

1035
01:26:16.039 --> 01:26:19.800
The only real warmth we see are
in the scenes with her daughter Caitlin,

1036
01:26:20.479 --> 01:26:26.920
and later Caitlin not only grieves for
her mother but her lost sisters.

1037
01:26:27.359 --> 01:26:32.079
Once she gets on Kathleen's family's side
and is separated from them forever, we

1038
01:26:32.159 --> 01:26:36.199
are left to think. The show
certainly mind a lot from the book written

1039
01:26:36.199 --> 01:26:41.760
in Blood. I haven't heard Diane
Fanning say anything about it, but Michael

1040
01:26:41.800 --> 01:26:45.920
has certainly complained. There are plenty
of prison scenes they could only have gotten

1041
01:26:45.960 --> 01:26:49.560
from his books, and they did
not ask him permission or pay him,

1042
01:26:50.399 --> 01:26:56.680
which technically they didn't have to.
If the whole series was based on Fanning

1043
01:26:56.880 --> 01:27:00.720
or Peterson's book, then yes,
they would pay. Campos did pay Jean

1044
01:27:00.920 --> 01:27:05.600
Xavier de Lestrade for the rights to
the Staircase, and not just the thirteen

1045
01:27:05.640 --> 01:27:12.439
episodes Lestrade produced. He handed over
eight hundred hours of tapes he had to

1046
01:27:12.479 --> 01:27:18.319
Antonio Campus. Lestrade said it was
only seventy five hundred euros or nine thousand,

1047
01:27:18.399 --> 01:27:24.640
three hundred and seventy dollars, which
Michael Peterson said made him a pimp.

1048
01:27:25.279 --> 01:27:29.560
I'm not joking, he said.
He pimped out his family and used

1049
01:27:29.600 --> 01:27:34.199
a lot of other colorful language,
blasting Lestrade and some emails to Variety.

1050
01:27:34.359 --> 01:27:40.159
Lestrade pointed out that Michael's story was
quote a public story. They did not

1051
01:27:40.319 --> 01:27:45.119
need to buy the docu rights to
have Michael Peterson and his children as characters

1052
01:27:45.159 --> 01:27:49.119
in the show, but he added, I am terribly upset by what Antonio

1053
01:27:49.239 --> 01:27:54.520
did to them. It is unfair. I understand why Michael is mad.

1054
01:27:54.880 --> 01:28:00.199
I feel really sorry, but Michael
is focusing on the wrong target. Well,

1055
01:28:00.239 --> 01:28:04.039
did later calm down and focused his
ire where it belonged at Antonio campus.

1056
01:28:05.039 --> 01:28:10.000
You can't fabricate stories about living people
the way he did when they are

1057
01:28:10.000 --> 01:28:14.760
not public figures, he fumed,
Well, yes you can, as long

1058
01:28:14.800 --> 01:28:17.680
as you say based on a true
story or inspired by a true story.

1059
01:28:18.520 --> 01:28:23.399
I could wax on about this for
years because it's one of my passions.

1060
01:28:24.119 --> 01:28:28.840
Obviously, as a true crime writer, I always want to see what creatives

1061
01:28:28.880 --> 01:28:32.439
will do with these stories. I
was dying to see the staircase. I

1062
01:28:32.520 --> 01:28:38.119
was obsessed with Ryan Murphy's American crime
story on O. J. Simpson because

1063
01:28:38.119 --> 01:28:42.760
I covered that case, and I
am off for creative license. But this

1064
01:28:42.840 --> 01:28:46.560
doesn't feel right, it's hurtful.
I can see why Michael was angry at

1065
01:28:46.560 --> 01:28:50.840
how his kids were portrayed. I
can see why Margaret was so upset when

1066
01:28:50.880 --> 01:28:56.479
she stumbled onto ads on Instagram.
She's really the only one who has spoken

1067
01:28:56.520 --> 01:29:00.199
out. And I can see why
the documentary filmmakers were angry at how they

1068
01:29:00.199 --> 01:29:05.880
were portrayed, because that's the whole
point, this meta idea of showing you

1069
01:29:06.279 --> 01:29:12.479
the filming of the famous documentary while
showing you the supposed real lives of the

1070
01:29:12.520 --> 01:29:16.600
people in it and what led up
to Kathleen's death. This all started when

1071
01:29:16.680 --> 01:29:21.880
Campos reached out to Lestrade to express
his admiration for The Staircase. As he

1072
01:29:21.880 --> 01:29:27.279
told Vanity Fair, that was in
twenty eleven, when there were only ten

1073
01:29:27.319 --> 01:29:31.319
episodes. Campos had already been interested
in making it into an independent film.

1074
01:29:32.079 --> 01:29:38.039
Other studios were also looking at it. His point to Lestrade was it was

1075
01:29:38.079 --> 01:29:43.680
already in the public domain, and
it was. But Lestrade thought better the

1076
01:29:43.720 --> 01:29:46.279
devil I know, I guess,
he said. Quote. Since I know

1077
01:29:46.359 --> 01:29:50.520
that Antonio had in mind to tell
the story of Michael and the documentary,

1078
01:29:50.960 --> 01:29:56.399
I thought it would be better to
cooperate and be involved in the process than

1079
01:29:56.520 --> 01:30:00.199
to stay totally outside as a stranger. In a way, I thought I

1080
01:30:00.239 --> 01:30:04.000
was protecting Michael and his family by
being involved, but I was wrong,

1081
01:30:05.159 --> 01:30:10.960
and therein lies the rub for this
show. Lestrade was credited as a co

1082
01:30:11.159 --> 01:30:15.479
executive producer on the show, but
he was not consulted. He read no

1083
01:30:15.640 --> 01:30:19.439
scripts, he was not paid,
and he just trusted Campos. The two

1084
01:30:19.479 --> 01:30:23.880
men would meet up for coffee from
time to time when they were in the

1085
01:30:23.920 --> 01:30:28.840
same country and call each other an
email. I'm sure he feels embarrassed now

1086
01:30:28.880 --> 01:30:33.520
that he was so naive. Yet
let's be honest. Antonio Campos had all

1087
01:30:33.560 --> 01:30:39.000
the tapes and we don't know what
was on them, but I will wager

1088
01:30:39.239 --> 01:30:42.920
it was not that Peterson kids screaming
at each other like they do in the

1089
01:30:43.000 --> 01:30:46.399
series. They were too well behaved
to have done that in front of company,

1090
01:30:46.680 --> 01:30:53.960
much less on camera. Documentary filmmaker
Don Porter told Variety quote the risk

1091
01:30:54.000 --> 01:30:59.000
of allowing someone else to fictionalize your
story is that you can't reclaim that narrative,

1092
01:30:59.079 --> 01:31:02.920
even if it's so clear that the
fiction is false. Several people involved

1093
01:31:03.079 --> 01:31:08.680
raised concerns that more people would see
the HBO version and believe it as truth,

1094
01:31:09.359 --> 01:31:13.720
I'm not so sure about that.
Netflix is a giant and The Staircase

1095
01:31:13.880 --> 01:31:17.840
was long a cult classic. HBO
will always be the elite cable giant,

1096
01:31:18.279 --> 01:31:23.720
but it is still finding its footing
on streaming. In my opinion of HBO,

1097
01:31:24.279 --> 01:31:29.159
Mayor of Eastown beats The Staircase hands
down. There's no comparison, and

1098
01:31:29.279 --> 01:31:33.279
it is fiction, but it's crime
writing and performing at its best. I

1099
01:31:33.319 --> 01:31:38.840
think despite the star power of Colin
Firth and Tony Collette, it is still

1100
01:31:38.880 --> 01:31:44.079
a true crime niche show. People
who liked the documentary will want to watch

1101
01:31:44.119 --> 01:31:47.399
it, but I don't think it
was appointment television the way Mayor of Eastown

1102
01:31:47.640 --> 01:31:54.199
was. That show broke the servers
on the finale. Rotten Tomatoes has The

1103
01:31:54.279 --> 01:31:59.720
Staircase at ninety two percent with reviewers
but a fifty seven percent audience rating.

1104
01:32:00.840 --> 01:32:05.880
Reviewers slobbered over it. They loved
all the performances, with several singling out

1105
01:32:05.960 --> 01:32:12.159
Parker Posey as Freda Black. She
was uncanny. She didn't just look like

1106
01:32:12.279 --> 01:32:15.880
her, she embodied her. She
nailed that accent better than any other actor.

1107
01:32:16.720 --> 01:32:23.479
Parker Posey is Fredda and all her
homophobic glory. She's funny and biting

1108
01:32:23.560 --> 01:32:29.000
and congenial and outrageous, and the
series is open about how Freda is used

1109
01:32:29.039 --> 01:32:33.520
in court. She herself starts using
that courtroom drawl about the porn and Michael's

1110
01:32:33.600 --> 01:32:40.039
computer as they are brainstorming in Harden's
office. Then Harden says, well,

1111
01:32:40.399 --> 01:32:44.439
but we need more than just the
Freda Black show. This part is fiction,

1112
01:32:44.720 --> 01:32:48.720
but it's still wrong or perhaps being
ironic. Freda Black and Awayne Deaver

1113
01:32:48.840 --> 01:32:54.039
won that trial. In one scene, she is sitting at a table of

1114
01:32:54.039 --> 01:33:00.520
men going over Michael's emails, and
her Southern pearl clutching is priceless. She

1115
01:33:00.640 --> 01:33:04.039
asked, what one of the words
even meant if you've still got kids in

1116
01:33:04.039 --> 01:33:08.800
the room, cover their ears now, though I won't actually say the word,

1117
01:33:09.199 --> 01:33:16.159
just the answer B two one.
The answer was connelingus. On the

1118
01:33:16.239 --> 01:33:21.439
other end, what's worse to Michael
Peterson is Colin Firth seems to demonstrate this

1119
01:33:21.600 --> 01:33:28.199
act to his surprised but aroused wife
a few scenes later. This would be

1120
01:33:28.239 --> 01:33:32.199
after he came home disappointed from a
lost encounter with a man. The real

1121
01:33:32.239 --> 01:33:36.560
Peterson found the sex scenes to be
very offensive. He said he wasn't trolling

1122
01:33:36.560 --> 01:33:42.560
the porn section at Blockbuster for hookups, and I believe him he was more

1123
01:33:42.600 --> 01:33:46.439
discreet. He also claims to have
never watched it, but he clearly has.

1124
01:33:46.760 --> 01:33:51.079
He knows exactly what to complain about. I've gotten off track a bit

1125
01:33:51.119 --> 01:33:56.039
with some funny stuff, but I'll
want to say I do appreciate what they

1126
01:33:56.119 --> 01:34:00.760
wanted to do here to explore the
narrative of truth, because it's meta.

1127
01:34:01.000 --> 01:34:05.560
It's not just the Peterson story,
it's also the story of the French filmmakers.

1128
01:34:06.039 --> 01:34:11.640
Sometimes scenes are shot for shot with
a documentary. It opens with a

1129
01:34:11.680 --> 01:34:15.840
black title card with a quote from
the Bible. I was born for this.

1130
01:34:15.399 --> 01:34:19.079
I came into this world for this, to bear witness to the truth.

1131
01:34:19.520 --> 01:34:23.720
And all who are on the side
of truth, listen to my voice

1132
01:34:24.600 --> 01:34:31.279
truth, said Pilot. What is
that John eighteen thirty seven. Ooof that

1133
01:34:31.479 --> 01:34:36.000
is a heavy way to start a
show, to quote Jesus and Puncious Pilot's

1134
01:34:36.039 --> 01:34:42.520
speech about truth. But I guess
that is the point. The showrunners played

1135
01:34:42.560 --> 01:34:46.000
so heavily with the truth in this
it is like what is truth? What

1136
01:34:46.199 --> 01:34:50.279
is fiction? And all of the
make believe scenes only work because of the

1137
01:34:50.319 --> 01:34:56.279
stellar cast. Sophie Turner, better
known as Sanza, from Game of Thrones

1138
01:34:56.359 --> 01:35:01.600
plays Margaret and Odessey Young as the
highly emotion Martha, a brit and an

1139
01:35:01.600 --> 01:35:08.039
Aussie, just like Firth and Collette. Patrick Schwarzenegger as Todd is so on

1140
01:35:08.079 --> 01:35:12.720
the nose it's freaky. Sometimes when
I think about Todd, I see Patrick's

1141
01:35:12.720 --> 01:35:15.880
face. They did not find a
similar looking young man to play Clayton,

1142
01:35:16.239 --> 01:35:20.720
even though the men resemble each other
in real life, and Peterson took issue

1143
01:35:20.720 --> 01:35:26.279
with that too. He was played
by Dane Dehan, whose good looks were

1144
01:35:26.359 --> 01:35:30.680
dialed down. Michael mentions the bags
under his eyes like he's a drug addict.

1145
01:35:30.319 --> 01:35:33.640
I'm not sure what the point of
that is, but I think they

1146
01:35:33.720 --> 01:35:38.399
chose a good actor who didn't look
like his real life counterparts so much.

1147
01:35:39.079 --> 01:35:43.199
But they did very much highlight bags
under Kathleen's eyes, so maybe it was

1148
01:35:43.279 --> 01:35:47.640
deliberate. I don't know. But
aside from the actor Collen Moss, whose

1149
01:35:47.640 --> 01:35:51.279
hair duo did most of the work
as Jim Harden, the actors were chosen

1150
01:35:51.319 --> 01:35:56.439
for acting. While we are talking
about the acting, we should talk about

1151
01:35:56.439 --> 01:36:01.680
the stunts. Tony Collette and her
stunt double Linda Kelur did who extensively researched

1152
01:36:01.720 --> 01:36:05.640
the death scenes, of which there
were three. Like I said, I

1153
01:36:05.720 --> 01:36:10.600
will play them in my group,
but not on open social media. You

1154
01:36:10.640 --> 01:36:14.800
can either watch the series or search
YouTube as well. I'll tell you where

1155
01:36:14.840 --> 01:36:18.520
in the series. I will give
you a spoiler alert here because if you

1156
01:36:18.560 --> 01:36:23.159
want to watch it for yourself,
do that first, because I am going

1157
01:36:23.199 --> 01:36:27.920
through these. The first one is
the theory of the fall that it was

1158
01:36:27.960 --> 01:36:31.479
an accident. That is an episode
two, At about the fifty three minute

1159
01:36:31.479 --> 01:36:35.640
mark, when she walks into the
house yawning, you can hear the flip

1160
01:36:35.680 --> 01:36:40.760
flops clapping the floor. She yawns
again, so hard it made me yawn.

1161
01:36:41.399 --> 01:36:45.560
The dread is horrific. She walks
in to go read that email and

1162
01:36:45.600 --> 01:36:49.560
then changes her mind and turns back
around to the stairs. She then tries

1163
01:36:49.600 --> 01:36:55.079
to jog up the first few steps
in her flip flops and trips, falling

1164
01:36:55.119 --> 01:36:59.359
backwards, hitting her head on the
edge of the doorway, smack on that

1165
01:36:59.479 --> 01:37:03.920
sharp crown molding. She is knocked
out for a moment and then wakes stunned

1166
01:37:03.920 --> 01:37:09.119
and tries to sit up. She's
pulling herself and when she does sit up,

1167
01:37:09.560 --> 01:37:13.960
the blood pours down her face.
She coughs, gags, and pulls

1168
01:37:14.000 --> 01:37:17.039
herself to a sitting position and cries, Oh God, Michael, help me.

1169
01:37:17.720 --> 01:37:21.600
Then she tries to stand in her
own blood and falls again, and

1170
01:37:21.640 --> 01:37:26.960
then we witness her have a sort
of seizure and take her last breaths.

1171
01:37:28.399 --> 01:37:32.119
Then we get David Rudolph's soft voice
over the film talking about how Michael got

1172
01:37:32.119 --> 01:37:36.199
towels, cleaned her face, and
called nine one one, and then the

1173
01:37:36.239 --> 01:37:41.880
film cuts to the war room at
the Peterson House with David's team and Michael

1174
01:37:42.039 --> 01:37:46.159
sitting around the dining room table.
The point is this is now the official

1175
01:37:46.239 --> 01:37:53.079
version of Kathleen's death. They are
going with the second theory, better known

1176
01:37:53.119 --> 01:37:57.279
as the murder theory, is shown
in episode four at about the fifty seven

1177
01:37:57.319 --> 01:38:00.720
minute mark. You do see her
find emails and porn on the computer.

1178
01:38:01.319 --> 01:38:05.159
I guess despite what the technicians said
in court, they went with this whole

1179
01:38:05.199 --> 01:38:11.319
theory. She sits inside waiting for
Michael to come in and says, I

1180
01:38:11.399 --> 01:38:15.720
always knew, I think somewhere underneath. What are you talking about? He

1181
01:38:15.800 --> 01:38:19.159
says, I'm talking about the porn, the escorts, and the men,

1182
01:38:19.560 --> 01:38:24.840
the men, the men. He
tries to tell her she's drunk and it's

1183
01:38:24.880 --> 01:38:29.000
called research, but she tells him
to stop lying. It's a fight,

1184
01:38:29.479 --> 01:38:33.680
an ugly one. She tells him
she's leaving him. As she gets angrier,

1185
01:38:33.840 --> 01:38:38.880
he walks away from her, which
makes it worse. She trails him,

1186
01:38:38.920 --> 01:38:43.119
saying awful things in her hurt.
You're nothing, she cries. He

1187
01:38:43.319 --> 01:38:46.319
is the one walking up the stairs. She is following him up and shouting,

1188
01:38:46.680 --> 01:38:51.159
I've given my whole life to a
pathetic closet case. And then he

1189
01:38:51.199 --> 01:38:56.159
turns around and yells shut up and
pushes her. That's the first time she

1190
01:38:56.239 --> 01:39:00.159
hits her head. Then he steps
down and grabs her neck and banks her

1191
01:39:00.159 --> 01:39:03.520
head on the step twice. She
wasn't really out yet. It's still a

1192
01:39:03.560 --> 01:39:08.640
struggle. Then he seems to come
to his senses. Oh my god,

1193
01:39:08.800 --> 01:39:13.079
he says, and he runs for
towels as she goes through the same sitting

1194
01:39:13.119 --> 01:39:15.960
up and falling down part she did
the first time. But this time he

1195
01:39:16.000 --> 01:39:20.000
comes back with towels, and she's
still fighting him. Even though he's trying

1196
01:39:20.000 --> 01:39:26.199
to help her. He's already saying
to her or himself, you tripped.

1197
01:39:26.640 --> 01:39:30.760
He's calling her baby, trying to
soothe her. Then her seizure here is

1198
01:39:30.960 --> 01:39:35.960
much worse as she is flopping and
taking her last breaths. It's the only

1199
01:39:36.000 --> 01:39:43.039
close up they use, and it
is devastating. They show Michael just standing

1200
01:39:43.079 --> 01:39:48.239
there coldly watching her. Then the
screen cuts to Margaret and Martha hearing the

1201
01:39:48.279 --> 01:39:55.640
guilty verdict in court and sobbing.
The next cut is to Caitlin and Martha

1202
01:39:55.840 --> 01:40:00.279
being pulled in opposite directions as the
press tries to get them on their way

1203
01:40:00.279 --> 01:40:03.960
out. I appreciate that the girls
are still very much the heart of the

1204
01:40:04.079 --> 01:40:10.000
story. This death scene is similar
to how I imagine the murder would have

1205
01:40:10.000 --> 01:40:14.439
happened. They use every bit of
the theory anyone has given, with the

1206
01:40:14.520 --> 01:40:18.399
exception of the blowpoke, since it
was disproven in court, and this still

1207
01:40:18.439 --> 01:40:24.960
does not look premeditated. It's definitely
heat of passion after Kathleen called him a

1208
01:40:25.000 --> 01:40:30.119
lot of awful things, unless she
think about him banging her head, which

1209
01:40:30.119 --> 01:40:34.199
only he would know about. The
third scene, the now infamous owl theory,

1210
01:40:34.600 --> 01:40:39.560
is an episode six at about the
fifty two minute mark, and they

1211
01:40:39.600 --> 01:40:44.880
go with Larry Pollard's version. They
show Kathleen putting out the reindeer. There

1212
01:40:44.920 --> 01:40:48.720
are night sounds, other birds,
and the owl, and then it suddenly

1213
01:40:48.760 --> 01:40:53.720
swoops and hits her head. She
falls to the ground, gets up,

1214
01:40:53.960 --> 01:40:58.800
and it swoops and then attaches to
her head. You can see her fighting

1215
01:40:58.800 --> 01:41:02.079
it off as it's to the door. She's screaming, Michael helped me.

1216
01:41:02.920 --> 01:41:06.720
She walks in the house, dazed, still calling for him, but shutting

1217
01:41:06.760 --> 01:41:11.640
the door as if to keep the
owl out, leaving the blood smear we

1218
01:41:11.760 --> 01:41:15.600
know will be found on that door. Later, she walks kind of blindly

1219
01:41:15.640 --> 01:41:18.640
to the stairwell and this time she
doesn't trip. She faints at about the

1220
01:41:18.720 --> 01:41:25.000
third step and falls backwards. Then
we go through the horrific death scene again,

1221
01:41:25.960 --> 01:41:29.159
and then this time they cut to
Sophie on the phone with Caitlin.

1222
01:41:30.079 --> 01:41:33.319
She's just told her about the owl
theory and says she is humbly asking for

1223
01:41:33.399 --> 01:41:39.960
permission to exhume her mother. Caitlyn
says, what the fuck is wrong with

1224
01:41:40.000 --> 01:41:45.279
you? Now? This never happened. No one ever asked that I know

1225
01:41:45.359 --> 01:41:49.159
of. Michael said he wouldn't have
allowed it, and Sophie Brunette hotly denied

1226
01:41:49.199 --> 01:41:55.720
it. But these three scenes are
remarkable. I'm sorry to go into so

1227
01:41:55.840 --> 01:41:59.479
much detail. I went back and
forth on how much I should give you,

1228
01:42:00.119 --> 01:42:02.680
but it felt important if you're not
going to watch it. It felt

1229
01:42:02.720 --> 01:42:08.760
important to analyze it even if you
did watch it. And as critic Richard

1230
01:42:08.800 --> 01:42:13.159
Lawson put it, what we need
to see quote is the most bold and

1231
01:42:13.279 --> 01:42:17.680
critical interrogation of our interest in such
things. Is this which you wanted to

1232
01:42:17.720 --> 01:42:24.800
see? He seeds in his review. Yes, it is for me and

1233
01:42:24.920 --> 01:42:28.880
lots of people. I told you
in earlier episodes. I think there is

1234
01:42:28.920 --> 01:42:33.159
something to these reenactments. Imagine if
attorneys could film things like this for court.

1235
01:42:33.760 --> 01:42:39.239
Which one do you choose? They
all explain the blood evidence every time,

1236
01:42:40.199 --> 01:42:43.880
But to me, the owl still
makes the most sense because of the

1237
01:42:43.880 --> 01:42:47.279
wounds on Kathleen's head, as well
as the drops of blood outside and the

1238
01:42:47.319 --> 01:42:53.399
spirit on the outside door from where
she came in. Detractors of the theory

1239
01:42:53.520 --> 01:42:57.880
say, why wasn't there a more
significant blood trail. I don't know that

1240
01:42:57.960 --> 01:43:01.119
answer. I can guess because her
hair was soaking it up at first until

1241
01:43:01.159 --> 01:43:06.720
she fell in the stairwell, I
said Larry Pollard's version. Because Titty Smith

1242
01:43:06.800 --> 01:43:12.520
thinks that the owl held on all
the way into the house. He thinks

1243
01:43:12.520 --> 01:43:15.920
she got away from it by running
or trying to run up the stairs.

1244
01:43:15.479 --> 01:43:20.079
Then the owl waits in the house
until it's safe to fly out, maybe

1245
01:43:20.159 --> 01:43:26.760
once police and paramedics are crawling all
over and doors are open. Smith believes

1246
01:43:26.800 --> 01:43:30.840
there were feathers all over the crime
scene, even one on Kathleen's face.

1247
01:43:30.680 --> 01:43:34.000
I'm not so sure about this part
of his theory. I don't know enough

1248
01:43:34.039 --> 01:43:39.479
about owls to say that makes sense
or not. But even though I do

1249
01:43:39.560 --> 01:43:43.800
believe that the police in DA's office
were corrupt in this case, I'm not

1250
01:43:43.840 --> 01:43:47.800
sure I believe they actually cleaned up
feathers and hid them. But think about

1251
01:43:47.800 --> 01:43:53.079
it for yourselves. Look at his
photos, read his book. If you're

1252
01:43:53.079 --> 01:43:58.039
like me, you want the truth, whatever it is. And I don't

1253
01:43:58.039 --> 01:44:00.520
know about you, but I need
a breather to take a small final break.

1254
01:44:00.920 --> 01:44:12.119
Sit tight. Let's talk about some
other truths. The death scenes are

1255
01:44:12.159 --> 01:44:16.399
honestly what made this series for me. That sounds gruesome, but I think

1256
01:44:16.479 --> 01:44:21.079
we have talked about the possibilities of
what happened to Kathleen for years, and

1257
01:44:21.239 --> 01:44:28.199
Campos and Khan have shown us what
could have happened. But what sucks is

1258
01:44:28.239 --> 01:44:31.239
that it will be hard for anyone
else to see the importance of these because

1259
01:44:31.279 --> 01:44:36.960
they fictionalized so much else. I
have talked about the Peterson family and Candice,

1260
01:44:38.439 --> 01:44:43.800
but the original Staircase filmmakers were terribly
misrepresented, and the Devince team wasn't

1261
01:44:43.840 --> 01:44:49.359
handled great either. Jean Xavier de
Laestrade is played excellently by French actor Vincent

1262
01:44:49.520 --> 01:44:55.000
Verminion, who is black. Though
Jean is white. In an effort for

1263
01:44:55.079 --> 01:45:00.279
diversity, several black actors are substituted. Robert Creighton plays Ron Jarette and a

1264
01:45:00.359 --> 01:45:03.560
white guy who looked like an original
cop on the show Law and Order.

1265
01:45:03.640 --> 01:45:09.319
In real life, Creton is a
fine actor, but his character is not

1266
01:45:09.479 --> 01:45:14.800
developed enough, so his big scene
in court when he explains his investigation into

1267
01:45:14.880 --> 01:45:18.600
Duane Deaver doesn't pack the same punch
that it does in the real documentary.

1268
01:45:19.600 --> 01:45:25.439
He's certainly not the menacing man that
Juror claimed to see. It's a shame

1269
01:45:25.479 --> 01:45:29.760
they wasted a good actor and such
a compelling figure. In the real documentary,

1270
01:45:30.720 --> 01:45:33.680
Jean is played as a director who
directs his subjects like their actors,

1271
01:45:34.119 --> 01:45:40.319
rather than just passively recording, as
he actually did for the documentary. In

1272
01:45:40.399 --> 01:45:45.079
an early scene, he even asks
Michael to do a scene again with more

1273
01:45:45.119 --> 01:45:49.560
emotion. He is shown arguing with
his other producers about how guilty to make

1274
01:45:49.640 --> 01:45:55.479
Michael look in the editing room.
The real Jean was very offended by this.

1275
01:45:55.720 --> 01:46:00.039
He said, I understand if you
dramatize, but when you attack the

1276
01:46:00.119 --> 01:46:04.319
credibility of my work, that's really
not acceptable to me. David Rudolph went

1277
01:46:04.359 --> 01:46:09.359
so far as to call the show
racist and anti Semitic for his depiction.

1278
01:46:10.319 --> 01:46:15.359
We first meet Rudolph and a diner
spreading mustard on pastrami, talking with his

1279
01:46:15.479 --> 01:46:19.159
mouthful, explaining how much his defense
would cost and how it would work to

1280
01:46:19.239 --> 01:46:24.760
Michael and his brother. The real
Rudolph said they may as well have hung

1281
01:46:24.760 --> 01:46:28.960
a sign over his head that said, Jue, he is a professional who

1282
01:46:29.000 --> 01:46:32.279
met Michael Peterson for the first time
in his offices. I don't blame him

1283
01:46:32.279 --> 01:46:39.079
for being offended. Producer Alison lou
Shack or lu Shak isn't even in the

1284
01:46:39.199 --> 01:46:44.399
series. Instead, the late producer
Dennis Ponsett is given all the credit,

1285
01:46:44.760 --> 01:46:48.880
and he was rarely even in America. First off, she agreed with Lestrade

1286
01:46:49.000 --> 01:46:54.680
quote to malign or discredit our filmmaking
by making it seem as though we were

1287
01:46:54.720 --> 01:47:00.279
biased from the beginning. As insulting
and professionally damaging. And then she explained

1288
01:47:00.560 --> 01:47:04.439
that she did not care to be
in the series, and she understood how

1289
01:47:04.560 --> 01:47:09.359
characters are combined for Tom, but
to cut out all the work of a

1290
01:47:09.439 --> 01:47:13.399
woman, a new mother in fact, and give it to a man who

1291
01:47:13.520 --> 01:47:18.039
isn't even alive was insulting. She
spent so much time in America, first

1292
01:47:18.159 --> 01:47:24.520
finding the Peterson case, then setting
up the complicated network of relationships that it

1293
01:47:24.560 --> 01:47:29.760
took to start filming, that when
she returned home her own son didn't recognize

1294
01:47:29.800 --> 01:47:34.079
her. She said, I have
mentored so many young female producers with the

1295
01:47:34.159 --> 01:47:39.720
lessons I learned from making the Staircase
and the demands it made on me as

1296
01:47:39.720 --> 01:47:43.880
a new mother and a professional.
So to have all my work being either

1297
01:47:43.960 --> 01:47:48.199
erased as if it never happened,
or assigned to a male character is offensive.

1298
01:47:49.079 --> 01:47:54.600
So why would they give this dynamic
woman's work to an old white guy?

1299
01:47:55.319 --> 01:47:59.319
I guess because they thought it worked
better. And later scenes when Ponsett

1300
01:47:59.520 --> 01:48:03.399
is fixed only arguing with the black
version of Jean Xavier, and more importantly,

1301
01:48:03.720 --> 01:48:09.439
the female editor, Sophie Brunette.
We can't have two women in charge,

1302
01:48:09.479 --> 01:48:14.319
can we? And let's talk about
Sophie, she is arguably the most

1303
01:48:14.439 --> 01:48:18.439
maligned. She was in a romantic
relationship with Michael, who was seventeen years

1304
01:48:18.439 --> 01:48:23.279
her senior, but not until after
the film was finished and he was in

1305
01:48:23.319 --> 01:48:27.359
prison. The series makes it look
as though she falls in love with him

1306
01:48:27.399 --> 01:48:31.399
through the tapes and wants to edit
him more sympathetically. That's not true,

1307
01:48:31.720 --> 01:48:36.479
at least according to the real Sophie. She felt sorry for Michael and horrified

1308
01:48:36.600 --> 01:48:41.520
at his life sentence. They don't
have that in France. She said,

1309
01:48:41.520 --> 01:48:45.039
it's basically a death sentence. That's
why she wrote to him, and they

1310
01:48:45.079 --> 01:48:49.960
struck up a friendship that became romantic. She did stand by him, she

1311
01:48:50.079 --> 01:48:54.239
did take care of him, and
she did work on the owl theory.

1312
01:48:54.760 --> 01:49:00.119
But it's the misrepresentation of her work
as an editor that offended her quote.

1313
01:49:00.439 --> 01:49:03.600
I never ever cut out anything that
would be damaging for him. I have

1314
01:49:03.680 --> 01:49:09.000
too big an opinion of my job
to be even remotely tempted to do anything

1315
01:49:09.039 --> 01:49:13.680
like that, and Jean would never
let it happen anyway. She admits she

1316
01:49:13.800 --> 01:49:17.039
was with Michael when the additional three
episodes were added when he got a new

1317
01:49:17.079 --> 01:49:21.920
trial, but they had broken up
when the final two were edited. She

1318
01:49:23.079 --> 01:49:28.600
also admits the production crew probably showed
much empathy for the Peterson children, which

1319
01:49:28.640 --> 01:49:31.720
does make it seem biased. But
they had seen these young people grow up

1320
01:49:31.760 --> 01:49:38.079
and have to deal with this incredible, horrific life changing experience, so they

1321
01:49:38.079 --> 01:49:42.600
were sympathetic to Michael sod in that
way. And as for the break up,

1322
01:49:43.079 --> 01:49:46.079
there are no hard feelings on either
side. Seventy nine year old Michael

1323
01:49:46.119 --> 01:49:50.520
Peterson still lives in Durham. He
had intended to move to Paris and had

1324
01:49:50.600 --> 01:49:55.920
promised Sophie he would. The plan
had always been to live in Paris after

1325
01:49:55.960 --> 01:50:00.000
his release. When he changed his
mind, their relationship ended. He wrote

1326
01:50:00.000 --> 01:50:04.479
in his autobiography, I don't speak
French. I'm too old. I couldn't

1327
01:50:04.479 --> 01:50:10.600
afford to live in Paris, and
my children and grandchildren live here in America.

1328
01:50:10.880 --> 01:50:15.199
But in the HBO series, it
is another hateful, cold, bitter

1329
01:50:15.279 --> 01:50:20.119
fight, reminiscent of his fight scene
with his late wife, with Sophie calling

1330
01:50:20.199 --> 01:50:26.199
him a liar and screaming that she's
the editor of their relationship. They do

1331
01:50:26.319 --> 01:50:30.039
turn her into a pathetic shrew,
just like she said so in the show

1332
01:50:30.119 --> 01:50:34.720
and in real life, Sophie moved
on. She and Jean worked together again.

1333
01:50:35.359 --> 01:50:40.000
Michael moved in with Patty until she
died and had stayed close to his

1334
01:50:40.079 --> 01:50:45.000
children. And speaking of his children, only one has given any interviews lately,

1335
01:50:45.079 --> 01:50:49.520
and not really about the HBO series, Margaret. Margie Ratliffe has helped

1336
01:50:49.560 --> 01:50:56.079
make a documentary called Subject. It's
about the people in documentaries, the ethics

1337
01:50:56.159 --> 01:50:59.960
of filming them and how it changes
their lives for better or for work.

1338
01:51:00.319 --> 01:51:05.640
Do they sign away their rights and
perpetuity? Technically yes, you are now

1339
01:51:05.680 --> 01:51:11.640
a public figure with Margaret and the
rest. It's unfair because Michael signed for

1340
01:51:11.680 --> 01:51:15.880
the whole family, even though the
kids were all technically adults. They didn't

1341
01:51:15.920 --> 01:51:21.199
know what they were getting into.
They didn't realize it might have lifetime repercussions.

1342
01:51:21.840 --> 01:51:26.479
Back then, documentaries were just for
nerds like me to watch on a

1343
01:51:26.479 --> 01:51:30.439
Sunday afternoon. Now they are mainstream, or, as one of the producers

1344
01:51:30.439 --> 01:51:35.000
of Subjects said, it's not the
golden age of documentaries, it's the corporate

1345
01:51:35.039 --> 01:51:43.079
age. Margie now has a complicated
relationship to the documentary. She openly supported

1346
01:51:43.079 --> 01:51:46.119
her father until he went on The
Doctor Phil's show. Then she suddenly said

1347
01:51:46.239 --> 01:51:50.760
she felt betrayed. This was after
years of giving interviews with her sister and

1348
01:51:50.760 --> 01:51:55.479
the rest of the family. She
said, quote, it was such a

1349
01:51:55.520 --> 01:51:59.760
strong violation of myself and my family
that I thought I need to bring in

1350
01:51:59.800 --> 01:52:02.920
cameras. I think I need to
tell this from my side. She does,

1351
01:52:02.960 --> 01:52:08.479
however, say she still believes in
her father. Just for whatever reason,

1352
01:52:08.640 --> 01:52:13.359
this Doctor Phil show angered her.
Dateline was less than two years before

1353
01:52:13.399 --> 01:52:16.520
this, and she was still fine
with discussing it. Then I watched the

1354
01:52:16.560 --> 01:52:20.800
Doctor Phil spot on YouTube and didn't
really see anything. But it's not my

1355
01:52:20.880 --> 01:52:25.279
dad up there talking to Doctor Phil, of all people, and maybe that's

1356
01:52:25.279 --> 01:52:29.399
what pissed her off. It's like
going on Nancy Grace's show after all that.

1357
01:52:30.600 --> 01:52:33.359
I am not at all criticizing her. She makes really good points.

1358
01:52:33.800 --> 01:52:39.600
But I agree with critics who say
you cannot pay documentary subjects without running the

1359
01:52:39.680 --> 01:52:44.840
risk of getting a skewed narrative rather
than the truth. But I do acknowledge

1360
01:52:44.880 --> 01:52:48.279
that the truth is what the filmmaker
wants it to be, even documentaries,

1361
01:52:48.800 --> 01:52:55.039
even podcasts. I know, and
again, yes, you do kind of

1362
01:52:55.079 --> 01:52:59.159
sign your rights away in perpetuity.
You are now in the public domain.

1363
01:53:00.000 --> 01:53:03.319
Sophie Brunette made herself a public figure
when she did an interview for a French

1364
01:53:03.399 --> 01:53:08.760
magazine when Michael was in prison,
which he pressured her to do. She

1365
01:53:08.800 --> 01:53:14.520
didn't realize that now made her a
player in this real tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

1366
01:53:15.680 --> 01:53:18.560
True crime isn't going anywhere, even
if Margie wants it, and she

1367
01:53:18.640 --> 01:53:25.560
knows that. But she makes good
points about subjects making informed decisions. She

1368
01:53:25.680 --> 01:53:30.920
wants things like therapists on set for
these projects, which is unrealistic. Most

1369
01:53:30.960 --> 01:53:35.359
documentaries, unless they have network backing, are a couple of people and a

1370
01:53:35.359 --> 01:53:41.359
camera. It's not a film set. But if children are involved, who

1371
01:53:41.439 --> 01:53:45.720
makes that decision for them and how
are they protected? That is a very

1372
01:53:45.800 --> 01:53:49.920
important question. When asked about if
she would watch the HBO series, she

1373
01:53:50.039 --> 01:53:55.319
said, quote, absolutely not.
I hear there's three different versions of my

1374
01:53:55.399 --> 01:54:00.439
mom's death. I'm not going to
watch that. I cannot imagine how hard

1375
01:54:00.479 --> 01:54:04.439
this has been on all of Michael's
children. The original documentary took away their

1376
01:54:04.439 --> 01:54:10.600
privacy in a legal way that simply
having been children of a murder victim would

1377
01:54:10.680 --> 01:54:15.399
not have. I have always sought
to protect the identity of children of victims

1378
01:54:15.399 --> 01:54:19.000
and of murderers, and if their
identities are well known, I still don't

1379
01:54:19.039 --> 01:54:24.319
do a where are they now?
Segment in the show. I didn't do

1380
01:54:24.399 --> 01:54:28.359
it now except for Margaret, who
has given recent interviews about her work.

1381
01:54:29.119 --> 01:54:33.239
I'm not perfect. I'm sure I've
made mistakes in earlier episodes, but I

1382
01:54:33.359 --> 01:54:38.680
was always learning and always trying to
be better. In my years as a

1383
01:54:38.720 --> 01:54:43.800
podcaster, I've learned so much,
but it never felt right discussing these people

1384
01:54:44.279 --> 01:54:47.720
unless I had to because they were
part of the story. But even then,

1385
01:54:47.800 --> 01:54:53.279
afterwards, I've always felt they deserved
their privacy. When I covered the

1386
01:54:53.319 --> 01:54:58.880
Sheila Bellish case, I deleted many
social media comments about what her grown daughters

1387
01:54:58.880 --> 01:55:02.840
are doing today. Listeners were researching
them and posting the cities they live in

1388
01:55:02.880 --> 01:55:08.560
and the jobs they have. It's
a form of doxing. And please don't

1389
01:55:08.600 --> 01:55:12.359
try to yell at me about free
speech. The First Amendment protects you from

1390
01:55:12.359 --> 01:55:15.680
the government, not social media.
I have every right to remove things I

1391
01:55:15.760 --> 01:55:20.840
see as inappropriate, just like Facebook
can remove your comments. Read the fine

1392
01:55:20.880 --> 01:55:26.359
print. It's the world we live
in. But beyond that, I implore

1393
01:55:26.399 --> 01:55:30.880
you to remember that the children did
not commit the crimes they didn't ask to

1394
01:55:30.920 --> 01:55:33.000
be in the public eye. If
you want to search them out on your

1395
01:55:33.039 --> 01:55:39.239
own, that's fine, but it's
ghoulish to see people excitedly posting that they

1396
01:55:39.279 --> 01:55:43.119
found the daughter of a murder victim. And that will take me to the

1397
01:55:43.159 --> 01:55:47.800
elephant in the room. I understand
intrinsically that what I do is cover the

1398
01:55:47.840 --> 01:55:54.199
worst moments in a person's life.
I am fascinated by true crime, like

1399
01:55:54.319 --> 01:55:58.600
I said, I always have been, but I do believe you can write

1400
01:55:58.600 --> 01:56:03.760
about these crimes without being exploitative to
the people who are left behind. I

1401
01:56:03.840 --> 01:56:09.960
consider myself a very ethical podcaster,
to the point that I didn't really want

1402
01:56:09.960 --> 01:56:14.760
to tell you this next part that
Martha was outed in the HBO series,

1403
01:56:15.399 --> 01:56:18.760
but now it's out there anyway,
and it is relevant to what I am

1404
01:56:18.800 --> 01:56:24.960
talking about now. HBO didn't have
to use that as a storyline. I

1405
01:56:25.079 --> 01:56:29.199
seriously doubt this was something they mind
out of the eight hundred hours of the

1406
01:56:29.239 --> 01:56:34.319
staircase footage Jean Xaviers sold them.
What's more upsetting, they didn't appear to

1407
01:56:34.319 --> 01:56:40.000
confirm it with Martha. They evidently
said there was enough word of mouth of

1408
01:56:40.039 --> 01:56:43.560
her being gay, so they felt
enough people knew about it to put it

1409
01:56:43.600 --> 01:56:46.720
in the show, and it is
a major plot point in the series.

1410
01:56:47.319 --> 01:56:54.319
Her queerness is connected to his.
She has neither confirmed or denied her sexuality,

1411
01:56:54.640 --> 01:56:59.079
as is her right. She hasn't
spoken at all about the HBO series

1412
01:56:59.520 --> 01:57:02.079
or anything to do with her father
recently, and that is a part of

1413
01:57:02.119 --> 01:57:06.760
the series that felt true. At
the end. None of the kids came

1414
01:57:06.760 --> 01:57:12.039
to watch him take the Alfred plea. They are living their lives. They

1415
01:57:12.079 --> 01:57:15.920
didn't want this toxicity anymore. HBO
says, they don't want to be around

1416
01:57:16.079 --> 01:57:20.800
him. Margie in real life sure
seems a bit pissed at him, so

1417
01:57:20.960 --> 01:57:26.920
who knows, and she is certainly
pissed about the HBO series. She said

1418
01:57:27.000 --> 01:57:30.520
she could block it on her Instagram
feed, but couldn't miss it on a

1419
01:57:30.560 --> 01:57:34.399
billboard when she was driving to work
in la She also said the actress Sophie

1420
01:57:34.399 --> 01:57:40.520
Turner reached out to her to discuss
her character. Margaret said she declined and

1421
01:57:40.600 --> 01:57:45.479
pointed out that she was paid nothing
for the original Staircase, she gets nothing

1422
01:57:45.560 --> 01:57:49.279
from this HBO version, but that
she is sure this actor is paid handsomely.

1423
01:57:50.279 --> 01:57:55.239
That is pretty bizarre when you think
about it. Then Turner, who

1424
01:57:55.279 --> 01:58:00.479
believes she is doing the right thing. Has now sort of offended Ratliffe tenially.

1425
01:58:00.640 --> 01:58:06.079
When I watched Margaret Ratliffe speak about
how the Hbomax series re traumatized her

1426
01:58:06.119 --> 01:58:12.000
and her family, I immediately thought
about the Jeffrey Dahmer series. When the

1427
01:58:12.119 --> 01:58:15.720
HBO Staircase came out, we got
a lot of press from the documentary filmmakers

1428
01:58:16.119 --> 01:58:20.560
angry at the twisting of their jobs, and we got Michael lashing out at

1429
01:58:20.600 --> 01:58:26.960
everyone. The kids stayed relatively quiet
at the time, not like when the

1430
01:58:27.039 --> 01:58:31.119
Dahmer series premiered and suddenly we had
a new discussion in the true crime world.

1431
01:58:31.880 --> 01:58:38.479
There were so many questions, do
we need a fictionalized series with the

1432
01:58:38.560 --> 01:58:44.720
handsome Evan Peters playing Dahmer when we
have endless documentaries with the real monster.

1433
01:58:45.479 --> 01:58:50.000
The families of Dahmer's victims said no, they were angry and yes, re

1434
01:58:50.119 --> 01:58:56.840
traumatized. They understand the interest and
the documentaries, but considered this beyond the

1435
01:58:56.880 --> 01:59:00.840
pale. No one asked them what
they thought. Certainly no one asked their

1436
01:59:00.880 --> 01:59:06.199
permission or paid them for their story. And let's be real, both Netflix

1437
01:59:06.239 --> 01:59:11.399
and HBO can certainly afford to pay
real life people if they wanted to,

1438
01:59:12.159 --> 01:59:16.760
but they didn't and no one fact
checked anything. Nisy Nashe was being lauded

1439
01:59:16.800 --> 01:59:20.399
for her performance as the neighbor of
the police ignored for too long, and

1440
01:59:20.479 --> 01:59:25.720
the actress who played Rita Isabel,
sister of a victim, was also being

1441
01:59:25.720 --> 01:59:30.239
celebrated for getting the dramatic courtroom scene
just right. I remember seeing side by

1442
01:59:30.279 --> 01:59:34.760
side showings on Twitter. It was
incredible. But did we need it?

1443
01:59:35.520 --> 01:59:40.720
I cannot answer that. Like in
this case, it's in the public domain

1444
01:59:41.159 --> 01:59:45.920
and there is a public enthusiasm for
it. I will say that we know

1445
01:59:45.119 --> 01:59:49.960
exactly what happened in the Dahmer case, he confessed. There are no lingering

1446
01:59:50.079 --> 01:59:57.399
questions, there is no mystery.
That's where the HBO Max series is so

1447
01:59:57.520 --> 02:00:02.439
different. As much as I understand
Margaret Ratleff's feelings, there is still a

1448
02:00:02.560 --> 02:00:08.560
huge community arguing over whether or not
he killed her mother. She is sure,

1449
02:00:09.159 --> 02:00:13.359
we are not. Antonio Campos thinks
he has the answer, though,

1450
02:00:14.119 --> 02:00:17.279
remember what I told you to keep
in your back pocket. In that last

1451
02:00:17.279 --> 02:00:23.399
episode, they showed Michael sitting down
for his final interview with Jean Xavier in

1452
02:00:23.439 --> 02:00:27.960
one of the last scenes of the
last episode, after he has broken Sophie's

1453
02:00:27.960 --> 02:00:30.520
heart. She goes to see Jean, who shows her the tape of the

1454
02:00:30.600 --> 02:00:35.359
last interview he did with Michael.
Michael had wanted to talk. He gave

1455
02:00:35.439 --> 02:00:40.760
his story about baseball, as he
called it, about when he found out

1456
02:00:40.760 --> 02:00:45.159
he was bisexual and his father caught
him, and how he dealt with his

1457
02:00:45.239 --> 02:00:48.359
father's violence and learned to hide it, that he had to live his life

1458
02:00:48.399 --> 02:00:54.640
that way, hiding it. Then
Jean tells him he always thought there was

1459
02:00:54.680 --> 02:00:59.279
something he was holding back in the
first trial. Michael says, I was

1460
02:01:00.000 --> 02:01:04.359
there is I lied about Kathleen.
She never knew. I never told her

1461
02:01:04.399 --> 02:01:10.159
about that side of me. He
goes on to explain that when people first

1462
02:01:10.199 --> 02:01:13.239
asked him if she knew, he
just said, of course she did.

1463
02:01:13.359 --> 02:01:17.159
She knew me. Of course she
knew because of how well she knew Michael.

1464
02:01:17.680 --> 02:01:21.079
But he didn't make that leap,
he says, to actually tell her.

1465
02:01:21.680 --> 02:01:25.880
And I'm sure I felt guilty,
he says, But when you get

1466
02:01:25.920 --> 02:01:30.359
away with something and you keep getting
away with it, it becomes oh,

1467
02:01:30.439 --> 02:01:34.760
it's all right, you see.
Michael is quietly weeping as he talks.

1468
02:01:35.239 --> 02:01:40.039
He says, I wish I could
have told her his as are read,

1469
02:01:40.680 --> 02:01:45.039
it feels like a big moment.
And then Jean asks did you kill Kathleen?

1470
02:01:45.760 --> 02:01:51.399
And Michael answers Kathleen's death was an
accident. He didn't say no,

1471
02:01:53.479 --> 02:01:58.039
just like he never said yes.
I told Kathleen I was bisexual. He

1472
02:01:58.159 --> 02:02:03.479
just implied she knew. Now it's
implied that whatever happened in that staircase was

1473
02:02:03.520 --> 02:02:09.479
still an accident. Now, when
I first saw this scene, I thought

1474
02:02:09.479 --> 02:02:13.520
it was made up and was prepared
for some more juicy emails from Michael Peterson

1475
02:02:13.600 --> 02:02:17.720
denying it. But it was crickets. He can't deny it if it's true

1476
02:02:17.760 --> 02:02:23.720
and it's on tape. And Lestrade
didn't use this. He kept it out

1477
02:02:23.720 --> 02:02:28.279
of the staircase. So maybe there
is your bias and maybe there is your

1478
02:02:28.279 --> 02:02:32.359
truth. Can you imagine what a
different documentary it would have been to end

1479
02:02:32.399 --> 02:02:38.159
it this way, because Campos tells
the story in the behind the scenes clip

1480
02:02:38.479 --> 02:02:43.520
as though it is truth. He
said over coffee in twenty seventeen, Lestrade

1481
02:02:43.560 --> 02:02:48.479
told him he filmed something explosive that
would change everything, that the public would

1482
02:02:48.520 --> 02:02:53.560
be shocked, but he didn't use
it. You know what else he didn't

1483
02:02:53.600 --> 02:02:59.359
do complain about this part of the
series. He gave extensive interviews about how

1484
02:02:59.439 --> 02:03:02.680
distorted his work was in the series, as though he filmed and edited the

1485
02:03:02.720 --> 02:03:09.279
Staircase to be sympathetic to Michael.
Intentionally, he expressed remorse for selling the

1486
02:03:09.359 --> 02:03:14.279
rights and trusting Campos, but that
was only when they were through the first

1487
02:03:14.319 --> 02:03:18.079
five episodes. He and the rest
of the team threatened to sue HBO if

1488
02:03:18.079 --> 02:03:23.840
they didn't put up a title card
before each episode saying it was fictionalized or

1489
02:03:23.880 --> 02:03:28.000
based on a true story, or
inspired by a true story, or any

1490
02:03:28.000 --> 02:03:32.840
of those euphemisms those who take creative
license use, but he did not complain

1491
02:03:33.000 --> 02:03:38.399
after the last episode premiered, after
Campos threw him under the bus in the

1492
02:03:38.439 --> 02:03:43.600
behind the scenes clip, what do
you think? Do you think Michael is

1493
02:03:43.640 --> 02:03:48.319
still somehow telling the truth? In
the very last scene of the HBO series,

1494
02:03:48.600 --> 02:03:54.920
Michael breaks the fourth wall. Colin
Firth looks directly at us through the

1495
02:03:54.960 --> 02:04:01.239
camera. The brilliance of Firth is
how his eyes change from sad to menacing,

1496
02:04:01.800 --> 02:04:08.680
too happy, even smug, and
then fade to black. So that

1497
02:04:08.880 --> 02:04:13.520
is your truth, your truth as
you saw it, my truth as I

1498
02:04:13.600 --> 02:04:17.560
just analyzed it. We use these
phrases all the time these days, speak

1499
02:04:17.600 --> 02:04:24.039
your truth? Well, what is
his truth? Did Kathleen fall down the

1500
02:04:24.079 --> 02:04:28.520
stairs? Or did she fall while
they were fighting? Because he shoved her

1501
02:04:28.520 --> 02:04:32.319
in anger and he still sees her
death as an accident. We will never

1502
02:04:32.399 --> 02:04:39.279
know. The Peterson case now goes
in the great pantheon of American crime cases

1503
02:04:39.560 --> 02:04:45.600
that we will never get an answer
to. Like Jean Been a Ramsay truth,

1504
02:04:45.960 --> 02:04:54.920
said Pontius Pilot, What is that? Southern Fried True Crime is hosted

1505
02:04:54.960 --> 02:05:00.000
and produced by me Erica Kelly.
Today's episode was also completely researched and written

1506
02:05:00.119 --> 02:05:04.279
by me, although Andrea gave wonderful
moral support. Southern Fride's original music is

1507
02:05:04.279 --> 02:05:09.399
by Raw Harrison of Gamma Radio and
the original graphic artist by Colli Horner.

1508
02:05:09.720 --> 02:05:15.399
Today's episode was edited and mixed by
our fabulous new editor, Brandon scheck Snyder

1509
02:05:15.479 --> 02:05:18.800
of Southern Gothic. I still mixed
the music and interrupt you with ads,

1510
02:05:18.800 --> 02:05:23.800
and obviously, at least in this
one, all opinions are my own.

1511
02:05:24.319 --> 02:05:28.640
And when I say researched, I
mean I spent weeks reading four books,

1512
02:05:29.000 --> 02:05:34.159
watching and rewatching that documentary over and
over and the HBO series, watching interviews

1513
02:05:34.199 --> 02:05:39.920
on YouTube, listening to podcasts,
and reading everything else I could get my

1514
02:05:39.960 --> 02:05:44.960
hands on about Lestrade and the other
filmmakers I've discussed, and then I had

1515
02:05:45.000 --> 02:05:48.119
to reread and rewatch a lot of
it after my hiatus. Then it took

1516
02:05:48.159 --> 02:05:53.079
forever to write because I wasn't sure
how much to reveal. In the end,

1517
02:05:53.439 --> 02:05:56.640
I went with a big spoiler alert
for you and gave you everything.

1518
02:05:57.479 --> 02:06:00.119
I'll take this moment to apologize for
the time to to get this episode to

1519
02:06:00.199 --> 02:06:03.520
you. You guys know I've dealt
with serious health issues for a while.

1520
02:06:04.119 --> 02:06:09.239
A wise woman told me I don't
owe anyone an explanation, and she's right,

1521
02:06:09.640 --> 02:06:13.199
but I am sorry for the delay. Oh and hey, please take

1522
02:06:13.279 --> 02:06:15.039
note of the new way to send
cases to me. You can go to

1523
02:06:15.079 --> 02:06:21.119
my website and click on the listeners
suggestion tab, or just email SFTC Research

1524
02:06:21.239 --> 02:06:26.560
at gmail dot com. Please remember
that I do not accept suggestions on social

1525
02:06:26.600 --> 02:06:30.800
media private messages. With three platforms
to manage, that is very overwhelming for

1526
02:06:30.880 --> 02:06:34.039
me. I hope you understand.
But please come join our Facebook group,

1527
02:06:34.359 --> 02:06:40.279
Southern Fried True Crime Fans Discussion Group, where we swap recipes, worship belly

1528
02:06:40.319 --> 02:06:45.479
parton and share memes. We also
occasionally do book giveaways. We do,

1529
02:06:45.520 --> 02:06:47.840
of course, discuss true crime,
not just Southern fraud, but all kinds.

1530
02:06:48.119 --> 02:06:51.640
But it is still very much a
Southern lifestyle group. Our group is

1531
02:06:51.680 --> 02:06:55.119
a safe and fun corner of Facebook, and by God, we meet it

1532
02:06:55.159 --> 02:06:58.119
when we say no shit us is
allowed. It's not just a motto,

1533
02:06:58.199 --> 02:07:01.279
it's how we run the group.
Don't forget the book giveaways on Patreon and

1534
02:07:01.359 --> 02:07:04.920
the Facebook group for the Owl Theory
book I discussed, as well as the

1535
02:07:05.000 --> 02:07:10.159
Neat Little Owl Theory gift I found, so if you're interested in joining either,

1536
02:07:10.439 --> 02:07:13.920
now would be a good time.
If you enjoy today's show, don't

1537
02:07:13.920 --> 02:07:16.880
forget to subscribe and please tell a
friend or rate and review on on Tunes.

1538
02:07:17.279 --> 02:07:21.439
I'm also on all ourge platforms like
a Heartstitcher, Spotify, and now

1539
02:07:21.479 --> 02:07:28.119
Amazon and Audible. Until next time, thanks so much for listening, y'all.

1540
02:07:28.119 --> 02:07:28.640
Take care,