Twisted true crime

Did this man kill his wife? Netflix series The Staircase explores the murder mystery

The first time Oscar-winning film-maker JeanXavier de Lestrade talked to prosecutors from the District Attorney’s office about murder suspect Michael Peterson, their verdict was chilling. ‘They told me, “Michael Peterson is evil.” That was the word they used. Evil.’

Michael, then a 59-year-old writer, was a well-respected man from a small town in North Carolina, USA, who apparently had no reason to harm his wife of four years, Kathleen.

The 48-year-old mother was found dead at the foot of her stairs in a pool of blood, after apparently suffering a fall while woozy from medication and alcohol. Michael made two 911 calls on discovering her body – the first, he said, while she was still breathing, then 15 minutes later when she was not.

The injuries on Kathleen’s body and the sheer amount of blood made police suspicious. Inconsistencies in Michael’s calls heightened their concern. But what police found on his computer convinced them of his guilt.

When de Lestrade heard about the case in February 2002, seven weeks after Kathleen’s death, Michael was facing a first-degree murder charge. Now, de Lestrade’s 13-part documentary The Staircase has been released on Netflix. It follows Michael, his defence team and the DA’s office as they investigate, then through a marathon tr ial. Each 45-minute episode brings a startling twist, uncovering new evidence that changes the case.

SECRET AFFAIRS

Ten years older than his wife, Michael was a pillar of the community. He had been a US Marine, serving in Vietnam in the Sixties, and he proudly displayed medals including two Purple Hearts – awarded, he said, after he was hit by shrapnel from a land mine, and later shot.

He wrote several books inspired by his experiences and worked as a newspaper columnist for the Durham Herald-Sun, where he was an outspoken critic of political corruption. But what few could have guessed was that Michael led a secret double life. He was bisexual, with a string of male lovers, and an eager user of gay porn.

When police came to his house on the night of Kathleen’s death, they found a computer print-out depicting men in a gay sex act on Michael’s desk. Numerous photos were quickly discovered on a hard drive. From then, detectives worked on a theory from which they never wavered: Kathleen was murdered during a row, after she uncovered Michael’s sex secret.

But, he said, Kathleen knew of his casual sexual encounters with men. She did not like it, but she tolerated it. Michael insisted they were soulmates. Michael with his wife Kathleen Durham County DA Jim Hardin could not believe him. Nor could the rankand-file police. ‘From the materials on his computer,’ asserted one officer, ‘he was not a happily married man.’

Film-maker de Lestrade says the authorities were only too happy to condemn Michael. ‘Remember, he published a column every week in Durham’s main newspaper which was very critical of the mayor and the police.’

THE FIRST BODY

Kathleen Atwater, a successful businesswoman, married Peterson in 1997, and they had five children – three from previous marriages, and two adopted. Kathleen had daughter Caitlin; Michael had sons Clayton and Todd, with his first wife Patty. Then there were Martha and Margaret Ratliff – the orphaned daughters of Patty’s best friend, Elizabeth.

The Ratliff girls were toddlers when their parents died. Captain George Ratliff was a US Air Force pilot, killed in action in 1983. At that time Elizabeth lived next-door to Michael and Patty on a German military base, and they helped take care of her girls.

One night in 1985, Elizabeth was found dead in a pool of blood with serious head injuries – at the foot of her stairs. The last person known to have seen her alive was Michael. Not only had his wife died from a bloody ‘fall down the stairs’, but so had a close female friend 17 years earlier. ‘It’s hard to get your head round,’ admits de Lestrade.

Investigators applied to exhume Elizabeth’s body from its family plot in Texas, but defence lawyer David Rudolf fought furiously to stop this. He knew the evidence against his client was flimsy: no murder weapon, no trail of bloody footprints, no motive. But the DA seemed to be smearing Michael’s name until no jury could dare find him innocent.

To make matters worse, it emerged that Peterson had lied about his Vietnam service. He had not been awarded the Purple Heart, because he had not been wounded in action – he had been hurt in a car accident far from there.

Amid this, Peterson’s children refused to believe any of the claims against him. ‘I know for a fact, no way in the world my father would have hur t Kathleen,’ Todd declared. Margaret said the Petersons had a ‘beautiful’ relationship.

DID THE OWL DO IT?

On the night of Kathleen’s death, Peterson said, they had drunk a bottle of wine with a rented video, and sat by their pool. Kathleen – who had taken a Valium – went inside. Her husband insisted he had found her there, with blood smeared all around the stairs. But DA Jim Hardin thinks she was beaten to the floor with a club. She struggled to her feet and was bludgeoned again, before bleeding to death. One detective added that the blood was dry when police arrived – implying she had been dead a lot longer than Michael admitted. Forensics experts decided the lacerations to her scalp were consistent with blows from a lightweight, hooked poker... such as the one DA Jim Hardin holds a photo of Kathleen Kathleen’s sister had given her for Christmas years earlier. Despite combing the property, police could not find it.

But in 2009, a more startling possibility came to light. Clutched in Kathleen’s fists were a clump of her own hair and microscopic fragments of feathers. Several people in Durham County had been attacked at night by owls, which swooped down and clawed their heads. One victim compared it to being hit with a baseball bat.

Was it possible that, as she walked unsteadily to the house, an owl attacked her? The lacerations seemed consistent with this theory.

THE VERDICT

Not everyone is happy to see the documentary airing internationally on Netflix. ‘Michael doesn’t want more publicity,’ says de Lestrade.

‘In a way, the series is for the children. It’s difficult for them to explain what they’ve been through. Some of them have their own children now: how do they explain to them what happened? It’s a relief for them that there is a documentary to tell the story.’

In the future, Michael Peterson’s grandchildren will wrestle with the evidence to make up their own minds... just as every viewer will.

The Staircase is on Netflix now.

Michael Peterson was charged with murder