The Murder of Kathleen Peterson (2001) – The Trail of Michael Peterson

The mysterious fate of Kathleen Peterson, a successful business woman, created a situation full of bitter controversy and wild speculations that has never subsided.

The previous article highlighted the events of the murder case and motives which could have driven Michael Peterson to murder his wife. It also mentioned another staircase-related case, the case of Elizabeth Ratliff, which also had ties to Michael Peterson. In this article, the events of the trail and the evidence which led to his conviction.

The Trail

During the trail in 2003, the prosecutor, Jim Hardin, called on Duane Deaver to testify. Deaver was a State Bureau of Identification agent who was deemed to be an expert in blood splatter evidence. He told jurors that there had been several experiments conducted that pointed away from Kathleen accidentally falling and towards her being beaten to death. Michael’s lawyers present their own blood splatter expert, Dr Henry Lee, who argued quite the opposite to Deaver.

Although no murder weapon was found at the crime scene, prosecutors offered the possibility of the fireplace blow that Kathleen had been gifted by her sister, Candace, at Christmas 1984. Dr Deborah Radish, a pathologist, claimed that the 101.6 centimetre brass tool was the perfect instrument for inflicting the lacerations found on Kathleen’s scalp. The blow poke had been found, covered in dead bugs and cobwebs, in the garage during the trail. A detective, who had searched the garage, was questioned by Hardin who suggested that the blow could have been planted.

Jurors sided with the prosecutors, on 10th October 2003, and Michael was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Martha and Margaret, the daughter of Elizabeth Ratliff, sobbed in the courtroom as they were certain of his innocence whilst Kathleen’s family, including her daughter, applauded the conviction. Despite the case being closed, Michael’s lawyers continued to fight his case. Two days after the conviction, they started the appeal process, arguing that the evidence connected with Ratliff’s death should never have been admitted and even challenged Deaver’s qualifications and testimony. Their objections were not taken seriously until 2011 when Deaver was fired from the SBI (State Bureau of Identification) for not reporting blood test results that resulted in a wrongful conviction of an innocent man.

A nationally recognised expert in blood pattern, Paulette Sutton, testified that Deaver’s methods were old fashioned, outdated and unscientific. In 2011, Sutton’s testimony helped to overturn Michael’s conviction and Judge Hudson ruled that Deaver had misled jurors. This subsequently resulted in a new trail of Michael Peterson for the murder of his wife.

Although prosecutors insisted on his guilt, Michael spent eight years in prison trying to protest his innocence. Michael, facing the prospect of a trail at 73 years old, entered an Alford plea to a manslaughter charge in 2017, which was used as a guilty plea for sentencing purposes. Michael received less than the eight years that he had already served meaning that he could walk away a free man.

Another theory

Throughout the investigation, Michael’s lawyers had been cooperating with a film crew who wanted to create a documentary. The documentary was titled The Staircase and they unwittingly recruited armchair detectives worldwide to present theories on Kathleen’s death. The majority were split between the theory that Michael had killed his wife or that she fell in a manner that caused multiple wounds to her head.

However, another theory was suggested by Larry Pollard, a friend of Michael’s, in 2003. He attempted to get the case reopened suggesting that the incident could have been caused by an owl. After looking at autopsy photographs, Pollard stated that some of the gashes on Kathleen’s body looked like marks which could have been left by an owl’s talons. Ornithological experts, that consulted with Pollard, agreed that the marks resembled more like an owl attack than a fireplace tool.

The theory was dismissed by Hardin as being ridiculous but Kate Davis, an executive director of a wild bird education organisation, supported the theory further. She claimed that raptors are known to get aggressive if they are defending their nests or hatchlings and that they tend to attack at night. Looking back at the case, Michael’s phone call to the emergency services was at 2:40am and Kathleen was found holding clumps of her own hair, mixed with wood splinters and needles from a cedar tree.

The SBI eventually acknowledged finding a “microscopic feather” in a clump of hair in Kathleen’s hand. However, with Michael’s plea agreement, the owl theory will never have it’s day in court.

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