As I’ve recently become very interested in true crime TV shows and films, Andy picked out this miniseries for me. It’s a documentary about the death of Kathleen Peterson, whose husband Michael was accused of her murder after she was found covered in blood at the bottom of their staircase. The filming began immediately after Michael’s 911 call was answered when police arrived at the scene, and recorded everything from the defence’s meetings to the many trials that occurred over the next 20 years after Kathleen’s death.
Prosecutors suspected that Michael Peterson brutally attacked his wife by bludgeoning her to death with a blow poke (a poker for the fire) which they claim is “mysteriously missing”, and then rang 911 to stage the scene as an accident. They believed that the sheer amount of blood all over Kathleen, the floor, and the walls, together with the severe lacerations to her head, were enough to rule out an innocent fall down the stairs and make a homicide more plausible.
Of course, the prosecutors weren’t able to see at that time the filming of Michael Peterson, but watchers of the series can. At first, I thought he gave me the creeps a little, and having seen the rather graphic pictures of Kathleen lying at the bottom of the stairs with blood absolutely everywhere, I was convinced that he was involved. However, as the episodes went on, I began to see Michael as an innocent old man trying to grieve over the tragic death of his wife and being unable to because of lawyers and reporters alike. While both his biological and adopted children remained on his side, he saw his sisters-in-law, step-daughter and other members of his family turn against him, convinced that he had murdered Kathleen.
While the defence team were an expert collection of lawyers – and of course I loved watching them going about their jobs, as I would quite like to be a lawyer! – there was actually very little evidence that could clear Michael Peterson’s name, so they had quite a rough time of it. Experts disagreed on whether or not the wounds on Kathleen’s scalp were proof of blows to the head inflicted on her by another person, or of simply bashing her head on the banister and stairs as she fell.
***Spoilers below!***
In 2003, Michael Peterson was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. The findings of blood spatter analyst Duane Deaver were what really swayed the jury into convicting Michael, as Deaver claimed that the blood clearly showed the result of blunt force trauma to the head. Peterson served eight years in prison until a man named Greg Taylor, who had been convicted of murder years previously, was released from prison after it was discovered that the blood spatter analyst in his case – Duane Deaver – had completely lied about his findings. Taylor had been in prison for almost seventeen years for a crime he did not commit.
After the discovery that Deaver had lied about Taylor’s case, it was also found out that he had falsified evidence in Peterson’s case and 34 others as well. Peterson was tried again in 2017 and released on time already served after submitting an Alford plea to the court. He still lives in North Carolina in the same huge house to this day, writing books and thinking about his wife who was so tragically taken from him.
I’m sure he’s very careful on the stairs.
