Kathleen and Michael Peterson - Part 2

0:00 Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina. And if there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years of marriage, some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and some days you'll feel like killing your wife. Welcome to love, Mary Kill, Hey Tina, Hey Rich, welcome back. You came back for part two. I'm so happy I did. I did. I can't wait to discuss this case more well. Today we're actually going to talk about the you know, the actual crime itself. Oh, if there was a crime. Maybe there wasn't a crime. I don't know, it's a real who done it? Yes? Sure you see what I did? There?

0:51 No who done it? Maybe I didn't do who? Oh? Oh, you're doing an owl reference. There you go a while. I'm a little slow. Sometimes you're really not. Though you're pretty you're pretty quick. That's pretty good, though, do you think there is foul play? Stop? I'm trying to think of a bird pun and I can't come up with I was trying to come out with something with talent, like tellan you're telling your talent me a story. You're going to be that's pretty good. Okay, I didn't come up with it very quick, very time. It's all right, Well, thank you so much for coming back for part two. If you haven't listened to part one, you should probably go listen to that first.

1:36 We I think that this case a lot of people are familiar with it, and I'm not necessarily apologizing for doing it, but I hope that we gave you some information maybe that you hadn't heard in part one. Yeah. I know the world does not need another Michael Peterson podcast, but here we are. But I really it is really kind of fun and interesting to dive into these cases that we know we think we know so well. Yeah, yeah, there's I definitely have learned a lot in this process. So it's still the same day that we recorded part one, but you went and you quickly edited part one so we could post it for our patrons. And I learned something while you were gone. I was looking for pictures and you might have known this, but I didn't, and maybe you didn't even say this, but Martha and Margaret were never officially adopted by Michael Peterson, which I don't like it all. Yeah, I think I may have that in my script for this part. But yeah, he never adopted them because of the money, like because he would Yeah, they were getting benefits because their dad was a soldier, and that would have stopped if he had adopted them.

2:46 I guess I don't like that at all. Yeah, like those again, we talked a lot about there. They've been through a lot, and it amazes me that they have. They've stood behind him throughout everything, unwavering to this day. Yeah, they've never had any son, probably anyone else, and that kind that really blows my mind because I think if I was in their place, I would have a hard time. But you know, he was, He was there basically their dad, right, they looked at him as their dad growing up. I think this happens a lot in a lot of cases, that when you don't have anyone left, you cling to who you right, who is still there. Yeah, that's a good point. I think like in Caitlyn's case, she still had her dad though her mom, Kathleen had died, so I think for her she had other, you know, other support system in place, and so for her maybe it was a little easier to look at things objectively. I think Fred and Caitlyn were pretty close and he was really there for her after Kathleen passed away. Yes, but we are just diving right into it. But we should have a snack. Well back from the previous episode, the Lovely Baby Carriss, most of it's still there. It's all still there. Yeah, But I did buy some gas station snacks and we had one of them in part one.

4:00 I have three more. It's still sitior too. Actually, we have a bad habit of kind of like leaving snacks in this room that have been rejected. Well, pick a number one through three and you'll get your next cas station one through three. I'm going to go with one. Okay, you're some layers stacks definitely looks better than lace. That's not normally an innovative snack. I've never had them before. I guess you're right right. I don't know if I've had them either. I was very interested, so I actually did a little research on lays stacks because I was like, I didn't I didn't know lays had like an alternative to pringles, and they basically look like around for a while they have, so Lais stacks was introduced in two thousand and three as direct competition for pringles. Lays stacks are heavier and thicker than pringles and the shape. I'll be the judge of that. The shape of the stacks is a simple curve called a hyperbolic cylinder, while pringles are formed into a double curve known as a hyperbolic paraboloid. How do you do it?

5:05 Which you would just be? There's a whole I think it blows my mind. The fees have been around for twenty years and you've never seen them. Shows how much you go. You go to the grocery store fair amount. I just probably never noticed them. But and you're like, the lays for you is like one of your favorite chips. You're just diving right in there. Huh yeah, I just wanted to see the shape. They're kind of broken. I think I dropped them earlier. But oh yeah, the shape is not nearly as interesting as the pringles shape. It's much curved oval, yeah it is. But all right, let's try them, all right, be right back. Do you think of those laid stacks? I thought they were delicious. These a lot like pringles, don't they do? They are like marginally thicker though a little thicker. Yeah, and the shape.

5:55 I don't like the shape as much because the shape of the pringles is such that you can put like ten of them in your mouth. At once, and it curves over your tongue, and these are they don't curve over your tongue the same. This is something we have discussed before in our marriage. But how just putting ten pringles in your mouth taste better than putting one pringle in your mouth. It's not about taste. It was more like when I was a kid, this was a competition. We like put my brothers and my sister. How many pringles could you put in your mouth? And then take them out without breaking them? Oh? Oh, you know we have done that before. I think it's a good road trip game that we played. Yeah, yeah, all right, well, thank you for That's just like I was just thinking this morning, it's kind of weird that we're like, you know, let's dive into like a case of murder and blood and gore, and first let's have a snack. Yeah, you don't want to talk about murder on an empty stomach. Very strange. Well, well, that's a deep subject. That's a deep subject. I know most people are familiar with the case already, but you want to do just the very the very briefest of recaps of what we covered in part one. Michael Peterson bad Man uh, two women have done well. We don't even know that Kathleen has died at the bottom of a staircase, but we know that his friend Elizabeth, who may or may not have been a lover, also died at the bottom of a staircase. Yes, I'm sorry, I just great retap a little. I'm a little tired. What else do we want to say?

7:27 What's about it? Really? We just went under their backgrounds. Michael is kind of a contankerous, kind of funny, funny story. I while you were editing the episode, I was going for looking for pictures, and I'm pretty sure that Michael was born looking forty years old. I could not find any I usually can find pictures. I could not find any pictures of Michael as a younger man. Interesting. Some people are just like that. They just have that look of an older person when they're really Last night I sent you a picture of the penguin from from Batman and Robin because he kind of has that same squenched up look as the penguin. Yeah, a little bit. So is there anything else we want to say about I mean, I think everyone it's pretty familiar with the case. Yeah, I go back and listen to part one. If you haven't, I did want to before we get into the day of Kathleen's death. I did want to first share a couple of anecdotes about Michael's temper. We talked about a couple examples earlier of him having kind of a hair trigger temper, but one more example.

8:26 One time, Margaret and Martha's aunts and a cousin were in Durham visiting and most of the family was all sitting by the pool while the Peterson's four English bulldogs were playing, jumping in and out of the pool and running around. One of the dogs, Clancy grabbed the hose that was attached to the hard plastic fountain in the pool and dragged it over to the deep end. Michael was in his office that looked out on the pool and seeing what Clancy did, he came running out and screaming, you stupid dog. I've replaced that thing three times already because of you. The dog out of the pool and beat him over the head with the hard plastic fountain again and again until Yeah.

9:07 Margaret finally jumped up and screamed, stop it, stop it. Hit me, leave the poor dog alone. Margaret ended up cleaning the blood off of Clancy's head, and this was witnessed by Aunt Margaret and all the you know, the other family members that were there at the time. When Aunt Margaret came to visit again for Martha's high school graduation, she noticed that the dog, Clancy wasn't there. She asked Michael about it, and he told her, without looking her in the eye, that Clancy had had a heart attack and drowned in the pool, and that the kids found him floating there. Aunt Margaret always wondered whether Michael had potentially killed the dog, but again, we'll never know. Horrible story. Yes, In the months leading up to Kathleen's death, the family was under a lot of financial stress. While Kathleen had done well at Nortel and had a bunch of stock options, their value had plummeted. At one point, her options had been worth two point four million dollars, but by the summer of two thousand and one they were worth less than fifty thousand dollars. Just so I can't that's just so horrible to think about. You think you've got like a half million dollars happened to us, not that amount of money, but yeah, that has happened to us before. So yeah, and Michael had made good money from his books, but it wasn't a steady income, and it had been three years since his last book, was probably he pretty much kind of stopped writing right other than for the newspaper. Yeah, I don't or was he writing in his books just weren't being picked up. Oh no, he I mean, he

10:37 had done the Charlie Tushoes book, which was a collaboration, and I don't think after that he had worked on any other books, although he did say that he was working on something that was about the military and porn, but I think that was kind of an excuse for why he had a lot of porn on his computer, because no one ever found like a manuscript or any draft or any notes for the book itself. So okay, As you mentioned in part one, Michael and Kathleen were now empty nesters. The three girls were all in college. Margaret was at Tulane University in New Orleans, Martha at the University of San Francisco, and Caitlin at Cornell University in New York, and the two boys still needed financial support even though they were older, which is nuts. It is nuts, and I mean, those three colleges are they're all still very state. They're all very good university, so not cheap at all. In April of two thousand and one, Michael and Kathleen took out a second mortgage on the home. In two thousand, their expenditures exceeded their income by nearly one hundred thousand dollars, and they had a credit card balance of more than one hundred and fourteen thousand dollars. The upkeep on the home was expensive as well. It needed major repairs. It needed a new roof, there was termite damage, and the plumbing needed an overhaul.

11:58 So can I interrupt just for a set and tell you that the house was a very nice house, But the house wasn't it was. It did appear to be dated, like in the pictures that I saw when they lived there. Yeah, yeah, it was built like you said it was built. It was built in nineteen forty. Yeah, And the houses like that can be a money pit, and I think it was a little bit of a money pit, just the upkeep of landscape, because it was kind of you know, in a in a very woodsy area. You know, because your roof does need to be replaced more if it's subjected to you know, large trees and yeah, I guess they had a colony of bats living in there. Attic, did you know that I did hear something about bats? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Bats are one of my biggest hopes, which is, I know, silly, but one of my biggest fears. On November twenty ninth, just over a week before Kathleen's death, Michael sent an email to his ex wife Patty where he asked her to take out a thirty thousand dollars home equity loan to help Clayton and Todd out of their crippling credit card debt. At the end of the email, he said, quote, it is simply not possible for me to discuss this with Kathleen. End quote.

13:05 I just want to say, in case our children are listening, which they're probably not. I know they're not. You don't pay off your kids credit card debt? I know. I just think that's yeah, when you're like, I don't know how old they were, but twenty five or twenty six or what I think they were, twenty five and twenty seven, Yeah, it's like kind of your responsibility. It's you. I'm not going to lose sleep while I might lose sleep over and I'm gonna feel bad for you. But yeah, and that email that he sent to Patty about their finances was one of the emails that was deleted, so he had we'll talk about it in a little bit, but he had deleted a lot of files, both before Kathleen's death then after. I don't know much about Patty. Do you know much about Patty? What did she do for I know, we know she was a teacher. Did she wasn't independently wealthy? Was she? I don't think so. But I don't know a lot about Patty either, other than what you know she was in the documentary. But I don't know a lot about her background now. I only know one thing that at the We'll get to this later, but I think she had an extensive art collection that may have been valued at a million dollars. Oh really, Yeah, I did not tell you why. I know that later. Okay. One other point about the you know, the stress that they were under the financial stress.

14:16 Kathleen was very stressed about her job. Nortel had gone through several rounds of layoffs, and even though she was at an executive level, she was worried that she was next, she confided in her sister that she was worried and that she was not enjoying life. Oh that's too bad. What was twenty two thousand and one, and you know nine to eleven had just happened, and so I think everyone's investments were tanking. Yeah, that's a good point. One last thing before we get to the circumstances around Kathleen's death. As anyone who saw the Staircase documentary knows, Michael was bisexual and he had flings with men outside of both his marriage to Patty and to Kathleen. Whether Michael was open about this with Kathleen or not is a good question. Michael later claimed that they had an understanding, but people who knew Kathleen well, like her sisters, say that there's no way she would have condoned that.

15:13 For example, when she found out that her first husband was having an affair, that was enough for her to end the marriage. Well, she did try to work on the marriage, Kathleen on her first marriage, Yeah, she did, but I think it was that was the thing the catalyst of, you know, eventually ending the marriage. We just we don't know if she knew about Michael and his flings or not. She never said anything about it to her sisters or her family, but she might have felt uncomfortable talking to them about that. So we just don't know. Well, there was one anecdote about like Michael had they had an extensive amount of books in their house, and Michael did have a lot of gay literature, and there was sometimes I guess the kids, you know, it was a long many years ago, they would kind of put these It wasn't porn. I think they were just you know, like books about gay sex and things like that, and they would put the book in each other's rooms and then they would be like, oh, are you gay? And it was just kind of a family joke. Yeah, So that doesn't mean that anyone knew that he might have been bisexual. Right, The literature wasn't the home. Yeah, Okay, let's get to the weekend of Kathleen's death. On Wednesday, December fifth, Michael sent Kathleen an email to her work email that read, quote, here's the scoop on the Independent, which is a Durham newsweekly. There were no invitations, but we can still go let me know if you want me to call in, or we could just show up at the door of Friday night. He's talking about a party, a Christmas party that that newsweekly was

16:44 going to have, and apparently Kathleen wanted to go to it. I'll continue his email said, you looked great last night. If only we hadn't gone to Poo Limb, which is an Asian restaurant in Durham. Let's work on our marriage tonight. End quote. I don't have much more text about this email, and it may or may not be relevant, but I think it made investigators seem like it made them think that maybe Michael was in the doghouse, that maybe they had had a fight, because he was saying, let's work on our marriage tonight, and he said something about not you know, if only we hadn't gone to this restaurant, like maybe they had a fight there or something like that. But oh, I actually was thinking that it meant like one of them got food poisonings. That could be too you know, we we don't know. On Friday the seventh, Kathleen took a vacation day from work. She and Michael went shopping that morning to Costco and a few other places to buy Christmas gifts. Wait, Michael, who I think as a monster went to Costco with his wife. I know, maybe he's not so bad after all, right, Costco is your least favorite. No, that's not true. That's not true. Why do why do you never go with me? Then I go with you to Costco? Oh? Please, at least once every three months, I go with you to Costco.

17:56 That is that is a blatant line. That is that is a that is you've never I'm going to start documenting my trips to Costco with you. Okay, all right, listeners, we will hold him accountable. After Costco, they also went to a few other places to buy Christmas gifts for the kids, along with a TV for the house and a Christmas tree. That afternoon, they put the tree up and decorated it. In Part one, I talked about Michael's book Behind the Staircase, and in the book he wrote about Christmas and how Christmas was so important to Kathleen. You know, she was like the Martha Stewart type, and she really loved to decorate for the holidays, like every holiday. And she was kind of disappointed because she had this call that she had to take on Sunday morning, and she really wanted to have the house all decorated before the kids came home from college for Christmas, and he made it sound like the house was not decorated, which was kind of weird to me because there were definitely there are definitely decorations. Whether she was done or not, we don't know. Well, I think police officers said that the tree was up and decorated. It might not have been finished, but you know, at least some decorations were on it, and the candles were all in the windows. And we'll talk about this a little bit later, but there was some wreaths like on the front gate and on the front door, Okay, and the famous lawn ornament. Again, we'll talk about that later too. But she definitely had started decorating for Christmas. But

19:26 in his book he made it sound like they hadn't. That they had brought the ornaments down from the attic or whatever and they were all over the house, but they hadn't started decorating. It was just to me that was just establishing that he he lied and trying to rewrite history to suit whatever his narrative. Early that Friday evening, they got a call from David Peerlmutt, who co authored the Charlie two Shoes book with Michael David was calling to share the good news that a major Hollywood producer wanted to option the rights to Charlie two Shoes. By the way, the movie still has not been made, but I did see an update from the producer from the spring of twenty twenty three that they were preparing to shoot the film this year in Savannah, Georgia.

20:08 Oh wow, so it looks like it's actually still happening. It's a good name. Yeah, I mean it was interesting though. The video I saw of this producer. He was I can't remember his name, but he he produced The General's Daughter, which was a pretty well known movie, and he was in this little video with David Peerlmutt, who was the co author of the book with Michael Peterson, and it was like Michael Peterson didn't exist. He was like, David, you wrote this book, and like they never mentioned Michael's name at all, of which yeat a little bit, a little bit. We don't have any idea how much money that would have been though. No, A lot of people have pointed to that amount of money was probably a significant amount of money because it was going to be a major production and that would have alleviated a lot of the financial stress. It's at all of it. Yeah, because if money was the motive for him killing Kathleen, then maybe wasn't quite a strong motive. But yeah, I never saw the amount of money that was going to come in from that. And it was it was a co authored book as well, so you know, whatever it was, he would only get half of it. But I did not see the amount. If a movie is made of your book, then that book is going to sell a heck of a lot of copies before the movie comes out. Yeah, good point. After that call, Kathleen and Michael went to the party that he had mentioned in his email thrown by The Independent.

21:26 They danced and socialized until one am on Saturday morning. Kathleen went into her office to do some work and to prep for a business trip to Toronto that was coming up on Monday. She left the office and headed back home around four pm. Sometime before she came home, Michael used a program called quick Clean to delete two hundred and sixteen files from his computer. We don't know exactly what those files were, but we know that he also deleted three hundred and fifty two files with the same program two days earlier. A few minutes before Kathleen got home, Michael left to go to the YMCA to work out. He called Kathleen at around six pm, and she was apparently annoyed about the amount of time he spent at the gym. I don't know how we know that. It was in the book that I read about the case.

22:12 But I thought back, I'm like, well, the only way we would know that is if Michael said that, which would seem odd, but that was the claim in the book that she called him and she was or he called and she was annoyed. Well, when Michael went to the gym, was he really going to the gym? Or was it he going to meet nice people? Yes, that is a good question. I imagine it was both. I mean, Michael was very like he was to see his arms. He was very fit, He had very strong arms, so I think he did work out a lot. But there was definitely more going on at the YMCA than just working out. Michael suggested that they stay home that night and celebrate the good news about Charlie Tushoes, and he offered to pick up a romantic movie. Just before seven pm, Michael stopped by the Blockbuster remember Blockbusters, and rented America's Sweethearts of Romantic Comedy Style Your Boyfriend, John c Catherine Zeta Jones, and Julia Roberts and Billy Crystal. Oh, I don't remember. It's a great cast. At nine pm, Todd's friend Christina Thomasetti arrived at the Peterson home to pick Todd up and go to a Christmas party in the neighborhood. The book I think we kind of read the same book. She was described as very hot. Oh really, Oh, I don't remember seeing remember that. I wasn't actually going to mention this, but it came up later at the trial that Christina Tomasetti I believe she was married at the time, and the prosecutor in the trial actually said in the trial,

23:45 well, you know that Todd was having an affair with Christina or he was planning to have an affair with her that night or something, which was really like in the trial, I think when that came up, it caused a big commotion and the judge was like, struck it from the record and all of that. I don't know what the truth is there. I just know that it came up at the trial that that was the case. Well, she testified, and she described the evening between Michael and Kathleen forget their names. Sometimes it's like they were having a night, like everything was nice. They were having a nice time. They were sharing a bottle of wine, and they seemed happy in their normal selves. Yes, she said that she came at like nine forty five. She and Todd left for the party at about ten twenty pm, and she did say that they were watching their movie. They seemed like they were in good spirits. Around ten forty pm, Kathleen logged on to the family computer. Normally she would use her laptop, but she had left it at work. Just after eleven pm, Kathleen returned a call from a colleague of hers in Canada, Helen Prislinger. There was a conference call for work schedule on Sunday morning, and Kathleen needed to get a document from Helen in order to prep for the call. During that call, Kathleen asked Michael for their home email address so that Helen could send the documents to that email address. Helen later reported that Kathleen did not sound drunk at all, nor did she sense any tension between Kathleen and Michael when Kathleen asked him for the email address. Is so weird that she didn't know the home email address. I thought that was a little bit weird too.

25:18 Yeah, but maybe she just never used it. Yeah. What happened between eleven PM and two forty one am when Michael first called nine to one one is not one hundred percent certain, as we only have Michael's account of this time. So that's what almost four hours of time. Yeah, we don't really know exactly what happened. We do know that the email from Helen with the attachment arrived at eleven fifty three PM, but it doesn't appear to have ever been opened. But we don't know. Again, we don't know did Kathleen stay at the computer? Did she leave? What Michael said happened after that is that he and Kathleen went out and sat by the pool talking and drinking some more wine. He said that Kathleen went inside between one forty five and two am, while he stayed out by the pool for another forty five minutes to an hour to finish smoking a cigar. So they were real night owls again with the owl puns. Very good, Well, they were, though, I mean, you know, for an older couple, not an older couple, but yeah, usually you wouldn't think you'd be out till like two in the morning, you know, hanging out with if we had elaborated on this, But Kathleen was forty eight and Michael was fifty eight. Yeah, and as we mentioned in part one, the temperature that evening was probably in the low fifties, like maybe fifty one fifty three at most, and Michael was wearing shorts and a T shirt and one other thing. So that was his story later that he would say that they were out by the pool for that amount of time and then he came in and found her at the

26:51 bottom of the stairs. When the paramedics initially came, he actually told them that he had just gone out to turn off the pool lights and then came back to find Kathleen there, implying that he found her just moments after the fall. And so he kind of changed his story. I think when some of the information came out about how long she might have been dead for, which we'll talk about in a minute, but I think he at first was like, oh, I just stepped out and back in I found her, and then he later sort of made it sound like, oh no, I was out there for like forty five minutes or an hour, so she could have fallen, you know, at any time during that you know period. So the implication like originally they had gone in together and then he went and turned off the pool light. That's what it sounded like. Yeah, and that is strange. Yeah, and I believe there's as much as a two hour discrepancy as to what time Kathleen came into the house. It's never we don't really know what time she came in, right, We really we don't even know if they were out at the pool. I mean, all we have is Michael's word. But between eleven PM and two fifty one or two forty one am, anything could have taken place during that time. We talked about the house and the setting in the last episode. But they had a for being in like a neighborhood. They had three and a half acres of property, so their nearest neighbors weren't that near really, and they had you know, so there's probably there's no neighbor testimony that can say, oh, yeah, I heard them by the pool or I saw the pool lights on.

28:19 It was very private, yeah, and wooded. Yeah, for sure. I do have a little clip I wanted to play. This is from much later when Michael Peterson went on The Doctor Phil Show and he talked about what happened that night, so I want to hear it from his words of what he said happened that evening. So we got the rest of the wine. We went out to the pool and we talked, and again one of those things, what do you talk about when your wife's going to die in a couple of minutes. Well, I didn't know she was going to die, so I'm sure we just talked about Christmas was coming up, what we're going to get the kids, and things like that. And then she did to me, Uh, well I got to go to bed. I'm going to go upstairs for the teleconference in the morning, and uh, I said, okay, good night there. Uh, And that was the last I saw her, really alive, vibrant. Was walking from the pool towards the house and I stayed out there for maybe an hour. I mighta dozed, I honestly don't know. It was a beautiful night, the pool was sparkling, and it was just really magical. I was happy with my life.

29:22 So then I got up and I went into the house the back way, and then I was gonna go around this v was a very big house and go around and lock the rest of the house up. And then I turned the corner and now on the back staircase, I saw her. She's just lying at the bottom of the stairs, and it w it was, you know, I'm like, what what uh? And so I I went to her and the first thing I noticed was, you know, there was blood, but I wasn't aware of that much blood until later, but she was crumpled up on the floor, and I picked her up and I held her, and then I called nine one one, What do you talk about with your wife when she's going to die? And a couple of such a weird, very strange thing to say. And then right after he's like, well, of course I didn't know she was going to die, but please don't if something happens to me and my death is suspicious, don't go on the doctor Phil just going to be a mistake. It seemed like doctor Phil was kind of on his was on his side on the show, but yeah, it was doctor Phil just makes me feel like I need a shower. Yeah, you know, I just realized that Michael Peterson's voice reminds me of reminds me of Thurston Howl from the from Gilligan's Island. I might date myself a little bit there, but I should say, I don't know what you're talking about, Island. What kind of show is that? Clearly, yeah,

30:53 a little bit. He just very unlikable in my opinion. I know that doesn't matter. It's irrelevant whether he's likable or not, but I just don't like the guy on that note. Let's take a break and we're back. Can I just say shout out to the lace people. They're really good on our little break them again? Oh yeah, definitely. Did I mention the Trader Joe's ones? Uh No, I don't. Okay, Trader Joe's makes a really good chip in a tube too. I can't what they're called, because Trader Joe's is. I love to go there, but it's kind of off. It's a drive for us. But their chips in a can are really good to I had no idea there were so many brands of chips in a can. Well you you yeah, you did know about the Trader joe was one because you've eaten them? Oh okay, okay, but yeah, you're not gonna I know what you're gonna say, and I don't want to hear it. I do not want to hear the night one. Well, I am going to play them. There's actually two nine only one calls, although the second one is very short, but the first one I'm going to play both of them. Let's start with the one at too forty one A them? John? Now, well one way your margency? Fifteen ten?

32:08 The street brief? Or Tom? Where you'll bring him? What kind of act? Those sins? Giving me a conscious? Is she ncious? Her coaches? How many stairs did you all them? How many for there there are? How many stays? Tom nails? Start com down? So fifteen point? I don't know, Chris to somebody who would works? Okay, somebody's this back in the ambulance. I'll ask you questions with the horse hields. Okay, put this quence start? Somebody else? Is this back in the ambulance? Okay? Is she away now? Hello? Hello? H Okay. Before we talk about that, let's play the second nine one one call. He called them back five minutes later, at two forty six a m. Where where please please? Would you hurry up? Learn dark nd There on the way, Can you tell me for sure she's not breathing?

33:39 But the love that was it? Yeah? What do you think about those nine one one calls? Well, recently I read an angry Reddit post where the poster said that there was no reason for podcast to play nine one one calls and it drove them crazy when people analyze a nine to one one call, which I agree to a certain extent, because I mean, we've said it before. You never know how you're going to react to a situation like this. I do want to say, even if you murdered your wife, even if you pushed your wife down the stairs with intent, you can still be emotional about it. You know, Yeah, you would be probably, I would hope, well not not, I mean a sociopath, Yeah wouldn't.

34:27 But we talk about that all the time. While they sound guilty or not, well, it's possible to be guilty and also be really upset about it. Yeah, you're in a very stressful situation either either way. Yeah. Yeah, I thought the I mean I thought his emotions sounded genuine, like he definitely sounded like he was freaking out and breathing heavily and things like that. The one thing that bothered me a little bit is that on the first call, he says she's still breathing, which I think is a little weird. He says it twice, and I do it makes you quite if she's breathing or not, because I kind of think that she wasn't at that point. I think she wasn't either. The thing that bothers me is when he said sorry. When he says, huh, that's a huge pet peeve of mine. Our kids will tell you, they will drives me nuts.

35:14 So, I mean, it does kind of sound like an old, old Jimmy Stewart movie because he is definitely a reactive person, maybe the overly dramatic person, like the crying. And I think for hours after he was sobbing when the police were there, and he couldn't talk to anyone, like like even on the nine one one call, he wouldn't. He didn't answer any questions, right. She would ask him a couple of things, he didn't respond, and when the police came later, they would ask him basic questions, you know, what's her birthday, things like that, and he just he would just stare at the police like he didn't, like he was in shock. But you know, makes you wonder if it was in act. Yeah, yeah, exactly, like if he was just trying to act like he was in shock and couldn't even function. And it is kind of rare because most people are able to process the you know, they're upset and speak to the police at the same time, which honestly, I'm always kind of amazed by. Yeah, and this is but this is someone who was in Vietnam in combat situation and he does like to talk about that a lot.

36:15 And I think he describes the crime scene with the amount of blood and he was like, oh, I wasn't really bothered by that because of my experience in Vietnam, I'd seen a lot of dead people. So that is a good point. Yeah, yeah, you would think he would maybe be a little more able to you know, cope and handle trauma like that. But again, it's easy for us to say his behavior on the nine to one one called didn't bother me too much. Sometimes I think you're supposed to stay on the line, and it does seem like, well, if you're supposed to resuscitate your wife or you want to you know, care take care of her, right, then you don't want to be on the phone, so he gave the address. He said, my wife is still breathing. He made it sound like it was, but he never did CPR. Never, he never performed CPR, And he said that later that he never did.

37:06 Yeah, which is strange. And he put towels under her head. You're probably going to talk about that in a minute. Yeah, I'll talk about the crime scene. So, yeah, unless you have anything more to say about the nine one one call. Well, it didn't bother me that he hung up either, because I could. I can kind of understand that because it sometimes it doesn't make sense to stay on the line. Yeah, and I wanted to mention too that it did take them a little longer to get there because there was a wreath on the front gate. They drove by the house. He drove by the house because they couldn't see the address because the reef the wreath was covering correct the address. But they did arrive at two forty eight am, so it was seven minutes after the first call, which is not too bad. Which coincidentally, at the same time that they arrived, Todd and Christina also returned. Right at that same time, the EMTs found Kathleen sprawled across the floor at the bottom of the stairs, with Michael crouched over her crying. Michael initially told the Paramount, as I mentioned earlier, that he had only briefly been separated from his wife prior to the accident.

38:05 He said, I went out to turn off the pool lights. I came back and there she was. Kathleen's legs were spread wide and her head was bent back and resting on the first step. The EMTs were prepared to deal with broken bones or even a broken neck, but they were taken aback by the blood. One of the EMTs said that he had responded to thirty or forty falls and had never seen so much blood. There was a red splattered roll of paper towels by her foot, along with some wadded up used towels. There was dried blood on her gray sweatpants, especially around the hip and waste area, where the sweatpants were completely red from the blood. There was dried blood on the soles of her bare feet, and there was a pair of bloody white socks laying between her legs. One of Michael's athletic shoes was sitting by Kathleen's foot, with a few spatters of blood on it.

38:53 What could she have tripped over his shoe or was the shoe No, I think he had taken the shoe off. I think he must have taken the shoe off because there was also a I'll talk about this later, but there's like a footprint on the back of her sweatpants that matched the shoe. That's very strange. And the socks I don't recall hearing about the socks before. Yeah, I looked at the picture. I think they were maybe her socks, and they were taken off and they were just sitting like between her Her legs were kind of, you know, spread apart on the floor, and they were like right between her legs. That's very strange. And I thought she was wearing flip flops. She had been wearing flip flops, I believe, but her when her body was found, she was in bare feet and the flip flops I've read were sitting next to her foot, like they were stacked one on top of the other, next to one of her feet.

39:43 The socks, I'm I'm I'm very curious about the socks. How they got there. The whole scene is very curious. There was also there were also blood soaked towels under her head and all around her. There was blood smeared and splattered on the wall, the stairs, and the floor underneath. What the ceiling. I've heard some I don't believe about the ceiling. Okay, from everything I've read, there was no blood on the ceiling. Kathleen had no pulse, no respiration, no blood pressure, and her pupils were dilated to six millimeters, indicating a lack of oxygen to the brain. She was dead, and it appeared to the Empts that she had been dead long before they got the call. When they're indicating that when he said she's still breathing, he probably was was either lying or wrong. I think so. Yes, And as we mentioned earlier, when they asked Michael for basic information like Kathleen's birth date and her medical history, he just gave them a blank stare and didn't respond. At the bottom of the staircase there is a French print of a black cat. Ah. Yes, the black cat. Yeah.

40:47 And the print I'm not sure if it's the same print that was in Elizabeth A. Ratcliffe's house. It's the same picture, but it may not be the same print, right right. I think the girls said that they thought it might have been their moms, because you know, Michael had control of her estate, so he might have kept some pieces. But it might be kind of like a cheeky reference to an Edgar Allan Poe short story called The Black Cat. It's about a man who finds a black cat and the black cat plagues him for some reason. He thinks the cat, we have two lovely black cats, which one of them is a little spooky. If you've listened to our podcast long enough, you know this. But he kills the black cat and then he finds another black cat and then he ends up killing his wife. So it almost seems like, you know, because Michael is so intelligent, like a few people would get that reference. Yeah, he was doing some subtle literary reference to Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of an interesting side note. Yeah. So the first police officers arrived on the scene around three AM. As the EMTs were still checking Kathleen's vital signs. On seeing the amount of blood, the first officer that was there radioed the Criminal Investigations Division. Around that time, Todd's friends Ben Maynor and Heather Whitson showed up. Todd had called Ben and asked him to bring Heather, who was a medical resident. Unfortunately, Ben was really drunk and started loudly telling people

42:19 to get out of the way. Heather offered her help but was told it was too late. Todd asked her to go attend to his dad, who he said was in shock. The next couple hours at the house were chaotic. So you had Michael, Todd, Christina, Ben, and Heather all there. The police told them to wait in the den, and Ben was clearly intoxicated and getting in everyone's way. We when the police told them you cannot talk exactly like, this is a criminal investigation. If you're going to be here, you can't talk to each other. Literally, no words should be exchanged, and that did not happen that way. Michael was pacing the floor up and down. Todd kept making phone calls and trying to leave the den. The police are trying to secure the scene. Todd called his uncle, Bill, Michael's brother, who was a lawyer. Bill told Todd to make sure that his dad did not say anything, and to tell the officer in charge that Michael is represented and his attorney is on the phone and has instructed him not to talk to anyone. Bill did not live in North Carolina and could not practice as an attorney in North Carolina, so he really couldn't represent Michael, but he could give him legal advice. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm not sure if it was Bill, but someone arranged for an attorney, a female attorney, to come to the house to support Michael and Michael's book, the book that I only read twenty percent of. He says that the attorney was not allowed into the house and she had to sit outside in her vehicle or whatever. But I've heard other reports that she was in

43:49 the room with them, So that's I can't imagine why the police. Yeah, maybe they would though, because they weren't really questioning him at that time, So maybe an attorney wouldn't be allowed into the room. Maybe. Yeah, it's that's strength that was unclear whether she was there or not. Yeah, the whole I mean, I think the whole scene was chaotic, and there's a lot of discussion about he lawyered up so quickly and does that look suspicious, which I you know, I don't think it does. I think you can't have that both ways right exactly, Like it is your legal right and if you have the means and the police are in the room with you, he definitely should call an attorney. Yeah, And I think they probably knew pretty quickly that they were start they were looking at this as a suspicious death, and that Michael was probably the person that they were going to look at, because I don't you've talked about this a little bit the last episode, and you're probably going to talk about it again. But Michael was very nervous about the police because of the articles that he'd written in the newspaper.

44:40 Yeah, for sure. At one point in the evening, as the police were investigating, Michael walked over and he was moaning and groaning and went over to his wife's body put his arms around her. Todd tried to coax his father to let go of his wife and had to physically lift Michael off of Kathleen's body. At that time, there was wet blood under her body and her clothing was still saturated with blood. And after Todd removed him, he went back and sat on a couch in the kitchen, which transferred blood to the couch. So the whole I think the whole scene was just chaotic. It probably wasn't managed very well by the police and controlled very well which is a problem. It's going to be a problem later. Do you think Michael was being performative or do you think that was his genuine emotion. It's it's hard to say. We don't know, but I wouldn't put it past him to be performative. Do you think that the police would have said, would have had it roped off or something, you know, her body roped off or something like you would think so. A medical examiner showed up at the scene, and his initial assessment was that Kathleen's injuries were possible with a fall, but an autopsy was needed to be sure. He told the detective in charge, if it's not a fall down the stairs, it was a rod like instrument, you should be looking for something like that right away. That was what I read in the book that I read that the medical examiner said that, Yeah, I thought the medical examiner like within an hour ruled it an accident. Well, like I said, he said that it was possible

46:12 that it was a fall, but his point was that you need an autopsy to be sure. In addition to the blood around Kathleen's body and on the stairs, there were a few other locations where blood was found. There were drops of blood on the walkway leading to the front door of the house, and some smeared on the front door, like a significant amount smeared on the front door. Detectives sprayed luminol on the floor going away from the stairs, and they saw bare footprints leading from the stairs to the laundry sink. The footprints turned toward the sink and then walked off to the washing machine, and then the trail then led to the kitchen sink and turned directly in front of that over to a kitchen cabinet, to a spot where there was also blood found. The luminol stuff is interesting to me. I don't think it necessarily tell a lot, But there were these footprints, but it was never really documented in the police report, and so again I just feel like the police did not do the best job of kind of documenting the scene and keeping it controlled. What do you think that footpattern means? If anything, like the going to the like he could have just been washing his hands. Yeah, I mean I think it was Michael, but I think yeah, it could have just been going to the sink to wash his hands, get a towel, get you know, paper towels, whatever it might be. So I don't think there's anything that suspicious about it. Well, you talked a little bit about the paper towels being and that is so strange that he would.

47:37 Yeah, it almost seems like he made an attempt to clean up some blood and then maybe decided it, you know, it was just too much. He wasn't going to work anyway, so why bother, so just leave the paper towels there. It's all very strange. It is very strange. The police collected the clothing that Michael and Todd had been wearing. The most interesting finding from the clothing was Michael's shorts. There was blood spatter in the crotch area and up inside the leg of his shorts. This wasn't transferred blood from him tending to Kathleen. It was spatter, and it indicated to investigators that it had to have come from Kathleen while she was beaten. On Kathleen's sweatpants. There was I mentioned this earlier. There was a clear impression in blood of the sole of an athletic shoe which turned out to match Michael's shoe perfectly, and it was on the top of the back of her leg, as if someone had stepped on her as she lay there with the top of the back of you like the I think it was like her thigh, like the back part of her like they saw the footprint when they turned her over, yes, because it was facing the floor, I think when she was laying there, so they did not see it until they turned her over. That is strange. That one is very Do you think her body was repositioned?

48:52 I mean I'm not sure, but you know the way that her body was laying with her head on the first step, and there were towels under her head, so obviously someone had at least put the towels under there, if not moved her body. I'm not defending Michael, but in that moment of panic and crisis, you know, maybe he positioned her body more than he could recall. If he was truly in shock and she was a tiny woman, maybe her sweatpants were baggy and he accidentally, you know, just stepped on I don't know, Yeah, I mean, her sweatpants could have been like sticking out and he might have stepped on them. And then yeah, and then kind of when he lifted her up a little bit to proper head on the steps. Yeah, really, Yeah, it's one of those things like looking at the crime scene itself. It's just kind of baffling, Like there's just so many different things that can lead you to think in different directions.

49:42 I haven't seen a ton of crime scene photos. Part of me doesn't want to look at them. But everyone says there was a tremendous, unprecedented amount of blood. Correct, Yes, but there's also a year and she had released her bladder, so there was also a lot of urine, which you know, adds to the amount of liquids. You know, it would see it would appear to be blood, but it was also urine mixed in. Yeah, I think that's true of her. Like her sweatpants. The top parts of her sweatpants were just completely soaked and that probably the urine probably contributed to that, as well as the blood underneath her as well. Investigators also found a discarded used condom in the master bedroom, and because of that, they decided to search Kathleen's body and to take samples of her head, hair, pubic hair, and bodily fluids, basically performing a rape kit on her. Later, Todd told the police that the condom belonged to one of his friends who had had sex with a girl in Kathleen and Michael's bed.

50:42 Gross. Yeah. Again. In Michael's book Behind the Staircase, he talked about this, And so the condom was in the like the middle of the floor in the in the bedroom. And obviously Kathleen a meticulous housekeeper, if she wasn't a meticulous housekeeper, would have noticed a condom in the middle of the floor. And he said that the police planted it. This is his claim that it was in the middle of the floor. There is a crime scene photo of it. I believe it was never talked about. It was never talked about on the trial because DNA tests did exclude Michael and Kathleen from you know, it belonging to either one of them. Yeah, it's a strange thing, Like you have a party and have people over and be like, oh, I just go have sex in my mom and dad's bed, Like it's good, it's great. I mean horrible, it's horrible. We had a horrible incident where we had someone for us house sat for us, and she had a big party and uh, yeah, we don't know what happened that night in her house, but it felt really icky when we came back to her house. True Michael believed that the police were hoping that the condom had someone else's male or female DNA that would make him look bad.

51:59 Oh okay, and when it didn't, he was, you know, they had no reason, right. I think that's a continuing theme that we'll see as we get into the investigation and the trial, is that, you know, Michael really felt like they were out to get him, right And was he paranoid or were they out to get him? Yeah? Good question. Investigators searched the house and the grounds, but they didn't find anything that appeared to be an obvious murder weapon. The house was turned back over to the family on Sunday evening. On Monday night, someone presumably Michael, stayed up late into the night, deleting three hundred and fifty two more files from the home computer. Some of these were eventually recovered by investigators, and some of them were emails related to the Peterson's financial struggles, like the one I talked about earlier, where he emailed Patty asking for money to help the boys out, which again could suggest a motive if he did in fact kill Kathleen, and maybe he was trying to cover up some of those emails over two thousand peign images were found on Michael's computer were not deleted. Those were not deleted, which is really interesting. So he's deleting all these financial documents, but he doesn't delete the porn. I would think that that would be the first thing that he would want to delete, because whether Kathleen knew about his bisexuality or not, Michael did not want the rest of the world to know that, right, So that's another one of them. If he was trying to cover up a potential motive for murder, you would think that that would be one of the first things he would think about deleting. Yeah, yeah,

53:29 very strange. Yeah, all right, let's talk about the autopsy. So Kathleen's autopsy was performed on Sunday at noon by doctor Deborah Radish, so very quickly after her death. Really we talked a little bit earlier about the question around the time of death, and one of the things that kind of frustrates me. And I'm not a medical examiner, so I don't know, but I would think if someone died, you know, sometime between eleven PM and two AM or two thirty AM, and they did an autopsy right like right away, within our after that, wouldn't it be wouldn't they be able to narrow down the time of death like much more? You would hope so, I would hope so too. I know you're about to say one thing though, that is indicative of her time of death. When you talk about the autopsy results, Yes, you're talking about the red neurons, Yes, sir, yes, that is on the list. But let me go through like all the autopsy results and kind of everything that all the significant findings from the autopsy. One is that she had hair grasped in her hands, which turned out to be her own hair. Some of the hairs were forcibly removed, like pulled out, while others appeared to have been broken or cut. There were at least seven deep complex lacerations and evulsions, which is a vulsion means the action of pulling or tearing away to the posterior scalp, so right in the back of her head. Subarachnoid hemorrhage, which means that there's bleeding in the space that surrounds the brain, so like inside the sculp around the brain,

55:00 which occurs if there's a weak area in a blood vessel of the brain that bursts There was no subdural hemorrhage, though, and no contusions of the brain, and the skull was not fractured. There was crusted blood under her fingernails, but no tissue, and I believe the blood was her own. I never saw anything to indicate that it was anyone else's, so I think it was probably her own. She had several contusions and abrasions on her face, neck, and her ear. At least some of these injuries could not be the result of an impact with a flat surface like a stair step, because they were in locations of the face protected by the orbital bone that would surround it. There were several contusions on her elbow, her wrists, her hands, and her fingers. Doctor Radish felt that these injuries were consistent with defensive injuries someone trying to fend off an attack. There was a fracture with hemorrhage on the small extension off of the left thyroid cartilage, which is unlikely to occur in a fall. Usually, an injury like that is the direct result or the result of direct trauma to the bone, and is common in strangulation or attempted strangulation. It's more of a vague sign of strangulation than something like a hyoid bone injury, but it's still a common sign of strangulation.

56:17 If it were a sign of strangulation, wouldn't there be on the other side of your neck also some trauma, not just on the one side. That makes sense to me, right, yeah, that would make sense because you know you put your neck, your hands around the whole neck. Right. There were also two pine needles stuck to her right hand. Her blood alcohol level was point oh seven, which is below the legal limit of point one, which was North Carolina's legal limit at that time. There were trace amounts of I'm not going to pronounce these well, chlorofen, chloropheneramine asking the wrong girl, which is an antihistamine, cyclobenzoprene, which is a muscle relaxant, and nicotine, diazepam or valium was present. The concentration was zero point one point five milligram per liter, which is actually on the low end of a normal dosage, and there were no opiates found in her system. At the medical examiner's office, they inspected Kathleen's brain tissue, and this is where getting back to your point earlier, that a microscopic exam revealed the presence of red neurons. Their existence meant to the medical examiner that she did not die quickly, that it probably took two to four hours as blood flow to the brain decreases, depriving it of oxygen. That causes a gradual process of brain cells dying and red neurons being formed. There is, however, different opinions on this. As with everything, you can find cases or examples where they could

57:49 form potentially in less time than that if you're under extreme trauma. Yeah. Yeah, So again, they took it to basically mean that she had probably been for a couple of hours, you know, or she had been dying for a couple of hours, right, But we don't know for sure. We talked about this a little bit the last episode that Kathleen had had a traumatic injury when she drove into the shallow end of the pool, and that's why she was on the muscle relaxanes and the volume because she was still having pain from that accident. Right. Yeah. I think the amount is interesting, And again I'm not a doctor, so I don't know how, you know, how this might have changed from the time she died until they did the autopsy. But the fact that the level of alcohol was pretty low, really, and the level of valium that was present was also on the low end as well. Like it wasn't it wasn't like she had taken a huge amount or anything like that. Not to say that she couldn't still have been dizzy or well. I think the amount of you know, valuum plus the alcohol, plus the muscle muscle relaxing and an antihistamine if nothing else would make you sleepy, could be yeah, and you know, not completely impaired, but impaired to a certain extent for sure. Yeah. So the autopsy, the final conclusion was I'm going to quote from the autopsy report. In my opinion, the cause of death in this case was due to severe concussive injury of the brain caused by multiple blunt force impacts of the head. Blood loss from the deep scalp lacerations may have also played a role in her death.

59:22 The number, severity, locations, and orientation of these injuries are inconsistent with a fall down the stairs. Instead, they are indicative of multiple impacts received as a result of a beating. Cause of death blunt force trauma to the head manner of death homicide. In our year plus of doing this podcast, I have learned to question every expert, and I think someone else would do this autopsy and possibly come up with a different result. Do you I do, don't you. I think it's hard to tell. I mean possibly, I don't. I mean I think the cause of death was I think she blet out. Yeah, but I think that. I mean, if you're looking at two possibilities, which they weren't thinking about an owl or anything else at this point, I'm sure if you're thinking about possibility, does she fall down the stairs or was she beaten to death? I think this conclusion.

1:00:17 I don't see how you could come to the conclusion that she fell down the stairs. I suppose it's possible, but it just seems very unlikely to me. You're putting your cards on the table already. Huh. Yeah, I mean I really don't believe. Like, with the injuries she had, it just does not seem plausible at all. She would have had to like fall down multiple times, get up multiple times, hit her head multiple times, and it just and it just doesn't seem I do think it's possible that she got up and fell down, Yeah, that may not possible multiple times, and just it just seems very unlikely to me. Yeah, I'm not going to put my cards on the table yet. Fair fair enough. As much as I hate to say it, I think that is a good place to stop at the end of part two, and we will wrap it up in part three. Oh dang, sorry you guys. We'll solve the case.

1:01:10 Oh will we? I mean, I'm going to do my boss to convince you. But well, you have some earth shattering revelation that you found. No it's not ruth shattering, but it's it's going to shake you a little bit. I think you're going to reveal it in part three. Yeah, okay, I will excellent, exciting. I'll look forward to that. Well, Cosmo is still here, our cat. Yeah, he's sleeping through the whole thing, but he's here. I think he's he's listening eyes when you were talking about the black cat picture, he really perked up then for a minute. He does like to sit in here when we podcast. It's cute. All right. Well, until next time, Thank you so much for listening. Please like, review, subscribe, follow on social media, send us an email at Lovemary Kill at gmail dot com. Until next time, don't push your husband down the stairs. Don't push your wife down the stairs.