Original subtitles

Durham police this morning are

investigating the death of a prominent city resident.

The officers were called early this morning to the home of Nortel

executive Kathleen Peterson who was found dead in her Forest Hills

mansion after apparently falling down the stairs.

Kathleen Peterson's husband is novelist Michael Peterson,

well known for his books on the Vietnam War.

He is also a former columnist for the Durham Herald-Sun and ran

an unsuccessful mayoral campaign in 1999.

Durham police have refused additional comment on the death.

Kathleen and I were in here watching a movie.

I had gone to Blockbusters and rented a video.

And we were watching American Sweethearts.

And I think it was probably around 11 o'clock

that the movie ended and we took our glasses, left the dinner plates,

as a matter of fact, on there, we would clean up the next day,

went into the kitchen.

We would talk for hours, Kathleen and I at night-time

would talk two or three

hours, talk about the movie or the kids or what we were going to do.

And we came in here. I think there was...

I'm not sure. We probably had another bottle...

I know we were drinking two bottles that night.

It was a nice night, I guess it was 55-60 degrees.

Very nice night. And I had gone outside and we were talking here...

..for...

..a fair amount of time.

And then what we would usually do on a nice night is we would go down

to the pool which I always think is about the

nicest place on the property.

I don't know if the chairs were like this or not but probably

something like this.

And we were both right here.

The dogs would come over and...

We were just talking and finishing our drinks and then she said,

"I've got to go in because I've got the conference call in the morning."

And she started walking out that way and I stayed right here.

Don't think I said anything special to her,

certainly not thinking this was the last time I was going to see her.

I said, "Goodnight. I'll be up a little bit later."

And stayed here and she walked...

And the last I saw her was when I was there and she was just...

..walking here.

That's it. That was the last I saw Kathleen

alive, no, she was alive when I found her but barely.

'Durham 911, what's your emergency? 1810 Cedar St, please. What's wrong?

'My wife had an accident, she's still breathing.

'What kind of accident. She fell down the stairs.

'She's still breathing. Is she conscious? What?

'No, she's not conscious.

'How many stairs did she fall down? Huh? How many stairs? Stairs.

'How many stairs? MICHAEL PANTS RAPIDLY

'Calm down, sir.

'Calm down. 15, 20, I don't know.

'Please, get somebody here right away.

'Somebody is dispatching the ambulance while I ask you questions.

'It's... It's in Forest Hills, OK, please, please!'

It was such a shock when I drove into the driveway.

Seeing ambulances, you think,

"Oh, my God did somebody have a heart attack?"

Never in your wildest dreams would you think of anything...

You wouldn't know what to think.

My first thought was my dad had a heart attack.

He's a little older than Kathleen.

So when I ran in there and saw my dad alive, I was,

quite honestly, a little relieved thinking, "Whoo."

Then he was able to mutter the word, something along the lines of,

"Kathleen, Kathleen, my God...

"Oh, God, Kathleen."

And he was motioning in the direction of the staircase.

'Sir, somebody else is dispatching the ambulance.

MICHAEL WHIMPERS

'OK, is she awake now? Hello?

'Hello?'

FAINT SPEECH AND SOBBING

PHONE LINE GOES DEAD

I can vividly remember finding Kathleen, I can remember

opening the door. I can remember calling 911.

I can remember...

I particularly remember Todd just holding me as tight as possible.

I think to sort of contain me.

And I can remember Heather,

the doctor, Ben's girlfriend taking my pulse.

And then I can remember, it must have been very early while I

was in the kitchen that a cop was on me instantly.

Everywhere I went a policeman was there.

I went outside with Ben and a policeman was there.

I remember walking down there and a policeman was there.

There was always a policeman with me.

I know for a fact there's

no way in the world my father ever would have hurt Kathleen.

But... the realism of their investigating it did seem real.

While it was completely unfounded in my mind,

the way that they were behaving,

the way that they were barking orders at us,

restricting us from talking to one another,

they truly drove home the point that they were investigating

this as a crime.

We came up Sycamore and you come up and

it kind of dead ends into our house and

you just see the yellow tape across the whole house. It was horrible.

It's, like, our house, you just want to go home and the yellow tape

was right there and you can't go home.

It was the worst thing in the world and then...

..I remember Dad actually explaining it to us. He was in shock kind of.

He was shaking and was like, "I didn't do it.

"You have to believe me." And we were like, "Dad, we believe you.

"This is horrible. How can we not believe you, you know?"

We didn't know any details yet and we were like, "We believe you.

"We believe you. We know it's not true. This is horrible."

It was so upsetting.

I couldn't believe it but it was so hard to think about that

because at the same time we were thinking about our mother, you know?

It was like two bombshells hitting us.

When I first entered the house, I noticed what appeared to be

two legs sticking out of a doorway or a hallway to my left.

And once I approached the victim, there was just a...

..very abundant amount of blood...

..on her, on the floor, on the walls that was not...

..consistent with somebody falling down the steps.

Obviously, we can't know exactly what happened.

We have to piece together what we believe happened based on the

circumstantial evidence we've uncovered.

The only people that know are Mike Peterson and Kathleen Peterson.

And, obviously,

Mr Peterson is not going to enlighten us about what he knows.

We believe our evidence is going to show that she was beaten,

that she was stunned and was bleeding,

that she probably recovered and struggled...

..in the doorframe with Mike Peterson to a degree.

And that he then had to bludgeon her...

..on multiple occasions after that.

And that she basically bled to death.

Live, local, up to the minute. This is...

Michael Peterson's supporters can't believe he's charged with the

murder of his wife Kathleen.

Kathleen was my life.

I whispered her name in my heart 1,000 times.

She is there but I can't stop crying.

But a special grand jury decided today there was sufficient

evidence gathered by police to warrant a trial in this case.

The charge - first degree murder.

Now, 11 days after frantically calling 911 seeking help for

his wife, Michael Peterson must spend the night inside the

Durham County Jail.

My mother and Mike had an absolutely loving relationship and there

is no way either of them would wish any sort of harm on the other one.

Kathleen Peterson's biological daughter Caitlin Attwater served as

the main spokesperson for the Peterson family.

She stood shoulder to shoulder with Peterson's biological sons and their

sisters, adopted by Kathleen and Mike Peterson.

This is going to be the most unbelievably heartbreaking

Christmas we could ever imagine.

We've already lost one mother and now the state

has taken away our father.

In my mind, if Mike finds Kathleen at the bottom of the stairs, it's

a reasonable assumption on his part that she fell down the stairs.

Peterson's attorney David Rudolph says the authorities seem to

have jumped to conclusions about Kathleen's death.

For us, if, in fact, the police are right that this was not a fall,

that should be the beginning of the investigation,

not the end of the investigation.

So far what I have been saying to the press basically is,

"We think it's an accident but until our experts look at it,

"we really can't say whether it's an accident or intruder.

"What we know for sure is it has nothing to do with Michael."

The benefits of an intruder theory is it's simpler.

There's no debate over the forensics for the most part.

The real problem with the intruder theory is lack of evidence

that there was an intruder. Right.

An intruder would then have to have a weapon with them capable of

inflicting these wounds but not a knife or a gun. Right.

And take that weapon with them. Right.

Mike clearly came and reacted to the scene. Right.

What we don't seem to have is shoe prints leaving the scene.

An intruder clearly wanted to get the hell out of there.

It seems to me what the intruder versus accident theory really

boils down to is...

..what caused the lacerations on the head.

I agree. The injuries themselves to me are just not rage type injuries.

With the rage, you'd have skull fractures.

Not only that but you'd have a lot of major lacerations in her face.

I've never met anybody that just stood still and waited to be

hit on the head four times or seven times.

She'd have to stand and let her head get beaten by an intruder

without moving around. That would be bizarre.

Everything I've heard about Kathleen is she's

a very feisty woman.

And there's no way that she's going to allow anybody to beat her up

without fighting back.

And there are no signs whatsoever she fought back.

I just don't see a crime of rage in all the experience I have.

It's just not there.

Hey. How you doing? Nice to see you. Come on in. Thank you.

You have breakfast all ready? You like some bagels or orange juice?

No, where's the coffee?

You didn't make any? Coffee's not made. Oh, well.

Is this the book here?

Yeah, that's the book that Mike and I co-wrote.

Charlie Two Shoes And The Marines Of Love Company.

Yep.

Came out in late 1998. '98.

My understanding is the last time you spoke with Kathleen was

a couple days before her death. Tell me about it.

It was really the night before, essentially the night before.

It was on the 7th of December, Friday evening.

I had spoken with Stratton Leopold who is

a producer in Hollywood and we had been talking to him for about

a year about the possibility of him optioning this book for a movie.

And he called me that day, that afternoon, and said that it was

a done deal, that everything was official.

And so I called Mike just after that.

It was probably about six o'clock

that evening and Kathleen answered the phone and we spent maybe

ten minutes talking on the phone.

Now, that night you spoke to her about ten minutes,

did you talk to Mike too that evening?

Yeah, she must have been talking in the kitchen because I said,

"Is the old man there?"

Kathleen and I were the same age and Mike was about ten years older.

She said, "Yeah, the old man is here but he's going to have to empty the

"dryer and mop the kitchen floor before he comes to talk."

They always had a very playful way with each other and I could

hear him chuckling in the background.

Did you hear any...

I mean, did there appear to be any pressure between each other,

frustration, anything like that? Between them?

Mike and Kathleen on this night? They were absolutely normal.

They were like I always saw them or heard them.

As I said, they were playful.

I sensed no stress or tension between them.

Just absolutely normal.

And that's why it was such a stretch to think that they went from

this normal playful back and forth between each other to...

something that is homicidal. It just makes absolutely no sense to me.

It's inconceivable.

I've got the autopsy photographs here.

That...

It's impossible for me to believe, if that's the back of her head,

that that can be caused from a series of missteps or fall

down 15 different stairs. I can't see that happening.

Nor could the medical examiner.

That's...

from our perspective an impossibility.

As Mike indicates, the medical examiner doesn't believe that

it was possible either,

that this had to occur from multiple inflictions of blunt force trauma.

If they have a witness who can say she went down the stairs like

a pogo stick head first, bouncing along, then that might fit.

But somehow I don't think that's the way people fall down stairs.

From my experience as an investigator and law enforcement

officer, it was not consistent with a fall down a flight of steps.

And that's why I moved out and obtained an application to

obtain a search warrant so quick.

You can't look at that and think it's an accident.

Especially when you couple it with the fact that...

I guess you've heard the 911 tape?

But the first call they had and she's supposedly still breathing.

The second call in, 15 minutes later or so, she's just quit breathing.

And yet when the medical examiners or EMTs arrived, the blood was

so dry that they didn't even get any on them.

They didn't have to wear protective garments.

Because the blood was already dried.

She'd been there for hours, probably.

It just never occurred to Michael Peterson that people

wouldn't believe him when he said she fell down the stairs.

That's really what this is all about.

He thought he'd get away with it.

Live, local, up to the minute, this is...

Sir, quit being smart and answer the question.

'In an occasionally tense bond hearing today,

'Mike Peterson's son Todd verbally scuffled

'with the judge and district attorney.

'With shackled ankles and often with tears streaming down his face

'Mike Peterson sat by emotionally listening to character

'witnesses before the judge agreed to let him go on 850,000 bond.'

'Peterson left the Durham County Jail just after 6pm.'

I really want to go home.

I want to see my kids and this is the first opportunity I've had

to grieve for my wife and I really would like to have that time.

'While his lawyers now turn to the facts of the case,

'Peterson turns to his remaining family,

'glancing at his first glimpse of sky outside the jail,

'chased by cameras.

'Even back at home, where friends arrive with groceries,

'Mike Peterson won't have time alone.'

It always seemed to me

that the greatest threat to our freedoms

came not from people who committed crimes,

but from the way the government tends to respond to that,

and the way the government tends to take on power for itself,

almost as though there is a vacuum that someone

has to fill and the government is going to fill it.

And so, for me, being in the role of a criminal defence lawyer

is being in the role of a person who can do at least

a little bit to hold back some of the government excesses,

to make sure that we don't lose our freedoms

in an effort to protect them.

In Michael's case,

there is no doubt in my mind that he is not guilty of this.

And so, for me, being able to help him establish his innocence

is really what is moving me at this point.

MUFFLED CONVERSATION

THEY LAUGH

Let me ask a question, in the experience that you've seen,

whether somebody was hit with something

versus fallen on a blunt type... in a blunt type contact -

are these very consistent, or are there aberrations here?

I would tend to consider the lacerations

as second choice in my thought of what occurred here.

The first choice is the presence of the bruises,

not the presence of the lacerations.

The presence of the lacerations is misleading,

because you see a whole lot of laceration,

and you say, "Oh, my God!"

I did that too at the beginning.

I looked at that and I thought, "Oh, my God, that's terrible,

"this is boom, boom, boom, boom, hit them on the head." Right.

But when you keep looking at it,

then you see things you didn't see before.

That's why I keep telling people, you know,

you should never look at a picture just one time - you look at it

on Monday, then on Tuesday, then on Friday, then on Monday,

then every time you look at it, you see new stuff. Yeah. And so...

..when, at the beginning, I thought that maybe this was

an elongated object, I think I've changed my mind on that.

That is reasonably consistent with a flat object.

Meaning hitting the ground.

Because the curvature... A flat object.

This wound here had to have been at least two impacts.

This one here had to have been at least one impact.

This area here and this area here are split.

They did not make any contact at all.

And the impact occurred here.

And then it's like when you take a watermelon and you throw it on

the ground, you get tears in places where it never touched the ground.

So, we've got one impact here, you've got one impact maybe here,

and you've got one about here.

When you say several impacts, are you talking about several times,

or could it be one point of contact?

Single contact. Single...

Yeah, single occurrence, three points of contact.

You take the watermelon and throw on the ground and it's going

to be in a million pieces.

OK, we're in here.

Faris, why don't you go in there, because you need to be up close.

Excuse me.

This is the area...

What we didn't notice is in the moulding area, we see a contact.

Faris, can you see that?

And dripping.

That which indicative of a local source of blood coming down.

Also we see some spatter in this corner area,

which means active bleeding still.

You know, the most interesting thing, we found some hair,

tissue material on this moulding. There's still some there...

You see some damage on the moulding.

Yeah, there's some fibres there.

I check all the ceiling area.

No cast-off pattern.

Generally, if somebody beat up somebody,

we see the cast-off pattern. Sure.

And here, it's not. So, however, if this weapon is too confined place...

Very small place... It would be very hard to...

create the energy just to... The energy level, er...

Now, how do you get your spatter coming up this wall here,

kind of behind this, er...?

OK, here it could be a possibility somebody coughing.

HE COUGHS

So you going to have a...

It's not inhaling, it's exhaling.

But if she's coughing up pure blood, like here, wouldn't she have

either fractured the base of the skull, or an injury to her...

Well, maybe the blood, just more blood come from the hair,

the face, come on to nose or mouth. So it's all external.

Yeah, external. Just the wet head... The wet head...

The wet head sponge thing.

It's not from internal bleeding, it's external, got into the system.

MUFFLED CONVERSATION

OK.

The autopsy photos are items one, two, three, four, five, six,

seven, eight, nine, ten, in terms of importance to the State.

And they are going to hit that really hard.

The power of those photos is they're, you know, they're visceral,

I mean, you look at them and, you know, you don't need any

expert testimony to say, "Oh, she must have been beaten."

That's the thought that pops in your head.

Without explanation, it's hard to imagine,

how does somebody fall down a step and end up with these kind of blows?

Right. And, you know, I think that really needs to be addressed,

in terms of, you know, finding out, how do people,

what do people just think on their own, and then,

putting out the defence explanation of it.

Our experts are of the view that she probably fell

and knocked herself out in a first fall,

and with lots of bleeding coming from the head.

Where did they say she fell?

Probably on the second or third step going up.

And these... You can see it here. OK.

This is where the step turns,

and you can see how narrow the steps are here,

plus you are going from the light,

a lighted hallway or a lighted kitchen,

and this is very dark, there's no lighting immediately over this,

there's only a light at the top of the stairs.

She had 0.7 blood alcohol,

she's going from light to dark... OK.

..and you've got these stairs.

So, Henry thinks she tripped on one of these stairs here

and hit her head... Fell backwards?

Fell backwards and hit her head, you know, probably somewhere up here,

and then there's a little bit of blood, it looks like a sort of...

her head slid down or something, and then hit her head again...

She fell backwards, hit her head against the doorframe...

Right, and then fell on the floor.

Fell on the floor and hit her head again. Right.

So, you've got two hits... This is what you think's happened?

Yeah, and that she's unconscious then,

bleeding on the floor for some period of time,

and then she comes to after some period of time and tries

to get up and there's blood on the bottom of her feet,

and, you know, in order for there to be blood on the bottom of her feet,

there needs to be a fair amount of blood on the floor,

because it's not just a speck or two, it's...

Right, it's completely coated. Right.

And that she then fell again... You know, obviously,

if you're trying to get up in blood, it's incredibly slippery...

..and fell again.

She fell right there? Right there.

Right.

Um...

DOOR CLOSES

David, we need to stop doing this in front of him.

This is...

I mean, today is not the best day in the world to do it.

I think we really need to keep him out of this.

OK, that's fine.

Um...

HE SIGHS

When I think of Kathleen...

..what I remember, unfortunately,

is her dying in my arms, er...

That's always the overwhelming... image.

If I look at something and think,

"Oh, yeah, God, there was this funny thing,"

or a picture on the refrigerator where she is in

the Imperial Gardens in Tokyo, or there's...

So many things that always, if I stop and think,

not one thing comes up, never one thing.

Or I might think, "Oh, that's a shining moment,"

and then I'll see a picture of something or another incident

might occur and like, "Oh, yeah, there's that one,"

so there's not one identifying thing with Kathleen, no, um...

The first people we have is Michael Peterson...

..and Patty.

What year did they, er... What year were they married?

They were married in 1966.

Do you know if they got married in the States,

or were they married in another country?

I think they were married in the States,

because after they were married,

Mike went to Vietnam, Patty went to Germany, she was a teacher in

Germany, and so after Mike got out of Vietnam, then he went to Germany.

While they were in Germany, they had two sons. The oldest is Clayton...

..and the next child was Todd.

So they had two boys... of their marriage.

And both of the boys were born in Germany?

Both boys born in Germany. And Clayton is the oldest one. OK.

Mike was a retired Marine captain, and when he got to Germany,

one of his better friends was George Ratliff,

who was a captain in the Air Force.

And George... Er, correction, Elizabeth worked with Patty

at the college, they both taught at the same college.

And that's how Patty and Elizabeth got together as good friends,

and then Mike and George, both being captains, became good friends.

After George and Liz were married, they had two children.

Margaret was the oldest daughter

and Martha the youngest.

Shortly after the birth of Martha, George died in 1983,

in an invasion in Grenada.

Two years after George died, Liz dies in 1985,

while living in Germany.

At this time, the entire Peterson family and the Ratliff family

are living in Germany.

During this period of time, after George and Liz die, after Liz dies,

Martha and Margaret move in with Mike and Patty, Todd and Clayton.

Because George and Elizabeth, in their separate wills,

wanted Mike and Patty to be the caretakers of their children.

Mike and Patty started having problems, and Mike came back

to the United States, and what year was it that he met Kathleen?

He met Kathleen in 1986.

So, he met her in 1986, Kathleen had a daughter named Caitlin.

What year did... When did they move in together? That was in 1989.

And that's when Martha and Margaret became one family,

under the same roof with Mike.

So, Mike and Kathleen living together,

and they had the three girls,

and there was moving back and forth, and eventually,

Todd and Clayton moved in

with Mike and Kathleen in Durham, North Carolina.

So, how old were each one of the kids at the time of

Kathleen's death in 2001? Her daughter Caitlin was 19.

Margaret, the oldest, was 20.

The baby, Martha, was 18.

Clayton was 27.

And Todd was 25...

..when Kathleen died.

And that was in the year 2001. 2001.

MUFFLED CONVERSATION

After your mother died, your real mother died... Yeah.

..who took care of you? Um, my dad right now, Mike...

Michael Peterson, and his wife, Patty.

Now, your dad died before your mother did, right? Yes.

Um, and you were probably still a baby in your mother's womb,

were you not, at that time? Or were you born?

No, I was about six months old. Six months old.

How old were you when your mom died?

I was, um, 18.

18? Months?

Oh, my birth mom! I'm sorry. Your birth mom, I'm sorry. Um...

I think I was, um... a little over a year. OK.

So, you have very little memory... Yeah, I don't...

The only memory I have is what people have told me. OK.

So I don't have memories.

And how did you start referring to Kathleen when you moved in

the house with her?

Well, we called her Kathleen for a good while and, um,

I started calling her Mom when...

I would say I was about... I was in...

..a freshman in high school. So, about five years ago.

And that's when I started to...

because I realised how much she was doing for us.

Tell me about the relationship between Mike and Kathleen.

And, I mean, refer to them as Mom and Dad, I don't want to discourage

you in that, now that we know who you're talking about, you know. OK.

Just tell me about the relationship between your mom and dad.

Um, well, it was...

It was wonderful, I mean, they were so happy that last year,

they were just... I don't know, there was...

It was beautiful, they were just really happy,

they loved each other, they, um...

They didn't ever fight usually and they just took so much joy in

each other's presence, I mean, we would laugh all the time,

they would just come home and make dinner and, you know,

drink some wine or something and it was just beautiful,

because we would just end up laughing the whole night and

I would just talk to Mom for ever.

I don't know, it was really beautiful, I never saw any problems.

Now, you say usually... Did I? At one point, you did.

Did you ever see any, er...

..any problems between the two of them?

Were there ever any discussions?

No, the only problems were Mom would just get frustrated at Dad

for not coming home from the gym on time, and that was just

because of dinner, but that always ended with everybody just...

I mean, that was the only problem,

but it was really such a small problem that it was almost a joke.

Do you think if there had been any problems between her and

your dad, that she would have...

maybe not necessarily told you

the problems, but she would have

let you know that Mike was doing something she didn't appreciate?

SHE CHUCKLES Yeah.

Yeah, she definitely would have.

She was always straightforward with us.

I mean, if there was ever, like, a problem in the family,

you know, between any of us or between, like, Martha and Dad,

you know, like Dad hates Martha's haircut or something,

or her hair colour, you know, I mean, we had family dinner every

night, so it was really hard not to bring that up in conversation.

I mean...

No, like, we were a very open family.

I always felt like I could talk about anything and I know

that Mom talked about everything with us, too.

How about the relationship between Kathleen and your dad?

It was always very strong, I was...

kind of jealous of it and happy for him,

because his relationship with my mom had never been romantic

or intimate or anything like that, you know, very platonic,

and to see him happy with, you know, with a woman, with Kathleen,

the two of them were just really good together.

They just connected on a different plane.

And...

..was there ever a time where your dad got really, really mad at you,

to where he showed his temper or anything like that?

I mean, to me, that would have been probably the worst thing...

That wasn't, actually, um, I mean,

it might have been for other things, I mean, Lord knows I've done

stupid things, wrecked his car and things like that...

Did he ever hit you? Yeah. Yeah. Spank you, or hit you? Um...

I guess mostly spanking.

Had you ever seen your dad violent towards anybody?

Er, no, no.

He disciplined us as children, but as parental discipline.

Did he ever hit you?

Er, he spanked us when we were children.

But I don't have a friend who wasn't spanked.

As far as actual aggressive behaviour - never.

Never in his... To another... er, I'll say non-child of his,

meaning an adult, a partner, a wife - nothing, nothing.

Even when he and my birth mother would have disagreements - nothing.

It was always my dad to kind of chuckle and walk off,

he never, ever became aggressive, in the slightest sense.

Mike?

How about here? Around here?

I'm guessing about here. OK.

This would be very close to where we were. OK.

Yeah, because she came over and she'd smoke cigarettes,

she'd put the cigarettes out in there.

There may have been another chair here.

That's all right, that's OK.

But I mean, we're talking about round about here.

OK, that's fine. This is close enough. OK.

Tell Todd to hold off until we can get the dogs out, all right?

OK, and you know to, um...

..come over to this button, and as soon as you push it,

step back, out of the way.

I could stand in the kitchen, if you like. OK.

I want to have a human witness in addition to the tape recording.

Make sure everything else is closed up. Yeah.

And I can testify that his doors are well fitted.

PHONE RINGS

You ready?

'Please, help!

'Help! Somebody, help!

'He-e-e-elp!

'Somebody, anybody, help me!

'Help me, please, help me!

'Help! Help!'

RECORDING FAINTLY AUDIBLE

RECORDING BECOMES MORE AUDIBLE

'Help me! Help!

'Please, help me!

'Help!

'I need help!

'Anybody, help me!

'Help!

'Somebody, please, help me!

'I need help!'