Original subtitles

This is ABC11 Eyewitness News at six.

Caitlin Atwater knows a year can change a life forever.

It's too much to even really say.

One year ago today, her mother, Kathleen Peterson, died.

At first, Caitlin believed she fell down the staircase, as she was told.

Now, she believes Michael Peterson murdered her mother

and she's certain Peterson will be convicted

in a criminal trial next spring.

Why do you think Michael would want to kill your mother?

I think that the Michael that I knew

would not want to kill my mom.

I think that...

..I didn't know him in the way that...

I think that I couldn't tell you why,

because I didn't know the person who killed my mom.

You know, that's not who he held himself out to be.

It doesn't change any of my memories,

it doesn't change the fact that I thought they were happy together,

but you don't end up at the bottom of the stairs...

..under those circumstances

if your life was what everyone thought it was.

From what we found, every aspect of Mike Peterson's life is a lie.

He's...

He wasn't wounded in Vietnam.

He obviously served and I'm sure that he served bravely,

but when he came back from serving in Vietnam

to Okinawa

and injured in a jeep accident,

he comes back to the States or wherever he lived -

he told everybody that he was injured in the war.

That's just absolutely not true.

There's obviously other aspects of his personality -

he wanted to give the appearance that this was a wholesome, blended,

functioning family.

That simply is not true.

The evidence is going to show that he was having

an illicit relationship

that we believe she likely found out about that,

based upon information that we found near the computer

and was contained in the computer.

The evidence is going to show that he is bisexual

and that he was having a relationship with

a man outside of this county.

We both believe that after she had a phone call from a person that

worked at Nortel about an upcoming trip that she was going to take,

that some time, perhaps after that phone call,

which could have been anywhere between 10:30 and 11:00,

she discovered this information on the computer,

which according to the persons that know her well,

they've told us that, including most especially her sister,

that she would have been infuriated by learning that her husband,

who she truly loved,

was bisexual and having an extramarital relationship,

not with another woman, but even with a man,

which would be humiliating and embarrassing to her.

We believe that...

once she learned this information, that an argument ensued

and the homicide occurred.

Yes, I've known about the bisexuality

since I was about - I can't remember -

13 or 14 years old.

And I learned about it from a friend.

And my parents knew.

And, um...

it's just part of his life since that time.

I felt from the beginning that the prosecution was going to go there,

that this would be an important theme for them.

The reason I believe that is because,

when they executed the search warrant,

the police,

the second search warrant - the first was December 9th, or 10th -

the second was the evening of the wake the following Wednesday.

They were here for several hours and then they left,

but when they left...

..the house and we came back into the house,

they left a picture...

..on a table in the den.

The table was completely clean,

nothing on it except one picture.

The picture was from his computer, which they had taken.

They had downloaded or printed off this picture

and it was pornographic.

It was a message, I knew that was a message,

that they left it there on purpose

so that we would see it and we would find it

and what the message was to me and to him -

"We know what you're like, we know this secret life of yours.

"We don't like it and we're going to do something about it."

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

I was looking at here, dealing with photographs that were taken

from his computer and most of them are homosexual military men.

They're all different types of things that they're doing,

multiple partners,

but they're all portrayed as being

gay military men...

..performing sexual acts on each other.

And part of, um...

One of the persons that we believe he had had a relationship with,

um...

..we believe he met this person from a website that once again

was designed for homosexual military men and this individual

that has been interviewed and that we know about...

that we believe had some type of relationship with Mr Peterson

contemporaneous with the time period that we've been talking about,

he fits right into this mould.

It's not the type of thing your typical, average juror

or typical, average citizen would want to access,

nor would want to play out in their personal lives.

Not if they want to portray themselves

as someone that has this perfect marriage,

or however he wants to make his life seem so perfect...

..with his wife.

But it's obviously very...

powerful information that he wants kept from...

..the public, in particular, but certainly the jury.

Because it could be very damaging, from a lot of perspectives.

You got his statement? Mm-hm. What did he say?

He said you had sex with him. Oh, you're shitting me!

Four or five times.

Where?!

Uh, I don't know all the details,

cos I was skimming through all the stuff

and when I came to his...

You're kidding me! Unh-unh.

That's what he's claiming.

PETERSON SIGHS That's what he's claiming.

HE CHUCKLES

Oh, my God. Everybody wants a piece of you.

Jesus Christ!

Or everybody claims to have a piece of you.

One of the two.

And you have a statement? Yeah.

We copied it. Send me a copy of that statement, I'm dying to see that.

I'll get it tomorrow.

Was it a short statement, a long statement?

About a page and a half. OK.

Handwritten.

Handwritten? OK.

He didn't indicate where this great love affair took place?

Yeah, but, Mike, I cannot remember it.

Rather know now than later. I'll say.

God, I'll say, for sure.

So I talked to Dave about Denis and we're going to rethink,

we're going to digest the statements

and then rethink as to how to approach it.

OK, all right.

Jesus, right.

God.

Hmm.

OK, well...

if you say "relationships", that would mean...

That would imply more than...

..sex, for instance.

And that never happened. I'm a very...

I'm not that multifaceted

that I could have more than one relationship.

I'm a monogamous person in the sense that I don't... There was Kathleen.

She took up my whole life.

Could I have sex? Yes.

That could exist,

but not a relationship, I could not go to dinner or have...

No, it would be inconceivable, that, because she fulfilled all of that

and actually fulfilled... certainly sexual,

but there was this other aspect

of me that just existed...

..and I...

..yes, did have sex.

No injuries to Mike Peterson - good fact.

Search of vehicles finds nothing - good fact.

And what else? And number of lacerations.

Good relationship between Mike and Kathleen.

Bad - imprecise statement from Mike Peterson about what happened.

Good - no motive at all.

Well, that's not a fact. Well, OK.

"No intimate" says bad marriage.

That's true, and no affairs, no current affairs. No intimate...

Good fact - apparent happiness that evening.

Bad fact - Mike ignoring 911 operator's questions.

Good fact - he called two times.

Right. Bad fact - he said she was breathing.

First call. Good fact - said she was breathing.

He said she was breathing.

Good and bad? Yeah.

Bad - e-mails. What does this mean, e-mails?

Gay e-mails.

Bad - affair during marriage.

Gay affair.

Bad - nobody knew about the bisexuality. Bisexuality hidden.

Good fact - she knew.

Who can testify that she knew?

She knew what?

Who is the witness that can say that she knew that he was bisexual. Mike.

Anybody besides Mike? Yes, Todd.

Todd and Mike are the only two people.

That is a negative, negative, negative.

That is a big, huge negative, I think.

Is there anybody in this room that believes

that she probably didn't know?

Let's go back to the truth for a second, reality.

The relationship was a beautiful relationship

and a loving relationship and I think we can prove it.

We know that there is a bisexual hidden life here, we know that.

Is it possible...?

I'm sitting there as a juror - is it possible

that a marriage can function that way

and the answer is, it can, and marriages do function that way.

Do you think that merely because he was bisexual

would make it more likely to you that he would murder?

That's the right question.

What the state is trying to do here

is prejudice the jury against this guy. Right.

It's got nothing to do with the evidence of guilt or innocence

in this case, because they want to attack him

for his personal lifestyle or what have you.

If that's all you've got, folks, if that's all the state's got,

we know you're going to acquit in this case.

Let's assume that all this bad stuff comes in -

we've got to ask ourselves,

what can Mike do to counteract that versus making it worse?

I think that if all he's going to do is get out and say,

"I wasn't having an affair at the time and she knew I was bisexual,"

that will not have any credibility at all.

My approach has always been, I'm not going to put my client on the stand

unless it becomes absolutely essential,

unless there is something he can do

that I have to have done that I can't do myself,

unless I'm convinced that we're going to lose the case

unless he gets on the stand.

I think Mike can come across pretty well on direct.

Whether he stands up to cross is a different issue,

but I think he can be taught on that

and some of the bad stuff we may have to deal with anyway.

Mike gets on the witness stand and a good cross-examiner

is going to be able to make his actions seem unreasonable.

And once he gets on the stand too, they can start bringing up

to impeach him, can't they, all the stuff about the...

Oh, God, let's get into that.

That, "Sir, you don't always tell the truth, do you?"

"I try to."

"I understand you try to, but sometimes, when it doesn't suit you,

"you lie about certain things, don't you?"

"What do you mean by that?"

You know? "Well, for example, your mayoral race.

"It wouldn't have helped you very much to admit

"that you had actually gotten your injuries in a car accident, right?

"In a book jacket, you painted yourself as having gotten

"these injuries in Vietnam, right?"

"This is true." "And you kept that lie going for years, didn't you?

"Right?"

Without Michael on the stand,

whatever gay stuff gets in,

I can argue they have so little real evidence here

that they're getting into his private sex life.

Even if we have to concede it...

..what does it have to do...?

I can sort of get into it as gay bashing.

You know? And sort of... Yeah, I like it.

As opposed to it becoming a credibility thing

with Michael having to admit, "Yeah, I've had homosexual relationships,

"but not with him."

What good does that do us?

Michael's the only one who can deny

an active current homosexual relationship. You know what?

THEY TALK OVER ONE ANOTHER

Oh, my God, come on.

His denial will have no credibility.

We have to suppress... Let's talk about that for a second.

"Mr Peterson, you claim that Denis Rowe is lying, making this up?

"Is that what you're saying?

"Well, Denis Rowe didn't make up

"those e-mails on your computer, did he?"

"No, but those e-mails..."

"Sir, my question was, Denis Rowe

"didn't make up those e-mails, did he?

"You wrote those e-mails, did you?" "I did."

"You wrote the e-mails saying you wanted to suck

"so-and-so's dick, didn't you?" "No, no."

"Are there e-mails saying that?" "Yes, sir."

"To two different people, Brad and..."

"Have you forgotten?"

"Didn't you want to suck their dicks?" Can we take a moment?

Yeah. LAUGHTER

Did you have to swallow hard?

INDISTINCT CONVERSATION

Can you say for him

what your goals are for this session? Yeah.

And certainly, if things come up in terms of testimony that David wants

to spend time with, he may veer in a million different directions,

but just in terms of us together and using this time for the space

and configurations of the courtroom.

Yeah, I'm not so interested, Mike, in particular substance right now.

What I'm really interested in is getting you up in a witness chair,

talking with a jury

and not going into some role

that's designed to shield

what's inside. OK.

What I'm hoping is that the role you play up on the jury...

up in the witness box is the role that you played with Kathleen...

..in terms of just who you are.

I want the jury to see the same person that Kathleen saw.

OK, you sing around the house to yourself, don't you?

I thought I heard you... Hum.

Hum. I hum. What's a song you hum?

I don't think it is a song, I just hum. What's a song you know?

Look for a way in, not a way out.

It is a sort of a dum-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee.

It used to be Kathleen's joke -

is this the dee-dee-dee song, or the dah-dah-dah song?

♪ Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah... ♪

Now, let the hands out of the pockets

and just walk, just easy.

♪ Bam-ba-dum... Da-da-da-da... ♪

Louder.

HE HUMS TO TUNE OF "Do-Re-Mi"

♪ Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam

♪ Bah-bah-dah-dah follows So... ♪

Now send it to that seat in the jury box.

THEY HUM TO TUNE OF "The Lonely Goatherd"

♪ Blah. ♪ ♪ Blah. ♪

Right to a specific place.

♪ Blah... ♪

Good. Widen stance, relax the body.

Blah-blah.

♪ Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah

♪ Blah, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah

♪ Blah, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah

♪ Blah-blah-blah-blah- blah-blah-blah. ♪

Good. I'm going to have to go back to Do-Re-Mi.

♪ Doe, a deer... ♪

Go to Happy Birthday, go to America The Beautiful,

but we're going to be asking you about your sex life, my friend,

so just let's get some... That might be easier than singing it.

Add some sound, come on. Uhhh. Ahhh.

I slit a sheet.

I slit a sheet.

A sheet I slit.

A sheet I slit.

Upon a slitted sheet, I sit.

Upon a slitted sheet, I sit.

I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit, upon a slitted sheet I sit.

Don't protect yourself.

I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit, upon a slitted sheet I sit.

Do it, please. I shut a sleet, a sheet, I sat upon the slitted sheet.

Now, I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit, upon a slitted sheet I sit.

I shit a sleet.

Good, and that's just the deal.

You may misspeak, a word like shit may come out,

you may make a mistake.

Big deal.

Mr Peterson, I want to read you something

and I'm going to ask you after you've heard it if you recognise it.

"Did your friend die for anything?"

"I hope so, if only because there is something in him that lives in you.

"Every man who dies can live on in us."

I think I wrote that.

I hope I did.

Do you believe it to be true, as you sit here today? Yes.

What parts of Kathleen live on in you?

Mm...

Good. We don't need to hear the answer now... OK.

..just your willingness to go there...

..was enough.

Good.

OK, Mr Peterson, you're under oath, correct? Yes.

And you expect this jury to believe you.

Yes. Treat you as an honest person. Yes.

But the truth is, there have been times in your life where

you have lied because it has benefitted you.

I...

would say probably that's a good characterisation,

although I might say...

..it's easier. It was just easier sometimes, to let the lie...

..come out.

And for example, now, you married Tricia Peterson in 1966,

isn't that correct? Correct.

And during your marriage, you had a number of affairs.

Yes. They were not all women, were they? No.

And you did continue to have affairs,

even after your relationship with Kathleen began?

That's a word... Affairs, to me, mean... Sex.

How do you describe, one incident or affairs?

You have... The word "affairs" is confusing to you?

Yes.

Let's make it simple then, sir - you had sex with

other people after your relationship with Kathleen began?

That's correct. Men? That's correct. And women?

No. Just men? Yes.

So, now, this was different from when

you were married to Patty Peterson.

Yes. OK. In fact, you never talked about that with Kathleen.

Well, we did talk about...

That you were having sex with other men during the marriage?

In the sense that yes, she understood that.

She understood it was with men? Oh, yes.

I think there was enough awareness on her part of me

as a person and who I was.

Which is what made this relationship so good.

That, yes, she understood these aspects

about me and was not bothered by that, because I loved her.

That, yes, I did have sex with other people,

but that had absolutely nothing to do with not loving Kathleen or...

loving her less.

Mike, what do you think?

How are you feeling compared to, say,

what we did earlier in the office?

I would have no clue. Honestly? Honestly.

My sense is that you are not parsing,

you are not trying to win on any technicalities... No.

I saw nobody who was being tricky,

someone who assumed responsibility and someone who within the...

No, and I told you this, guys, from the beginning.

My ass, life, totally is in your hands, and I know that,

and I'm not going to outsmart you, I'm not going to outsmart Hardin,

outsmart anybody, and I'm going to tell you.

At one point you actually even leaned into the wind, physically.

Mmm. And it was a cold wind, so I thought,

"OK, he's going to be fine."

Hey. Hey. We're late. That's fine, that's fine.

All right.

Hey. Number one, I want to talk about additional survey stuff,

to give us more insight and what I would call triggers, key questions.

So... Well, how do you approach the bisexuality issue?

Since we didn't do it last time.

For the reasons you expressed. Seems like that reason still applies.

We're not doing it, but it's a big issue in the case.

You would hide it in a list of questions, like,

"What are your views about heterosexuals?"

You'd have a whole list of...

I really think probably we're going to have to pick

a topic like marriage. Right.

What are the kind of reasons, what can be accepted within a marriage?

That kind of thing, rather than just go on the issue.

No, but I do think we're going to need to

find out their attitude towards homosexuality.

Well, we will, or we could do it that way.

And then you've got to ask it of at least

400, 500 people to have a statistically meaningful sample,

and so, we're talking about a significant expenditure,

but in my mind, if you were choosing between this

and a mock trial in this case, I'd choose this.

A survey, and then analysing the data,

and then coming up with some conclusions,

which is going to cost what?

It's probably going to be in the 35,000, 40,000 range. OK.

So that's a total of, like, cash we have to come up with

to carry this case through trial, of 385,000. That's...

Look, you guys are spending the money,

and Mike, it's your life... Right.

..but I'm just telling you that sometimes what you find out

is intuitive, and sometimes what you find out is counterintuitive.

And it's the counterintuitive stuff that you just would never know.

You find out one thing that's counterintuitive in that survey...

Mm-hmm... for 35,000,

and it's mighty cheap.

It's mighty cheap, when you stack it up against the rest of your life.

Mm-hmm. OK. We have our... schedule down.

So what we're going to have, it's going to cost six-five, six-seven,

700... We know for a fact, between 750,000 to 800,000.

HE DROPS PEN ON TABLE

I think we were originally thinking 500, 550,

something like that.

So that's cost us another 250. 300,000 more.

Over budget. Over budget.

If we were a business, we'd be out of business.

Then again, what do people do who don't have money?

"The rich get off."

Well, that's the only reason the rich get off,

because they can afford to defend themselves.

The damn poor go to jail because they can't afford

to defend themselves - period.

I mean, not in every case of course. But that's pretty much it.

What would somebody do in my case?

First off, they wouldn't have prosecuted like this,

but the other thing is,

they'd be hopeless. Hopeless, in hiring experts.

For somebody to come in and prove that, "No, this didn't happen."

Yeah, I think the state budgets and allocates a certain amount,

but it's nowhere near.

No, nothing. Yeah, yeah, the American justice is...

..very, very expensive.

At the end of this light, this is the end of the white neighbourhood.

All up in here, everything is white, everybody is white.

And then starting across this street, everything is black.

This is the biggest scandal in Durham, right here.

They've put in millions of dollars to build these houses

that they were going to be for poor people, and it's just crooked,

and it was never developed of course,

the houses are not occupied, it's in bankruptcy.

They built these apartments - look at that.

These are only a few years ago.

They're falling apart. They're just, it's just a travesty.

And it's a beautiful - as you can see -

it's a beautiful piece of property.

It overlooks the city. This is one of the nicest areas.

This is the story of Durham - promises and promises,

and corruption, and theft.

And lies.

When I came to Durham for the first time,

in 1961, over 40 years ago,

I just couldn't believe that blacks couldn't go to school

with white people, they couldn't eat in restaurants,

they were not much better than in slavery times.

And after 40 years, there are definitely some rich blacks,

and certainly society has gotten better, but in many regards,

it's just as bad, and in some cases, it's worse...

than it ever was.

And all we do in this town is...

..not deal with the real problems.

The real problems are crime, drugs, ignorance.

And nobody wants to talk about that. I find that, for instance...

..in my case, every day, my God,

pounds of newsprint, ink, paper,

all the media, everybody is focused on my trial.

It's a diversion, it's something, it's an entertainment,

it's a show, and if one tenth,

ONE TENTH of that amount of time or media exposure,

if it were given to what's real and what's true,

the problems, things would get better.

It was four years ago, 1999.

I was writing about Rolling Hills, that place we just saw,

I was starting with that.

It's mostly about corruption.

"Cops solve 5% of crimes. Why?"

"Despite an onslaught of publicity on how crime is down,

"streets are safer, drug traffic reduced,

"one figure remains truly alarming - the clearance rate of crime.

"Police solve about 5% of reported crimes,

"while ticket collection is, by comparison, an impressive 33%."

Then there's this one. I didn't attack the DA very often.

And it says, basically, "The DA's got a hard thing for bingo,

"so he sends the cops out to close down the bingo parlours. Why?

"Because he can't get anybody for anything else.

"My God, there's more crime in City Hall than in southern Italy.

"The DA and cops can't catch any real criminals

"in City Hall, so they go after underage voters and bingo players."

So it was just a commentary and I didn't attack him personally,

I didn't say anything negative about his personal life,

I don't know anything about his personal life and I never

would say anything about anybody's personal life anyway,

but everybody knows - and I should have certainly known better

- that when you make fun of people, they don't like it,

it's just that simple.

And, eh, if you make them look silly or ridiculous, they remember that.

Speed it up...

Pants are 34, shirt's 33.

This is on top of the blood smears and blood spatter.

That's basically the last one.

And here, this has to be after the urine deposit.

Smaller ones, 1mm to approximately 4mm.

Three inches by two-and-a-half inch.

Blood spatter, radial, out from the centre.

See now, I looked at those and I thought, OK, bloody pants.

I would have spent three minutes looking at them.

But Henry's a whole different story.

You can see, these blood stains,

basically you have multiple deposits.

You have blood spatter underneath it,

you have under blood stain and you have additional blood stain.

That tells me it's not coming out one time, it's multiple deposits.

And that's consistent with what Werner is saying,

about the fact that she wouldn't have lost consciousness

for some extended period of time?

She has to be conscious, can't get up or sit up, with the moving...

So the pants themselves can tell us the story,

she was up.

And there was time... Half-an-hour time lag in between.

So essentially you got less blood on the bottom than here.

Is there any chance that she's on her knees, slouched over -

because there's more blood on this side than there is on that side -

against the wall?

This person probably just put the,

when they initially put the towel, maybe her body was up here.

I'm sure that's right.

Do you see what I mean, Ron?

That's the position when they took the picture. Right.

We have to look at the scientific fact and base

our interpretation purely on the scientific fact.

The first thing, I look at the scene,

I notice there a tremendous amount of blood spatter.

Ordinary beating up scene, we don't see that much blood spatter.

The second thing I notice,

all of those blood spatter come from different directions.

If you're beating in the same direction and repetitively,

in theory, we should see most of the spatter come from one direction,

goes to other direction.

The third area I feel strange is,

I examined the upper wall, the ceiling, carefully,

inch by inch. In the staircase area,

I did not see a single blood spatter on the ceiling

constituting, say, cast-off blood.

Mr Lee seemed to, um,

the only thing he wanted to prove was that it wasn't a beating.

He never even wanted to consider that it could be.

Never even wanted to think that it was possible. Mm-hmm.

He only wanted to prove that it wasn't.

I personally think Lee was trying to, was acting like

he was being paid to try and convince somebody of something.

That's the impression I got from him.

I thought that Lee, he was terribly difficult to understand,

and as a result I found my mind wandering,

so that there were a lot of questions that

he might have answered, but I don't remember!

And I felt that he just took the evidence and stretched it

to fit whatever he needed to counteract what the defence

was saying.

When I first heard him I thought,

"Man, this guy reminds me of my junior year calculus teacher."

I couldn't understand him either.

LAUGHTER

But, you know, I think he's really qualified,

I actually think he really knows what he's talking about,

but he comes off kind of hokey because I couldn't understand him,

but I think if he had been given a little more latitude,

he may have been able to convince me a little more about what

he was talking about. OK.

But he didn't come up with anything that really made

a plausible other explanation for what happened.

It still didn't make a very good case for it being

just a fall down the stairs. So I was left kind of wondering,

"Well, if he doesn't think it was a beating, what was it?"

OK, thank you.

I'm just very freaked out.

One of the things we've got to think about when we think of Dr Lee is,

this is not California, this is not New York City,

this is "the South", and I think part of what we're hearing here

is a reaction to ethnic differences.

Partly, but I think... It's difficult.

The substantive part of it is that it's very overwhelming evidence

of the blood and the wounds that we're going to see,

but I think, for me, the most important things were

he's a hired witness, he's not clear,

he talks with an accent, he's too general...

He doesn't provide an alternative explanation.

He doesn't provide an alternative what happened.

So I'm not sure we're going to be able to

come up with a good explanation.

I think even if we spent an hour with Henry talking about

the limits of the science and... No, it's not, no.

They look at all this blood and say,

"In the right case, maybe, but not in this case."

Right. Here, you have to be able to know something about what happened,

there's just too much blood,

too much movement to not have some information.

Because people have this image that we're saying she fell

from the very top, so why aren't her bones broken? Right.

And if she fell that far, how could she possibly get up again?

Somehow we have to paint the scenario that this happened

three or four stairs up, she fell back and hit her head,

started bleeding, slipped and fell again.

I think Henry is not really comfortable doing

a lot more than poking holes.

So we need to think about that.

Cos that's clearly, at least in this context, the big question for them.

The state has a theory, the defence doesn't,

all the defence has is critiques.

I've got a theory that if she's, for example, if she's on the floor

leaning against the chairlift, and she goes up and her feet slip out...

She never actually stood up at all, she just got her feet...

Right, right.

Feet under, slip back again.

She's got a 0.7 alcohol, she's got Valium, there's blood

on the floor, you've got this thing, so every time she falls...

..she's hitting her head from about the same distance,

right on that metal thing.

WATER TRICKLES

So what's the overall, bad news, good news, what?

Well, the overall bad news is, again... We don't have any...

We got no explanation to tell them what happened.

David and I talked about doing an animation to reconstruct

exactly how these injuries might be inflicted by a fall...

Right, right.

BARKING

That the dog? Yeah. I haven't heard it, and I don't want to hear it.

Come on, guys, come on. Where's Wilbur? Hey, Wilbur!

What'd you do with him, huh?

The other bad thing I didn't mention,

of course the autopsy photos are so visceral... Oh, Jesus, yeah!

..people just react to them immediately. Yeah.

Are they that gruesome? I've not looked at them, are they that awful?

Yeah, they're pretty bad. You look at them initially,

you think, "Man..." Your initial reaction

from looking at the autopsy photos is,

"You can't get that from a fall."

Mm. Which is one of our problems, because we can't precisely

explain how you do and can get them from a fall.

Right. All we can say is they

definitely didn't come from a beating either, right?

Definitely did not come from a beating,

and we're very strong on that.

They got the burden of proof, so...

Yeah, but that burden of proof is sort of like... No...

It's like innocent until proven guilty,

which we all know is horseshit.

You're guilty the minute that they...

Don't be such a cynic, people get off on that all the time,

you just don't read about it. MICHAEL LAUGHS

No, I AM a cynic on that.

Innocent until proven guilty I think is, the overwhelming thing is,

hey, if the police arrest you, you're guilty.

This is what people believe.

Well, that's why our main theory of the case is, and the blow-up,

how did this case get transformed from accident -

as reported by them initially - to murder?

And David is thinking about taking the original report

from Dr Snell, medical examiner,

where he concluded that in his opinion...

That it was a fall, right? He actually offered an explanation.

That she fell on the third step and hit her head somewhere else.

Oh, really? It's fairly detailed.

The medical examiner says it's an accident, he was here, right?

Exactly.

The single thing that Holland had to go on, right? Nothing.

And yet within...

..hell, 30 minutes of that son of a bitch coming in here,

it was a crime scene and I was guilty - and that was it.