Original subtitles

'Live from ABC, this is Eyewitness News at Six.

'The murder case against Michael Peterson

'doesn't just involve his wife any more,

'it involves a friend who died 18 years ago.

'Just like Kathleen Peterson, Ratliff was found dead

'at the bottom of a staircase.

'Eyewitness News reporter Anthony Wilson has more

'on the potentially explosive information.'

'Elizabeth Ratliff was a friend of Michael Peterson.

'In fact, Peterson was with Ratliff

'the night before she was found dead in Germany.

'Ratliff's body was discovered at the bottom of a staircase in 1985

'and prosecutors have implied the circumstances of her death

'mirror those of Michael Peterson's wife Kathleen.

'She was found dead in the Peterson home back in January 2001.'

Anything for me? No.

OK, you guys have got a much better film now.

What did Margaret Ratliff tell you about what happened to her mother?

Does she know any of the details? No, she doesn't.

With the exception that her mother

died of a natural cause.

Didn't we look at this a few months ago

and didn't Mike give us an autopsy or something

that said cause of death, a stroke or cerebrovascular haemorrhage,

or something like that? Right.

He told us that he had been with her the day before,

I think, with Patty, they had dinner or something.

But you know what the authorities will do.

The police are going to assume that because she was found

at the bottom of the stairs,

they're going to try to link them together.

Whether or not they're successful...

Like the stairway killer, is that the idea?

Apparently that's what they're going to...

He's found a way to kill women 17 years apart...

This is, like, in the mid-'80s?

Yeah, this is 1985, I believe.

So he strikes, like, every 17 years

by finding some way to kill women on a stairway, is that the...?

Right. Of course, it helps the case.

You know, if you have two people found at the bottom of the stairs,

they're going to try to bring that in, one way or the other.

I mean, I don't know what's there, and it may be nothing,

but if it is nothing, we need to find out it's nothing.

Because I'm not going to be very... comfortable,

being surprised by something that happened in Germany.

Oh, I know.

I know you don't know much about the case,

but we all form impressions from whatever we've heard.

Howard, what's your gut-level reaction?

Can I ask one question before? Sure.

OK. Someone said that it was another wife

that died in similar circumstances.

I think... I don't know whether she was a wife

or whether there was another woman, that it came up

that she may have fallen in similar circumstances.

And someone had said they need to check that out.

This second incident in Europe casts a long shadow on Michael Peterson.

It really does create a lot of doubt. OK.

And so I think that people are going to really question his innocence

because of this.

Because the two instances,

as I remember reading, were so very similar.

Can you be back here in 40, 35 minutes?

Is that enough time? Oh, I'm sorry.

The Germany thing is out there already.

We're not going to get rid of that, it's there, you know,

there is no getting rid of it.

All we can do right now is... I agree with David.

Can I make a suggestion?

I'd like to know, if you were to ask him one more time,

what would you want to know about the Germany thing?

What would you want to know about it?

And then answer the questions.

OK. Do you want me to start by clarifying the Germany thing?

Yes, I think now that it's on the table,

I think what we have to do,

here are the facts that are known right now about Germany.

We know what we're going to be able to show.

There was no financial benefit from it.

He did take, you know, he took care of the kids for the next 16 years.

There was no evidence of any affair.

D'you want to mention the 70,000 or not?

Yeah, you can say that there was a 70,000 life... insurance policy,

and that's all the money that... And it was left to the girls.

Right. Which he spent on the girls. Right. Which was spent on the girls.

What happened is that during the night or the few days following

the death of Mrs Peterson, the police overheard some people

talking about, well, this is really a double tragedy

because Margaret and Martha's mother died in the same way.

And that is why the police decided to check into it

and go to Germany and find out what the circumstances were.

It wasn't the same window.

I would think the defence would benefit from this story

being brought up in the case because my opinion has gone,

like you say, the higher respect, moral character towards Peterson

by the man who would do that, take on the children, etc.

I have to say, I have a totally new respect for the man.

Anybody who'd take on someone else's children and raise them

and they are not blood children, because when they got divorced,

he could easily have said,

"Go with Patty, or go to the state", or whatever.

I'm just thinking that the group in general jumped to a conclusion

of innocence because he adopted these... her two children,

the woman who died. No, that's not what happened.

I don't think you can do that.

Let's assume, for instance, that he had an affair with this woman, OK?

And he was discovered, OK? I'm going to write one of his books now.

Suppose he has to get rid of her,

and does, then adopting the children

would make him look innocent, wouldn't it?

Here's a picture of Axel here. OK. When we get in the airport...

So he's going to meet us at the airport?

Axel's going to meet us at the airport.

Grafenhausen is where Elizabeth was living at the time of her death.

That's also where Mike and Patty were living.

And one of the first people we're going to see is Patty herself.

Where's Patty living now? Grafenhausen.

Oh, she's still living there? Yeah.

But a different house? Different house, not far,

it's just a little village.

And Patty is taking us over to the apartment.

She says a woman lives there, but doesn't know her,

so we're just going to go and knock on her door.

Hopefully she'll let us in.

You're talking about Elizabeth's apartment?

Elizabeth's old apartment, yeah.

In my mind, there are two main things

that I think we should be focusing on when we go over there.

First of all...

I think we need to understand what the relationship was

between Mike and Patty on the one hand

and Elizabeth Ratliff on the other.

And the second thing I think we really need to focus on is

what happened on the morning that Elizabeth Ratliff died.

What time did Barbara find her?

What were the conditions like, you know,

what happened after Barbara found her?

What were Mike and Patty doing? All that sort of stuff.

I hear Clayton's doing well in Baltimore, he enjoys it.

I am thankful, I'm encouraging him to apply for entry to

Johns Hopkins to do a semester's degree. That would be great.

In electronics. Yeah. So these are the... the houses?

These are all the homes, they're all exactly alike.

The stairs... There's a young German youth right there. Yes.

Hello, Todd. And this is where Todd grew up for six years.

So does this bring back fond memories for you?

It's amazing being back here. Is it? It's a lot smaller.

Really? You remembered it bigger?

And this home here was the Peterson home.

Right here? That is it. Mm-hm.

Right, so you all live right here?

Yes, I won't go further, there's someone in her window. OK.

But we lived here.

The children's bedroom upstairs and ours over there.

And this is the home of dear Elizabeth McKee Ratliff,

our beloved friend.

Right here? This is it, yes, this is her home.

And Liz lived here with...

Margaret and Martha. With Margaret and Martha,

and Barbara, the nanny, would live here with them.

But of course, she was not always here,

she was sometimes out with her family, with her friends.

But they lived here from... probably the end of 1983

until Liz's death in the fall of 1985.

And we spent essentially much of every day together.

She and I were teachers together, at the base school.

And Sunday evening, we had dinner here together.

Mike came in later because he went every day

to the gymnasium at the air base.

And he came in perhaps 30 minutes later.

We shared dinner, then I took my two sons back home

to put them in bed.

Mike stayed here, as was customary since George's death,

to help clear the dishes perhaps,

sometimes he'd read a story to the children.

Um, you know, bring family comfort to them.

And then he returned home to me, got the... Rather, to our home.

He came to collect the automobile keys,

he drove back here in the automobile,

Liz would have been in her automobile.

We American teachers have the custom over here,

if we need to have automobile repair work done,

one drives, a friend collects us and brings us back home,

that had been the arrangement.

And I can confirm the fact that he returned

within 30 to 40 minutes after that trip.

Let me ask you a question. Of course, yes.

When they left your place, the girls were here asleep, right?

Or did they come home, Martha and Margaret?

Repeat your question, please. No, the dinner was here.

The dinner was here, but when Mike took...

My understanding is Mike took Liz...

The girls would have been sleeping upstairs.

Who was watching the girls?

They were probably alone for 30 minutes.

So you're talking how old were they? I would have been... Several years.

Two and one. Two and one? And they would have been left alone?

Yes, but probably she might have notified a next-door neighbour

and also, I was there.

Up the street. OK.

Let me ask an unpleasant question. Yes.

Is there any chance that Mike was having an affair with her?

My response would be absolutely not.

It was a platonic relationship.

Because I know all aspects of his personality...

Under no circumstances would he have had a sexual relationship with her,

he would have had a platonic,

a loving, familial relationship with her,

and that... in my mind,

in my heart, in my spirit, under no circumstances,

including even temporary insanity, if that can strike all persons,

under no circumstances would he have taken her life or injured her.

Is this how you pictured it, Ron? No. No?

I didn't realise it was this close. It's very close. Yeah.

Yeah, I thought it was a lot further away,

the way they were explaining to me.

It's real close.

Hello? Hi.

Hi. DOG BARKS

Is it all right if we come in? Yes, of course. Thank you.

Thank you very much. You're welcome.

Don't be afraid of the dog. Oh, no, no, no. He's just barking.

But I understood that she had a stroke, up there. Yeah.

And then she fell down and obviously broke her neck. I really don't know.

OK.

I know that my neighbours up there, they still were talking that it was

kind of funny and mysterious and I think the baby-sitter found her.

Yes, yes.

Hello, guten Tag. Guten Tag, wie geht es Ihnen heute?

SHE SPEAKS GERMAN

And hello. You are most kind. Never mind. It's OK. Thank you.

So... Are you OK?

278 centimetres.

16. Yeah.

This is the first time I've been in the home since that period of time.

Is that right, since she died? Yes.

And when Barbara first came in and found her and was with her

for perhaps five minutes and then came to collect me

and I ran immediately, and Liz was still in the same position.

And then Michael immediately, within a few minutes,

telephoned the military police and she was...

Now that I see the staircase,

she could have even been on the first or second stair.

I was sitting here the entire time

that the Polizei and the military police were in the home

and I was sitting here directly observing

when the German medical examiner took the spinal tap

and held the contents up so that he could view them and that...

Even from this distance, I could see that it did not look clear.

And that's when he made the statement,

right there by her body,

in my presence, that she had died of a cerebral haemorrhage.

There was nothing out of place except she was no longer living.

Everything was as one would have walked into a normal home.

You know, there was no pool of blood,

there were no... Spatters.

There could have been a few spatters here.

But so small that they did not register with me. OK, so, like this?

Yes. Position me exactly.

OK, if you turn here and the feet were something like right here.

Just turned a little... she was turned sideways.

She was turned on her side, facing upwards. Facing that way.

Yes, like that. OK.

Except this arm was more under her, as I recall.

Something like this? And this arm would have been more like this.

You are more at an angle and her position was more linear.

More straight? More linear. At a diagonal. Like that. Yes.

But you take up four stairs

and she would have only taken up three stairs

and her head was lower and her head was more on this angle.

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

MARCHING BAND PLAYS

What was your sense...?

Other than attending the parties at Mike and Patty's house,

did you have any sense of what their relationship was like at the time?

I saw them as a perfectly normal couple.

Not anything unusual.

Did you ever see Mike lose his temper at Patty or get angry?

Oh, no, we were never in a situation where that would have happened.

This is Liz here? Mm-hm.

And that's the oldest daughter with her, Margaret? Mm-hm.

Which one's Liz? On the right. On the right. May I see it?

Is this about what she looked like when she died?

Is this close to when she died?

Mm-hm. Because you can tell by the age of the girl.

One girl was two and one was one. OK.

That's Patty, of course, because look,

here I see Patty and Liz side-by-side.

This could have been Liz.

If I had not seen this other picture,

I would have taken this for Liz.

How close they looked. See? Look at this - Patty, Liz.

Who's that there? Is that Mike? That's Mike. Oh, wow!

This is after George had died?

I would think so, otherwise... And which one is Liz now?

The one standing up? Yeah. But look how close...

From our perspective, given what the police think,

what we're concerned about is did she ever say anything to you

that would have led you to believe she had some affair with Mike

or illicit relationship with Mike?

No. That's the first time I hear this. OK.

We have to ask the question. Yeah, I know.

But that would have been so far-fetched that even if

she had said that, I'd have said, "Are you crazy?"

And I don't think...

See, the friendship between Patty and Liz was such a friendship

that you wouldn't dare ruin your friendship over something like that.

And that's the way Liz believed

and that's the way I believe with my close friends

because I risk the friendship.

And to me, the friendship is worth more than a man.

I can find a man somewhere else.

But then I still have that friendship.

Makes me feel real good.

No, but would you risk a friendship...

You're asking the wrong person. ..that went on for years?

You're asking the wrong person.

It takes time to build a friendship, and when it lasts for years...

It depends on how fast you talk. Ah, no.

This is the District Attorney's office? Yeah.

What's the handwriting on the back there? Is that anything?

Oh, yes, it's a decision of my colleague

who says I'm putting an end to this case. Ah, OK.

It's finished. Do we get a copy of this?

Yes. Yes, I see. There it is.

And I have the name of the doctor. OK.

It was a long year. 16 years, 17 years. Yes. Yes.

Thank you.

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

Because there is a trial in the United States,

because of murder, homicide, which is the prosecution?

It's a homicide case in the United States.

A homicide case in the United States.

Where is it in the States?

In North Carolina. North Carolina? Yes. OK.

Thank you very much. No problem. Thank you. Good luck.

Have a good day. Goodbye.

The body was given to the MPs

and any following investigation

will be conducted by the CID Darmstadt.

He realised that there is blood

inside the fluid... spinal fluid.

OK, cause of death - natural death,

due to blood inside the brain.

OK, yeah. Haemorrhage.

Is it unusual for the doctor to go to the place of a death?

No, they always go. OK.

Every accident, the German law says they must be attended by

a doctor and he has to give his medical examine, you know? OK.

And there was no foul play,

that's why they quit the investigations.

OK.

Hey, Michael. How are you? I'm back.

If I never go to Germany again, it'll be OK.

All I could think about as I watched these German men

marching in this parade on Saturday was what they were doing in 1942.

Yes, exactly. Or guarding somebody who I knew.

Yes.

Sunday, we first interviewed Barbara.

Yeah, there were a couple of things that she said that, you know,

if they are true, are troubling.

She claimed there was a lot of blood all around the stairway

and the bottom of the hallway.

You know, when Liz was lying there.

And Patty says that's just not true.

There's no indication of that in any of the police reports.

But she, you know, was very firm about that, you know,

blood on the wall, blood underneath the stairs, you know,

she told me she'd been cleaning blood up for weeks afterwards.

All right, um...

On the exhumation.

Apparently Hardin told Barbara in an e-mail to her,

told her that they were exhuming Liz's body.

Right now, we're just basing it on what Barbara told us

that Hardin told her, and I don't want to...

What I'd like you to do, then, is talk to Hardin and say,

"Jim, we don't personally have any objection", although again,

what's the fucking grounds?

Can people just go dig up graves?

What Hardin claimed was that they had permission

from Liz's mother and sister.

What, aren't the closest relatives...?

I don't want to get into a pissing contest,

what about their daughter? I don't know.

You know, it may be ugly, it may be terrible, but the bottom line is

it's going to help end up helping... You know... I understand that.

If everything is as we think it is, it's going to help us. I know.

But normally, look, I've seen enough dead bodies and copses and graves

that it doesn't...

You know, I have no moral problem with this, but again,

as I wrote you, Liz was a very good friend of mine.

And you know, I've been with the Ratliff family

since George died.

Jesus, you know, the Grenada invasion in 1981.

21... I mean, these people have been going through an immense amount.

And... it's just...

I just don't know and I can't imagine

what Margaret and Martha would think.

"Oh, by the way, your Aunt Margaret

"decided to dig up your mother - just because."

Oh, Christ!

So if you could work it out with Holland, or Harlen, or Hardin, look,

so that I won't tell the girls,

but before they do it, I'm certainly going to have to tell the girls.

And you might say...

You might also, Jim, want to talk to the girls, you know -

the sister's one thing, but the daughters are another matter.

I really don't want to give in to them. OK.

I don't want to get into a pissing match with Hardin

over who did they get permission from

and who should they have got permission from.

I mean, that's just a battle that...

A, I don't want to fight, and B, we're not going to win.

Fine, but I guess now we're strictly talking the law here.

Can people just go and dig up graves?

It's one thing when they go in and go swab Kathleen's vagina.

Now, we're talking... You know, that's macabre and sick.

They go in there after Kathleen's autopsy,

two days later, she's in there, they all rush into her body

and we're doing that, which was disgusting.

And now we're digging up a body. I just... I don't like it.

I know. But I mean, I understand it.

So just work it out with Hardin,

at least I can notify Margaret and Martha

that their mom's going to be dug up.

I understand.

I understand.

Morning. Morning, nice to see you. How are you? Good, good.

Good sleep? I did sleep, yes, thank you, and you? Good.

I'm so happy to see you.

Do you want something to drink?

Just a little water, yes, that would be lovely. Ice?

PHONE RINGS

Oh, my God, my attorney, Jesus!

Hello.

David.

Fine, what's up?

Go ahead.

Well, that's what I thought.

I thought that was the whole purpose behind embalming

was to preserve the body.

So the expectation is she's going to look

exactly like she was when she was buried.

Well, that's what I thought.

Yeah, you know, she was buried in her wedding dress.

So you want to see her about seven o'clock. Bye.

That was David saying...

Is...? I beg your pardon.

..that the exhumation is probably going to be, you know,

she's going to be perfectly preserved.

Indeed. Well, that's what I would have thought.

Well, I... had horrors of other things that...

Well, I think we did, but that's the whole idea behind embalming

and having this, you know, sealed coffins and a vault in there,

so that you are preserved for ever.

Yes.

I think, when Margaret was sitting with me,

we had a very good visit.

And we sat down and we talked for many, many hours.

We talked through the entire night. All of her hopes, dreams, fears.

And with your trial approaching closer and closer,

I think everyone's anxiety is growing more.

When we were in Frankfurt,

I took her up to the wonderful lofty building

from which you can view all of Frankfurt.

She developed some severe anxiety about that.

And obviously, this is all related to her feelings for you, the father,

you are her profound father figure, obviously.

But I think her anxiety is perhaps increasing somewhat

because she does not want to suffer another loss.

And we touched very briefly on the exhumation of her mother.

I did not use that word.

I didn't use necessarily an epithet,

but I didn't want to use that word directly.

But this, I feel, would be a very profound

and certainly life-disturbing event for her.

It was just a shock. It was too overwhelming.

It was... the most horrible thing in the world. I don't know.

It was like my worst nightmare when I was little.

You know, you'd have nightmares of, like, your mother,

your parents coming back alive and, like, what they would look like.

You know, just typical childhood nightmares.

It was like it was coming true.

It was my worst nightmare in the world coming true.

It was horrible.

The fact that we had to sign it, too, was... kind of traumatising.

You know, we had to sign this sheet that would release our...

It would have them dig up our mother and examine her body.

It's horrible.

It's the most... horrible thing I could ever have imagined.

My first gut reaction was no. "No way, no chance in hell.

"I'm not going to let this happen."

But then I sat down and I thought about it

and realised that, you know...

And Dad didn't even talk to us about it.

He just told us, you know...

He asked us, basically, whether it was OK with us.

When I talked to Martha, I just realised that we had to.

I mean, obviously, it would show that Dad didn't do anything.

You know, it would give even more proof to the fact

that Dad is innocent of everything.

The last trip Liz Ratliff, nee McKee, made was in a hearse.

She had ridden in others -

the first after she died, 1985.

She had been transported from her home, where she'd died,

to the hospital for her autopsy.

Then there was a hearse ride from the hospital to the airport

for her return to the United States,

in what was presumably her last hearse journey,

from the mortuary to the grave.

However, 18 years later, she made another trip.

This one, a 1,200-mile journey across middle America

in the back of a hearse,

travelling from her grave...

..to North Carolina for another autopsy.

What they're looking for, I'm really not sure.

The woman has been buried for 17 years.

The autopsy, the investigation,

everything that was conducted back in Germany

ruled that it was an accident,

she had a cerebral haemorrhage.

This is crazy.

Absolutely crazy.

Disturbing a woman after 17 years for some wild guess, I guess.

We're not concerned about it, cos we know what happened.

We're disturbed that they feel it necessary to exhume the body

and disturb her peace.

The two girls, Martha and Margaret, are pretty well disturbed about it.

A little bit farther down.

All right. OK.

Oh, the flat headstones? OK.

I think I see her right here, there's four stakes in the ground.

Who's buried next to her? George?

OK.

They were married for a very short period of time.

They've been laying together here, side by side, for 17 years.

Now they're going to move her out.

I know that captain would raise hell.

This is crazy.

Three, two, one.

The DA thinks there's enough similarities between the two deaths

that they've had Elizabeth Ratliff's body exhumed from the ch...

Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

Three, two, one.

The DA thinks there's enough similarities

between the two deaths they've had Ratliff's body exhumed

from the cemetery here in Texas

and brought to the medical examiner's office in Chapel Hill.

A little water in there. That's condensation. Yeah.

That's a great shame. Yeah.

My first.

Ratliff's body will be guarded the entire time

it heads back to Chapel Hill.

That vehicle will be followed by Durham investigators,

and even when they spend the night in Alabama tonight,

there will be guards looking over the body.

She's expected to be back here... No, she - I can't say "she".

Three, two, one.

Have you got a long drive back?

We have a very long drive back.

Anything else you want to tell us? Nope.

SHE LAUGHS

Thank you.

Well...

..y'all ready?

In what shape is it?

It's in great shape. Great shape? Great shape.

We didn't know what to expect, but things went well.

Things went very well.

Up until the death of Kathleen,

I really didn't know who Michael Peterson was,

other than being a writer.

Um...

..and a military veteran.

I didn't know him personally. I didn't know his character.

Who can do something like that?

Somebody that's got a very, very bad temper.

Talking with witnesses and some of Elizabeth Ratliff's family members,

he's got a very bad temper.

A lot of people that I interviewed

said that they were the perfect couple.

"I wish I had a husband like that."

But... going back to the materials

that we found in his computer and in his home,

he was not a happily married man to Kathleen Peterson.

MOBILE PHONE RINGS

Hello. Hey. How are you?

Everything went swell.

The vault was intact, as well as the casket.

We're in Louisiana.

No. No, no, no, the casket has not been opened.

We're not touching that. No, no, that'll be opened Wednesday.

Anyway, I'm very optimistic

about what our findings are going to be, Wednesday.

That was Elizabeth's sister, Margaret Blair.

She lives in Rhode Island.

I expect him to be found guilty...

..of killing his wife.

And I think, after the autopsy tomorrow,

people will have issues, I think,

with the result of that as far as his involvement

with the death of Elizabeth Ratliff.

We home. We home.

They could have had that autopsy done in Texas.

We suggested that they did it in Texas

with a neutral forensic pathologist,

and there are some world-class forensic pathologists

there in Texas who could have done that.

Instead, what the prosecutors did was they spent thousands of dollars

transporting her body 1,200 miles from Bay City, Texas, to Chapel Hill

in order to allow Deborah Radisch, who had already concluded

that Kathleen Peterson's death was not accidental,

to perform the autopsy on Elizabeth Ratliff.

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