![]() For this hootdunit (I will not apologize), let us turn to the experts at the Audubon Society because They Know Birds ™. She had been found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her house years before - and when her body was exhumed during his trial, a new autopsy marked her cause of death as a homicide too.įinally, we have arrived at the Owl Theory, my personal favorite hypothesis in any murder case ever. It was something he claimed Kathleen knew and accepted, and that the prosecutors believed she had only recently discovered and confronted him about.Ĭasting further suspicion on Peterson was the case of Elizabeth Ratliff, an old close friend of his (he even adopted her children after she passed). The prosecution argued that Peterson had beaten her to death, possibly with a missing fireplace blow-poke - an instrument that was later discovered and presented in court without any dents.Īnd in one of the case’s major twists, it was revealed that Peterson was bisexual and sleeping with men - including an ongoing affair with a male escort - outside of his marriage. Then there were the seven unexplained lacerations on the back of her head and the massive blood loss, neither of which would coincide with simply falling down a set of stairs. ($1.4 million, to be exact.) The last person to see her alive? Check. In many ways, this does appear to be one of the most blatant “the husband did it” crimes in a genre absolutely rife with such cases. That all still wouldn’t explain the sheer bloodiness of the scene, though. ![]() Plausibility (on a scale from 0 to 10): 2Īmount Michael Peterson wants us to believe this: 10 Peterson also frequently wrote articles for his local newspaper, the Durham Herald-Sun, that were critical of the police and the district attorney, leading him to claim that they were especially biased against him for that reason. Peterson said that she likely tripped after mixing booze with Valium. he frantically called 911, tearfully telling the dispatcher that he had found his wife at the bottom of “15, 20” stairs. Peterson said that he and his wife had spent the night drinking wine and then relaxing by their pool Kathleen then opted to go inside while he stayed outside for some time longer. Obviously, this is what Michael Peterson’s defense team went with. Theory 1: Kathleen just fell down the stairs. Spoilers ahead, including one very important one involving an owl. But before the new episodes air, here’s a refresher on the main theories. To this day, we still don’t really know how Kathleen Peterson met her end at the bottom of those stairs. ![]() (While we’re here, let’s take a moment to reflect on the fact that Peterson went on to freaking date the series’ editor for a while. The case garnered widespread attention, in part, because of Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s remarkable true-crime docuseries The Staircase, which Netflix will be airing in full, along with three brand-new installments. ![]() He was granted time served and, today, Michael Peterson, now 74, is a free man. ![]() By 2017, he decided to enter an Alford plea, a guilty plea which the defendant asserts innocence but acknowledges there’s enough evidence to convict. In 2011, after a blood analyst’s testimony was discovered to be faulty, Peterson was granted a new trial. Her second husband, novelist Michael Peterson, was arrested shortly after his wife’s death, convicted of her murder, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In the very early hours one December morning in 2001, the 48-year-old business executive was found dead in a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase in her North Carolina home. On Friday, Netflix is bringing back one of the most intriguing, bizarre murder cases of the century: the death of Kathleen Peterson. ![]()
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