but soon another bombshell and this one would blow the family apart. two months after christmas the coroner released the results of the official occupies. multiple lacerations to the back of her head. like she was bludgeoned to death. severe. long, linear. lacerations. not consistent with a fall. not consistent with a fall. if kathleen s sister candace had been harboring suspicions about what had really happened to her sister, the medical examiner s report was the thing that pushed her over the edge. i seven huge lacerations that basically scalped her. it was murder. that one picture that was it. after reading the autopsy report herself, kathleen s daughter kaitlyn agreed with her aunt. she called her step sister margaret. i said you need to read this. you need to understand that mom she did not die from falling
an owl. who done it, huh? it s awful. we re going to need some time. it s a complicated and simple question. if i were going to ask you did you bludgeon kathleen that night in the stairway of your house to cause her death? no, no, no. let s go back to the night. early december 2001 and stroll up the driveway of the gracious rambling house in one of durham s better neighborhoods. michael and his wife kathleen are out back by the pool as the story goes. finishing off a bottle of wine. in the living room the christmas tree is already up. the grown peterson children expected home for the holiday. christmas was big for kathleen. god, yes. and valentine s day and halloween. she made a celebration out of everything. everything. kathleen s daughter kaitlyn
daughter kaitlyn got the word it was as shocking as it was definitive. her college roommate delivered the news. she looked me straight in my eye and said kaitlyn, it s your mom. she s dead. those words still ring clearly in my head. kathleen s sister couldn t believe what she was hearing. michael called me directly. we couldn t tell if she fell down the stairs or fell off a ladder. i said are you sure she s dead. yes, michael was sure. candace headed to her sister s house. this is a mansion, a huge property so police kept saying you may not want to go in. there s so much blood. this is really awesomely scary. the police were not exaggerating. when candace finally got inside, she says, michael brought her to the back staircase where it happened. my sister s blood is washed in pools up against the wall. her blood was everywhere. the image would be seared in
head that she wondered if the couple had been fighting. kathleen certainly seemed stressed. she was very, very concerned about her job stability at her company. and they were making layoffs. according to candace job insecurity couldn t have come at a worse time. her sister told her the financial pressures on their lives were mounting. she and mike were drowning in credit card debt and that big house had turned into a money pit. and they had invested heavily in her company s tech stock only to lose a bundle when the dot-com bubble burst. then there were the big college tuition bills. we ve got three kids going to college and good colleges, expensive private colleges. kathleen s daughter from her first marriage kaitlyn, remembers it, too. there was a lot of financial problems, i sensed it i sensed the stress of that. when investigators looked at the couple s credit reports, they saw just what kathleen s sister feared. they were living above their
step-daughter to michael said her mom was always happiest at the holidays. she loved christmas. she loved being in the mood playing christmas music from december through new year s. it was the kids who brought kathleen and michael together. his first marriage had started to fall apart. she was separated. michael was raising his two boys and two young girls, margaret and martha. the girls became neighborhood playmates with kathleen s daughter, kaitlyn. they would play barbies and my little ponies and all the time. all the time. and then kathleen came over to borrow a book one night and that s when it began. as the kids spent more and more time together so did michael and kathleen. it wasn t long before they approached the kids about becoming a family together. they sat me down and said you know kaitlyn how would you like it if martha and margaret came to live with you and i immediately thought a permanent sleepover.