with the p.d. you know, i don t my perception of that is that i don t i don t pay much attention to i i don t really like politics anyway. so therefore, it didn t affect me one way or the other. the detective wanted to know more about what was going on inside the peterson home. in addition to the forensic evidence you re gathering, you got to ask this question, what s going on in this marriage? huh? right. that s a big part of your investigation? right. detectives pulled aside kathleen s sister candace to ask if she d noticed any trouble in her sister s marriage. the police took me in a police van to interview me privately. in her grief, candace was hesitant to say anything bad about her now widowed brother-in-law. she d always liked him. he was a fun person to sit and chat with across a dinner table. he was interesting. he s a little bit arrogant about his intelligence, but you know he was a very smart man. when i found out my sister was dead, i was his big
intriguing idea for what he believes happened that night. his scenario of an accidental death has come to be known as the owl theory. he s seen owls in the area. he thought that this was very plausible. he put together this whole theory himself. so here s how the neighbor s theory goes, according to brother bill. kathleen, who has spent the day putting up christmas decorations, goes out front that night while michael is back by the pool. she s checking on her lawn display beneath the trees. the owl flew down and landed on kathleen s head and then tore her scalp in a manner that would be consistent with the lacerations that were found on her scalp. bleeding, kathleen leaves drops on the walk and a smear on the door as she struggles into the house, getting only as far as the staircase where she joins the defense s depiction of falling, passing out, coming to, and rising again only to fall for the final time. the owl theory was not completely new. it had been floated years
in the books, it goes down as a guilty plea. in february of 2017, 73-year-old michael peterson arrived at the durham county courthouse for what would be the final chapter of this saga. he was there to take that alford plea. pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter. kathleen s daughter caitlin came to durham to see it happen. and of course kathleen s sister candace was there. she ran into michael s chief defender outside the courthouse. oh, david, good to see you today. pleading guilty. pleading guilty. thank you, that s what i ve always wanted. actually we re not pleading guilty. you re pleading guilty. alford schmalford. guilt. michael peterson, he d like to walk around and proclaim his innocence, but he can t. he can play with words but he can t play with the facts. the courtroom was eerily reminiscent of the 2003 trial, packed with tv cameras. everybody s a little bit older, but there s so much that s the same.
what had happened on that back staircase? from almost the moment he was retained, defense attorney david rudolf thought michael peterson was innocent. no one thought michael could ve ever harmed kathleen. and indeed, there was never a shred of evidence that they had ever had so much as a loud argument. in court, he laid out a straightforward scenario for the jury. the truth is that kathleen peterson, after drinking some wine and some champagne and taking some valium tried to walk up a narrow, poorly lit stairway in flip-flops and she fell and she bled to death. just as the prosecution had, the defense put the couple s marriage front and center. telling the jury it was more or less perfect. everywhere they went, people noticed.
their house. walking the yard. looking under bushes and trees. i remember feeling that something was going badly with the police. michael called a family meeting. he sat down with us and said, you know, girls, i don t know what s going on, but it seems bad. and i i just want you to know i didn t do anything wrong. i didn t do anything. and we said, of course, dad, we know. but police weren t so sure. they seemed intent on peeling away the veneer of the peterson s marriage. what was going on behind the closed doors in the mansion on cedar street? they were asking me questions about kathleen and michael s relationship. and if i knew of anything. i thought they were happily married. she was very much in love with him. but the detectives were beginning to believe the perfect marriage was anything but. despite that gorgeous house, maybe michael and kathleen peterson weren t exactly rolling