girls, i don t know what s going on, but it seems bad and 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 in dow. coming up if he wasn t writing a book or had any royalties coming in, he had no income. i sensed there were a lot of financial problems, i sensed the stress of that. and what autopsy revealed.
base outside frankfurt. their good friend, elizabeth ratliff a widow, lived nearby. liz has two children and she is teaching school had a great many friends. all there. on november 24th, 1985, elizabeth went to the petersons for dinner. later, michael peterson says he drove her home. she got out and went upstairs. see you tomorrow. the next morning michael says he was fast asleep when elizabeth s nanny came running with urgent news. i m upstairs in bed and she is saying something, you know, i said dad or i don t know. she s screaming and so i put some clothes on and i go over to the house. and in fact liz is dead. dead at the bottom of the stairs. bottom of the stairs. another good friend in their circle, amy beth burner and her husband were summoned to elizabeth s townhouse, too. she asked michael what happened. he said well she probably had an
prosecutors in the murder trial presented an explosive theory of the crime. they claimed michael was secretly by-sexual. and beat his wife to death after she discovered e-mails arranging a meet with the escort. not true said michael. and he wanted to speak with us. to tackle the accusation directly. but, if kathleen was bludgeoned to death as prosecutors thought, problem. investigators hadn t found the murder weapon. prosecutors believed it was a hollow fireplace tool called a blow poke, seen here in family photographs. it had been given to kathleen by her sister, candace, as a gift. i d given it to her about ten years prior. that s for sure. and that thanksgiving when i was at her house, the i definitely saw it by the fireplace. reporter: prosecutors thought peterson had ferreted the blow poke out of the house that night after the
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
you don t want to go through it real speedy. you want to make sure that you cross all your t s and dot all your i s. it would take investigator a couple of days it go through the 9,000 square-foot estate. while they did michael and the kids took refuge at a neighbor s house. i spent most of the time in bed and margaret came in and martha and kaitlyn, everybody flew in, everybody. he said from the moment the police arrived at the house they were aggressive towards him and his family. but even in his haze of shock and grief, peterson says he thought he knew why. i had written some really negative comments, i had been a columnist, really been hammering the police. you lit out at the cops. his accusations of the city cops range from their failure to get a handle on drug trafficking to only solving a small fraction of crimes. the chief of police had emailed me a couple of days