reporter: and that s exactly how michael presented it to his two girls. margaret s the older it s really funny i think he put it, we re gonna have a long sleepover, and we said, yeah! reporter: her younger sister, martha of course we want to live with caitlin and kathleen, and play barbies, and, um, be a family together. reporter: so michael and his four kids and kathleen and her daughter became a blended family he was a former u.s. marine-turned-full- time writer who liked to draw on his wartime experiences in vietnam one of his vietnam books got a big advance, money that went towards buying that fine house they said, we re thinking about moving into this house. and they drove us over we didn t even go inside we just looked and we thought, oh, my goodness, you know, this is amazing. reporter: there in his office he wrote his war stories and churned out sharp-elbowed columns on city politics for the local paper. stick in the eye stuff
she was on flexeril which is, apparently, a muscle relaxant oh yeah. she was in a great deal of pain all the time reporter: for michael peterson, the trial was hard enough to bear, but the family spilt made it even worse. there was kathleen s daughter, caitlin, across the room in the prosecution s camp and behind him the whole time, his girls, margaret and martha they were sisters they loved one another they helped one another. and that s been the biggest, to me, the sadness that everything that kathleen wanted to make happen and did happen as far as the family was torn asunder. reporter: michael s story is one he says those closest to him have known for years that information reporter: a story his lawyers were about to present to the jury and they had an ace up their sleeve, a moment straight out of perry mason. one that would leave mouths agape in the courtroom that s a blow poke isn t it
time consuming you don t want to, you know, go through it real speedy you want to make sure that you cross all your ts and dot all your is. reporter: it would take investigators a couple of days to go through the 9,000 square foot estate. while they did, michael and the kids took refuge at a neighbor s house. just spent most of the time in bed then margaret came in, martha, caitlin, everybody flew in, everybody. reporter: he says 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 d i d been a columnist. and i ve really, really been hammering the police you you you lit out at the cops, huh? oh many times reporter: his accusations of the city cops ranged 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 just a co
first wife patty, and then later with kathleen, raised them as his own. patty was saying that our birth mother was like a sister to her she was her closest friend in the whole world. and it was said in our mother s will that we would go to mike and patty when they passed away. and, so, dad saw it as his responsibility and took us in. and stay we stayed with him for our whole lives. reporter: you didn t think, that s strange, the petersons who are these people well actually, you know, i can understand how that could happen this was her world now liz must love these people and trusted them to the nth degree reporter: elizabeth ratliff s body was flown to texas for burial at the funeral, margaret was desperate to hear further details from michael peterson about her sister s passing but to her surprise michael was very aloof and very strange reporter: did he speak? no, he didn t really say a lot at all he never talked about the
mom she did not die from falling down stairs, that she was beaten to death. reporter: but caitlin s childhood playmates, her step-sisters margaret and martha, stood strong with their father dad told me that he didn t do it, and i believe him. i trust him. reporter: the step-sisters never spoke again. caitlin removed her belongings from the house i ve lost, obviously, far more than just my mother i thought, you know, i i did lose martha, and margaret, and michael, my family, my home. reporter: could the family agony get any worse? well, it could and by a wide margin because now investigators were picking through michael peterson s past, turning the clock back some 20 years, and taking a peek at his previous life an ocean away what they would discover was beyond eerie how can michael have found two women dead at the bottom of a staircase? a similar tragedy in the past gets the attention of investigators.