dripping down the walls. well that doesn t happen when you have a cerebral hemorrhage. authorities in north carolina were thinking the same thing. if foul play had been involved in elizabeth ratliff s death. it might bolster their case. but the only way to know for sure, they concluded was to dig up elizabeth s grave. former assistant district attorney greta black. we decided it probably would be worthwhile to try to exhume her body to determine whether the findings in germany were accurate or not. to do that they would have to get the okay from elizabeth s daughters, margaret and martha. the girls who believed in in their father s innocence as fiercely as they mistrusted the authorities, struggled with that decision. the hardest i ever had to do was to write off the exhumation of our birth mother. but ultimately they agreed. i signed off on it because we wanted to be like there is no way this could have happened in like please look at the
what type of services did you perform? oh wow, that s pretty broad. reporter: in a sensational revelation, the prosecution called brad the escort to the stand. what type of sexual activities, sir? oh, just about anything under the sun. reporter: on the witness stand, the escort told the jury that just three-months before kathleen s death, he and michael peterson had arranged to meet. we were to hook up. and what were you all planning on doing? having sex. reporter: the hookup never happened, but combine that with the other combustibles in the couple s life, the prosecution said, and you have all the ingredients for a fatal confrontation. it got out of control, and michael peterson snapped. and he was the only one who could have done it, according to the prosecution. reporter: further evidence that michael attacked kathleen ferociously, the prosecution stated, was as clear as the spray of blood up the staircase walls. the amount of blood, the positioning of the
hi i m richard lui with your top stories. supreme court justice ruth bader ginsberg remains at the hospital after having growths on her left lung removed. the 85-year-old jurist is up and working, she s never missed arguments before. with the dow on a losing streak, treasury secretary steve mnuchin phoned top bank ceos, mnuchin meets with top government officials overseeing the economy tomorrow. now back to dateline. welcome back to dateline extra. i m craig melvin. kathleen peterson was dead at the bottom of the stairs, the steps and walls covered in blood. responding officers immediately suspected she had been murdered and investigators were focusing
aneurysm like her father. when i started to think about someone falling down the stairs, i thought well that s possible those stairs are you know, pretty steep and you know, they re slippery and wooden. but amy beth says she looked around, she noticed something blood. not just where elizabeth lay but high up along the staircase walls, too. too much blood, she thought for a slip and fall. if you fell down the stairs, why would there be blood splurted up the side of the walls? it didn t make any sense to me. she says there were household details out of order. like the table that liz set out every night with the girls breakfast plates. it was bare. the snow boots shoe left by the front door still on her feet. liz never wore her boots in the house. she always took her boots off. that was another clue to me that something was wrong. it s obvious that she was running from someone or trying to escape.
location of the blood, it was overwhelming. in general terms, the greater the force, the smaller the drop. reporter: to take the jury vividly up the back stairs, the prosecution called the state s blood pattern expert, duane deaver. he told the jury with certainty that kathleen peterson had been beaten to death. he testified the droplet pattern high up the walls was just what you d expect to see with a weapon rising, striking, and casting off blood with each new blow. and i believe there is a minimum of four blows that have occurred in this, uh in this scene. reporter: what s more, deaver testified, this blood stain was found on the inside of peterson s shorts. he d done tests that he says proved that the only way it could have gotten there was if peterson had been standing over his wife, beating her. and the individual wearing these pants at time of that impact was in close proximity to the source of blood when it was impacted. i remember the jurors were captivated by hi