Transcripts for MSNBC Dateline 20200914 06:44:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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? coming up
reporter: by dawn, news of kathleen s fall started rippling through the family. details were still vague when family members reached michael s girls, margaret and martha, at college. she said um something s happened. your mom has fallen down the stairs. you know it was an accident. you know, you should come home. reporter: by the time kathleen s daughter, caitlin, got the word, it was as shocking as it was definitive. her college roommate delivered the news. she looks me straight in my eye and she just says, caitlin, it s your mom. she s dead. those words still ring clearly in my head. reporter: kathleen s sister, candace, couldn t believe what she was hearing. michael called her directly. it was still vague or she we couldn t tell if she fell down the stairs or she fell off a ladder, but there was no question i kept saying, are you sure she s dead? reporter: yes, michael was sure. candace headed to her sister s house. the whole thing was sealed off with crime
reporter: but soon another bombshell, and this one would blow the family apart. two months after christmas, the coroner released the results of the official autopsy. multiple lacerations to the back of her head, it looked like she was bludgeoned to death. severe, long, linear lacerations. not consistent with a fall? not consistent with a fall. reporter: 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 saw the seven huge lacerations that basically scalped her, she was murdered. that one picture. that was it. reporter: after reading the autopsy report herself, kathleen s daughter caitlin agreed with her aunt. she called her step-sister, margaret. i said, you need to read this. you need to understand that
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 what happened to liz. reporter: but any questions regarding foul play in elizabeth ratliff s death were laid to rest by the results of an autopsy performed at the u.s. military hospital in germany. elizabeth died, the examiner said, from a brain hemorrhage,