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Stand. he said he had been involved in 500 cases, involving blood spatter. reporter: was that true? no. in fact, he had been involved in 54 cases. he said he had written 200 reports involving blood spatter analysis. not true. he said that he had been to the scenes of falls 15 times. in fact, he had never been to a scene of a fall. reporter: what s more remember deaver s conclusion at the trial that the blood stain on peterson s shorts proved he had been standing over his wife beating her. the individual wearing these pants at the time of that impact was in close proximity to source of blood when it was impacted. reporter: turns out he d conducted an experiment pre-trial, and it was videotaped, too. watch. on the second attempt, peterson says it looks as though deaver and another agent got the results they wanted. his assistant does a little jig. oh. a little happy end zone dance? yeah. exactly. exactly. we got him. got you gotcha moment. ....
reporter: a decade after he was arrested for killing his wife, kathleen, michael peterson was back in a north carolina courtroom arguing for a retrial on the grounds that the state s crucial blood pattern expert had given false testimony against him. but as far as kathleen s sister, candace, was concerned, prison was where peterson deserved to rot. my sister s dead for eternity. oh, no, no, no. he murdered my sister. he took the prime of her. he needs to be held accountable for what he did. reporter: but peterson s attorney, david rudolph, was just as determined to free his client from prison. over the course of a seven-day hearing, rudolf methodically dissected the original testimony of blood pattern expert, duane deaver. ....
But that hardly mattered to his girls, margaret and martha. for them, the dark cloud that lay over the family name for nearly a decade had lifted. we re part of the peterson family. and we are not afraid to say it. we so were stigmatized before, you know, and, like, hiding it. reporter: still, the second trial loomed. but working in michael s favor was the fact that the prosecutor would have to try a very different much weaker case. duane deaver had been fired from his job and some of the state s critical blood evidence would be inadmissible. i think their case is very, very badly compromised because of deaver. he was all over the crime scene. reporter: and there was another important victory for peterson s side. what types of services did you perform? oh wow, that s that s pretty broad. reporter: brad, the male escort, a sensational centerpiece of the prosecution s case, wouldn t be part of a second trial either, a judge said. the escort had been revealed in a search ....
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 his testimony. um, and it all seemed to make perfect sense. reporter: then there was all that dried blood the emts noticed around kathleen s body, suggesting she may have been attacked well before peterson called 9-1-1. according to prosecutors, lab tests backed that up. kathleen s head injuries had produced something called red neurons, which they say form after oxygen is withheld from the brain for at least two hours. that gives mr. peterson at least two hours to do things before the 9-1-1 call is placed. reporter: what was he doing ....
Attributed to a beating? defense attorney rudolf notes what he didn t find though the cuts were deep, there were no skull or bone fractures. there was absolutely no fractures anywhere. no fractures to her fingers, to her arms to her skull. and there was absolutely no injury to the brain. and that s just almost an impossibility if what you re doing is beating somebody with a metal object. reporter: and for a final exclamation point, the defense had a perry mason moment up its sleeve. the prosecution had insisted throughout the murder weapon used to bludgeon kathleen peterson was the fireplace blowpoke, only police never found it. almost three months into the trial, one of michael s sons made a stunning discovery in the peterson s basement. he immediately runs up to margaret who was at the house and said, margaret, i think i i i think i found the blowpoke. reporter: in court, the defense played the moment for all it was. ....