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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.
they said, my god, there was blood everywhere. and, well, no. there wasn t. the german police didn t see any blood. the german doctor didn t see any blood. the american military didn t see any blood. why didn t they see any blood? and if you saw all this blood, why didn t you say something at the time to someone? reporter: he is certain elizabeth ratliff died of a stroke. as for how his wife, kathleen, died years later, michael can t say for sure. but he thinks his first instinct was the right one. i guess maybe i m the last person to believe it. i think she fell down the stairs. i don t know. reporter: michael believes alcohol must have played a role in her fall, and even though her blood alcohol levels weren t off the charts, he says, there may have been another contributing factor. a few months before her death, she d suffered an injury diving into their swimming pool. and her doctor put her on several prescription meds. do you remember her being wobbly in the weeks that ....
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. ....
Scene of a beating. reporter: he was a star witness for the prosecution in the peterson trial, the blood pattern expert who put michael peterson in the staircase bludgeoning his wife, reporter julia sims. you talked to the jurors here in this case, julia. how important was the blood expert, deaver s testimony? that blood evidence was critical. here s a guy who has been doing this for years for the state. look at what his experiment showed. it s got to be the truth. reporter: he d been key in other cases, too. the newspaper recounted the story of a man who was sent to prison for murder after deaver s lab report suggested a stain on the man s car was the victim s blood. and it turned out not to be blood. wasn t blood at all. huh-uh, no. and deaver knew, and didn t disclose it? deaver knew that that was not blood and didn t disclose it. reporter: that man s conviction was overturned. gregory f. taylor is innocent of the charge of first-degree murder. reporter: and th ....
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 ....