THE intriguing circumstances surrounding novelist Michael Peterson’s involvement in his wife Kathleen Peterson’s death are back in the spotlight thanks to a new HBO Max limited series about the case.
Michael was convicted in connection with Kathleen’s death, but true crime enthusiasts have questioned his guilt for years, positing bizarre theories including one that blames her death on an owl attack.
Nearly two decades ago, Michael was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first degree murder of his second wife Kathleen, a business executive.
On a December night in 2001, Kathleen was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her North Carolina home.
Autopsy results indicated she had experienced a number of traumatic injuries in the leadup to her death, which occurred after she bled out for 2 hours.
One of the most compelling revelations in the trial involved details about a female friend of Peterson’s who was killed years earlier after falling down the stairs.
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That death was ruled accidental, but was used to explain why and how Peterson might have sought a manner of death that could be made to seem accidental.
Michael was the one who discovered his wife’s body at the bottom of the staircase hours after the fall.
In the original case, prosecutors accused Michael of beating his wife to death with a fire poker.
The defense, however, claimed Kathleen had simply fallen down the stairs.
Alcohol and valium were detected in her blood in the autopsy, a fact that the defense held up as evidence that she could have fallen.
A strange theory that never made it to trial came from a neighbor and pinned the death on an owl attack.
The Peterson’s neighbor, Larry Pollard, who is also a local attorney, put forward an explanation that involved an owl aggressively attacking Kathleen outside.
After getting the owl off of her head, according to the theory, Kathleen went back inside and attempted to go upstairs, which is when she fell to her death.
The theory was spurred by the presence of wounds on her head marked in a three-prong pattern that resembled claws.
Owls reportedly had a known presence in the neighborhood and an NBC Dateline report uncovered security footage of a man in the area being attacked by one of the massive birds.
Pollard did not put the pieces together to the so-called “owl theory” until months after the trial, thus the defense team was not aware of the possibility and did not introduce it in court.
Since the owl theory was developed, the narrative has gripped the imagination of amateur sleuths.
Kathleen’s death and Peterson’s trial earned sustained attention after a gripping television series by a French documentary crew.
The documentary helped elevate the case to infamy in the world of true crime.
In 2011, after the reputation of a key witness in the case was marred, Peterson managed to secure a retrial.
This time, he secured an Alford plea deal on a count of voluntary manslaughter.
An Alford plea means the defendant still attests to their innocence, but acknowledges sufficient evidence exists for a court conviction.
He was released from prison soon after based on time already served.
Since his prison release, Peterson moved back to Durham, North Carolina where he and Kathleen resided at the time of her death.
He sold the house they shared together and moved into an apartment.
According to his former attorney David Rudolf: “He’s in a ground floor apartment with no stairs — that was a really important accommodation.”
Peterson has two adult children from his first marriage, along with guardianship over two children of a deceased friend of the couple.
He has written multiple books since his release from prison, including a 2019 memoir about his life and the trial called Behind the Staircase.
According to Newsweek, Peterson even dated one of the editors of the 2004 Staircase documentary.
The trial and the making of the documentary is now the subject of a new HBO Max Series that premiered this month featuring Colin Firth as Peterson and Tony Collette as Kathleen called “The Staircase.”
Asked whether she thought Peterson killed his wife, The Staircase show runner Maggie Cohn told Variety: “I don’t think anyone can answer that.”
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Filmmaker Antonio Campos told the entertainment news outlet that there are surprising new details about the theory that Kathleen died after being attacked by an owl.
Campos said that a new, rarely heard theory is also revealed in one of the episodes.
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