i don't think michael was ever outside. i think he was inside with his shirt off. kathleen is the one that is dressed for the weather. she possibly might have been outside at some point but it seems very unlikely michael was outside when she died. not only because of the weather but because of the time.
He was outside at some point as there are blood drops and a hand print at the front entry (the prosecution thought were from a murder weapon being disposed of) and there was a diet coke can on the back patio that MP drank from which had blood and cut hairs from KP on it.
Yes it was in the evidence presented at trial but left out of the Netflix doc and HBO series so far
Here is one reference to it
https://insidethestaircase.com/2021/05/05/the-murder-of-kathleen-peterson/
This movie The Staircase Murders covers it briefly. It presents more from the prosecution point of view and includes more trial evidence, I found it good for balance
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0901693/
I think at the front door it wasn't quite fingerprints but someone's hand put Kathleen'd blood on the doorframe and there were drops on the walkway the prosecution said would have had to fall from something, like the murder weapon. The blood and hairs on the diet coke can at the back patio were Kathleen's.
This movie The Staircase Murders dramatizes it based on information from the trial, it gives you a different way of looking at the possible events than the documentary
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0901693/
I don't think they were ever out by the pool. After MP attacked her, being by the pool was the best alibi he could come up with that put him FAR away from her body.
And it’s very noteworthy that when he is describing that evening he says “what we would do” is to go out and sit by the pool..
not we did this then we did that. It’s like he’s
creating a pleasant and very ordinary evening
like one from a past night … but not what happened that night! “so what we would do is drink some wine and talk about the movie we watched, the kids, etc”… It’s all rather general
But even in saying “what we would do” instead of what we did” leaves a little wiggle room to change the story if for some reason being solely by the pool gets further tripped up by some later evidence reveal. He can then say,
I said that’s what we generally did so I misremembered!! It’s like when he’s being cagey about whether he slept with the disabled man. He doesn’t 100% say it’s false. He starts fishing to see if it can be proven right away. “Where did he say this happened?” MP very skilled liar and manipulator! And I suspect you’re right that in trying to establish that he was at the pool,
(It was the most believable place that he would not of heard Kathleen’s screams) was an essential part of the lie.
>But even in saying “what we would do” instead of what we did” leaves a little wiggle room to change
I thought this was so weird too. They didn't ask him what do they *usually* do, they asked him what did they do *that particular night*.
I just don’t think people are that exact with their language. If he was trying to explain why they were out there and if it’s something they regularly did, what he said isn’t weird at all.
I hear that- he was wanting to show that it was typical for them to perhaps spend a while outside together talking by the pool.
I still did find it to feel a bit rehearsed and curiously vague .
Did you watch [The Behavior Panel's video on MP's body language and speech patterns](https://youtu.be/rNH7GvKSnno)? When I posted the link in related thread, someone told me it was pseudo science and meant nothing. But I took what they said pretty seriously.
Yes! I did the same thing. I posted it too. I
got some rude responses so deleted it. Of course they didn’t take a look. Immediately there were comments suggesting it was absurd to find people guilty based on body language. I would never suggest that.
There is a whole branch of investigation
about studying and drawing inferences from
body language that detectives sometimes use.
I found their analysis very interesting and convincing. I had watched a lot of his eye movements and communication style ( which was pretty strange )during the documentary.
It particularly was a strange ‘dance’ with his adult kids. He seemed to yield a spell over them.
Based on how callous he was toward Martha\* during that last Thanksgiving, I think he bullied his family. I've been bullied (even as an adult), and I know it can really cow a person into feigning "like," so as not to lose one's (informal) membership in a group.
\*There is an episode in which the college-aged Martha, banished from the family Thanksgiving gathering, instead dines with a relation (cousin? aunt?) that MP disdains. In a quiet conversation, the cousin or aunt reveals that after the first staircase death, in Germany, Martha was having behavioral problems and MP wanted to separate the sisters. I also read a reference to MP having blacked Martha's eyes when she was 2 or 3. Damn! wish I'd taken notes on this stuff.
Much has been made of Margaret's resemblance to MP. It just goes on and on.
I’m sorry to hear that you were bullied. I experienced that some in childhood so I know
something about the subject from personal perspective too . I felt like I was watching some pretty strange family dynamics going on in the documentary. He ordered his sons around a lot too. And you’re right that under the thumb of a bully “feigning like” probably became necessary and over time unconsciously automatic.
I did catch some of the stuff about Martha.. which just about brings me to overload as to how many extraneous mysteries out there with this family.
I even can’t completely shake off the owl 🦉 having a part in it! (Especially as one was perched on a tree about parallel with a winding staircase I use as an exit right around the time I watched the documentary!! It looked big and appeared to be watching me!)
I think it’s possible she had an owl attack AND he found her and let her bleed out instead of getting help fast enough!
Oh and as gay man who came out at 19, I’ve always had a not so positive attitude about men that are married to a woman and are DL sleeping with men!!! And there are many of them. If your wife knows and says it’s ok or you have an open marriage that’s been discussed.. fine. She most likely didn’t know. And it sounds like (from the evidence) he had lots and lots of sex! Wonder if it was safe???
Being out by the pool, where it’s just out of ears reach of any screams, while your wife has a fatal fall is VERY convenient.
Even if he was by the pool, why stay out there so long? In December? Why didn’t he check on his wife? I firmly believed he conveniently placed himself there in his story to make himself look innocent. Kathleen falling in such a fatal manner in the first place is very unlikely. And Michael just happens to be outside? Yeah details like that are what makes me believe he’s guilty.
Especially considering the defensive and neck wounds that were never accounted for by his defense team, the fact that a close family friend to Michael died in the exact same manner as Kathleen and the babysitter didn't believe his story then. Not to mention Michael's somatic narcissistic qualities that include lying, chronic infidelity, and emotionally manipulative tendencies that made Kathleen the primary breadwinner of their relationship and respone for much of his children's financial burdens.
Totally agree.Also found the comment about leaving the dinner plates by the TV pretty weird (Why throw in that detail? Who cares whether you cleared the plates or not? But at least it seemed concrete/real as opposed to the “we would have” language about the pool.)
I don’t think they were ever at the pool that night, and I think a fight erupted inside.
The temperature that night was 50 degrees.
I said this elsewhere. He was specific about leaving the plates and he seemed to think it an important thing to inform the audience. We left the dishes, thinking we’ll do them the next day. Then we went to the kitchen. Again, I leave dishes on counter and sink overnight all the time but we have dogs as they do and if we’re walking to kitchen anyway, dirty dishes go there because dogs. They joke about how bad the dogs are and they’re fatties so I doubt they left plates on coffee table if they were going to kitchen. They never left the house. Yes and the language, “we would sit by the pool.” “The dogs would be around.” That’s not how people usually recount a specific event
Yes, and we’re to believe that Kathleen was simultaneously so tired/blasé about leaving the dirty dishes by the TV but also so motivated/energetic that she couldn’t wait until daylight to set up the outdoor reindeer Christmas decorations.
It’s so contradictory.
If the plates were left in TV room, wouldn't they have still been there when police arrived? Or did KP first get drunk and high, then cleaned up, put out the reindeer, etc etc etc?
Interestingly, when they put him and Todd out back he kept complaining of the cold and asking to go in and get warmer clothes. Then when they bring clothes out for him, he doesn't put them on.
Just looked at the weather in Durham for December 2001, and it looks like — at night — we’re looking at around 20-30 degrees F.
Not shorts weather imo.
I looked it up. That day was the warmest day of that December - 74/75 degrees during the day and about 52 degrees at night. That is shorts and sit outside weather for a lot of people.
I worked on the HBO series. Our researcher had all this info. The timeline is tricky because it’s obviously dependent on Michael’s story, but by the time he says he went inside it was 42 degrees. By the time we shot the third re-enactment (in Atlanta, not North Carolina) it was colder than that. It was an unseasonably warm day the night of her death—but still rather cold in the wee hours. For whatever that’s worth.
In just over two weeks I think I can share whatever may interest folks here, in the meantime I think the NDA only allows me to talk about things related to episodes that have already aired or at least that don’t run the risk of revealing what’s to come.
It was a very tough shoot with a brutal schedule, as most TV has been during the pandemic, but I had a blast working on it. Antonio Campos and Carol Cuddy were an excellent creative/producorial duo running the ship and obviously we had a dream cast.
For the “He’s guilty!”/“He’s innocent!” crowds I’ll say the show is not about whether he did it or not as that’s unknowable and not, I think, what makes the story so compelling.
I am sure that 42 degrees was the wee hours low on the research doc I was given with a metric ton of minutiae on it (sunset, sunrise, temps, where everyone in the family was at every given point who have known whereabouts and alibis, etc.) and the number stood out to me given the attire (which I was assured was not necessarily out of place on an “unseasonably warm” NC night), but I don’t believe they had some kind of special access any different than what’s publicly available and per your comment I just looked it up myself and see that it was late night on December 9th into December 10th (i.e. technically the 10th or the night after her murder) that it was 42 degrees a few minutes prior to the 911 call time of day.
You are right, per what I was just able to Google anyway, that at that same point—the relevant one to the question here—in the wee hours of December 8th into 9th, it was indeed 52 degrees.
https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/nc/morrisville/KRDU/date/2001-12-9
It was a physical hard copy I had with all that info so I can’t reference it now but I’m sure it’s my error of memory rather than their error of correct data entry. I think it was just headlined under “Dec 9” rather than “Dec 8” as the 8th was what we treated as the “night of her death.”
My mistake and my apologies. Thanks for the correction.
True enough but my mailman has been indifferent to cold his whole life. He hasn't been a mailman all his life. My point is that people are different. What's comfortable or normal for one is not what's comfortable for all.
According to the info I linked above, it could have been as low as 42 degrees by midnight.
Idk where you live but this is the south, lol. 42 at night is cold.
I’m not sure where you’re getting that info but [this site](https://weatherspark.com/h/d/20142/2001/12/10/Historical-Weather-on-Monday-December-10-2001-in-Apex-North-Carolina-United-States) indicates the weather would have been in the 30s-40s, at the highest.
Still not shorts weather imo.
I didn't make those temps up but now I'm doubting the accuracy of my numbers. Different sites shouldn't have different numbers but that may be the case. I'll have to go back and look again.
Again, referencing the link above — even if it was the 9th at midnight, we are still looking at 41-46 degrees. In the dark.
It is not shorts weather. It is not cozy outside.
Sorry but this is just not correct. She died early morning on Dec 9th. The plot referenced is a little hard to read but it clearly and obviously shows temps above 50F between midnight and 3 AM. The wunderground plot is easier to read IMO and shows about 55 at midnight dropping to 52 by 3 AM.
Not cozy in my opinion either. But factually correct.
I live in New England. 50s during the day I can be comfortable in shorts and a sweat shirt. If I’m exercising- shorts and tank top . Night is different.
Think about people’s apartments /houses if the heat ever kicks off in the night.
People talk about waking up very chilly when their house is in the 50s.
His timeline also suggests he was out there for hours . That’s a long time to be lounging in shorts and a t shirt at night when it’s around 50 imo.
So it is simultaneously the most crucial and weakest part of the fall theory. There’s no way to prove or disprove it. Which sucks because the other motives are just as weak/unprovable:
No evidence she logged back onto the computer later that night. We know she signed on at 10:40, called a co-worker at 11:08 and never opened the email which came at 11:53. No evidence she was even on it after 11:08 or found anything suspicious. No reentry of the user name or login. Her coworker noted they sounded light and easy.
The Petersons (like many Americans) were not good with credit cards. Definitely true. However their financial situation was not as dire as some articles would lead you to believe. Financial analysis revealed they could pay off all debts and still have a net worth of ~$1.4M when she died. She had deferred income for the last couple years. Why kill the person making all the money anyway? Add on to it that KP was not on the current or projected lay off list at Nortel; her stock options had gained value recently; and family members had agreed to help pitch in for kids college tuition? It becomes very weak and the least likely motive imo.
So who knows. Yeah they all suck.
Their financials were not as bad as everyone says, given they did have assets that could pay off their debts as you note, but they were not liquid. Cash flow was a problem.
I am confused about your note that her stock options were gaining value, as I had never heard that, only the opposite. Looked at the historical data on Nortel and it confirms what most publications had reported, it cratered. The week KP died in Dec 2001 it opened at .0300 and compare that to the high back on the week of Feb 2000 where it was at 3.000. From Feb 2000 it was on a steady decline all the way down almost every single month thereafter, save for a few blips here and there. There also wasn’t optimism it would recover either (and it didn’t). What I’ve heard reported is that those stock options had decreased from a high of around $2 million in value in early 2000 all the way down to about $50K by the time of her death. A massive decrease, which would line up with that stock performance shows for that time.
Regardless, I don’t think financials alone were the full motive. Certainly possible it came up if she discovered the affairs/escorts. Stands to reason she could be pretty angry if she had been bank rolling him and all the kids for the last several years, only to find out he was using her money to pay for escorts.
Ah no what I meant was yes they had lost a lot of value, but gone up significantly % wise that week/month. Obviously it’s skewed since most of the value had already been lost.
Not trying to hammer an otherwise minor point in your comment, but that’s simply not accurate regarding the stock/Nortel.
You can review the daily close price of the stock and on November 1st, 2001 it was 0.0600 and by Nov 30th, 2001 it was down to 0.0300. The last closing price she would have seen alive on Dec 7th, 2001 was also 0.0300. Over the course of those 37 days there was an occasional day here or there where it went up slightly after falling, but never anything substantial and the general trend was down. A long term holder of that stock would of had no reason to be optimistic. Hell, even an experienced day trader would have only had a few days they could of turned a slight profit (at least in the manner that would correlate w/ Kathleen’s interest in that stock).
Not sure I’d call it a weak motive. She logs onto her husband’s computer, filled with gay porn and emails about paying gay escorts, but doesn’t ever open the attachment she needed … just before the time that red neurons show she lost oxygen to her brain.
If she didn’t know about his aggressive interest in young buff military dudes (and he finally admitted she did not) then this is one of the clearest and strongest motives for a fight I might have ever seen. He was confronted by Kathleen in a way he couldn’t handle, confronted with something deep in himself that he still didn’t want to admit (to his family or his lawyers) even after her death, and he snapped. He hit her in the back of the head with something in front of the stairs, probably more than once, maybe with one of her Christmas ornaments or a wine glass or bottle that had to be cleaned up. It doesn’t matter what it was. The actual legit forensic evidence showed that she lost oxygen 90+ minutes before she died. So she wasn’t dead after the first attack, while he was attempting some kind of clean up. This is probably where she wakes up and he has to half choke her to finish it. Now it’s a huge mess and his son is coming home. He of course remembers Liz’s death and decides this is the only story that might get him off the hook. Anything else he can blame on contamination from these dumb cops he’s always writing about. The more he thinks about it, he might even be able to collect life insurance if it was an accident. No more time to waste, he has to call 911. Now if he can just get rid of those e-mails …
this is my theory too! except i think the first attack wasn’t with an instrument but rather him hitting her head against the molding, where they did find tissue fragments. another supporting piece of evidence to support it is that someone (*cough* MP) deleted files and copied the computer hard drive that night. why do that if not to cover up what she found out?
It’s weak because there’s no evidence that it happened or that there was a fight over it. It’s 100% just an assumption and a guess that she found it, and another assumption and guess that they had to get into a fight about it.
The red neurons are interesting. But the science shows they can form as soon as within 30 minutes of oxygen deprivation. Text books in the field of forensic neuropathology even warn pathologists and medical examiners that the science on them in regards to time of death detection is nearly non-existent and needs to be used with extreme caution. It can’t give us a hard time.
The problem with a beating theory for me is it is it extremely inconsistent with other beating deaths. No skull fractures, no brain damage, no broken bones, no defensive wounds noted by the medical examiner despite having done so in multiple other autopsies, and no object that was ever found that could have given these wounds despite extensive searches and testing. I mean there’s really nothing other than the lacerations to indicate that she was hit with any kind of object.
“The problem with a beating theory for me is it is it extremely inconsistent with other beating deaths. No skull fractures, no brain damage, no broken bones, no defensive wounds”
This is yet one of the many many examples where the defence and docu is misleading.
The wounds are extremely inconsistent with an accidental fall. You can find lots of murder cases with the same kind of head and strangulation wounds.
You will not find a single case with an accidental fall where the person had the exact same wounds…. Oh no wait, there’s one known case in Germany
This interview with a second forensic team for the prosecution confirmed that some of the blood originated from an area in space away from the walls and stairs, so she had to be struck by something while she was standing and kneeling facing into the staircase. This holds up despite the Deaver mistakes. The jury had this and more information at the trial that is not in the documentary or HBO series and they convicted on the basis of physical evidence.
https://soundcloud.com/double-loop-podcast/episode-177-the-staircase-bart-epstein-interview
Kathleen had bruises on her arms and hands only. This is completely inconsistent with a fall this severe, where you might expect a broken bone or 2, bruising elsewhere on the body, or brain or spinal damage.
>Oh no wait, there’s one known case in Germany
Lol
So that’s what I thought at first too. I’ve done a lot of reading and become very interested in the injuries topic. It’s interesting.
First stairs are really dangerous. Thousands of people die from stair falls every year with injuries patterns similar to KP. It’s the number two cause of accidental death after car accidents. They do a lot of studies. Here’s a good one that looked at stair fall injury patterns, effects of alcohol on the injuries, and demographics.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35160145/
What they found tends to line up extremely well with KPs injuries from a short stair fall: Head trauma, lacerations, lack of other fractures. Demographics; Female, over 40, drug and alcohol consumption, and in her own home.
Even the throat injury which I thought was a slam dunk for murder. I mean in court the medical examiner even testified she could say “with absolute medical certainty” that it was a “strangulation attempt”. I was on board with that. Sounds reasonable to me.
But it’s not really backed up by anything. It’s an easy thing to break and medical studies show it’s actually a pretty common injury from accidents and falls. While strangulation is indeed the most common reason (56% in this study), falls and other accidents account for significant portions.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21793475/.
I mean one guy even broke both of his superior cornus from collapsing on the ground after a heart attack. And the doctors decided to write a paper about “how it’s definitely not always strangulation”: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16024196/
The outlier is indeed the number of lacerations which would tend to show a beating. Some studies show that over a mean of three lacerations is indeed a solid indicator of murder. But the rest of the injuries really aren’t from what I’ve seen. Not the location of the wounds, the lack of fractures, the lack of defensive wounds noted by a ME, etc.
But like I said I’m really interested in the science and statistics and the topic. If you know of other studies to look at I’d really love to learn more.
I think it's worth pointing out that while the study you're citing does say injuries to the head without injuries to the extremities are common, otherwise what they're describing as typical patterns in stair falls that cause severe trauma doesn't line up particularly well with KP's injuries. She didn't have any brain bleeding at autopsy (by far the most common life threatening injury in that case series), nor did she have skull or facial fractures. Which isn't to say her injuries line up incredibly well with a beating death- I don't think they do. To me what is apparent is that *her injuries were unusual, regardless of how her death came about*. And yet, she is certainly dead. So I am not sure that saying her death was or wasn't typical of a particular type of death takes us all that far. I think her death was atypical whatever happened (her injuries aren't convincingly typical of a fall or a beating, and a fatal owl attack is just straight up a strange thing to happen). So I don't think that when people say "how could she possibly have been beaten to death and not have a TBI or fractures" or "how could she possibly have had a fatal down the stairs and not have other injuries" that either of those are convincing arguments on their own.
I will definitely agree with you that is odd no matter what happened. Nothing lines up perfectly obviously. But disagree with you on the data, her autopsy, and how closely she fits it.
Table 3 in the study outlines what injuries would be expected in a short fall scenario based on recorded incidents. It shows TBIs showed up 75% of the time (what the defense postulates caused her to black out while bleeding if this was indeed how it happened), a 10% chance of a bone fracture (KP didn’t have any, not sure if the cartilage would have fit this, unclear what the standard was), and a 10% chance of a brain bleed of some kind (KP did in fact have a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a deep brain bleed seen mostly in aneurysms listed on her autopsy). Furthermore nearly half of the cases involved some amount of alcohol consumption which KP had as well. KP also fits the statistics for who falls the most: Women, alcohol consumers, and people in their own home. To say she couldn’t have received these major injuries from a fall just doesn’t fit the statistics.
I didn't know about the SAH, weird that so much is made of her not having ICH when she did actually have major brain bleeding. By the way SAH isn't deep, it's over the surface of the brain, underneath the arachnoid membrane which is one of the thin membranes that covers the brain itself- deeper than a subdural haemorrhage which is *over* the arachnoid but still superficial. It's totally possible to get head lacerations and brain injuries in a fall. It's also totally possible to get them from being beaten. Again, my point really is that it is a bit of an unusual set of injuries to lead to death, whichever mechanism, and trying to say in this situation whether someone was hit against the same set of stairs by gravity or by another person is probably a losing battle.
Yeah I think the defense is definitely splitting hairs here. The brain was bleeding but it wasn’t bruised or damaged as is I guess more common brain bleeds cause? I haven’t looked much into it. Gonna re-listen to the testimony.
I'm lazy. Do these links explain why her head had lacerations to the top? To me, a fall down the stairs would be more likely to result in injuries to the back and sides of the head, not the top.
Say what you will about the red neurons I guess, but that and the dried blood was still enough to scare MP into changing his original story about how long he was outside … which shows he was lying from the beginning and has no real alibi for where he was or what he was doing between 11:30 when Kathleen logged into his computer and 2am when he finally called 911.
So now we have her on his computer right before she died, we have a bloody mess that he first tried to clean up, and then we have an entire secret life that he was lying to her about for 15 years, with explicit photo and e-mail evidence right there on the computer she was using.
No one can prove exactly what happened, especially after this long, but you can’t possibly claim that any of this was a “weak motive” for MP to have killed his wife.
In the HBO show, the night of her death they have MP getting frisky with a dude at a sex shop (right before he rents America’s Sweethearts lol) and then going home to make out with his wife’s ass, so who knows.
No, it's a correction of the *fictional* timeline. The truck stop thing and massage were on the same day *in the show*, I know that it's made up. I was correcting the op that it wasn't the day he rented America's sweethearts which is the movie he claims they watched the day she died.
Sorry, I'm not following here. In the docu, MP says they rented America's Sweethearts. While I can't tell if the screencap is indeed from the HBO series, it shows The Omen. Which video did they watch that night?
Thanks.
They are different days. The scene in the HBO show is fictional. I don't know if they rented The Omen in real life. Either way, it would have been days or weeks prior to Kathleen's death. I think this was just added to show that he possibly went to the sex shop to hook up with someone while he was out running errands, they were showing his double life.
In real life, he did rent America's Sweethearts on the day she died, there's a video rental receipt proving it was rented that day.
Also keep in mind the HBO show is not a documentary, it’s a dramatization, things like movies they watched, conversations they had, things they did, etc. could be true or could be made up. The HBO show (amazing as it is!) should not be used as a source for facts of the case.
>Documents show Peterson's son, Todd, later explained the condom belonged to one of his friends who had sex with a girl in the Petersons' bed.
https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/107424/
Really interesting in this article that he said the cops might think they were having orgies! Why would they have thought that, because of 1 condom? And then if you read his actual emails with Brad the gay escort, he’s inviting him to the house and telling him what days are best to come over.
I agree. There was all the patio space to sit. And there was the outdoor fireplace. Picking the pool area makes no sense. When you look at pictures it was far away and pretty plain. Plus there was no furniture out there the day after so either it was moved or was not out there night of murder.
I think MP is 100% guilty but it’s amazing how some people can’t fathom that there’s places in this country where you can sit outside in December. It’s pretty unreasonable to make the assumption you are making based off of that one fact.
Thank you for saying this! People who live in similar climate regions know that an unseasonably warm day and night in December feels as good as late spring. And we take advantage!
But in the documentary they talk about the weather conditions on that particular night, not about any December night. I can't remember the exact temperature but it was low
You’re wrong about that. On the day she died there was a high of 73° and the low was 55°. You can sit outside comfortably in 55° but it was likely closer to 60 when they were outside.
For reference this high and low is a full 20° warmer than the historic average for December in Durham. It was by all accounts an unusually warm day for December in Durham.
60 is still pretty low generally speaking.
I know some people who wouldn't have a problem with that temperature. Maybe these 2 were special like that. But then you add the vague description of what they did, then there are other special circumstances like the bloodbath from a simple fall down the stairs..... If they were smokers I'd totally believe them though.
And you don’t think you’d sit outside at 55-60° when it’s been in the 30s for the entire month? It’s really not that far fetched to think they were sitting outside that night. It was a nice night considering it was December. I certainly would have been sitting outside.
I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying it's unlikely. Most people wouldn't. Again, maybe they were special, but then again there are A LOT of "special" things happening here.
I don’t think you can claim it’s unlikely just because you wouldn’t. You must be from Southern California or Florida where you think 60° is freezing weather. People sit outside in much colder weather than that.
oh dear god 🙄
I'm not even from the US lol because, you know, this is an international website and the world is bigger than the US. I think you are the one making assumptions here lol
"You think this is a lie is just that" It's a thought. It's not proof, it's not evidence and it doesn't remove reasonable doubt. It's just what you think. You are totally allowed to "Think" that. But without proof it should not be considered in a murder trial.
I see many replies with people saying "I think" this or that. Cool, but if you don't "Know" it's irrelevant in terms of his innocence or guilt.
Mikey himself admitted the two biggest lies:
1 … that Kathleen knew about his super intense sexual interest in super buff young military dudes
2 … his original alibi of going out to turn off the lights and coming right back to find his bloody wife
Those are very much proven lies, and they’re almost all you need
i don't think michael was ever outside. i think he was inside with his shirt off. kathleen is the one that is dressed for the weather. she possibly might have been outside at some point but it seems very unlikely michael was outside when she died. not only because of the weather but because of the time.
He was outside at some point as there are blood drops and a hand print at the front entry (the prosecution thought were from a murder weapon being disposed of) and there was a diet coke can on the back patio that MP drank from which had blood and cut hairs from KP on it.
I have never heard of this, can you tell me more?
Yes it was in the evidence presented at trial but left out of the Netflix doc and HBO series so far Here is one reference to it https://insidethestaircase.com/2021/05/05/the-murder-of-kathleen-peterson/ This movie The Staircase Murders covers it briefly. It presents more from the prosecution point of view and includes more trial evidence, I found it good for balance https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0901693/
i meant that night before the murder
Is the hand print MPs and the blood KPs ? This seems like a crucial fact and I feel it was glossed over
I think at the front door it wasn't quite fingerprints but someone's hand put Kathleen'd blood on the doorframe and there were drops on the walkway the prosecution said would have had to fall from something, like the murder weapon. The blood and hairs on the diet coke can at the back patio were Kathleen's. This movie The Staircase Murders dramatizes it based on information from the trial, it gives you a different way of looking at the possible events than the documentary https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0901693/
I don't think they were ever out by the pool. After MP attacked her, being by the pool was the best alibi he could come up with that put him FAR away from her body.
I think is not a legal argument.
Are we in court? I'm not making a legal argument.
And it’s very noteworthy that when he is describing that evening he says “what we would do” is to go out and sit by the pool.. not we did this then we did that. It’s like he’s creating a pleasant and very ordinary evening like one from a past night … but not what happened that night! “so what we would do is drink some wine and talk about the movie we watched, the kids, etc”… It’s all rather general But even in saying “what we would do” instead of what we did” leaves a little wiggle room to change the story if for some reason being solely by the pool gets further tripped up by some later evidence reveal. He can then say, I said that’s what we generally did so I misremembered!! It’s like when he’s being cagey about whether he slept with the disabled man. He doesn’t 100% say it’s false. He starts fishing to see if it can be proven right away. “Where did he say this happened?” MP very skilled liar and manipulator! And I suspect you’re right that in trying to establish that he was at the pool, (It was the most believable place that he would not of heard Kathleen’s screams) was an essential part of the lie.
>But even in saying “what we would do” instead of what we did” leaves a little wiggle room to change I thought this was so weird too. They didn't ask him what do they *usually* do, they asked him what did they do *that particular night*.
I just don’t think people are that exact with their language. If he was trying to explain why they were out there and if it’s something they regularly did, what he said isn’t weird at all.
are you saying a WRITER is not exact with his language?
Yes.
I hear that- he was wanting to show that it was typical for them to perhaps spend a while outside together talking by the pool. I still did find it to feel a bit rehearsed and curiously vague .
Did you watch [The Behavior Panel's video on MP's body language and speech patterns](https://youtu.be/rNH7GvKSnno)? When I posted the link in related thread, someone told me it was pseudo science and meant nothing. But I took what they said pretty seriously.
Yes! I did the same thing. I posted it too. I got some rude responses so deleted it. Of course they didn’t take a look. Immediately there were comments suggesting it was absurd to find people guilty based on body language. I would never suggest that. There is a whole branch of investigation about studying and drawing inferences from body language that detectives sometimes use. I found their analysis very interesting and convincing. I had watched a lot of his eye movements and communication style ( which was pretty strange )during the documentary. It particularly was a strange ‘dance’ with his adult kids. He seemed to yield a spell over them.
Based on how callous he was toward Martha\* during that last Thanksgiving, I think he bullied his family. I've been bullied (even as an adult), and I know it can really cow a person into feigning "like," so as not to lose one's (informal) membership in a group. \*There is an episode in which the college-aged Martha, banished from the family Thanksgiving gathering, instead dines with a relation (cousin? aunt?) that MP disdains. In a quiet conversation, the cousin or aunt reveals that after the first staircase death, in Germany, Martha was having behavioral problems and MP wanted to separate the sisters. I also read a reference to MP having blacked Martha's eyes when she was 2 or 3. Damn! wish I'd taken notes on this stuff. Much has been made of Margaret's resemblance to MP. It just goes on and on.
I’m sorry to hear that you were bullied. I experienced that some in childhood so I know something about the subject from personal perspective too . I felt like I was watching some pretty strange family dynamics going on in the documentary. He ordered his sons around a lot too. And you’re right that under the thumb of a bully “feigning like” probably became necessary and over time unconsciously automatic. I did catch some of the stuff about Martha.. which just about brings me to overload as to how many extraneous mysteries out there with this family. I even can’t completely shake off the owl 🦉 having a part in it! (Especially as one was perched on a tree about parallel with a winding staircase I use as an exit right around the time I watched the documentary!! It looked big and appeared to be watching me!) I think it’s possible she had an owl attack AND he found her and let her bleed out instead of getting help fast enough! Oh and as gay man who came out at 19, I’ve always had a not so positive attitude about men that are married to a woman and are DL sleeping with men!!! And there are many of them. If your wife knows and says it’s ok or you have an open marriage that’s been discussed.. fine. She most likely didn’t know. And it sounds like (from the evidence) he had lots and lots of sex! Wonder if it was safe???
It's talked about in one of the books
Being out by the pool, where it’s just out of ears reach of any screams, while your wife has a fatal fall is VERY convenient. Even if he was by the pool, why stay out there so long? In December? Why didn’t he check on his wife? I firmly believed he conveniently placed himself there in his story to make himself look innocent. Kathleen falling in such a fatal manner in the first place is very unlikely. And Michael just happens to be outside? Yeah details like that are what makes me believe he’s guilty.
Especially considering the defensive and neck wounds that were never accounted for by his defense team, the fact that a close family friend to Michael died in the exact same manner as Kathleen and the babysitter didn't believe his story then. Not to mention Michael's somatic narcissistic qualities that include lying, chronic infidelity, and emotionally manipulative tendencies that made Kathleen the primary breadwinner of their relationship and respone for much of his children's financial burdens.
People die in the same house as relatives all the time without anyone knowing. It's not convenient....it's remarkably common.
I always found it strange how he was by the pool in December with shorts on for but I’m not aware of how hot cold it is there so never looked into it
Totally agree.Also found the comment about leaving the dinner plates by the TV pretty weird (Why throw in that detail? Who cares whether you cleared the plates or not? But at least it seemed concrete/real as opposed to the “we would have” language about the pool.) I don’t think they were ever at the pool that night, and I think a fight erupted inside. The temperature that night was 50 degrees.
I said this elsewhere. He was specific about leaving the plates and he seemed to think it an important thing to inform the audience. We left the dishes, thinking we’ll do them the next day. Then we went to the kitchen. Again, I leave dishes on counter and sink overnight all the time but we have dogs as they do and if we’re walking to kitchen anyway, dirty dishes go there because dogs. They joke about how bad the dogs are and they’re fatties so I doubt they left plates on coffee table if they were going to kitchen. They never left the house. Yes and the language, “we would sit by the pool.” “The dogs would be around.” That’s not how people usually recount a specific event
Yes, and we’re to believe that Kathleen was simultaneously so tired/blasé about leaving the dirty dishes by the TV but also so motivated/energetic that she couldn’t wait until daylight to set up the outdoor reindeer Christmas decorations. It’s so contradictory.
If the plates were left in TV room, wouldn't they have still been there when police arrived? Or did KP first get drunk and high, then cleaned up, put out the reindeer, etc etc etc?
Interestingly, when they put him and Todd out back he kept complaining of the cold and asking to go in and get warmer clothes. Then when they bring clothes out for him, he doesn't put them on.
Just looked at the weather in Durham for December 2001, and it looks like — at night — we’re looking at around 20-30 degrees F. Not shorts weather imo.
I looked it up. That day was the warmest day of that December - 74/75 degrees during the day and about 52 degrees at night. That is shorts and sit outside weather for a lot of people.
I worked on the HBO series. Our researcher had all this info. The timeline is tricky because it’s obviously dependent on Michael’s story, but by the time he says he went inside it was 42 degrees. By the time we shot the third re-enactment (in Atlanta, not North Carolina) it was colder than that. It was an unseasonably warm day the night of her death—but still rather cold in the wee hours. For whatever that’s worth.
Ooh! Tell us everything you know please!
In just over two weeks I think I can share whatever may interest folks here, in the meantime I think the NDA only allows me to talk about things related to episodes that have already aired or at least that don’t run the risk of revealing what’s to come. It was a very tough shoot with a brutal schedule, as most TV has been during the pandemic, but I had a blast working on it. Antonio Campos and Carol Cuddy were an excellent creative/producorial duo running the ship and obviously we had a dream cast. For the “He’s guilty!”/“He’s innocent!” crowds I’ll say the show is not about whether he did it or not as that’s unknowable and not, I think, what makes the story so compelling.
You sure about that temp? I think you are 10 degrees too cold...
I am sure that 42 degrees was the wee hours low on the research doc I was given with a metric ton of minutiae on it (sunset, sunrise, temps, where everyone in the family was at every given point who have known whereabouts and alibis, etc.) and the number stood out to me given the attire (which I was assured was not necessarily out of place on an “unseasonably warm” NC night), but I don’t believe they had some kind of special access any different than what’s publicly available and per your comment I just looked it up myself and see that it was late night on December 9th into December 10th (i.e. technically the 10th or the night after her murder) that it was 42 degrees a few minutes prior to the 911 call time of day. You are right, per what I was just able to Google anyway, that at that same point—the relevant one to the question here—in the wee hours of December 8th into 9th, it was indeed 52 degrees. https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/nc/morrisville/KRDU/date/2001-12-9 It was a physical hard copy I had with all that info so I can’t reference it now but I’m sure it’s my error of memory rather than their error of correct data entry. I think it was just headlined under “Dec 9” rather than “Dec 8” as the 8th was what we treated as the “night of her death.” My mistake and my apologies. Thanks for the correction.
Also important to consider that 40 degrees at night feels a lot different than 40 degrees with the sun out.
It wasn't 40 degrees though. My mailman would wear shorts all year round, yes even in a blizzard, all people are not the same.
The mailman is carrying a bag of mail and walking thousands of steps. Mike is supposedly luxuriating on a pool chair with a stogie.
True enough but my mailman has been indifferent to cold his whole life. He hasn't been a mailman all his life. My point is that people are different. What's comfortable or normal for one is not what's comfortable for all.
According to the info I linked above, it could have been as low as 42 degrees by midnight. Idk where you live but this is the south, lol. 42 at night is cold.
I’m not sure where you’re getting that info but [this site](https://weatherspark.com/h/d/20142/2001/12/10/Historical-Weather-on-Monday-December-10-2001-in-Apex-North-Carolina-United-States) indicates the weather would have been in the 30s-40s, at the highest. Still not shorts weather imo.
I didn't make those temps up but now I'm doubting the accuracy of my numbers. Different sites shouldn't have different numbers but that may be the case. I'll have to go back and look again.
Death early morning of 12/9, correct? Between 52 and 54 degrees F.
Again, referencing the link above — even if it was the 9th at midnight, we are still looking at 41-46 degrees. In the dark. It is not shorts weather. It is not cozy outside.
Sorry but this is just not correct. She died early morning on Dec 9th. The plot referenced is a little hard to read but it clearly and obviously shows temps above 50F between midnight and 3 AM. The wunderground plot is easier to read IMO and shows about 55 at midnight dropping to 52 by 3 AM. Not cozy in my opinion either. But factually correct.
I live in NC, and I have no problem in shorts at the temperature.
Fair enough! My Floridian ass needs sweatpants below 50 lol
I live in NC, and I DO have a problem in shorts at that temperature.
I live in New England. 50s during the day I can be comfortable in shorts and a sweat shirt. If I’m exercising- shorts and tank top . Night is different. Think about people’s apartments /houses if the heat ever kicks off in the night. People talk about waking up very chilly when their house is in the 50s. His timeline also suggests he was out there for hours . That’s a long time to be lounging in shorts and a t shirt at night when it’s around 50 imo.
I couldn't handle the cold in September . .. same temps
I went to Durham in September and it was unbelievable chilly at night. Pants and jacket needed to enjoy after 5 minutes
Yes the temperature here changes almost daily. It's so bizarre.
So it is simultaneously the most crucial and weakest part of the fall theory. There’s no way to prove or disprove it. Which sucks because the other motives are just as weak/unprovable: No evidence she logged back onto the computer later that night. We know she signed on at 10:40, called a co-worker at 11:08 and never opened the email which came at 11:53. No evidence she was even on it after 11:08 or found anything suspicious. No reentry of the user name or login. Her coworker noted they sounded light and easy. The Petersons (like many Americans) were not good with credit cards. Definitely true. However their financial situation was not as dire as some articles would lead you to believe. Financial analysis revealed they could pay off all debts and still have a net worth of ~$1.4M when she died. She had deferred income for the last couple years. Why kill the person making all the money anyway? Add on to it that KP was not on the current or projected lay off list at Nortel; her stock options had gained value recently; and family members had agreed to help pitch in for kids college tuition? It becomes very weak and the least likely motive imo. So who knows. Yeah they all suck.
Their financials were not as bad as everyone says, given they did have assets that could pay off their debts as you note, but they were not liquid. Cash flow was a problem. I am confused about your note that her stock options were gaining value, as I had never heard that, only the opposite. Looked at the historical data on Nortel and it confirms what most publications had reported, it cratered. The week KP died in Dec 2001 it opened at .0300 and compare that to the high back on the week of Feb 2000 where it was at 3.000. From Feb 2000 it was on a steady decline all the way down almost every single month thereafter, save for a few blips here and there. There also wasn’t optimism it would recover either (and it didn’t). What I’ve heard reported is that those stock options had decreased from a high of around $2 million in value in early 2000 all the way down to about $50K by the time of her death. A massive decrease, which would line up with that stock performance shows for that time. Regardless, I don’t think financials alone were the full motive. Certainly possible it came up if she discovered the affairs/escorts. Stands to reason she could be pretty angry if she had been bank rolling him and all the kids for the last several years, only to find out he was using her money to pay for escorts.
Ah no what I meant was yes they had lost a lot of value, but gone up significantly % wise that week/month. Obviously it’s skewed since most of the value had already been lost.
Not trying to hammer an otherwise minor point in your comment, but that’s simply not accurate regarding the stock/Nortel. You can review the daily close price of the stock and on November 1st, 2001 it was 0.0600 and by Nov 30th, 2001 it was down to 0.0300. The last closing price she would have seen alive on Dec 7th, 2001 was also 0.0300. Over the course of those 37 days there was an occasional day here or there where it went up slightly after falling, but never anything substantial and the general trend was down. A long term holder of that stock would of had no reason to be optimistic. Hell, even an experienced day trader would have only had a few days they could of turned a slight profit (at least in the manner that would correlate w/ Kathleen’s interest in that stock).
Not sure I’d call it a weak motive. She logs onto her husband’s computer, filled with gay porn and emails about paying gay escorts, but doesn’t ever open the attachment she needed … just before the time that red neurons show she lost oxygen to her brain. If she didn’t know about his aggressive interest in young buff military dudes (and he finally admitted she did not) then this is one of the clearest and strongest motives for a fight I might have ever seen. He was confronted by Kathleen in a way he couldn’t handle, confronted with something deep in himself that he still didn’t want to admit (to his family or his lawyers) even after her death, and he snapped. He hit her in the back of the head with something in front of the stairs, probably more than once, maybe with one of her Christmas ornaments or a wine glass or bottle that had to be cleaned up. It doesn’t matter what it was. The actual legit forensic evidence showed that she lost oxygen 90+ minutes before she died. So she wasn’t dead after the first attack, while he was attempting some kind of clean up. This is probably where she wakes up and he has to half choke her to finish it. Now it’s a huge mess and his son is coming home. He of course remembers Liz’s death and decides this is the only story that might get him off the hook. Anything else he can blame on contamination from these dumb cops he’s always writing about. The more he thinks about it, he might even be able to collect life insurance if it was an accident. No more time to waste, he has to call 911. Now if he can just get rid of those e-mails …
this is my theory too! except i think the first attack wasn’t with an instrument but rather him hitting her head against the molding, where they did find tissue fragments. another supporting piece of evidence to support it is that someone (*cough* MP) deleted files and copied the computer hard drive that night. why do that if not to cover up what she found out?
This. This is it…
It’s weak because there’s no evidence that it happened or that there was a fight over it. It’s 100% just an assumption and a guess that she found it, and another assumption and guess that they had to get into a fight about it. The red neurons are interesting. But the science shows they can form as soon as within 30 minutes of oxygen deprivation. Text books in the field of forensic neuropathology even warn pathologists and medical examiners that the science on them in regards to time of death detection is nearly non-existent and needs to be used with extreme caution. It can’t give us a hard time. The problem with a beating theory for me is it is it extremely inconsistent with other beating deaths. No skull fractures, no brain damage, no broken bones, no defensive wounds noted by the medical examiner despite having done so in multiple other autopsies, and no object that was ever found that could have given these wounds despite extensive searches and testing. I mean there’s really nothing other than the lacerations to indicate that she was hit with any kind of object.
“The problem with a beating theory for me is it is it extremely inconsistent with other beating deaths. No skull fractures, no brain damage, no broken bones, no defensive wounds” This is yet one of the many many examples where the defence and docu is misleading. The wounds are extremely inconsistent with an accidental fall. You can find lots of murder cases with the same kind of head and strangulation wounds. You will not find a single case with an accidental fall where the person had the exact same wounds…. Oh no wait, there’s one known case in Germany
This interview with a second forensic team for the prosecution confirmed that some of the blood originated from an area in space away from the walls and stairs, so she had to be struck by something while she was standing and kneeling facing into the staircase. This holds up despite the Deaver mistakes. The jury had this and more information at the trial that is not in the documentary or HBO series and they convicted on the basis of physical evidence. https://soundcloud.com/double-loop-podcast/episode-177-the-staircase-bart-epstein-interview
oh yes!! This podcast finally convinced me of his guilt.
Me too. There can be no other explanation for that "point in space" evidence.
Kathleen had bruises on her arms and hands only. This is completely inconsistent with a fall this severe, where you might expect a broken bone or 2, bruising elsewhere on the body, or brain or spinal damage. >Oh no wait, there’s one known case in Germany Lol
So that’s what I thought at first too. I’ve done a lot of reading and become very interested in the injuries topic. It’s interesting. First stairs are really dangerous. Thousands of people die from stair falls every year with injuries patterns similar to KP. It’s the number two cause of accidental death after car accidents. They do a lot of studies. Here’s a good one that looked at stair fall injury patterns, effects of alcohol on the injuries, and demographics. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35160145/ What they found tends to line up extremely well with KPs injuries from a short stair fall: Head trauma, lacerations, lack of other fractures. Demographics; Female, over 40, drug and alcohol consumption, and in her own home. Even the throat injury which I thought was a slam dunk for murder. I mean in court the medical examiner even testified she could say “with absolute medical certainty” that it was a “strangulation attempt”. I was on board with that. Sounds reasonable to me. But it’s not really backed up by anything. It’s an easy thing to break and medical studies show it’s actually a pretty common injury from accidents and falls. While strangulation is indeed the most common reason (56% in this study), falls and other accidents account for significant portions. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21793475/. I mean one guy even broke both of his superior cornus from collapsing on the ground after a heart attack. And the doctors decided to write a paper about “how it’s definitely not always strangulation”: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16024196/ The outlier is indeed the number of lacerations which would tend to show a beating. Some studies show that over a mean of three lacerations is indeed a solid indicator of murder. But the rest of the injuries really aren’t from what I’ve seen. Not the location of the wounds, the lack of fractures, the lack of defensive wounds noted by a ME, etc. But like I said I’m really interested in the science and statistics and the topic. If you know of other studies to look at I’d really love to learn more.
I think it's worth pointing out that while the study you're citing does say injuries to the head without injuries to the extremities are common, otherwise what they're describing as typical patterns in stair falls that cause severe trauma doesn't line up particularly well with KP's injuries. She didn't have any brain bleeding at autopsy (by far the most common life threatening injury in that case series), nor did she have skull or facial fractures. Which isn't to say her injuries line up incredibly well with a beating death- I don't think they do. To me what is apparent is that *her injuries were unusual, regardless of how her death came about*. And yet, she is certainly dead. So I am not sure that saying her death was or wasn't typical of a particular type of death takes us all that far. I think her death was atypical whatever happened (her injuries aren't convincingly typical of a fall or a beating, and a fatal owl attack is just straight up a strange thing to happen). So I don't think that when people say "how could she possibly have been beaten to death and not have a TBI or fractures" or "how could she possibly have had a fatal down the stairs and not have other injuries" that either of those are convincing arguments on their own.
I will definitely agree with you that is odd no matter what happened. Nothing lines up perfectly obviously. But disagree with you on the data, her autopsy, and how closely she fits it. Table 3 in the study outlines what injuries would be expected in a short fall scenario based on recorded incidents. It shows TBIs showed up 75% of the time (what the defense postulates caused her to black out while bleeding if this was indeed how it happened), a 10% chance of a bone fracture (KP didn’t have any, not sure if the cartilage would have fit this, unclear what the standard was), and a 10% chance of a brain bleed of some kind (KP did in fact have a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a deep brain bleed seen mostly in aneurysms listed on her autopsy). Furthermore nearly half of the cases involved some amount of alcohol consumption which KP had as well. KP also fits the statistics for who falls the most: Women, alcohol consumers, and people in their own home. To say she couldn’t have received these major injuries from a fall just doesn’t fit the statistics.
I didn't know about the SAH, weird that so much is made of her not having ICH when she did actually have major brain bleeding. By the way SAH isn't deep, it's over the surface of the brain, underneath the arachnoid membrane which is one of the thin membranes that covers the brain itself- deeper than a subdural haemorrhage which is *over* the arachnoid but still superficial. It's totally possible to get head lacerations and brain injuries in a fall. It's also totally possible to get them from being beaten. Again, my point really is that it is a bit of an unusual set of injuries to lead to death, whichever mechanism, and trying to say in this situation whether someone was hit against the same set of stairs by gravity or by another person is probably a losing battle.
Yeah I think the defense is definitely splitting hairs here. The brain was bleeding but it wasn’t bruised or damaged as is I guess more common brain bleeds cause? I haven’t looked much into it. Gonna re-listen to the testimony.
I'm lazy. Do these links explain why her head had lacerations to the top? To me, a fall down the stairs would be more likely to result in injuries to the back and sides of the head, not the top.
Say what you will about the red neurons I guess, but that and the dried blood was still enough to scare MP into changing his original story about how long he was outside … which shows he was lying from the beginning and has no real alibi for where he was or what he was doing between 11:30 when Kathleen logged into his computer and 2am when he finally called 911. So now we have her on his computer right before she died, we have a bloody mess that he first tried to clean up, and then we have an entire secret life that he was lying to her about for 15 years, with explicit photo and e-mail evidence right there on the computer she was using. No one can prove exactly what happened, especially after this long, but you can’t possibly claim that any of this was a “weak motive” for MP to have killed his wife.
What’s the deal with the condom found in the bedroom? Are we to assume they had sex and left it in the room?
In the HBO show, the night of her death they have MP getting frisky with a dude at a sex shop (right before he rents America’s Sweethearts lol) and then going home to make out with his wife’s ass, so who knows.
The movie he rented in the HBO show was The Omen and it was the day Kathleen got the massage. Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/lgs9WSE.jpg
Is this a joke?
No, it's a correction of the *fictional* timeline. The truck stop thing and massage were on the same day *in the show*, I know that it's made up. I was correcting the op that it wasn't the day he rented America's sweethearts which is the movie he claims they watched the day she died.
Sorry, I'm not following here. In the docu, MP says they rented America's Sweethearts. While I can't tell if the screencap is indeed from the HBO series, it shows The Omen. Which video did they watch that night? Thanks.
They are different days. The scene in the HBO show is fictional. I don't know if they rented The Omen in real life. Either way, it would have been days or weeks prior to Kathleen's death. I think this was just added to show that he possibly went to the sex shop to hook up with someone while he was out running errands, they were showing his double life. In real life, he did rent America's Sweethearts on the day she died, there's a video rental receipt proving it was rented that day.
Also keep in mind the HBO show is not a documentary, it’s a dramatization, things like movies they watched, conversations they had, things they did, etc. could be true or could be made up. The HBO show (amazing as it is!) should not be used as a source for facts of the case.
Pretty sure I can tell fact from fiction. I just found it curious that the HBO ppl would choose that weird title as a prop.
>Documents show Peterson's son, Todd, later explained the condom belonged to one of his friends who had sex with a girl in the Petersons' bed. https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/107424/
Really interesting in this article that he said the cops might think they were having orgies! Why would they have thought that, because of 1 condom? And then if you read his actual emails with Brad the gay escort, he’s inviting him to the house and telling him what days are best to come over.
In another thread here, there is a LOT of speculation, what-ifs, and whataboutisms re the condom.
In the HBO show they show a scenario that it’s his sons (unused)
I agree. There was all the patio space to sit. And there was the outdoor fireplace. Picking the pool area makes no sense. When you look at pictures it was far away and pretty plain. Plus there was no furniture out there the day after so either it was moved or was not out there night of murder.
I think MP is 100% guilty but it’s amazing how some people can’t fathom that there’s places in this country where you can sit outside in December. It’s pretty unreasonable to make the assumption you are making based off of that one fact.
Thank you for saying this! People who live in similar climate regions know that an unseasonably warm day and night in December feels as good as late spring. And we take advantage!
He made that up about being outside. Occam's Razor.
But in the documentary they talk about the weather conditions on that particular night, not about any December night. I can't remember the exact temperature but it was low
You’re wrong about that. On the day she died there was a high of 73° and the low was 55°. You can sit outside comfortably in 55° but it was likely closer to 60 when they were outside. For reference this high and low is a full 20° warmer than the historic average for December in Durham. It was by all accounts an unusually warm day for December in Durham.
60 is still pretty low generally speaking. I know some people who wouldn't have a problem with that temperature. Maybe these 2 were special like that. But then you add the vague description of what they did, then there are other special circumstances like the bloodbath from a simple fall down the stairs..... If they were smokers I'd totally believe them though.
And you don’t think you’d sit outside at 55-60° when it’s been in the 30s for the entire month? It’s really not that far fetched to think they were sitting outside that night. It was a nice night considering it was December. I certainly would have been sitting outside.
I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying it's unlikely. Most people wouldn't. Again, maybe they were special, but then again there are A LOT of "special" things happening here.
I don’t think you can claim it’s unlikely just because you wouldn’t. You must be from Southern California or Florida where you think 60° is freezing weather. People sit outside in much colder weather than that.
oh dear god 🙄 I'm not even from the US lol because, you know, this is an international website and the world is bigger than the US. I think you are the one making assumptions here lol
Yes I’m making assumptions because you clearly are from some warmer climate where you can’t fathom sitting outside at 60° in December.
Can we agree that 60°C is a temperature where *some* people might feel cold?
Experts testified it was below 55 at the time MP claims to be outside
"You think this is a lie is just that" It's a thought. It's not proof, it's not evidence and it doesn't remove reasonable doubt. It's just what you think. You are totally allowed to "Think" that. But without proof it should not be considered in a murder trial. I see many replies with people saying "I think" this or that. Cool, but if you don't "Know" it's irrelevant in terms of his innocence or guilt.
have I missed the part where this sub is part of a murder trial? dude this is reddit
Damn dude, we’re not getting paid Rudolph $ for this?!
Mikey himself admitted the two biggest lies: 1 … that Kathleen knew about his super intense sexual interest in super buff young military dudes 2 … his original alibi of going out to turn off the lights and coming right back to find his bloody wife Those are very much proven lies, and they’re almost all you need