Staircase Murder: Part 1
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This week on the show, we are covering one of the most notorious true crime stories. It's a case with so many twists and turns. It involves trying to decide, was it just a tragic fall down the stairs, or was it something else more sinister? It involves letting the forensic evidence decide whether it was an accident or whether it was a homicide.

This week on Forensic Tales, we're covering the complete story of the staircase murder. The story of Michael Peterson.

Hey Forensic Tales listeners, thank you so much for joining me on a brand new episode of the show. As always, I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy right now. It's so important that we continue to take care of not only ourselves right now, but also each other.

And if you happen to follow me on Instagram, by now you know that my fiance and I added to our little family. We have an 11 week old golden retriever puppy. Her name is Kona and she is literally the cutest thing in the entire world.

This is our first puppy together and the whole experience has just been so amazing right from the beginning. She has brought so much joy to our lives so far. She's literally the best. Okay, I think I could talk about her for the rest of this episode, but that is not what we're going to do.

This week's case is one that I'm actually going to cover in two parts. So the first part we're going to cover this week, and then next Monday, we will finish it up with part two. There's just so much to cover in this story, and I want to make sure we touch on all of the evidence that we have. Believe me, there's a lot.

So the case that I wanted to talk about this week is a case and a story that I think most of us in the true crime community have heard of before. Whether you've listened to a podcast on the case or you've seen a documentary on it, you might be familiar with the story. I would say it's one of those cases that has truly captivated the true crime community, especially after the release of the popular Netflix documentary on it.

But what you might not be familiar with is the incredible amount of forensic evidence in the case. As the case makes its way to trial, the forensic evidence is really going to be the focus. The story we're covering this week on the show is the story of Michael Peterson, or you might know it as the staircase murder.

So for those of you who are familiar with the case, I won't bore you too much of the details, but I think it's important that before we really get into the forensic evidence in the case, we look at exactly what happened on the night in question and really have a good understanding of the possible theories and how they relate to the forensic evidence.

And who knows, maybe there are some details of the case you don't remember. Or hey, if you don't know who Michael Peterson is or anything about the staircase murder, this will certainly be helpful as well. And I know a lot of my listeners might have different opinions about what they think about the case and whether or not Michael Peterson is guilty or innocent.

So I want to hear from you. After this two-part special of the show, Let's Connect, I'll have a couple discussion posts on our Instagram, at Forensic Tales, as well as our Facebook page. And of course, you can always email me directly with your thoughts and opinions on the case at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. Okay, let's get into it.

Michael Peterson was born near Nashville, Tennessee on October 23rd, 1943 to immigrant parents Eugene and Eleanor Peterson. I actually read somewhere while researching this story that apparently Michael's father, Eugene, actually went by the nickname Big Thunder from Down Under. Now, I have no idea where he got the nickname, but just throwing it out there.

Michael attended college at Duke University, where he graduated with a degree in political science, and he was super involved in school. He was the president of his fraternity, and he even became the editor of The Chronicle, which was the university's daily school newspaper. Once Michael graduated from college, he took a civilian job working for the U.S. Department of Defense and was stationed on a military base in Germany.

That same year in 1965, while living and working in Germany, Michael Peterson met Patricia Sue, a local elementary school teacher on the military base. Michael and Sue got married and pretty quickly had two children together, two boys named Clayton and Todd.

A couple years later, in 1968, Michael enlisted to serve in the U.S. Marines, and this was right around the time in which the Vietnam War was really starting to heat up. And shortly after enlisting, Michael was sent to fight in the war.

But his time in the Marines didn't really last too long because in 1971, he was honorably discharged from the rank of captain after becoming pretty severely injured in a car accident. The injuries he suffered from the car crash actually left him permanently disabled. So he was no longer able to serve in the military.

Michael and his first wife, Patricia, or Patty as she was known to go by, divorced in 1987. And their two sons, Clayton and Todd, moved in with their mother and Michael decided to move to Durham, North Carolina. Michael Peterson wrote three books in his adulthood that were based on his time and experience serving in the Vietnam War.

The Immortal Dragon, A Time of War, and A Bitter Peace. And he even co-authored a few other similar type novels.

He also worked as a newspaper columnist for the Durham Herald Sun, and many of his columns centered around his criticism of the Durham Police Department. And he was also very critical of the district attorney James Harden Jr., which you'll want to remember that name because it's going to come up a little later in the story.

He really didn't have too many nice things to say about the local police department or the local prosecutor in Durham. Sometime after his career in the Marines, Michael Peterson made a run for mayor. And during his campaign, he claimed that he won a silver star, a bronze star, and two purple hearts from his service in the Vietnam War.

And according to Michael, he had all the awards, but he said he didn't have the proper documentation for them. So the story behind one of the Purple Hearts was that according to Michael, he received the award after being hit by shrapnel after a fellow soldier of his stepped on a landmine. And the other Purple Heart came from being shot.

Now, at some point, Michael eventually came clean and basically admitted that his war injury wasn't actually from getting hit by shrapnel, but was actually from the car accident that he had been in. Since all of this happened, military records have confirmed that Michael did in fact receive a silver star and a bronze star medal with Valor, but has been no record of the two Purple Heart Awards.

So my dad was a Vietnam War veteran. He was drafted into the war at a pretty young age. He didn't have any choice whether or not he wanted to. So the fact that it's pretty much known that Michael Peterson lied about receiving two different Purple Hearts while serving just makes my stomach turn. In 1989, Michael met and moved in with Kathleen Atwater Peterson.

Kathleen was born in 1953 in Durham, North Carolina, but moved to Pennsylvania and that's where she spent most of her childhood and teenage years. She moved back to Durham to attend Duke University, where she actually became the first female student to be admitted into the university's engineering department.

Now, Kathleen was incredibly smart. Not only did she complete her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Duke University, but she also finished her master's degree in engineering from there as well. Kathleen married Fred Atwater, her first husband, and the couple had one child together, a daughter by the name of Caitlin.

But Kathleen and Fred ended up getting a divorce, and that's when she meets Michael Peterson in the late 1980s.

So by this point, both Kathleen and Michael are separated. They're divorced from their first spouses. They both have grown children. And in 1992, they purchase a 14-bedroom, 10,000-square-foot home right there in the very affluent Durham neighborhood of Forest Hills.

And about five years after meeting, they decide to get married. And now they have a brand new family together, not only with each other, but they also have the blending of both Michael and Kathleen's adult children. Now, given Kathleen's education, she became a very successful business executive at the telecommunications company Nortel.

Her salary was that of a high-level manager. She was making around $150,000 a year, and she was also given stocks in the company.

Michael, on the other hand, wasn't making as much money as his wife Kathleen. Well, actually, Michael wasn't making any money by the year 2001. In fact, it was reported that by the early 2000s, Michael hadn't brought in a paycheck for well over two years. So Kathleen was certainly the breadwinner in the relationship.

But because we are talking about this case on the show, we know that this story certainly doesn't have a happy ending. And that's what we're going to get into now. It's Sunday, December 8th, 2001, when the Durham Police Department receive a frantic 911 phone call from the Peterson residence at 2.40 a.m.,

And the phone call is from Michael Peterson reporting that his wife, Kathleen, has fallen down the stairs. Or so that's what he thinks has happened. Now, I know a lot of people like to discuss and talk about 911 calls, especially when it comes to suspecting someone's guilt or innocence.

We like to think that we can tell when someone is telling the truth or when they're lying on a 911 call just simply based on how they're speaking, how they're reacting, what they're saying. But I'm one of those people that doesn't necessarily agree with that.

I personally think we all deal with situations differently. Some of us are calm, some of us are a mess, and there's so many different variables to consider. But in this case, Michael calls for help because he says he's discovered his wife at the bottom of the staircase. So here's a small portion of that initial 911 phone call.

How many stairs?

Calm down, sir. Calm down. No, 15, 20, I don't know. Please, get somebody here right away. Okay, somebody's this back in the ambulance while I ask you questions. It's a force shield, okay? Please, please. Sir, somebody else is this back in the ambulance. Is she awake now? Hello? Hello? Hello?

I'm sorry.

So you can hear Michael Peterson telling 911 that his wife had an accident and she's still breathing.

He tells dispatchers that he thinks Kathleen fell down the stairs. And then the call goes into some questions about exactly how many stairs did she fall down? Which I know there's been some discussion as to Michael's initial response about not knowing exactly how many stairs she fell down. I think in the recording he says like 15 or 20 stairs.

But again, maybe because of how frantic the situation is, he just doesn't know how many stairs. So a second 911 call comes in a few minutes later at 2.46 a.m. This time, Michael tells dispatchers that Kathleen is no longer breathing and basically just says, hurry up and get here. And then he hangs up.

So paramedics arrive at the Peterson residence a few minutes later and they encounter Michael who was wearing shorts and a t-shirt without any shoes or socks on. Paramedics pretty quickly realize that Kathleen is well beyond saving by the time they get to her and she's declared dead right there at the bottom of the staircase.

And soon after Kathleen is declared dead, officers from the Durham Police Department start showing up at the house to begin what they believe is an investigation into an accident, a fall down a staircase. But when the responding officers arrive at the house and they see Kathleen at the bottom of the stairs, they first notice is just the sheer amount of blood everywhere around Kathleen's body.

There was blood on the staircase itself, all over the walls, some on the ceiling. Blood was practically everywhere here. Now, I don't think you have to be an expert in the falls category to notice that this was just an insane amount of blood to just have occurred from a fall down the stairs.

And if you haven't seen some of the crime scene photos in this case, I highly recommend you give them a look. I'll of course be posting photos to our website as well as our Facebook and Instagram pages. But I think a lot of you will be really surprised at the amount of blood there was in the stairway, especially when you think that the cause of it all is related to a fall.

Some reports indicate that Michael's adult son, 25-year-old Todd Peterson, who doesn't live with his dad and Kathleen, arrived at the house even before paramedics got there that morning. And other reports say that he arrived shortly after.

Now, I don't know which version is exactly true, but we do know that Todd was there very early that morning. Now, mind you, this is somewhere around 3 o'clock in the morning, and we know that right after Michael called 911 when he discovered Kathleen, he made a phone call to Todd, and that's when he showed up at the house as quickly as he did.

So Todd was at the house practically within minutes of that 911 phone call. Again, it's unclear why Michael's second phone call right after discovering his wife dead is to his son, especially so quickly after the accident happened. It's also worth mentioning here that there are a lot of reports that suggest that

Todd wasn't exactly a huge fan of his dad's new wife, Kathleen. In fact, there's enough information out there to say Todd didn't like Kathleen at all. Now, according to Michael Peterson, him and his wife, Kathleen, were drinking some wine together out by the pool. Michael was smoking a cigar. This was around 12, 1 o'clock in the morning.

Michael says Kathleen went back inside the house to use the computer upstairs. He says he stayed outside by the pool smoking by himself while Kathleen was using the computer for about 45 minutes. He says he then came inside around 2.40 a.m. and that's when he discovered Kathleen at the bottom of the staircase.

He even offers an explanation to the first responders as to how his wife could have fallen. And he says she may have fallen after consuming both alcohol and Valium that evening. But again, he wasn't 100% sure because he stuck to his story that he was outside by the pool when all of this happened.

So going back to where Kathleen was discovered and just the amount of blood that was present. The blood in this case is the first big piece of forensic evidence that we're going to be talking a lot about here.

So police also noticed that the blood on the stairs and across the walls didn't appear to be fresh blood. In fact, the blood had already started to dry and become hard. It didn't look like blood that had gotten there right before paramedics and first responders arrived at the house that morning.

Of course, the amount of blood determines how long it's going to take to dry, right? If it's just a drop of blood, that's going to dry much quicker than, let's say, a huge pool of blood. And that's an important piece of evidence here because we know there was a ton of blood around Kathleen. And it was pretty obvious to the police that the blood had already started to dry, right?

suggesting to them that it had been there for much longer than what really matches up with Michael's story. And this observation by the police of the dried blood is going to be a really important piece of forensic evidence later on because it's going to help the prosecution suggest a whole different version of events as to what really happened that night.

It's important to note that the majority of the blood at the scene was found at the bottom of the staircase. The bottom is where first responders saw most of the blood from the accident, which isn't necessarily consistent with the idea that Kathleen fell down the stairs. Without leaving much blood on the way down, but rather leaving a ton of blood at the bottom of the staircase.

Police also found evidence of a swipe mark on one of the staircase walls, as if someone took a rag or maybe a towel and tried to wipe up some of the blood from the wall, which would suggest that someone, and we're going to say Michael because he was the only one in the house, took something and tried to clean up blood from portions of the wall.

Now, there were white towels, well, what used to be white, now they were soaked in blood, underneath Kathleen's head. Now, again, if you've seen any photos from this case, it seems a little odd that Michael would have tried to wipe up the blood here, just given the amount of it. Like, this really isn't a scene where you can just go grab a couple towels and clean up the blood.

Maybe he thought he would try to wipe it up and then realized, oh man, this is a lot of blood and gave up on the idea. I don't know, but it was pretty clear that this section of the blood had some swipe marks indicating to the police that someone did try to clean up some of the blood on the wall.

But it's hard to tell because there was blood splatter over the swipe mark as well, making it difficult for investigators to figure out what caused the swipe mark. If the swipe mark on the wall suggests that Michael may have tried to clean up the scene, then this wouldn't exactly match up with the theory that Kathleen accidentally fell down the stairs.

Because if this was all just a terrible accident, as Michael suggested to the police that it was, then it wouldn't necessarily be a logical thing for him to try and clean up any part of the staircase. If your wife has just fallen down the stairs and quite obviously looks dead or pretty close to it, I don't think anyone's first thing is going to be to start cleaning up the place.

Investigators also found a decent amount of blood on the bottom of Kathleen's feet, which suggests that maybe she stood up or at least for a brief period of time was back on her feet after the bleeding started, causing there to be blood on the bottom of her feet, which was troubling to the investigators because that would mean that somehow after falling, Kathleen stood up

got blood on the bottom of her feet, and then possibly fell again? To the investigators and forensic experts, blood on the bottom of Kathleen's feet didn't seem to line up with a fall, unless you believe she fell, got up at some point, and then fell again. The investigators also found a bloody shoe print on Kathleen's sweatpants that she was wearing when her body was discovered.

Now, at first, the police weren't sure exactly what made the bloody mark on the sweatpants. But Michael Peterson's athletic shoes and socks were found right next to Kathleen's body. And when the shoes were compared to the print left on Kathleen's sweatpants, investigators believed it was a perfect match to the bottom of Michael's shoes.

So we're going to talk a lot more about this bloody shoe print and what it means as far as the forensic evidence of the case in part two when we get to the actual trial. Now, just like what we saw with the swiping or the attempt to clean up the blood on the walls, it was also troubling as to exactly why Michael took his shoes and socks off next to Kathleen's body.

The argument, I guess, to that is maybe Michael took off his shoes and socks because he didn't want to track blood all over the house, right? It was an extremely bloody site. But again, it begs the question, you just found your wife dead at the bottom of the staircase. Is keeping the house clean really going to be your first priority?

Or was there another explanation as to the mark found on Kathleen's sweatpants? Kathleen's blood and forensic evidence wasn't just found on or near her body at the bottom of the staircase. Investigators also found two large drops of blood outside on the back patio of the house. These drops of blood weren't anywhere near the staircase or Kathleen's body.

Remember, according to Michael, he was out on the back patio smoking a cigar when Kathleen would have fallen down the stairs. So why exactly would there be any forensic evidence or blood out there on the back patio far away from the bottom of the staircase?

There was also another bloodstain found on the side door of the house leading out to the back patio, as well as a few drops of blood inside of the kitchen sink. So it's worth mentioning here that when first responders first got to the Peterson house for what they thought was an accident, they didn't exactly lock down the house or the crime scene. There were a lot of people coming and going from inside the house.

So did Michael drag Kathleen's blood on the back patio and in the kitchen? Did his son Todd do it? It's hard to say for sure, especially when a crime scene isn't fully locked down from the get-go. If we're going to talk about the forensic evidence in this case, we also need to talk about what exactly was found throughout the rest of the Peterson house.

So investigators found an open bottle of wine and two wine glasses in the kitchen, which did have Michael's fingerprints on it, but they didn't find any of Kathleen's prints.

Now, keep in mind, we don't always leave perfect fingerprints behind when we touch different objects. A lot of the time, we just leave behind a partial print, or in some cases, we don't leave behind any prints.

But the wine found in the kitchen is consistent with Michael's story that the couple spent the evening outside on the back patio drinking wine, which may have led to Kathleen's accident between the alcohol and the volume that she may have taken that night. Police also found what appeared to be a used condom in the couple's master bedroom.

But the condom was tested, there wasn't any sperm or forensic evidence belonging to either Michael or Kathleen on it. So although the condom appeared to have been used, there wasn't any forensics to suggest that it actually was. I'm not sure how exactly this fits into the narrative of what happened, but it was certainly booked into evidence in the case.

By this point in the investigation, it's around 4.45, 5 o'clock in the morning, and around this time, Michael Peterson was allowed to go upstairs and access his computer. Now, I don't know if that's because by this point, it still seems like an accident, but anyway, Michael is allowed to access his computer, and by a little after 5 o'clock in the morning, Michael Peterson has contacted his attorney.

Now, by getting an attorney, I don't think that always points to someone's guilt. I know when something happens and someone lawyers up right away, we tend to assume that means that person is guilty.

But as someone who works in our criminal justice system, my advice has always been if something terrible has happened to you or someone that you love and you even start to think for a millisecond that you could possibly become a suspect or a person of interest or just someone police want to talk to, get an attorney.

just to have someone there to help navigate through things and just to make sure that you don't do or say something stupid, which we all know we all can say and do stupid things even when we're 100% innocent. But okay, we know that Michael Peterson contacted his attorney, Carrie Sutton, within just a few hours of Kathleen's death.

His attorney, Kerry Sutton, was actually able to get Michael into contact with another high-profile attorney who we'll talk about a little bit later on. But going back to the Peterson computer, after Kathleen's death, a forensic search was conducted on the Peterson computer.

Forensic searches of electronic devices, whether that's a cell phone, computer, laptop, whatever that may be, can be extremely helpful in criminal investigations. It's practically impossible for you to completely delete or get rid of all forensic data off a device. Even when you think you're deleting stuff, a forensic search can still find a lot of data even after being deleted.

And not only that, a forensic search of a device can also tell whether or not stuff had been deleted. So the forensic search of the Peterson computer, which was mostly used by Michael, found several important pieces of evidence. The first was that forensics actually confirmed the part of Michael's story that said Kathleen went upstairs to use the computer that night.

Kathleen did, in fact, use the computer and she sent an email to a co-worker of hers around midnight. Now, even though this piece of evidence confirmed Michael's claim that his wife used the computer that night, it doesn't exactly line up with the timeline.

Because forensic experts were able to determine that Kathleen sent that email to her co-worker about an hour before Michael said his wife went inside and used the computer. But here's the part where the forensic evidence in this case takes another turn.

So the forensic search also found evidence that a large amount of images had been deleted from the computer the very day of Kathleen's fall. But deleted images weren't the only thing they found. Investigators also found thousands, and I mean thousands, of gay porn images on the computer.

And as I mentioned, Michael was the one who primarily used this computer in the house. Investigators also found email exchanges between Michael and a male prostitute. And in these email exchanges, they were talking about meeting up with each other for, let's just say, a sexual encounter. But this wasn't the first time that Michael sought out the attention of a male escort.

Because that same forensic search of the computer found an earlier relationship with a college lacrosse player. Besides what was on the computer, at some point, Michael had printed out several email exchanges with male escorts and he kept them in an envelope near the computer. This has been something that I personally have never understood before.

why he would print the emails in the first place. I can't think of a single reason why you'd ever print an email. I mean, unless it was for something for work, I suppose. And especially since once you decide to print the emails, you're running a huge risk of your wife finding them and reading them. Now, I don't know. Did Kathleen see some of the images or emails on the computer that night?

or maybe saw the emails inside the envelope and that's what started a fight between them, there's definitely something there that many have speculated about. In some of these emails, Michael talks about loving his wife Kathleen. I think one of the emails even refers to Kathleen as being, quote, his smoking hot wife. Now, obviously, this became Michael's huge secret in the marriage.

A secret that I'm sure if Kathleen found out about would certainly lead to a huge fight and then a separation and then probably a divorce. I don't really see a scenario where Kathleen is the breadwinner in the marriage with her high executive job being okay with her husband spending his days chatting it up online with male escorts.

Which goes back to the scenario that at the time of Kathleen's fall, Michael wasn't bringing in any money. He hadn't in over two years. Kathleen's job at Nortel was financially supporting not only herself and Michael, but by this point, she had her three girls all in college.

At the time of Kathleen's death, Michael and Kathleen were reportedly in $143,000 in debt. And this debt was all credit card debt. So they had racked up well over $100,000 on credit cards alone. And not only did they have to worry about Kathleen's daughters in college debt,

Michael's sons also relied on them for financial assistance. Michael's sons, even at their age, were in a lot of personal debt themselves. Their personal expenses went well beyond their means. And I read somewhere that one of Michael's sons had a $500 car payment at the time of Kathleen's death. The topic of finances are extremely important in this case.

not only on the personal debt that Kathleen and Michael had, but there were rumors that Kathleen's job was possibly at risk. And we know that there is a high turnover rate when it comes to executive management in many different industries, and Kathleen's job wasn't exempt from this.

And it's important to point out here in all of this talk of finances is that Michael Peterson was the sole beneficiary of his wife's $2 million life insurance policy. I know. How many cases have we heard about people dying in suspicious or unusual ways and it always or almost always involves life insurance?

If you recall, when first responders and paramedics arrived at the house that morning, Michael had on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. He told first responders that he was outside on the back patio with Kathleen having wine together and he was smoking a cigar well past midnight.

Well, by this point, police and first responders suspect that this might not just be some tragic accident and a fall down the stairs. And operating under that assumption, police call in a forensic meteorologist to take a look at the case. So a forensic meteorologist uses weather data to basically reconstruct the weather on a particular date and time.

And ultimately, a forensic meteorologist's role in a criminal investigation is to investigate what kind of role the weather may or may not have played in a crime or a particular event in time. They're more commonly used in like deadly traffic accidents and even events like that, but because they're able to paint a picture of how the weather may have played a role in a certain event or accident.

So a forensic meteorologist was brought in to basically figure out what the weather and temperature was the night of Kathleen's fall. Remember, this is all according to Michael's story that the couple was outside in the backyard by the pool until well past midnight.

And we know that Michael stayed outside smoking a cigar until 2.40, maybe 2.45 a.m. that morning, wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt. So based on historical weather data, the forensic meteorologist determined that the outside temperature that night at the Peterson residence was somewhere between 51 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Which, especially to me, being a Southern California girl myself, when the temperature hits 50 degrees, we've got our heaters on full blast, okay? Like, we're literally freezing. But this doesn't happen in Southern California. It happens in Durham, North Carolina.

But even in North Carolina, the forensic meteorologist raised a lot of questions as to how exactly Micah Peterson could have been sitting outside by the pool in 50, 55 degree weather, wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. And it's not like he was out there for only a few minutes. He was out there for a few hours.

According to Michael's very own story, he was out there for a very long time. Even after Kathleen went inside, he stayed out there on the back patio for an additional 45 minutes. So I don't know. I don't know how comfortable 50, 55 degree weather could feel just sitting out there in shorts and a t-shirt on a patio smoking a cigar like it's nothing.

And the forensic meteorologist who was called in pretty definitively concluded that the weather that night would have been pretty far outside the quote comfort zone to just be sitting outside in shorts and a t-shirt for as long as Michael claimed that he did. But devil's advocate here for just a moment, maybe Michael Peterson was just a cold weather kind of guy.

The discussion or debate about the weather conditions are definitely going to play a much bigger role a little later on, but it's important to mention here as it relates to Michael's version of events. Because if you believe he could have sat out there on the patio in 50 degree weather, wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of shorts for at least a couple hours that night,

then the possibility of Kathleen falling while he's out there on the patio makes sense. He was outside. He didn't hear the accident happen. But if you believe the forensic meteorologist in the case, then it's really unlikely that Michael was smoking a cigar when the fall supposedly took place, pretty much making his story of events impossible.

meaning he would have had to been inside the house at the same exact time Kathleen was. And because Kathleen Peterson died in an unusual way, and because falls like this are just so uncommon, her body was sent to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy to be performed.

Toxicology results showed that at the time of Kathleen's death, her blood alcohol content was 0.07%, suggesting that Michael's story that he and Kathleen enjoyed wine together that night, although there were no fingerprints on the wine glass, was true. But what was even more interesting than her blood alcohol content were the injuries to her body.

The medical examiner noted a number of different injuries, including a fracture of the thyroid neck cartilage and a total of seven deep lacerations to the top and back part of her head. Lacerations that appeared to be more consistent with blows from a blunt object than a fall. Kathleen's brain tissue had the presence of red neurons.

The brain neurons appeared to be shriveled by the time her body was discovered by paramedics. This suggests that Kathleen likely suffered from an episode of a lack of oxygen causing the neurons to swell from the lack of oxygen. And that's pretty meaningful here is that the episode of lack of oxygen would have occurred sometime before her whole body died.

Essentially meaning she would have lived past the point where her red neurons developed and sometime before her death. Between the blood evidence at the scene and Kathleen's autopsy, the medical examiner believed that she actually died somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours after sustaining the injuries, which again does not line up with Michael's timeline of the night.

Rather, the medical examiner's findings suggest that Kathleen suffered major injuries to her skull and also suffered from a lack of oxygen well before she finally passed away. So based on this information, the medical examiner ruled Kathleen Peterson's death a homicide. This finding was based on what first responders observed at the Peterson's residence, the blood evidence,

and the medical examiner's findings that her injuries were just not consistent with a fall down the stairs. The medical examiner believed that Kathleen suffered a total of seven blunt force injuries to the skull, but she didn't die right away. Rather, her actual death occurred somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours later from blood loss.

This explains the swelling of the neurons in her brain and why the blood at the crime scene appeared to be dry. And this is also a huge problem for Michael, who claims that he last saw his wife about 45 minutes before the fall while sitting out on the back patio. So far, though, none of the forensic evidence at the scene or the findings from the medical examiner support his timeline.

The evidence actually points to Kathleen's death occurring much earlier in the night than Michael suggests. And according to the autopsy, points to homicide, not an accident. Michael Peterson is arrested and officially charged for the murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson. He hires an attorney by the name of David Rudolph, who is this big hotshot defense attorney.

David Rudolph was hired by Michael Peterson after a referral from his previous attorney, Carrie Sutton, who we remember that Michael contacted just a few hours after Kathleen's death. Michael Peterson was now going to face charges in his own wife's murder and facing the rest of his life behind bars.

On part two of The Staircase, the story of Michael Peterson, we're going to cover the murder trial as well as the new forensic evidence that presented in the case. We're also going to talk about the appeal, the possible alternative theories of the case, and of course, how exactly the story ends. Part two of this case will be released next Monday.

Until then, I would love to hear your thoughts on that case. You can find the show on Instagram at Forensic Tales, as well as on our Facebook page. You can also email me your thoughts and opinions on Michael Peterson directly at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. There is still so much to cover in this case and how forensic science played such a huge role. I will see you guys next week.

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