Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - The natural place to start would be inside the house at 1810 Cedar Street. On the back staircase where the dreadful thing happened. After all, that was the heart of the matter.

The children of the house could never undo it, or understand what had come to pass so violently.

Caitlin, daughter of Kathleen Peterson: My parents Michael and Kathleen had the most loving relationship ever. They were the most ideal parents.

You’ll learn soon enough about the other secrets that couldn’t be contained inside that gracious home in Durham, North Carolina. 

The holidays had always come early at the Peterson’s.

Kathleen Peterson was one of those people who started putting up lights and wreaths the first week of December.

And as her daughter Caitlin remembers it, come December 2001 her mom and stepfather Michael, a writer, were eager to hear happy voices again in the sprawling six-bedroom home, with the kids grown and flown. They were now empty-nesters.

It was the kids, actually,  who brought them together, in the mid-80s. His marriage had started to fall apart, she was separated. Michael’s two girls, children he’d adopted recently when their mother, a family friend, had died suddenly were playmates with Caitlin down the street. In 1987 they all moved in together.

Caitlin: They all sat me down and said: 'How would you like it if Martha and Margaret come live with you?' And I immediately thought -- 'a permanent sleepover!'

They became a family again.

Caitlin: Mom pulled me aside in the beginning and said, "This is going to be our family now.'

And the couple thrived. Michael by then was a full-time novelist. He’d gotten more than a half million dollar advance from his publisher for one of his books set in Vietnam, where he’d seen combat. Later on he’d write a sharp-edged column on city politics for the local paper.

Kathleen, a Duke engineering graduate, was a goal-oriented businesswoman who’d became a rising star at Nortel, the telecommunications company, as a $150,000 a year executive. She threw herself into a supermom schedule juggling career, kids, charities and the arts.

Michael’s brother could see the difference Kathleen made in him after a first marriage fizzled.

Bill Peterson, Michael’s brother: I think she was spontaneous. She was a lot of fun. She had a tremendous sense of humor.

Caitlin: It was really easy to just kind of fall into amazement of this person who could just keep you entertained and laughing.

Not that it was all a laugh-track sitcom. Caitlin remembers some real screamers between her stepdad and mom. But Caitlin says that 20 minutes later it all would have blown over.

In 1992, the couple bought the 14-room dream home on Cedar Street and five-years later—they made it official and got married. And as time passed, their friends remarked on what a happy couple and family they were.

But as Christmas 2001 approached, the kids away at college, a jittery Kathleen, more than anyone, would have welcomed the time-out that the holiday offered. By now the boom had gone bust. Nortel stock was tanking. Thousands were being let go and Kathleen thought she’d be next. She was taking Valium.

Caitlin: I think more than anything, it was devastating. She threw her life into that company. And it wasn't just work that was stressing her out. She had to lay off her own boss.

Michael had been through some rough times too. A few years back, he’d run for mayor and, to his embarrassment, had been caught out publicly in a lie, embellishing his combat history in Vietnam.

Bill Peterson: It's just a bit of a lie that starts to exponentially grow over a period of time. And there's nothing you can do about it.  It got out of control.

Still, just that past fall he’d picked himself up, run for local office again—city council—and lost. No question, the autumn of 2001 had been a tense one.

So on December 8^th, with Kathleen dreading a morning conference call with the home office and likely more bad news, it was Michael who suggested an afternoon of Christmas shopping and a couple of bottles of wines later to put a cheerier glow on the evening.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent: How much drinking was there in the house?

Caitlin: My mom loved to party. She was a happy person. She'd have a glass of wine and start drinking to calm her nerves.

Murphy: Were either of them sloppy drinkers?

Caitlin: Not sloppy. But that's not to say she didn't drink a lot.

That night they had some dinner, watched a video, and celebrated the good news that Hollywood was nibbling at the rights to Michael’s most recent book. But what happened after that is mostly speculation. We know for certain that Kathleen took a call from a co-worker around 11 p.m. and perhaps waited by the computer for an e-mail from her colleague. Michael would say later that they sat out by the pool for awhile. He stayed for a smoke, when she went upstairs to go to bed.

Exactly how Kathleen Peterson came to be lying at the bottom of the stairs gushing blood would be a mystery that would tear a family apart by the roots.

911 call.

Operator: Durham 911, where’s your emergency?

Michael Peterson: 1810 cedar street please

Operator: What’s wrong?

Peterson: My wife had an accident she’s still breathing.

Operator: What kind of an accident?

Peterson: She fell down the stairs. She’s still breathing please come.

By the time Caitlin heard the news from her college roomate, it was much worse than a dreadful fall.

Caitlin: She looks me straight in the eye and she just says, "Caitlin, it's your mom. She's dead."

As is routine with any sudden death, the police were summoned to the scene.

Det. Art Holland: I received a page approximately—around three o’clock in the morning—that there was a—death investigation. The call came in as a person that had fallen down some steps.

When Detective Art Holland of the Durham police got to the Peterson home he encountered a ghastly tableau: A 48-year old woman lying dead in a pool of blood, splayed out on the floor, her head resting on the landing of a back staircase.

The arriving paramedics and police officers thought they’d been called to the scene of an accident but there was so much blood—everywhere—on the victim, splattered up the stairwell—that they couldn’t rule out foul play.

They’d called in Detective Holland from the homicide unit to ask him what he thought.

Det. Holland: This doesn't look like an accident.

Michael Peterson, barefoot in bloody shorts was standing nearby. Officers had seen him cradling his wife’s body. He had to be pulled away.

Det. Holland: I identified myself to Mr. Peterson and even shook his hand. And explained to him that sorry for her, his loss. But that it appeared that the scene looked suspicious and needed to be processed.

Murphy: Was he helpful at that point? Did he answer your initial questions?

Det. Holland: No, no he was pretty much, very quiet. Kept to himself didn’t say a whole lot.”

Police videotaped the scene as the officers found it. Michael Peterson’s tennis shoes and socks by the foot of the body, white towels soaked red with blood from the dead woman’s grievous injury to the back of her head. Blood smears up the oak staircase and on the walls above.

Detective Holland called for a crime scene analyst, an expert in blood spatter.

The technician made his measurements and the story revealed to him by the blood put the supposed accidental fall on Cedar Street in a whole new light.

Det. Holland: He told me that he felt strongly that this was a homicide.

For the next 20-hours officers meticulously photographed and documented what they now regarded as a crime scene. Blood outside on the walkway. Blood stains on the front door. The blood on the kitchen sink. A wine bottle and glasses on the counter. Every inch of the three-acre property was combed.

Murphy: You are looking for a murder weapon?

Holland: We are looking for a murder weapon, sure.

The suspicious death of Kathleen Peterson was news. The family gathered in grief, unaware that even more sorrow was headed its way.

In mid-February—two months after Kathleen’s death—the medical examiner released her autopsy report with back of the skull photographs that, she said, indicated a death by blunt-force trauma. Seven deep lacerations on the scalp. In other words, the medical examiner found that Kathleen Peterson had been bludgeoned to death.

Not long after, Michael Peterson—novelist, sometime politician—was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife. Conviction would mean life in prison.

Peterson denied killing his wife. Peterson’s four children, and step-daughter Caitlin, stood by their father’s side.

Accident or murder: which was it? A question to be resolved in the Durham County Court House.

MORE FROM DATELINE

Dateline Section Front

The Trouble At Twin Wrecks Read diving logs Shelley Tyre wrote The Secret Life of Tiger Woods The Trial of Amanda Knox NBC's People of the Year: Read the interviews The Night Mary Jane Disappeared The Friday the 13th Mystery Mystery at Lost Dog Road Slideshow: Photos in the Bob Duke case When The Smoke Clears Dateline Section Front   Add Dateline headlines to your news reader: