A Perfect Husband (15 page)

At the request of the Durham Police Department, a bloodstain pattern examination was conducted on certain items of clothing submitted to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab. Special Agent Duane Deaver had taken possession of ten paper bags of evidence and had examined them in the Molecular Genetics Section of the bureau, and Criminal Specialist Dennis Honeycutt was present during the examinations. Agent Deaver's report, filed just after Valentine's Day, on February 19, 2002, concluded the following:

Item#1. A pair of shorts, collected from Michael Peterson, Brooks Sport brand, size 36, 100% cotton. The front of the shorts were heavily bloodstained. The blood had soaked through to the inside fabric of the pockets, and bloodstain on the front of the shorts, which had also been diluted, had formed a “V” pattern. There were smears, contact stains, and blood spatters visible on the shorts. Of particular interest was the blood spatter on the
inside
of the right leg of the shorts.

Item#2. Four white athletic socks, collected at the bottom of the Peterson staircase, with soaking and smear stain in blood.

Item #3. A pair of Converse brand men's 8.5-size athletic shoes, low-cut, leather. The soles of each shoe were bloodstained. The right shoe had spatters, drips, smears, and contact stains in blood on it. The left shoe had the same. When the shoes were examined for a second time, by Special Agent Joyce Petzca, other points of interest came up. The toe of each shoe had blood spatter that came from a source of blood
directly above
the toes.

Item #4. A knit short-sleeved shirt collected from Michael Peterson. Navy in color, size large, the shirt had a heavy odor of perspiration about it. Dark bloodstains were visible on the left chest, and on both sleeves of the shirt. The dark color of the shirt, however, prevented a complete examination of the bloodstain characteristics.

Also in a sealed paper bag were items identified that had been collected from Todd Peterson. Of interest was a size-large shirt, gray in color, Structure brand, which had contact stains in blood over the top of the shoulders and the top of the sleeves. The front of the shirt had contact stains in blood from the collar down to the middle. The back of the shirt had contact stains in blood, along the left shoulder blade.

Of further note was a pair of jeans collected from Todd Peterson, Perry Ellis brand, size 34” x 32”. On the front of the jeans, smears of blood could be seen above the right pocket. Contact stains of blood were found on the right side of the leg, in the crotch area. On the left side of the leg, contact stains could be seen along the inseam, just below the crotch. On the back of the jeans, a contact stain in blood was found near the hem of the right leg.

Also collected in the brown paper bags were the items of clothing worn by Kathleen Peterson on December 9, 2001. A dark-colored fleece top, size petite, was stained heavily with blood around the collar, and down the back. The tail of the shirt was soaked in blood.

There was also a pair of white sweatpants, size medium, L.L. Bean brand. Unlike the fleece top, which revealed very little, the pants collected from the body of Kathleen Peterson, had quite a few points of interest. The pants had a story to tell. On them were found:

A) Soaking stains of blood on the front of the pants, primarily around the waist area.

B) A diluted bloodstain visible along the crotch of the pants, down each side of the leg.

C) Contact, drips, and smears visible on the front of the pants.

D) Blood spatters visible on the front right and left legs of the pants.

E) Diluted bloodstains in the seat area of the pants.

F) Blood spatters visible on the back of the right leg of the pants.

G) A shoe track, transfer stain in blood, found on the
back of the right leg
of the pants.

The shoe track, it was later revealed, would match the size-8.5 Converse sneaker belonging to Mr. Michael Peterson.

Also at the request of the Durham Police Department, a bloodstain pattern examination had been ordered for the stairwell, as well as in the kitchen area of the Peterson mansion. Conducted by Special Agent Duane Deaver, with Crime Scene Investigator Eric Campen and Crime Scene Investigator Angie Powell also present, the testing began at 5:07
P.M.
on January 9, 2001.

Duane Deaver, an SBI agent since 1985, had been involved in over five hundred criminal cases, and was the State Bureau of Investigation's chief instructor for bloodstain pattern analysis. Briefed by Detective Art Holland, Deaver began an in-depth examination of the area. Being very cautious and conservative in his analysis, the testing of the crime scene took him almost six hours to complete.

For the purpose of the report, Deaver numbered the stairs from top to bottom, one to eighteen. In the hall outside the staircase, blood spatters were found on the wall, and on the header over the hall leading to the kitchen area. There were two drops on the header, 114 inches above the floor, as well as three drops of blood on an adjacent wall. Each of these drops showed a downward path, an
origin from above the drops
. Agent Deaver believed this cast-off blood was created by some object being swung in an upward motion.

In the front of the stairwell, there was a pair of foot-printlike transfers in blood. A photograph provided to Agent Deaver showed Kathleen Peterson's body seated in the same spot. The photo showed that the victim's feet were bare, and had bloodstains on the bottoms. To the expert, these stains indicated that Mrs. Peterson had stood up in her own pool of blood.

Transfer stains in blood could be seen on the trim molding, and finger and hairlike transfer stains were visible on the trim. There were drips in blood going from the floor to forty-six inches in height. A light switch to the left of the trim molding had a transfer stain in blood on it. One particular piece of trim, along the inside of the stairwell above step fifteen, had fingerlike transfer stains in blood. There were three individual stains at the end of the handrail, making it appear as though someone had been trying to pull herself up.

On the north wall at the bottom of the stairs, the area over steps sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, a large smear of blood was noted. What was interesting about this was that this smear of blood had another blood spatter pattern
on top of it.
That meant there was fresh blood on top of dried blood.

The blood spatter patterns that covered the north wall, including the entire width of the stairwell, were found to rise to a height of seventy inches above the highest step on the stairwell. On the east wall, an unstained area was found in the middle of a bloodstain pattern. This so-called “void” area was approximately ten inches long and four inches wide, and a careful reconstruction of the blood spatter patterns on this wall revealed two points of origin for the patterns.

After measuring the two points of origin for the blood, Agent Deaver noted that a minimum of two blows were delivered to cause the source of blood in the corner of the wall above step seventeen. It was possible that these bloodstains resulted from Kathleen Peterson's head being struck as she was standing.

Blood spatters above steps sixteen and seventeen were also examined for points of origin. A line of blood spatter was noted in a pattern that ran above the steps, matching a place where a metal chairlift was located. The chairlift was an unused wheelchair-type device that had been installed by previous owners. The device had blood spatter on it and bloodstains behind it.

Drips, smears, and transfers in blood were noted on the surface of numerous steps, and were found on the
riser
between steps sixteen and seventeen. Oddly, above step fifteen, when a reconstruction of a blood spatter pattern was made, a point of origin was found to be twenty-seven inches up from that step.

Deaver concluded that a minimum of one blow had been delivered to cause the source of blood above step fifteen. In addition, a blood transfer on step fifteen was noted to have sharp edges and looked as if it had been created by a heavy object. Drips were also seen on a piece of floor molding in the stairwell, with a fingerprintlike transfer.

On the landing at the top of the stairs, a transfer stain in blood was made just above the riser, on the underside of the wood flooring. According to Deaver's measurements, that blood spatter came from a source
directly above
the stain.

After further study, the SBI agent also concluded that someone attempted to clean the stairway near where Kathleen Peterson's body was found. The wall next to her body showed certain runs in the pattern of blood, indicating that a liquid had been applied to that place. One particular step, toward the bottom of the stairwell, near where Mrs. Peterson's head was resting, showed that an effort had been made to clean the step entirely.

Based on the patterns of blood, the various locations of smears and cleanup, Agent Deaver had no doubt that someone had struck Kathleen Peterson repeatedly. After further analysis of the photographs taken of the victim's clothes and of the crime scene, the expert also surmised that the bloodstain patterns on Mrs. Peterson's pants showed that her body had been moved in positions
other than what
he observed at the scene.

In the kitchen, Agent Deaver found further evidence of foul play. There were transfers in blood on a cabinet that contained two shelves of drinking glasses. The transfer stains were fingerlike and were discovered on the knob of the cabinet. Directly below the cabinet, Deaver found a drop of blood on the kitchen countertop, with two drinking glasses and an open wine bottle sitting near the sink basin.

The sink looked messy, with a large pasta pot and a food strainer covering the drain in the sink. When Agent Deaver raised the pot, he could smell the odor of alcohol coming from the drain. The smell of alcohol was so strong, it was clear that someone had poured a good deal of wine down the drain, perhaps an entire bottle.

As he concluded his findings, there was no doubt in Agent Deaver's mind: someone attempted to stage the scene.

Michael Peterson was born in Nashville, Tennessee, but his family moved to Virginia when he was young, where he graduated high school, moving on to earn a B.A. in Political Science from Duke University in 1965. When the intrigue of war drew the Duke graduate to Vietnam, Peterson felt it would be the perfect experience and setting for him. He expected to write “the great American war novel.”

When Peterson arrived in Vietnam, he was quite anxious and considered to be gung ho. Commissioned as a lieutenant, he was assigned to a small outpost, called Oceanview, located in the northernmost region of South Vietnam. His battalion was small, comprised of no more than thirty men. And by the time he arrived there, in the middle of 1968, Lieutenant Peterson found himself and his men in a tough position.

The platoon he was with had the job of defending a region that the North Vietnamese Army wanted control over; the Oceanview outpost was just at the edge of the demilitarized zone that separated North and South Vietnam. According to marines in his battalion, by early 1969, Peterson and his men were having a growing problem with North Vietnamese soldiers who would sneak inside American bases with explosives.

Just months after Michael Peterson's arrival, the official log of the unit's activities recorded that on the night of February 22, 1969, numerous positions across South Vietnam were being attacked by the North Vietnamese Army. At Oceanview, the fighting would continue for six hours. As Michael Peterson, the highest ranking officer at Oceanview, recalled the events of that night, he said his outpost spotted enemy troops through night-vision telescopes. Peterson himself, from his command bunker, saw twenty-five enemy soldiers descending near Oceanview. It was a life-and-death situation and his outpost was in jeopardy.

In recalling the incident, Peterson would confide that he demanded his patrol not shoot at enemy troops until he gave the command. Even though Peterson would later claim that instead of listening to his order, his patrol panicked and opened fire, in an interview that was taped right after the battle in 1969, Peterson had said something different: he had admitted that his crew opened fire on his order.

Whatever the case, when the crew from Oceanview had opened fire that night, killing two and wounding others, it was Michael Peterson who was finally able to stop the firing, long enough, at least, to pull his marines back to the command post. In a dramatic moment following the return of his men, Peterson's nineteen-year-old radio operator, Corporal Jack Alfred Peterson, died in Michael's arms, saying, “I hurt, Lieutenant, I hurt.”

Michael Peterson would later incorporate part of the Oceanview battle into his novel
A Time of War.
It was a novel that was so epic, Peterson's editors would liken it to the James Jones masterpiece
From Here to Eternity
. Calling Peterson's account a “classic story of Vietnam,” the book jacket described
A Time of War
as “a richly textured novel” that captures “the essence of a time and place.” Indeed. Peterson did recount the 1969 battle in one scene in particular, which detailed a lieutenant who sent two men to their death. In that same scene, Peterson described a marine who had to be restrained for being angry at the lieutenant for deliberately getting their men killed by sending them out on patrol.

Perhaps it was based on true life, certainly much of it was fictionalized, but in any case
, A Time of War
was Peterson's way of chronicling the brutal action he'd witnessed in the fields of his remote outpost. True to his own account of what happened that night, one of the marine warriors, who dies in the lieutenant's arms, repeated the same real-life line, “I hurt, Lieutenant, I hurt.”

But the recollections of Michael Peterson, while dramatically fictionalized in his war novel, were never entirely confirmed by all of his former battalion marines. Apparently, Peterson's memory of the Oceanview battle, was not quite the same version that everyone else had recorded. One of the members of Peterson's company, Corporal Leo Hazelton, would later tell reporters that Michael Peterson panicked. Hazelton would confide that as the North Vietnamese soldiers began to descend on Oceanview that night, Michael Peterson had to be restrained because the lieutenant was “running around in circles.”

In Hazelton's reported account of the 1969 battle, when Michael Peterson learned that no reinforcements were being sent to his outpost, Peterson acted as if “the world was coming to an end.” Another marine who was at Oceanview that night, Dennis Coney, recollected that when things got really heated at the outpost, “somebody had to grab Michael Peterson and slap him,” forcing the young lieutenant to face reality.

At the end of the battle, the North Vietnamese withdrew before dawn, never having injured any member of the Oceanview outpost. The men who died, it turned out, were killed by members of their own battalion. Of course Lieutenant Peterson would continue to claim that it was his
troop
who panicked and opened fire, unknowingly killing members of their own patrol. But Leo Hazelton and others would assert that the Oceanview troop lost American soldiers because they acted on Michael Peterson's panicked command. “Peterson didn't know it was our own people,” Hazelton later told the
News & Observer
.

Michael Peterson would deny being the cause of any battle fire; he would maintain that his troop panicked because the enemy was chasing them. Of course one could never know the actual truth about the 1969 battle. Some of the enlisted men blamed Peterson for the “friendly fire” deaths of their fellow soldiers. Others in the Oceanview troop would praise Lieutenant Peterson for his valiant efforts, claiming Peterson behaved like a leader, that Peterson was able to get them through the night.

After the battle was over, for his successful defense of the Oceanview outpost, Michael Peterson received the Silver Star of Valor. At the end of his tour of duty, Peterson also received the Bronze Star for leadership in combat. For many years following that 1969 battle, Peterson would tell the story of how he was injured that night in Vietnam, the night his radio operator was killed. According to stories told by Michael Peterson, his radio operator had stepped on a land mine when he was killed, a land mine that sent shrapnel into Peterson's leg, earning him a Purple Heart.

But there was never any documentation of a Purple Heart in Michael Peterson's military record, nor was there any record of a land mine exploding. When Peterson ran for mayor of Durham in 1999, when he was forced to admit that in actuality he was injured in a traffic accident in Japan, Peterson would explain that the accident happened just after he left Vietnam, and would claim that he spent months in a hospital with dying and wounded soldiers.

To members of his shocked family, who didn't understand why Michael would misrepresent something as significant as a Purple Heart, Peterson would claim that his memory of that time period was too painful for him to discuss in further detail.

Years later, when local reporters later speculated that Michael Peterson's Vietnam combat might have shaped Peterson's character, that the 1969 battle might have had some bearing on the man standing trial for murder, it would be Peterson's attorney David Rudolf, who would rush to Peterson's defense.

Disappointed over the
News & Observer
article that detailed the differing stories of the “Battle at Oceanview,” Rudolf felt it was unfair for local reporters to bring up old stories about Vietnam. Rudolf would assert that, even if it were true that Michael Peterson panicked in the first few minutes of battle, all that mattered was that his client “pulled it back together and won a Silver Star.”