A Perfect Husband (8 page)

It was not that Michael Peterson was being charged with any crime. It was just an investigation the Durham police were conducting, trying to conclude what, exactly, had happened to his wife.

As it was, the police had entered the Peterson mansion on the night of Kathleen's wake. They hadn't expected anyone to be home. They hadn't wished to confront Michael Peterson, his two sons, two of his daughters, or his brother Bill. The police had been blamed by the family for interfering with their going to Kathleen's viewing, but police had not requested that the family stay at the house that evening.

Kerry Sutton, Peterson's attorney and friend, had blasted the actions of police in the press, stating she was stunned by their behavior, by their insensitivity. But actually, it was Sutton who had advised Michael Peterson to stay in the house during the search.

The Durham police had a job to do. They were still investigating Kathleen's fall. And that job would continue, even while Kathleen's family mourned at her wake, even while they mourned at the Duke Chapel during her funeral service.

Most of Kathleen's family had found a way to put the police business on a back burner. Most of her family had found the strength to stand up and speak on Kathleen's behalf, especially on the day of her funeral. There was Caitlin, who said her mother's impeccable character was enough to give each of her children the strength to fulfill their dreams. There was Maureen Berry, who spoke of Kathleen's nonjudgmental nature, who said Kathleen was a uniquely upbeat individual, particularly with her husband by her side. There was Reverend Joseph Harvard, who told the congregation to keep the image of Kathleen dancing in their minds. The Reverend wanted people to remember Kathleen as she was, on the Friday night before her death. On that night, Kathleen had danced, until the early hours of the morning, in the arms of her beloved husband, Michael.

There were many testimonials about the love Kathleen shared with Michael. There were many people who felt the couple had been soul mates and they grieved for her widowed husband. As for Michael, he was so distraught about having lost his best friend, he was unable to get up and speak.

But regardless of the family's loss, regardless of the media coverage, the fact remained that it didn't matter how cold or calloused people believed the Durham police to be. The lead investigator, Art Holland, had observed a few curious things on the night of Kathleen's death, and the detective had reason to pull a number of search warrants.

In fact, a number of the responding officers and paramedics had some misgivings about the death scene. For one thing, there was blood on the sidewalk leading to the Peterson home, which didn't make sense. Mr. Peterson hadn't spoken to police at all that evening; he had been too distraught. But having blood outside the door, and having blood outside on a can of diet Coke as well, that didn't quite add up with Michael Peterson's claims in his 9-1-1 calls.

Beyond the blood in strange places, there were other discrepancies. When Peterson placed the first emergency call, he reported that his wife was still breathing. But the paramedics at the scene noted that most of the blood around Kathleen was dry. According to the paramedics, Mrs. Peterson had been dead for some period of time . . . long before they arrived.

And there were other things that seemed out of place: a series of odd e-mails in Michael Peterson's desk, a broken crystal wineglass, Michael's athletic shoes and socks, which were all bloody, next to Kathleen's body, and an unwrapped condom that was filled with fluid that didn't appear to be semen.

After the initial police inventory was logged, the next search, which had been conducted the night of Kathleen's wake, turned up items in Mr. Peterson's home that were even more out of the ordinary. There were wild pornographic materials found in Peterson's office. There were unusual pornographic Web sites listed on his main computer. And hidden among Peterson's bookcases were strange things such as the
O.J. Simpson Notebook
and packs of unused condoms.

Not that Detective Holland was ready to charge Mr. Peterson with anything, but the detective was in a “conversation” with Jim Hardin, the Durham district attorney. And while Michael Peterson was asserting that Art Holland and Jim Hardin were treating him unfairly—showing people the newspaper columns he had written, columns in which Peterson had attacked DA Hardin and police officials for the gang violence and drug problems in Durham—the fact was, Jim Hardin was being very methodical about his job, as was Detective Holland. They were under an ethical obligation to determine what had happened in the Peterson home in the early morning of December 9, 2001. And they were in no rush to judgment.

Barry Winston, Peterson's attorney, told local news reporters that the investigation would clear his client. Winston was advising Peterson not to speak with police because of what he called their “heavy-handed tactics.” Kerry Sutton told the media that she hoped the police weren't going to persist in asking Mr. Peterson to “prove a negative.” It wasn't her client's job to prove that he wasn't guilty. It was up to the police to show culpability . . . whether it be Mr. Peterson, someone else, or no one at all.

DA Jim Hardin had not yet submitted the investigation's results to a grand jury. The investigation was still open. The Durham police had asked his office to assist, and the district attorney was doing that, even though his office had not made any decisions.

As the investigation progressed, the police began looking at records of phone calls from the Peterson house and from the Petersons' cell phones. However, after a week of searching, no unusual phone patterns had turned up. The police could only characterize Mrs. Petersons' death as suspicious. Attorney Barry Winston would repeatedly insist to the media that his client Michael Peterson was innocent. Winston reminded people that the phone records proved one thing: Michael had done what anyone would do in his situation, which was to call 9-1-1.

To all of his supporters, the situation seemed obvious; Mr. Peterson's local political commentary had gotten him into a snarl. That was the opinion of all of his friends and family. People were concerned that Michael was slowly being framed. After being advised to search for a more powerful attorney, Michael agreed to make some calls. If the local officials were intent on blaming him, Michael needed to arm himself. Michael had plenty of net worth. And just to be safe, he decided he would make a round of phone calls.

Looking for the best lawyer that money could buy, Peterson fired Barry Winston in favor of David Rudolf, another Chapel Hill attorney, who had a reputation for being one of the best defense lawyers in the South. David Rudolf was not only high-powered, he had just reached national attention for his victory in a case that involved an NFL player, Rae Carruth, the Carolina Panthers wide receiver. Carruth had been facing the death penalty on a charge that he had killed his pregnant girlfriend, but with Rudolf defending him, the NFL player was convicted of the lesser charge of conspiracy.

 

 

Although Peterson no longer wrote columns for the
Herald-Sun
newspaper, Peterson still kept his political views in front of the public by having his own web site,
www.Hizzoner.com
.
However, in light of all the controversy, Mr. Peterson decided to pull down all of his political barbs. It was a sad commentary on civil rights in America, but Peterson felt he had lost his right to free speech. In light of the serious accusations being hurled at him following his wife's death, Peterson could no longer continue his free-wheeling attacks on the police and local officials. Peterson needed to focus on his innocence. Peterson needed to remind the community about how much he loved his wife.

In place of Peterson's political commentary about the dismal state of Durham affairs, Hizzoner.com would begin to show only one thing. It was a beautiful photo of Kathleen in a brightly colored dress. She was smiling, with sparkles in her eyes, standing on the spiral stairway in their mansion. Under Kathleen's photo, there was this loving caption, written by Michael's friend Guy Seaberg:

“All of us at Hizzoner.com mourn the death of Kathleen Peterson, a dynamic, wonderful and remarkable lady—a loving wife, mother and friend. Her passing is Durham's immense loss. Our love and sympathies to Mike, their children, and their entire family.”

In the South, David Rudolf's reputation as a criminal attorney was legendary. A close friend of former O.J. Simpson defense lawyer Barry Scheck, he had been described by Scheck and other colleagues as a legal perfectionist. Rudolf and Scheck met when they were both public defenders in the South Bronx. The two maintained a close friendship and a high regard for each other. Over the years, Scheck called Rudolf for opinions on all of his major criminal cases.

But it wasn't only Barry Scheck who thought the world of David Rudolf. Anyone who looked at his track record would agree that Rudolf deserved his high-powered reputation. Rudolf was not only brilliant, he was the type of attorney who would put an exceptional amount of energy into a case. Rudolf was a fighter, a believer in the justice system, and he enjoyed a challenge.

Above all, Rudolf had a tremendous amount of experience. He handled state and federal cases involving everything from drug conspiracies to sales of firearms. As far back as the 1970s, Rudolf was involved in sticky cases. In
United States v. Busic
, Rudolf acted exclusively as the counsel for a defendant in a federal trial involving a group of Croatian nationalists who were charged with an airplane hijacking and the murder of a New York City police officer.

Over the years, there were many examples of his victories, particularly in jury trials. There were prominent cases in North Carolina where David Rudolf successfully represented men who had been charged with murdering their wives. Rudolf excelled in that area.

There was one prominent physician whom Rudolf defended, Edward Friedland, who had spent four years as a murder suspect in his wife's death. The woman had been found slashed in the couple's home, and her doctor husband would have faced the death penalty, if convicted of the first-degree murder charges. But with David Rudolf at the helm, not only was the criminal case dropped, a civil case was filed to clear Friedland's name. In the civil matter, David Rudolf was able to win a jury verdict of $8.6 million.

Another accused husband whom David Rudolf defended was Charlotte businessman John Hayes. After hearing Rudolf's compelling argument, a panel of North Carolina jurors spared John Hayes from the death penalty, convicting the businessman of the lesser charge of second-degree murder in the slaying of his wife. David Rudolf had won the victory by mounting the first “battered-husband” defense ever heard in North Carolina.

David Rudolf was good; he was really one of the best.

But it was the case he handled on behalf of former NFL player “Rae-Rae” Carruth that won Rudolf his most public acclaim. Rae Carruth, a player for the Carolina Panthers, hung out in the fast circles of professional athletes. Along the way, Carruth had met a beautiful young woman at a party, Cherica Adams, who became his girlfriend, and later, the mother of his child. Adams, a twenty-four-year-old dancer who reportedly socialized with basketball stars such as Shaquille O'Neal, had been in love with Carruth. However, their romance allegedly soured when she told Carruth of the unexpected pregnancy. A few months after she shared the news, the expectant mother became the victim of a drive-by shooting.

The murder involved alleged associates of NFL player Carruth. One of those associates, a career criminal by the name of Van Brett Watkins, would later cut a deal with North Carolina prosecutors for which Watkins stated that Rae Carruth had hired him as a hit man.

Throughout the trial, David Rudolf was successful in launching an attack against hit man Watkins, maintaining that Watkins was psychotic. But another codefendant in the case, Michael Kennedy, testified that he had witnessed the drive-by shooting, that he had been in the passenger seat of Watkin's car on November 16, 1999, the day that four bullets ripped through Cherica Adams's body. Kennedy testified that Adams was driving down a dark road behind Carruth's SUV. According to his testimony, the codefendant, Rae Carruth, deliberately slammed on his breaks, blocking Adams's path, pinning Adams's car at the end of a dark alley.

On her deathbed, Cherica Adams managed to write a note that corroborated the other eyewitness accounts. In it, Adams stated that Rae Carruth had used his SUV to block her off on the road. Adams died a month after the shooting. Luckily, her son with Carruth, a healthy boy she named Chancellor, was born before her death, and the boy survived.

But regardless of the fate of the child's mother, by the end of the highly publicized case, David Rudolf had been able to create enough reasonable doubt. He began poking holes in the state's case by bringing up inconsistencies in the evidence, by questioning the credibility of career-criminal witnesses. To fortify his theory that Carruth was innocent, David Rudolf called upon the famed forensic expert, Dr. Henry Lee, whose testimony had helped O.J. Simpson get acquitted.

During Rae Carruth's trial, Dr. Henry Lee would take the stand to say that the angles of the bullets at Adams's murder scene suggested that Carruth's SUV was not blocking Adams's vehicle. The famous Dr. Lee would testify that the first three bullets that entered Adams's car were at a ninety-degree angle, indicating that Adams's and Carruth's cars were parallel. David Rudolf was using Dr. Lee's testimony to support Rae Carruth's claim that he was innocent.

However, the state of North Carolina painted a portrait of NFL player Rae Carruth as a man plagued by bad financial decisions. To compound his financial worries, Carruth had suffered numerous injuries over the years, and then Carruth sprained his ankle again, just a month before his pregnant girlfriend's murder.

Ironically, after bail for $3 million was posted for Rae Carruth, the former NFL player decided to pick up and drive out of the state, driving in a white Ford Expedition. After a car chase, Carruth said he was headed for Tennessee because he “needed time to think.”

Of course, the North Carolina jury hadn't completely bought into the notion that Carruth was innocent. Regardless of Rudolf's contentions, regardless of Dr. Lee's expert testimony, a jury of twelve convicted Rae Carruth of conspiracy to commit murder. For that, “Rae-Rae” Carruth was sentenced to serve at least eighteen years in prison.

For certain people following the NFL Panther's case, there seemed to be eerie similarities between Rae Carruth and O.J. Simpson. There were so many claims that each of these men had made—claims that didn't seem to add up. There was the expensive dream team each man had hired; there was all that reasonable doubt.

Then there were the alleged killers, who had no blood on their hands. And there was that odd phenomenon of the professional athlete, who, regardless of having been accused of murder, seemed to feel a sense of entitlement to freedom. It was as though these star players deemed themselves above the law.

But no matter what parallels people might have drawn, no matter what people might have thought of O.J. Simpson being found innocent, of Rae Carruth being found innocent of a first-degree murder charge, the truth was, their defense teams had fought the good fight. And in Carruth's case, it was David Rudolf who was able to combat the prosecutor's theory that the NFL player had masterminded the fatal shooting of his pregnant girlfriend. To all of his legal colleagues across the country, once again, David Rudolf had seen victory. The former NFL wide receiver, Rae Carruth, had been spared the death sentence.

 

 

And now, with the trouble facing Michael Peterson, David Rudolf would have his chance to prove his skills all over again. Because of his local celebrity, Peterson was under the scrutiny of yet another North Carolina prosecutor. And David Rudolf decided to defend the prominent Durham author, even before any indictment or formal charge had come down.

Peterson hadn't done anything wrong. His lawyer believed that. His family believed that. Together, they would beat the legal system. Michael Peterson knew it would cost him, but for a lump-sum retainer fee, Mr. Peterson could rest assured that David Rudolf would cover all the bases. If necessary, Peterson was told, the esteemed Dr. Henry Lee could be called upon to examine Kathleen's blood in the stairway. As he had done for Rae Carruth, Dr. Henry Lee would be willing to fly to North Carolina to see if he could determine what might or might not have happened to Mrs. Peterson in that mansion.