Written in Blood (17 page)

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Authors: Diane Fanning

BOOK: Written in Blood
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According to witnesses for the prosecution, the 90-degree angle of the blood spatter patterns on Michael Peterson's shoes were indicative of someone standing over a victim, stains that could not be received just by coming into contact with the body at the bottom of the stairs. Peterson left the shoes by Kathleen's body before emergency personnel arrived at the house.
Photo by Durham Police Department.
Michael Peterson was wearing these bloody shorts when law enforcement arrived at his home following Kathleen's death.
Photo by Durham Police Department.
Kathleen Peterson was wearing these sweatpants on December 9, 2001, the night of her death. Police and emergency personnel said some of the blood was dry when they arrived on the scene, though when Michael Peterson called 911, he said his wife was still breathing.
Photo by Durham Police Department.
Michael Peterson said he found Kathleen in this spot after they had been celebrating the movie option of one of his books. He said she fell, but prosecution experts said the blood spatter patterns, including those on the framed
Chat Noir
poster, were inconsistent with a fall.
Photo by Durham Police Department.
Caitlin Atwater came down to Durham, NC, from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, to attend her stepfather's trial. Liz Ratliff's sister, Margaret Blair, is in the background to the right. She testified for the prosecution.
Photo by Diane Fanning.
Michael and Kathleen Peterson lived and were married in their home at 1810 Cedar Street. Kathleen also died at the house on December 9, 2001.
Photo by Diane Fanning.
Kathleen's daughter designed and erected the gravestone over Michael Peterson's objections about cost. Roses were engraved on Kathleen's headstone because they were her favorite flower. The except from Colleen Hitchcock's poem, “Ascension,” was read at Kathleen's funeral.
Photo by Diane Fanning.
“It's awful for the people who know them. I guess everybody feels the way I do. You just feel very helpless because you don't know what to do. I guess there's nothing anyone can do to help them get through this.”
–Lou Galifianakis
Kathleen would not make it to the holiday function for 100 under-privileged children that she'd planned to attend on Sunday, December 9. She would not be present at her business meeting in Toronto the next morning. She would not see the special viewing of
The Nutcracker
at the Executive Mansion on Wednesday evening. She would never go back to Bali to celebrate her wedding anniversary on June 21. All her plans and her dreams, all her hopes and fears vaporized on that stairway at 1810 Cedar Street.
Michael Peterson was shut out of his home as the investigators, the district attorney and the medical examiner sought the truth of what happened that night. He did not, however, spend the time alone. His family, Kathleen's family and his neighbors and friends rallied round him in support. No one gave any indication that they thought Michael was responsible for Kathleen's death. Two of her siblings kept their negative thoughts private.
The average person has a difficult time believing that
an innocent man would hire an attorney before any charges were filed. Naturally, Peterson raised eyebrows outside of his immediate circle when he lawyered-up within hours of Kathleen's demise. His first attorney was his long-time friend, Kerry Sutton. She brought Barry Winston into the case. In days, Mike exchanged both of them for the high-powered legal team of David Rudolf and Thomas Maher.
Rudolf had a stellar reputation as a defense attorney in North Carolina even though he was a transplanted Yankee. He earned his law degree from New York University in 1974. After graduation, he worked as a federal public defender in New York City.
Rudolf moved South to teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and opened a private practice there in 1982. He represented the mail order company, Adam & Eve, against obscenity charges and Robert J. Kelly, Jr., in the Little Rascals Day Care child molestation case—both high-profile cases in North Carolina.
The spotlight of the nation turned on Rudolf when he defended the Carolina Panthers' wide receiver, Rae Carruth, against charges that he killed his pregnant girlfriend. Although Carruth was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in prison, it was on the lesser charges of conspiracy to murder and shooting into an unoccupied vehicle. Rudolf saved Carruth from a possible death sentence.
His co-counsel in the Peterson case, Thomas Maher, was one of the brightest people to ever practice law in North Carolina. He graduated cum laude with his B.A.
in American Culture from Northwestern University near Chicago, Illinois, in 1979. He then went on to law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he performed even better—graduating magna cum laude—in 1982. He clerked for two years at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. He had been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Duke University since 1990 and at the University of North Carolina since 1992.
In Rhode Island, voices of the present and echoes of the past tormented Margaret Blair. She found the name of the lead investigator in the Peterson case, Art Holland, on the Internet. Should she call and tell him about her sister? Or should she let it go and not dredge up a past that would surely darken her days?
She turned, as she had so often in her life, to her trusted friend and priest. He told her that making that phone call was the right thing to do. These were the words Margaret needed to hear. On December 13, she spoke to Investigator Holland. She told him that her sister had died the same way and that Michael Peterson had told her that he was the last person to see Elizabeth Ratliff alive.
Pat Finn left her last job in Germany a few months earlier. She was settled in Chicago when she heard the news that Michael Peterson was accused of killing his second wife. She was not surprised.
On the day of Peterson's arrest, Rudolf and Maher submitted a twenty-page motion for his release on $1 million property bond. Former U.S. Congressman Nick Galifianakis, Michael's friend and neighbor, agreed to assume responsibility for him and insure that Peterson did not flee. The defense asserted in the motion that Kathleen either died in a drunken fall or was murdered by someone other than her husband.
He had the best legal team money could buy, but Michael Peterson could not buy his release from jail. Superior Court Judge Ron Stephens did not entertain any testimony or arguments on the afternoon of December 21. He ruled that Peterson would remain in jail without bond until a January 22 hearing, where it would be determined whether the state would seek the death penalty.
Caitlin Atwater, who had returned to Cornell after the funeral, was now back in Durham. She and Todd Peterson expressed their shock and dismay about Mike's continued incarceration to the media gathered outside of the courthouse.
Behind bars, Michael Peterson wrote the “Jailhouse Journals.” His first piece was about Christmas Eve in custody and it dripped with self-pity.
On Christmas Day, Peterson's location in the jail dictated that he had no visitation. The five children gathered at 1810 Cedar Street, still in shock. Caitlin spent some time with friends that day. The next morning,
she drove to Northern Virginia to visit her two aunts. Veronica Hunt, her 81-year-old grandmother, was there, too. After the funeral, she had gone home with Lori. Now, she was staying at Candace's house for a while. The death of her daughter hit harder during the holiday season. It was not a time to be at home alone in Florida.
Caitlin then returned to Durham, where her father picked her up and took her to his home in Washington, North Carolina. She couldn't bear to stay in any one place for long. She felt an irresistible urge to keep moving.
On the morning of December 28, Investigators Art Holland and Mike Harris met with Patty Peterson. The language she used in her statement to the officers was odd. She talked about the evening before Liz died. Liz had been at her house for dinner. Instead of telling them that Michael walked Liz and the girls home, she said, “Elizabeth went home and Michael left also.”
She mentioned that George Ratliff had a life insurance policy when he died. However, when Liz's assets were listed two years later when Mike filed her will in Texas, there was no reference to these funds at all. Liz had told her family that she had not touched that money, but put it aside for the girls' education.
The Zamperinis received a phone call from Bill Peterson after Caitlin left their home. He wanted to inform them that Michael was a practicing bisexual. With the computers in the hands of law enforcement, he knew it was only a matter of time before the police knew. He
didn't want the family to learn about it from a reporter calling to get their reaction.
On New Year's Eve, Michael called Candace collect. She motioned for Mark to get on the line. Then she asked Michael, “Are you homosexual?”
He responded with a denial.
“Are you bisexual?”
Again, he answered no. “Why are you asking me this?” he said.
“Because Bill told us you were bisexual. Is it true?”
Peterson blustered about his telephone time being up—and then, he was gone. It was the last time Candace ever spoke to Michael.
Candace's head pounded with this new revelation. She'd thought Michael was heterosexual. She'd thought he was monogamous. She'd believed that he loved her sister—that he was madly in love with her.
Her siblings, Steven and Lori, had suspected Michael was responsible since the moment they heard Kathleen was gone. Candace had defended him to them again and again. Now she faced the possibility that Steven and Lori were right. The Michael Peterson she thought she knew did not exist.
She wondered if Michael and Bill had wanted her to make the funeral arrangements just to keep her out of their hair. She cast a jaundiced eye on the actions and words of all the Peterson men. She suspected they were not being open with her.
In Rhode Island, Liz Ratliff's 92-year-old mother Elizabeth McKee received a belated Christmas greeting
from Patty Peterson. It was postmarked January 2 and mailed from Durham.
I pray you will rest in peace concerning your daughter, Liz, my beloved dearest best friend. She, Elizabeth, died a natural death; her life was not taken from her.
I held vigil over her body and was with her longer than any other person, official or civilian, German or American. The last days of my dear friend Liz were happy and shared with friends.
It was an odd missive with an unusual definition of “vigil”. By all other accounts, Patty spent the day of Liz's death sitting in the kitchen and staring out into space.
The police called Caitlin at Fred's house in eastern North Carolina wanting to talk to her. She hesitated to make a commitment to stop by for an interview when she returned to Durham because she was so confused about her feelings toward Mike. No other family member had talked to the police yet. She still subscribed to the principle that Michael was innocent until proven guilty. But the barricaded stairway gnawed at her, stirring up a sense of uneasiness with his story.
She turned to her father for advice. He said that it could not hurt to talk. And it might help her better understand the situation. He impressed on her the importance of not hiding from problems—because when you avoid them,
they only get worse. She agreed to meet with police when she returned.
On the drive back to Durham with Caitlin, Fred's cell phone rang. On the line was David Rudolf looking for Caitlin. He told her to be careful what she said to the police. In his assessment, they wanted to drive a wedge between family members and push the family apart. He advised her not to talk to police at all.
Fred interrupted, “Are you representing Caitlin?”
“No,” Rudolf replied, “I was just advising her of what was going on.”
“You're representing Michael?”
“Yes.”
“You are looking out for his interests and his interests only?”
“Yes,” Rudolf admitted.
That one word said it all. Caitlin and Fred went directly to the police station and talked to investigators. The police did not supply much information to the two, but they did tell them that they knew it was not a fall. And that they knew they had the right person, but could not yet tell them why.
The possibilities of what had happened to her mother screeched through Caitlin's head. She was full of doubt and was no longer comfortable staying with the family on Cedar Street. She picked up her car and headed back up to Northern Virginia.
Todd Peterson arranged a television interview and wanted all five of the children to talk to the cameras about their dad and how distraught they were that he was in jail. According to Fred Atwater, Todd was belligerent and demanding when he talked with Caitlin.
Caitlin did not want to participate because she no longer felt certain about her feelings. She had reflected a lot on her relationship with her stepfather. In high school, she thought they had a strong bond—they talked and joked with each other and Michael often gave her good advice. At times, she had balked at sharing him with her mother, but she thought his love for her was genuine, even though he never verbally expressed it. Looking back now, it seemed more like care than love. Michael, she believed, was not a very loving person and she blamed that character flaw on Vietnam.
The situation between them had taken a dramatic turn when Caitlin went away to college. It was bad enough that he never wanted to come to Ithaca to visit. What really bothered Caitlin was that he tried to talk Kathleen into not visiting her either. Caitlin now reflected on his hairtrigger temper and his frequent bouts of yelling. She thought about this man's controlling nature, which she had overlooked in the past.
She did not know what to believe. She only knew that her mother was dead. And no matter how Kathleen had died, Caitlin's pain would last forever.
Todd phoned her repeatedly telling her she had to participate in the interview. His pleas sounded more and more like demands with each call.
When the interview was videotaped, Todd, Clayton, Margaret and Martha were there, along with Clayton's girlfriend Becky. She was not identified. She did not speak. Some viewers who did not know Caitlin were left with the impression that the silent young woman in the living room was Kathleen's biological daughter.

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