Colin Firth and Toni Colette in The Staircase.
Courtesy of HBO Max
The case against Michael Peterson might be closed. However, there are still many questions about the role the bestselling North Carolina novelist and mayoral candidate may played in the death of his wife, Kathleen Peterson, a successful executive.
The contentious case and trial are the focus of The Staircase, the thrilling HBO Max 2022 miniseries starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette that’s now available on Netflix. The drama is based on the French-produced 2004 true crime docuseries of the same name, which followed Michael’s high-profile murder trial.
In December 2001, Kathleen was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in their Durham, North Carolina, mansion. While Michael maintained that Kathleen fell after a night of drinking wine mixed with Valium, he soon became the primary suspect after a damning autopsy report showed that she experienced severe head and neck trauma consistent with being intentionally beaten by a blunt object, according to Investigation Discovery.
Keep reading to learn more about Kathleen Peterson’s death, including what Michael said happened the night she passed, what the prosecution and defense argued at his trial and why he’s now a free man.
Who Was Kathleen Peterson?
Toni Colette in The Staircase
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Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 21, 1953, Kathleen Peterson was raised in Lancaster, PA. Her obituary described her as an “accomplished student, engineer, volunteer, and leader.” She was the first female student admitted to Duke University’s School of Engineering in 1971, where she earned both a BS in Civil Engineering and an MS in Mechanical Engineering.
Her professional career included executive roles at companies such as Baltimore Air-Coil-Pritchard, Merck, and Nortel, which required her to travel to Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, Malaysia, Europe, Hong Kong and Canada. She also served on the Board of the Durham Arts Council and helped raise money for the Carolina Ballet and the American Dance Festival.
Kathleen met her first husband, physicist Fred Atwater, while at Duke University. The couple went on to have one child, their daughter Caitlin Atwater, before divorcing.
Who Was Michael Peterson?
Colin Firth in The Staircase
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Michael Peterson served in the Vietnam War and was honorably discharged in 1971. After college, he worked for the U.S. Department of Defense and later began writing books based on his military experiences. He met his first wife, Patricia Sue, and the two married in 1968, eventually having two sons together, Clayton and Todd, People reported.
While Michael and Patricia were living in West Germany, they became friends with George and Elizabeth Ratliff. After George and Elizabeth’s deaths, Michael became the guardian of their kids, Margaret and Martha. The Petersons moved to Durham, and Michael and Patricia got divorced. Michael and Kathleen later met, and they married in 1997, according to the site.
Michael and Kathleen had a large blended family that included Michael’s children from his first marriage, the two girls he adopted after the Ratliffs died, and Caitlin, Kathleen’s daughter from her previous marriage. With Kathleen’s successful six-figure job at Nortel and Michael with a half-million-dollar advance on a book deal, they purchased a 14-room mansion on three acres, according to All That’s Interesting.
What Happened To Kathleen Peterson?
The Staircase
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Around 2:40 a.m. on Dec. 9, 2001, Michael called 911 and reported finding Kathleen unconscious at the bottom of the staircase of their home in a pool of blood. “My wife had an accident. She’s still breathing,” Peterson said on the call, per ABC News. Kathleen died later that morning.
Peterson told authorities that earlier that night, the pair had watched the movie America’s Sweethearts and drank some wine. They also walked outside and sat by the pool. Kathleen allegedly went back inside to go to bed, while he stayed outside to smoke his pipe.
Michael claimed he found his wife about 30 minutes after she went to bed, just before 2 a.m. He said Kathleen likely slipped on the stairs after drinking wine and taking Valium, according to ABC News. But the police who arrived on the scene had different suspicions due to the amount of blood found across the stairs and on Kathleen.
“When I first entered the house, I noticed an abundant amount of blood on her, on the floor, on the walls, that just was not consistent with somebody falling down the steps,” Art Holland, the lead detective on the case, told the news site.
Additionally, Dr. Deborah Radisch, an associate state medical examiner who performed the autopsy, testified during the grand jury session that the injuries weren’t consistent with a fall down stairs.
“They were caused by some sort of blunt object,” she said in an interview, according to the News-Observer. “We don’t usually see multiple injuries of that kind of severity in a fall down the steps.”
What Happened During Michael Peterson’s Trial?
Michael Stuhlbarg and Colin Firth in The Staircase.
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A grand jury indicted Peterson on a first-degree murder charge, and he turned himself in at the Durham County jail, where he maintained his innocence and spoke publicly for the first time about his wife’s death.
“I’ve whispered her name more than 1,000 times, and I can’t stop crying,” Peterson said, per News & Observer, surrounded by his family outside the jail. “I would have never done anything to hurt her. I am innocent of these charges and can’t wait to prove it in court.”
During the trial, which began in 2003, it was revealed that at the time of Kathleen’s death, the family wasn’t in the best financial position. The Petersons had $142,000 in credit card debt across 20 active accounts and also spent $100,000 more than they earned in the three years prior, CNN reported during the 2003 trial.
Meanwhile, the defense argued that Petersons had a combined net worth of more than $1.4 million and were living beyond their means, despite their assets, mortgage liabilities and credit card debt.
The prosecution also noted that pictures of naked men were found on Michael’s computer and communications about Peterson meeting a man for sex. The prosecution argued that Kathleen may have confronted Michael about his bisexuality, according to A&E Crime + Investigation.
How Was Elizabeth Ratliff’s Death Possibly Connected?
The body of Elizabeth Ratliff, the mother of the two kids Michael adopted after she died, was exhumed and re-examined after her body was also discovered at the end of a staircase, similar to Kathleen’s. Peterson was also seen at Elizabeth’s house the night before her death.
Ultimately, medical experts determined that Ratliff’s death was a homicide, after German authorities initially said it was due to a cerebral hemorrhage that caused her to fall and hit her head, according to CNN.
On Oct. 10, 2003, Michael Peterson was found guilty of the murder of Kathleen and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the News-Observer.
Why Was Michael Peterson Released From Prison?
Colin Firth in The Staircase
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After serving eight years in prison, Peterson’s appeal to overturn his conviction was successful, and he was granted a new trial. The judge found that the former State Bureau of Investigation agent, Duane Deaver, misled the judge and jury in 2003 about the validity of his experiments during the trial, per the News-Observer.
Just before the new trial in 2017, Peterson entered an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter. He still maintained that he didn’t kill her, as the Alford plea allows people to not accept guilt while accepting there is enough evidence to convict them, according to the Charlotte Observer.
“Accepting this Alford plea has been the most difficult thing I’ve ever done — ever,” Peterson said, per People. “The second most difficult thing I ever did in my life was to sit through that trial and I listened to lies and perjury, fake evidence, made-up evidence, withheld evidence. … So many times I wanted to jump up and scream, ‘Liar! This is not right!’ But you don’t do that in court.”
Although the Alford plea made Peterson a convicted felon, he was released from prison because of the time he’d already spent after the first murder conviction.
Where Is Michael Peterson Now?
Colin Firth in The Staircase
Courtesy of HBO Max
Michael Peterson remains a free man and likely still lives in Durham. His son Clayton told The News & Observer in April 2021 that Michael had been living with his ex-wife, Patricia, for two years until she passed away from a heart attack.
In 2008, the 9,429-square-foot home in Durham’s Forest Hills, which Michael shared with Kathleen, was sold for $1.3 million. The house was listed again in 2020 for $1.9 million. While the most recent Zillow listing didn’t mention that a woman died there, it did note that “This home has been featured in a Netflix documentary as well as a major feature film,” ABC News reported.
In 2019, Peterson was reportedly living in an apartment in Durham. “He’s in a ground-floor apartment with no stairs — that was a really important accommodation,” his defense attorney, David Rudolf, said at CrimeCon in New Orleans, according to Oxygen.
The Staircase is streaming on Netflix. Watch the official trailer below.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicamercuri/2025/12/09/where-is-michael-peterson-now-the-bizarre-true-story-behind-the-staircase/
