May 26, 2022 • 41 mins
December 9th, 2001, novelist Michael Peterson calls 911 telling the operator that he's found his wife at the bottom of stairs in their home. She is still breathing, but there's lots of blood coming from her head. Kathleen Peterson later dies. When police and emergency personnel first enter the home, Peterson's injuries are characterized as accidental and the scene is not handled properly, forensically. Soon, however, the facts do not add up and Michael Peterson is charged with murder. Kathleen Peterson has seven head injuries. So where does the owl come in? The owl theory speculates that an owl attacked Kathleen, precipitating her fall, but in fact, this theory never makes it into court. Michael Peterson is found guilty at trial, and sentenced to life in prison. Eight years later, he is granted a new trial after evidence comes to light that a prosecution witness lied. Peterson is eventually released. New charges aren't filed because Michael Peterson takes an Alford plea. This allows him to not admit guilt, but rather acknowledge that the state has enough evidence to convict. Peterson said he simply didn't want to go through another trial ordeal. He was sentenced to time served.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. Back in the mid sixties,
my grandfather was in his pickup truck on a dark
Arkansas road. Large owl swept in front of his windshield.
(00:28):
It didn't so much scare him as it gave him
a feeling down the pit of his stomach that something
bad had happened. When he got back home, we got
a phone call and it was a sister in law.
His brother had died just four hours before. Rural folks
many times believed that an owl is an omen, particularly
(00:48):
if it crosses your path. Today's case on body Bags,
We're gonna talk about Kathleen Peterson, her husband and an owl.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags. Joining me
today is my good friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of
(01:10):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, what can you tell
us about Kathleen Peterson. Kathleen Peterson was a forty eight
year old American businesswoman and philanthropist, and she died under
suspicious circumstances in two thousand one. She was married to
writer Michael Peterson. They had been married about five years
at the time of her death. There's several theories out there,
(01:33):
Joe about what happened to Kathleen, and some of those
have been made into a new docuseries, a documentary. There's
lots of things floating out there, and I'd like to
look at this case today in three separate parts. Kathleen
was found dead at the bottom of a staircase. How
she got there is the subject of all of these theories.
(01:55):
So number one, we have the accidental option. Number two
we have a murder option. And number three you've already
alluded to, is that an owl had a part to
play in Kathleen's death. That evening, Kathleen and her husband
had been drinking some wine and Michael Peterson says he
(02:17):
is outside having a cigar. Kathleen's back in the house.
He says she combined the alcohol with valume, and that
is why Kathleen ended up at the bottom of a staircase,
bleeding out, ultimately to her death. Let's start with some
basic things, Joe. If you fall down a staircase twelve
(02:37):
to fifteen stairs, can that kill you, Well, most certainly
it could, Jackie, and you have to think about any
kind of impact like this trauma related is is going
to be depended upon not just where you strike, but
what you strike and kind of the composition and texture.
I'll give you an example. If you if you fall down,
say a set of metal stairs in some industrial complex,
(03:01):
that's gonna leave a much different type of insult to
the point of impact. That is, where that energy transfers
from the fall, say, for instance, in the back of
the head, where the head actually strikes that fixed object.
That's gonna look a lot different. Say, for instance, if
you have say a highly finished surface, like a wood
surface that's kind of rounded, this sort of thing like
(03:23):
the treads on the stairs, and in in a residential location,
that appearance is going to be completely different. And of course,
in the case of Kathleen Peterson, we're talking about a
very high end home in Durham, North Carolina. These stairs,
though they're the rear stairs, are finally constructed. The edges
are not real, real rough, if you know what I mean,
(03:46):
they're finished, polished. That sort of thing. Now, that can
make for kind of a tricky, a tricky thing to
ambulate across. And you've mentioned just a moment ago that
she did have alcohol and boarder. As a matter of fact,
it is like point zero set of and I think
is her alcohol limit that they determined at autopsy, and
she did in fact have valume on board. But let's
(04:07):
keep in mind one thing as we kind of go
through this discussion. Michael Peterson stated that she left and
walked into the house. It's not like you know, many
people would say she was knee walking drunk, because she's not.
Point zero seven even with valium on board is not
going to inhibit you to the point where you're out
(04:30):
of control. She had the ability to ambulate when he
last saw her. Okay, so we know that Michael was outside,
so he did not, according to his comments to the police,
know that she fell. When he came inside and found
her at the bottom of the stairs, there was a
lot of blood around, which would indicate that she had
(04:52):
a head wound. So he calls N one, tells the
nine one one operator that she is still breathing. So
what would account for that large volume of blood. It
goes certainly to a head strike. We've talked about this
before him on body bags, and I'll say it again,
you know, for this purpose, because I can't I can't
(05:13):
think of another case that it it's going to carry
as much weight in as as with the Kathleen Peterson case,
and that is the head is the most vascular area
of the body. And it's not you know, it's not
just the features of the face that require tremendous amount
of blood supply, but it is in fact the brain.
So you've got this huge network of vessels that run
(05:34):
throughout the head. And that's why many times when you
have a head strike and your head opens up, you
bleed copiously. There's tremendous amounts of blood coming forth. And
it's not surprising that he walked in and found essentially
at the base of the stairs. Kind of this complex.
You've you've kind of got a turn in the staircase.
(05:56):
There's of a many landing down there, and you've got
blood all over the top surface. You've got it on
the facing of the stairs kind of where it's boxed
then and then you've got it underneath the lip. You've
also got some on the walls as well. Tell let
me stop you for just a second. When Michael comes
in and finds her body, we don't have an idea
of how long that she has been lying at the
(06:17):
bottom of the stairs. So if she has a head wound,
for there to have been this amount of blood that
we are told was there. If she just has a
head wound, is her blood going to spill out at
that kind of a rate. Yeah, yeah, most certainly it can,
because you know, that's an indication first off, that are
hard is still beating at least during during this moment. Remember,
(06:38):
we have three states when we begin to talk about
death investigation. We have anti mortem, which means before, we
have perimortem, which means in the throes of like right
in the middle, and then of course we have post
mortem all right, which is after death. So in that
anti mortem and perimortem phase, individuals still have agonal respirations.
(07:00):
They will still have circulation going on. So all the
while you have that arterial flow, and in some of
the venus see page to where you know you've got
the blood, it's still trying to return go back through
the through the entire system. You know, it has to
cycle through the lungs and back through the heart and
all these sorts of things to be pumped back out.
So this is still going on. So blood is actually
(07:21):
emanating from these particular areas. But Jackie, the the interesting
thing about this, it's it's one thing, when you have
a head strike and you have a single injury, and
as I've stated, you're going to bleed out profusely from
that one location. And of course a lot of that
is deepened upon the size of the of the insult
as well. But Jackie in in Kathleen's case, she's got
(07:46):
seven one, two, three, four, five, six, seven very nasty
lacerations that essentially involved the backside of her head. So
for me as a death investigator, if you're trying to
sell me on this idea, when you fall and gravity
is drawing you down towards the treads of that staircase
(08:08):
and you impact on that particular area, that is not
something I'm going to buy. This is something that would
have required a forceful attack. It would have involved multiple strikes. Now, also,
if you're trying to tell me, well, she went back
up the stairs and fell not just once but twice,
(08:31):
you know, multiple times, I'm not buying that either. And
these are very very centralized insults that she sustained to
the back of your But you're talking about the amount
of blood that was at the scene, Joe, even if
she had seven lacerations or wounds, how much blood as
your heart pumps is actually going to come out of
(08:52):
those lacerations, I mean, short of cutting an artery or
or a venus. When we think of large amounts of
blood gush, how much blood are we actually talking about
coming from those wounds? Quite a bit, um, quite a bit.
And and just so our listeners understand. Um, you know,
when you hear when you hear people holding forth on
(09:14):
ideas about the amounts of blood that you see at
the scene, it can be very very uh difficult to
quantify that amount. And a lot of that is depending
upon the surface where the blood actually settles on. Um.
You know, if you're talking you know, for instance, like
(09:34):
a carpeted surface, there's no way to quantify that because
you know you've got multiple layers there. Then you think about,
you know, to what degree has the blood dried, And
the drying of blood is an issue in this particular
case as well. There are a couple of people that
actually stated at the scene they saw dried blood. So
that involves a time factor. Um. You know, where you
(09:57):
think about the elements of of the in dwelling environmental conditions,
you know, relative humidity, temperature, all these sorts of things,
and also um, you have no idea uh as to
the depth of the blood that's being distributed all over
(10:17):
the place. Uh, you know, because depth is important when
we're measuring volume. You know, let's just think about that.
You know, the depth of say, for instance, a swimming pool.
We can look in the shallow in and it appears
to have quite a bit of water there. You go
to the deep end, it's even it's even more. It's
kind of simple science, but you have to understand there's
no way to measure that at a scene relative to
(10:38):
a pool. So your ability to quantify the amount of
blood that was lost at the scene, even though it
is appearance at least is a large pool, you don't
understand the thickness, and of course that follows relative volume
as well. So going along with the amount of blood
that was found in the house, let's look at this forensically.
When the police arrived, they first believe that this is
(11:00):
an accident, that Kathleen has fallen down the stairs based
on what her husband has said. So we find forensically
that a lot of things are going on that impact
what you should have been able to tell happened. Police
did not cordon off the scene immediately we had the
sun come in and he tracked blood as he came
(11:23):
through to the kitchen. There were blood smears on the
wall that police were not originally sure where they came from.
And you had neighbors and friends coming over to see
what was going on as they saw the police activity.
So you have lots of people impacting your crime scene?
What do you do? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And this
(11:43):
goes back to you know, my hero that I've mentioned
several times, ed muhan Lecard you know, uh, Edmond, you
know plainly stated that every contact leaves a trace. That
everybody brings something to a scene that has the potential
to bespoil this environment you know where, Uh, And it
could be any number of things. It could be the
(12:04):
dirt on their shoes. It could be the shoes that
they're wearing and the texture of those shoes and how
it transfers the blood that's in dwelling at the scene
they step in and transfers it to another location. It
could be them. Hey, you know we were talking about
the volume of blood. Uh, you don't know what's going
on outside. So when you open that door multiple times,
you can have wind that blows through there. You can
(12:25):
have any number of trace elements that come in there.
You can wind can impact uh, the scene itself, and
not to mention, you don't have accountability relative to who
is engaging and interacting with the decedent as well. Now
we do know that two a m t s arrived
at the scene, then you have the police and then
(12:45):
you have this kind of cast that comes in afterwards.
You know, it's at that point in time. And it's
one of the things that we teach young police officers
uh that when they arrive at a scene, it's so
very important uh to actually secure that area and keep
everybody out. Then you realize how hard it is to
tell family members to stay out of the scene, and
(13:06):
that's very difficult. But sometimes the police have to stand
up and say no, you cannot come in here at
this point in time. And it's hard to know when
this transitioned from, say, for instance, an emergent event you know,
where you're trying to render aid, to when this actually
became identified as a crime scene. Those are two different
(13:28):
uh mill us, if you will. It's kind of a
fancy word for the environment in which this is all occurring.
So when is it that they geared back and they said, hey,
well we need everybody to exit as quickly as you
possibly can. Everybody step out, and it's at that point
in time that he had to cordin off the area.
(13:48):
You have to sequester those individuals that actually made contact
in the scene because they're gonna walk off and they
might have evidence on them. You know, we go back
to this idea of shoe prints. There was actually a
shoeprint that was found on Kathleen's sweatpants. I would want
to know the provenance of that of that shoeprint. I'd
like to know the point of origin relative to that shoeprint,
(14:10):
you know, because Michael's shoes and socks were actually on
the floor adjacent to her body, So how did that
dynamic occur? I want accountability for everybody it's there, because
everybody that touches this thing actually has the ability to
destroy the entire case before it even gets started. You know,
(14:47):
as a death investigator, you show up at the scene,
you know you're begging for information from the dead. I
know that sounds quite bizarre, but you know, there's that
old adage that we always talk about um of We
speak for the those who can no longer speak for themselves,
and we read things into the life that they had
led the during the events of their death, and certainly
(15:10):
what happened to the bodies afterwards. And that's important here
in uh Kathleen Peterson's death, Jackie, there's a big factor,
Joe that I want to talk about. Going back to
the blood just a little bit. The next theory that
we're looking at here is the fact that Kathleen could
have been murdered by her husband. So if Kathleen did
(15:31):
not fall down the stairs and cause these seven lacerations
as you described, to her head, then that means she
would have been it in the head. She would have
been bludgeoned. And I find it very interesting, Joe, that
there was one huge piece of evidence that points to
the fact that she really could not have fallen down
(15:52):
the stairs and remained in that supine position. What was it?
That's the fact that she's got blow on the soles
of her feet. You know, unless you want to go
off chasing rabbits, theoretically, you begin to think about this
and you think, well, you know, did some never do
well come up and paint the soles of her feet
(16:13):
with her own blood? And Obviously that's not going to
be the case. So how how do we arrive at
a position where the blood winds up on the soles
of her feet? And the only explanation is that after
she was struck and blood began to seep from her
head or pour from her head, or you know, actually
spray from her head if it's an arterial strike, then
(16:35):
we have to believe that she walked, she walked through
a pool of blood, her own blood there that's distributed
on the treads of the stairs, that there was no
awareness on her part that she is essentially under attack.
For me, you know, I visualized her in this environment
(16:57):
and she's standing there, she struck, or perhaps someone comes
in from the top above her and strikes her. As
she's at the base of the stairs and blood begins
to seet down, she gets it onto the soles of
her feet. One other indicator here that's absolutely fascinating to
me is the fact that when her hands are actually examined,
(17:21):
they find bits of hair caught on her hands and
dried their uh visa via the blood, And there's actually
contused areas on the back sides of her hands, which
you know, almost gives you the impression of someone raising
their hands above their head. They have an awareness they're
being struck in the head. Right, just follow me here
(17:41):
and that area where you're stowing. You know, what, what
do we do when we sense that we have injured
our head? One of the it's a natural reaction to
reach up and place our hand there to check ourselves
or to protect ourselves. Was that what Kathleen was doing.
And in the interim, blood is transferring to her fingers,
the pumps her hands and she pulls away in her
(18:02):
own hair is caught there. So you've got this very
dynamic situation that's taking place there at the base of
that staircase. Jack. So then we need to move on
and look at what possibly could have caused those lacerations,
since we now don't believe they were caused by the fall.
One theory that was raised was the lack of what's
called a blowpoke. It is a fireplace utensil that that
(18:27):
could have been the murder weapon. So what kind of
a wound would a fireplace utensil cause? And is it
consistent that it would have caused seven lacerations as you described, Yeah, Yeah,
there's a high probability that it could you're talking about
a cylindrical shaped object, which essentially is a metal tube. Um,
(18:49):
it would you would have to be able to utilize
this instrument so that you could uh deliver energy from
a single strike where you would raise it, say, for instance,
above your head or swinging it from the side, and
hit a point of impact at that at that moment
in time. And what happens That energy that you're generating.
(19:11):
Let's just say, for instance, you're raising above your head
and you're striking downward. That energy that you're generating by
that force as you're bringing that thing down onto the
top of her head transfers to that point of impact
along the shaft of that blowpoke or an object similar
to that, and it transfers to the skin. And what
(19:33):
happens then, well, it results in these lacerations. And just
kind of on a little aside here. Um, many people
get very confused when they hear the term laceration. My
friends in the medical community, they will use laceration very broadly.
Somebody comes into an emergency room, You'll hear and all
the you know, the medical shows and whatnot, and they'll
say they've got a lack Well that that's an abbreviation
(19:57):
for a laceration, but it could you know that could
endo it also a sharp fourth injury. This is not
sharp force, and how do we delineate that. Well, when
we examine these types of injuries and the morgue, and
you have a blunt force laceration where someone is struck,
what will happen is that it will generate, first off,
a very jagged wound. It will be very irregular. The
(20:21):
edges or what it referred to as the margins will
not be neat because there's actually a tearing. And if
anyone wants to get an idea as to what this
looks like, if anyone at home has like say, simply
a pencil and an orange, you take the orange and
you place the shaft of the pencil onto the surface
of the orange and you press down. What happens, well,
(20:43):
the orange begins to rise around the sides of the
shaft of that pencil. That's basically what happens with the laceration.
The skin as it's impacted, kind of wraps itself for
just a moment around the sides of that cylindrical object,
and the skin then begins to rip or tear. And
that's why you get this real nasty looking injury that
(21:07):
rises up. Now, if this we're safe, for instance, um
ma chetty wound or an axe or something like that
that has a milled edge. Edges are gonna be very
very neat it all. It's not necessarily all look like surgery,
but there will be very well defined the forensic pathologists
call it defined margins. With this, you're not gonna have
(21:27):
that because not only is the skin gonna tear, guess
what else is gonna happen. You'll get these little abraided
areas along the edge, and that gives you an indication
that something has been torn at that moment time. Now,
could it be generated from fall? Yeah, but it's gonna
be a single impact. I don't know of anybody worth
their salt out there in forensic practice that's gonna say
(21:50):
that an individual would sustain this many lacerations from a
single fall. Generally you're gonna see one maybe maybe too,
but you're gonna fall a great distance in order to
make that happen. So you brought up blunt force versus
sharp force injuries. But Kathleen, with even with all of
these lacerations in her skull, she didn't have any skull
(22:12):
fractures and there was no brain swelling. Wouldn't you expect
that in a blunt force trauma. Well, I think everybody
automatically flees to this idea that if you have a
laceration and that's associated with blunt force trauma, that there's
going to be, say, for instance, a depressed skull fracture
underlying that laceration. And that's just not the case. And
(22:35):
when you begin to combine this with uh, the other
elements that we have going on, and let's just let's
just play Devil's advocate here for a second. Let's say
she was just struck once and it split her head open.
Now we could say that she might bleed to death,
but it would take a much longer amount of time.
What begins to take place here, though, after all of
(22:56):
these strikes, is you have a schemia that's letting in
and so you have an individual that's losing let me interrupt,
a schemia. What is that? A schemia is a condition
that arises from a lack of oxygen aated blood that's
being uh supplied to the brain. So essentially it's being
shunted or it's being um impeded to making it back
(23:20):
through the system because you're bleeding out. Essentially you have
a big defect in your body. And in Kathleen's you
know circumstances, she had seven of these things, Jackie. It's
not just one, she had seven. So she's gonna bleed
out from these multiple areas. And listen, the longer someone
is down in this environment where they've got what are
referred to as just like agonal respirations, their hearts still pumping,
(23:43):
and you just allow them to lay there, you've got
more time for them to kind of dwindle away. Now,
one of the things that the forensic pathologists stated in
this case, that's that's quite fascinating. You know people have wondered, well,
you know there's there's no hemorry essentially on the brain.
There was some uh, subarachnoid that was there that arises
(24:06):
from a concussive event. Okay, I'm sorry, subarachnoid, check out
of let me say what again. Yeah, So with subarachnoid,
the arachnoid surface of the brain is actually the surface
of the brain, as opposed to say subdural subdural dura,
meaning the sack that the brain is essentially encased in
(24:26):
and your cerebral spinal fluid kind of circulates around it.
You can get actually a subdural hematoma, which is hemorrhages
trapped in between the dura sack and the surface of
the brain, which has the arachnoid surface. The arachnoid surface
is actually the surface of the brain, but this is
inside of the brain. And this has arisen from what
(24:48):
the forensic pathologist has characterized as a concussive injury. And
she didn't just have one concussive injury, Jackie, she had
multiple concussive injuries. And of course this is the opinion
of the forensic pathologists because there's not a lot of
evidence to bear this out. She is essentially speculating what
(25:09):
she can do because she is a court qualified expert,
that she died as a result of multiple concussive injuries
to the brain. So you know, you think about, well,
what is a concussion. Will anybody that has ever heard
allowed boom that goes off and it kind of rattles
your cage just for a second, that's a concussion, uh,
(25:30):
concussive event. So you've got her brain that is reacting
to these blows where her brain is literally kind of
um a sloshing back and forth inside of her skull.
She's disoriented at that moment time she goes down, maybe
into an unconscious state. And all the while, all the while,
her heart is still beating, her lungs are still working.
(25:52):
But guess what. The blood is not going where it
should go. The blood is going all over the floor.
The blood is going all over the treads at the stairs,
and that's what led to her death. One other point
to consider Joe and talking about these blunt force injuries
to her head, if she had fallen down the stairs
as was stated, you would have expected there to be
(26:13):
some kind of injury to the neck. I would have
to think being hit with not very much accuracy if
you're just swinging at someone's head, you know, could hit
other parts of the body. So what are we looking
at in form of any kind of neck injuries that
Kathleen had. Yeah, you know, you think about this is
a very dynamic event when somebody falls down a set
(26:38):
of stairs. And one of the things that you know
when we check for this at the scene, actually, as
medical legal death investigators, we we look for what's referred
to as crepitus, and crepitus is kind of a I
don't want to put anybody off by saying this, but hey,
this is body backs. This is what we talked about.
There's kind of a crunchiness that takes place in the neck,
(26:58):
and if the neck is broken, I'm just talking about
the initial external examination. You can actually feel this kind
of crunchiness in the neck and it gives you an
indication that something is wrong. Of course, that has to
be verified, you know, just prior to autopsy at the
morgue where you're going to do an X ray of
the body. But in Kathleen's case, there's no evidence of
(27:19):
a broken neck. All of her vertebral bodies were intact. Okay, However,
I'm not concerned with the back of her neck, Jackie.
I'm what's fascinating to me about this whole case is
one little injury that doesn't get talked about a lot,
and that is this cartilaginous fracture that's taken place on
(27:40):
the thyroid cartilage. And if everybody at home will essentially
take your index finger and feel on the left side
of your throat where say, for instance, your your Adam's
apple is, and you just go above it, we say
in in in our in our parlance, we say superior.
There is a little old bitty area up here. You
(28:02):
can kind of feel it through your skin, called corn
you And it's a little cartilaginous body, you know, Jackie,
she had a fracture. She had a fracture there. The
cartilage was actually fractured. People don't think about cartilaginous fractures,
but they do occur, and in my experience at least,
and this is way way up in the neck, Jackie,
(28:23):
I mean way up. We're not here's here's that infamous
little bone. We're not quite at the level of the highoid,
but we're just below it, okay. And so at that level,
at that level, that little feature is actually fractured. You
know what takes to do that. It takes pressure, Jackie.
It takes pressure directly applied to their or. I guess
(28:46):
you could say that if someone was struck uh with
an instrument, you might could achieve that, But what they're
seen at the scene doesn't necessarily match up, for instance,
with uh, this blowpoke striking that area. So I don't know.
I think that many people that might look at this
(29:06):
might think that direct pressure was applied to that specific area,
you know, maybe consistent with a couple of hands, such
as in a case of throttling, or where the hand
is configured into a ce essentially with a thumb dominant
on the on the right side and the fingers digging
into the neck on the left side and applying direct
pressure to that area until that little area of cartilage snaps. Now,
(29:30):
how in the world does it? Perfectly healthy woman, and
she was healthy. Her coronary ardors were almost completely clear, Jackie.
She has not had a heart attack, she has not
had a stroke, She doesn't really have that much in
dwelling natural disease going on. How does she how does
she sustain that specific injury? You know, we can talk
about the back of the head all day long, but
(29:50):
how does this anterior or front of the neck insult occur?
She did not have any bruising around her neck, did
she know? She She didn't nothing that was truly significant
in this particular case, and so that would uh, you know,
she had several other areas of insult that were she
had some injuries on her back, she had some injuries
(30:13):
on her arms, and of course, you know, as I mentioned,
just a moment ago. There were those insults of course,
on the backs of her hands where she had clutched,
you know, hair in her hands that was dried in
there and kind of stuck to the surface, or what
referred to as the palmer aspects of the hands where
the hair had come away from her head. It goes
(30:54):
without saying I think that injuries can tell us a
lot about a case and about what occurred, uh in
the moments just prior to death. But you know, Jackie,
I gotta tell you, in Kathleen Peterson's case, we've got
so many injuries, there are so many insults, and to
say that this is a dynamic case I think is
rather understatement of the facts. It is Joe. In fact,
(31:18):
some would say it's fanciful in some aspects because of
this third theory that Kathleen Peterson's death was caused by,
of all things, an owl. All you have to do
is google the owl theory and you'll find more than
you ever want to know. It has been put out
(31:39):
there that Kathleen was attacked by an owl which caused
her fault. Some are saying that her injuries on her
head came from talents. How do you address that Joe. Well,
first off, I would address it by saying that none
of that evidence has ever made it into court. That
the genesis of that evidence, actually it comes arises from
(32:01):
a neighbor of the Peterson's who happens to be an
attorney in Durham. That he came up with this idea
that perhaps it was in fact, uh particular species of
owl that attacked Kathleen Peterson as she was running into
the house and suddenly, uh, you know, the awl may
or may not have chased her, she tumbled down the
(32:23):
staircase and struck her head. There was, um, there was
a single owl feather that was entered into uh, entered
into evidence, as I think probably an incidental finding. And
then you know, I think kind of use the word fanciful.
I think that it is fanciful, um that this has
(32:43):
been uh you know, the foundation for this, this idea
that a bird of prey attacked her at this particular time. Now,
I will say this. You know, owl's are known to
move around at night, hence the term night owl. Okay,
they move around night. They're kind of nocturnal animals. So
I guess you could put that forward. But again you've
(33:06):
got to give me something more than that, because they're
saying that these injuries that she has sustained on the
back of her head, uh may may be consistent with
the talents of an owl, where essentially the skin has
been uh insized by these talents and in torn and
you have these evulsions, and evulsions are part and parcel
(33:31):
of lacerations, and it gives you an idea of the
amount of force that was used. One in particular is
rather than ghastly, there's there's kind of a triangular shaped
evulsion that measures several centimeters in length and it it's
kind of pie shaped, um, you know, like a slice
of pizza essentially, and it's flapped back over. I don't
(33:53):
think that that's indicative of, say, for instance, a bird
of prey, but it goes to the ferocity with which
she was struck. You know, this is a tearing event
that takes place with this blunt force trauma where the
cylindrical object is being driven down onto the external surface
of her of her scalp, and it tears it away.
(34:16):
And the reason you kind of get this pie shape,
if you will, is the fact that she was struck
once on one side and then there was another strike
that took place almost immediately adjacent, and it led to
this tearing away a tremendous amount of force. It wasn't
significant enough so that it fractured the external table of skull,
(34:36):
but it was significant enough so that the skin itself
was was ripped away. So I find all this information
that you're giving me about the lacerations and the injuries
to the skull fascinating. But I've got to go back
to the blood, the blood amount that is found on
the floor. There is blood, as you said, on the
bottom of her feet, there's blood on the wall, and
(35:00):
you kind of alluded to and we we got away
from it earlier, the difference between blood spatter and and
blood droplets. How is all of this going to come
into plagia because we have heard contradicting evidence about what
happened to that blood was the blood smear on the
wall and effort to wipe it away? Was the blood
(35:22):
droplets aspiration from her breathing out blood from her lungs?
Address that for me, I have to say, as a
forensic scientist, Um, you have to be you have to
take great care when you move forward with blood stained evidence.
That it is written in stone as to how you
(35:47):
apply your assessment, and let me kind of break it
down for you, so so our listeners understand. Let's say,
for instance, you're talking about a latent print, okay, where
print has been left behind by a suspect. Okay, we
dust that area, we find the print, we raise it,
and we lift it. Okay. Then we have a database,
(36:09):
a template, if you will, that we will go back
and we will examine that print, see if it matches
up with anything, and then we can begin to apply
quantities or values to that print, and in the end
we have almost a mathematical assessment that validates that print.
(36:29):
You don't have that with blood stain. You don't what
template are you going to use? Now we talk about
blood stain in terms of low velocity, medium velocity, and
high velocity, and kind of that dynamic that takes place
as blood is sprayed about or spread about in those
sorts of things. Um, how are you going to measure
(36:51):
that and come back with a consistent template. And that's
one of the reasons I think it was all the
way back in two thousand nine Jackie Um there was
actually a federal study that was done relative to to
blood stained evidence and questioning kind of the science behind it.
And you know, you're gonna have two separate people that
will interpret this, and they can interpret it any number
(37:14):
of ways, because there is no hard and fast rule
to constructing or reconstructing a scene relative to the dynamics
of the blood stained. So you know, you can look
at a wipe or swipe on a wall and you
can get an idea that, yeah, probably something there happened
relative to somebody attempting to clean up. But when you
(37:34):
get what in this case would be medium velocity, which
is consistent with uh, someone swinging a bat, swinging a hammer, uh,
swinging a cylindrical metallic cylindrical object, you can generate that
kind of velocity because of the leverage that's involved in
this generating that injury, and you'll get these kind of
(37:55):
particulate bits of of spray that are deposited it all
over the place. With that, with that, you begin to think, well,
what could be the point of origin. Well, you know,
the prosecution said, well, this is definitely arises from a strike,
multiple strikes, But then how are you going to talk
(38:16):
about the overlay, you know, and the dynamic of that
The movement of it in this kind of three dimensional
environment where you've got blood that's overlaying other blood stains
and this sort of thing. Then you've got the defense.
I think one of their witnesses got up on stand
Jackie and said, oh, well, the blood that you're seeing
on the wall here, this is aspirate. This is coming
(38:38):
about as a result of her coughing up blood and
spraying it onto the wall. Well, okay, I've seen that
before famously. I saw it in the Jodi Arius case
which Travis Alexander all over the sink. It was bloody aspirate,
and that's medium velocity. It's very fine. But here's the problem.
(38:58):
Her airway had no blood in it. Her lungs had
no blood in them, and they were normal way. It's
not like they were heavily congested. In order to get
blood into the airway, in order to aspirate and spray
it out, you have to have a point of origin.
This was there. There was no source for the blood
to have been sprayed. So that again is a big problem.
(39:20):
And I think, in my opinion at least, that both
the prosecution's blood analysis and the defenses blood analysis that
cancel one another. Out in this case, so all were
left with at the end of the day. In Kathleen
Peterson's case is the assessment of the injuries. How did
those injuries come about? And I can tell you, based
(39:41):
upon what I've seen thus far and based upon my experience,
I have to tell you I don't think an al
did this well. Joeah, jury did the exact same thing
that you're doing here. Weighed all three theories and came
up with murder. Michael Peterson was convicted and sentenced to
life in prison for the murder of his wife. However,
in two thousand and twelve, he was granted a retrial
(40:03):
after it was uncovered that a witness for the prosecution
had given false evidence under oath. Michael released from jail
in two thousand and seventeen. That was about eighty nine
months in prison, and after that he entered an Alfred plea,
which means he was able to maintain his innocence and
he would be sentenced to his time served and no
(40:25):
further charges would be made against him. Joe, Yeah, you're right, Jackie,
And I think you know, reflectively, you begin to think
about the swirl of interest in this particular case and
the public is rightly, rightly interested in this because you know,
even as someone that I considered myself to be rather
(40:46):
seasoned when it comes to death investigation, I have to
tell you, in all of my years, I've never encountered
a case quite this complex, certainly one that I've never
been Um, JOSEPHS got more and this is body packs.
Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. Back in the mid sixties,
my grandfather was in his pickup truck on a dark
Arkansas road. Large owl swept in front of his windshield.
(00:28):
It didn't so much scare him as it gave him
a feeling down the pit of his stomach that something
bad had happened. When he got back home, we got
a phone call and it was a sister in law.
His brother had died just four hours before. Rural folks
many times believed that an owl is an omen, particularly
(00:48):
if it crosses your path. Today's case on body Bags,
We're gonna talk about Kathleen Peterson, her husband and an owl.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags. Joining me
today is my good friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of
(01:10):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, what can you tell
us about Kathleen Peterson. Kathleen Peterson was a forty eight
year old American businesswoman and philanthropist, and she died under
suspicious circumstances in two thousand one. She was married to
writer Michael Peterson. They had been married about five years
at the time of her death. There's several theories out there,
(01:33):
Joe about what happened to Kathleen, and some of those
have been made into a new docuseries, a documentary. There's
lots of things floating out there, and I'd like to
look at this case today in three separate parts. Kathleen
was found dead at the bottom of a staircase. How
she got there is the subject of all of these theories.
(01:55):
So number one, we have the accidental option. Number two
we have a murder option. And number three you've already
alluded to, is that an owl had a part to
play in Kathleen's death. That evening, Kathleen and her husband
had been drinking some wine and Michael Peterson says he
(02:17):
is outside having a cigar. Kathleen's back in the house.
He says she combined the alcohol with valume, and that
is why Kathleen ended up at the bottom of a staircase,
bleeding out, ultimately to her death. Let's start with some
basic things, Joe. If you fall down a staircase twelve
(02:37):
to fifteen stairs, can that kill you, Well, most certainly
it could, Jackie, and you have to think about any
kind of impact like this trauma related is is going
to be depended upon not just where you strike, but
what you strike and kind of the composition and texture.
I'll give you an example. If you if you fall down,
say a set of metal stairs in some industrial complex,
(03:01):
that's gonna leave a much different type of insult to
the point of impact. That is, where that energy transfers
from the fall, say, for instance, in the back of
the head, where the head actually strikes that fixed object.
That's gonna look a lot different. Say, for instance, if
you have say a highly finished surface, like a wood
surface that's kind of rounded, this sort of thing like
(03:23):
the treads on the stairs, and in in a residential location,
that appearance is going to be completely different. And of course,
in the case of Kathleen Peterson, we're talking about a
very high end home in Durham, North Carolina. These stairs,
though they're the rear stairs, are finally constructed. The edges
are not real, real rough, if you know what I mean,
(03:46):
they're finished, polished. That sort of thing. Now, that can
make for kind of a tricky, a tricky thing to
ambulate across. And you've mentioned just a moment ago that
she did have alcohol and boarder. As a matter of fact,
it is like point zero set of and I think
is her alcohol limit that they determined at autopsy, and
she did in fact have valume on board. But let's
(04:07):
keep in mind one thing as we kind of go
through this discussion. Michael Peterson stated that she left and
walked into the house. It's not like you know, many
people would say she was knee walking drunk, because she's not.
Point zero seven even with valium on board is not
going to inhibit you to the point where you're out
(04:30):
of control. She had the ability to ambulate when he
last saw her. Okay, so we know that Michael was outside,
so he did not, according to his comments to the police,
know that she fell. When he came inside and found
her at the bottom of the stairs, there was a
lot of blood around, which would indicate that she had
(04:52):
a head wound. So he calls N one, tells the
nine one one operator that she is still breathing. So
what would account for that large volume of blood. It
goes certainly to a head strike. We've talked about this
before him on body bags, and I'll say it again,
you know, for this purpose, because I can't I can't
(05:13):
think of another case that it it's going to carry
as much weight in as as with the Kathleen Peterson case,
and that is the head is the most vascular area
of the body. And it's not you know, it's not
just the features of the face that require tremendous amount
of blood supply, but it is in fact the brain.
So you've got this huge network of vessels that run
(05:34):
throughout the head. And that's why many times when you
have a head strike and your head opens up, you
bleed copiously. There's tremendous amounts of blood coming forth. And
it's not surprising that he walked in and found essentially
at the base of the stairs. Kind of this complex.
You've you've kind of got a turn in the staircase.
(05:56):
There's of a many landing down there, and you've got
blood all over the top surface. You've got it on
the facing of the stairs kind of where it's boxed
then and then you've got it underneath the lip. You've
also got some on the walls as well. Tell let
me stop you for just a second. When Michael comes
in and finds her body, we don't have an idea
of how long that she has been lying at the
(06:17):
bottom of the stairs. So if she has a head wound,
for there to have been this amount of blood that
we are told was there. If she just has a
head wound, is her blood going to spill out at
that kind of a rate. Yeah, yeah, most certainly it can,
because you know, that's an indication first off, that are
hard is still beating at least during during this moment. Remember,
(06:38):
we have three states when we begin to talk about
death investigation. We have anti mortem, which means before, we
have perimortem, which means in the throes of like right
in the middle, and then of course we have post
mortem all right, which is after death. So in that
anti mortem and perimortem phase, individuals still have agonal respirations.
(07:00):
They will still have circulation going on. So all the
while you have that arterial flow, and in some of
the venus see page to where you know you've got
the blood, it's still trying to return go back through
the through the entire system. You know, it has to
cycle through the lungs and back through the heart and
all these sorts of things to be pumped back out.
So this is still going on. So blood is actually
(07:21):
emanating from these particular areas. But Jackie, the the interesting
thing about this, it's it's one thing, when you have
a head strike and you have a single injury, and
as I've stated, you're going to bleed out profusely from
that one location. And of course a lot of that
is deepened upon the size of the of the insult
as well. But Jackie in in Kathleen's case, she's got
(07:46):
seven one, two, three, four, five, six, seven very nasty
lacerations that essentially involved the backside of her head. So
for me as a death investigator, if you're trying to
sell me on this idea, when you fall and gravity
is drawing you down towards the treads of that staircase
(08:08):
and you impact on that particular area, that is not
something I'm going to buy. This is something that would
have required a forceful attack. It would have involved multiple strikes. Now, also,
if you're trying to tell me, well, she went back
up the stairs and fell not just once but twice,
(08:31):
you know, multiple times, I'm not buying that either. And
these are very very centralized insults that she sustained to
the back of your But you're talking about the amount
of blood that was at the scene, Joe, even if
she had seven lacerations or wounds, how much blood as
your heart pumps is actually going to come out of
(08:52):
those lacerations, I mean, short of cutting an artery or
or a venus. When we think of large amounts of
blood gush, how much blood are we actually talking about
coming from those wounds? Quite a bit, um, quite a bit.
And and just so our listeners understand. Um, you know,
when you hear when you hear people holding forth on
(09:14):
ideas about the amounts of blood that you see at
the scene, it can be very very uh difficult to
quantify that amount. And a lot of that is depending
upon the surface where the blood actually settles on. Um.
You know, if you're talking you know, for instance, like
(09:34):
a carpeted surface, there's no way to quantify that because
you know you've got multiple layers there. Then you think about,
you know, to what degree has the blood dried, And
the drying of blood is an issue in this particular
case as well. There are a couple of people that
actually stated at the scene they saw dried blood. So
that involves a time factor. Um. You know, where you
(09:57):
think about the elements of of the in dwelling environmental conditions,
you know, relative humidity, temperature, all these sorts of things,
and also um, you have no idea uh as to
the depth of the blood that's being distributed all over
(10:17):
the place. Uh, you know, because depth is important when
we're measuring volume. You know, let's just think about that.
You know, the depth of say, for instance, a swimming pool.
We can look in the shallow in and it appears
to have quite a bit of water there. You go
to the deep end, it's even it's even more. It's
kind of simple science, but you have to understand there's
no way to measure that at a scene relative to
(10:38):
a pool. So your ability to quantify the amount of
blood that was lost at the scene, even though it
is appearance at least is a large pool, you don't
understand the thickness, and of course that follows relative volume
as well. So going along with the amount of blood
that was found in the house, let's look at this forensically.
When the police arrived, they first believe that this is
(11:00):
an accident, that Kathleen has fallen down the stairs based
on what her husband has said. So we find forensically
that a lot of things are going on that impact
what you should have been able to tell happened. Police
did not cordon off the scene immediately we had the
sun come in and he tracked blood as he came
(11:23):
through to the kitchen. There were blood smears on the
wall that police were not originally sure where they came from.
And you had neighbors and friends coming over to see
what was going on as they saw the police activity.
So you have lots of people impacting your crime scene?
What do you do? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And this
(11:43):
goes back to you know, my hero that I've mentioned
several times, ed muhan Lecard you know, uh, Edmond, you
know plainly stated that every contact leaves a trace. That
everybody brings something to a scene that has the potential
to bespoil this environment you know where, Uh, And it
could be any number of things. It could be the
(12:04):
dirt on their shoes. It could be the shoes that
they're wearing and the texture of those shoes and how
it transfers the blood that's in dwelling at the scene
they step in and transfers it to another location. It
could be them. Hey, you know we were talking about
the volume of blood. Uh, you don't know what's going
on outside. So when you open that door multiple times,
you can have wind that blows through there. You can
(12:25):
have any number of trace elements that come in there.
You can wind can impact uh, the scene itself, and
not to mention, you don't have accountability relative to who
is engaging and interacting with the decedent as well. Now
we do know that two a m t s arrived
at the scene, then you have the police and then
(12:45):
you have this kind of cast that comes in afterwards.
You know, it's at that point in time. And it's
one of the things that we teach young police officers
uh that when they arrive at a scene, it's so
very important uh to actually secure that area and keep
everybody out. Then you realize how hard it is to
tell family members to stay out of the scene, and
(13:06):
that's very difficult. But sometimes the police have to stand
up and say no, you cannot come in here at
this point in time. And it's hard to know when
this transitioned from, say, for instance, an emergent event you know,
where you're trying to render aid, to when this actually
became identified as a crime scene. Those are two different
(13:28):
uh mill us, if you will. It's kind of a
fancy word for the environment in which this is all occurring.
So when is it that they geared back and they said, hey,
well we need everybody to exit as quickly as you
possibly can. Everybody step out, and it's at that point
in time that he had to cordin off the area.
(13:48):
You have to sequester those individuals that actually made contact
in the scene because they're gonna walk off and they
might have evidence on them. You know, we go back
to this idea of shoe prints. There was actually a
shoeprint that was found on Kathleen's sweatpants. I would want
to know the provenance of that of that shoeprint. I'd
like to know the point of origin relative to that shoeprint,
(14:10):
you know, because Michael's shoes and socks were actually on
the floor adjacent to her body, So how did that
dynamic occur? I want accountability for everybody it's there, because
everybody that touches this thing actually has the ability to
destroy the entire case before it even gets started. You know,
(14:47):
as a death investigator, you show up at the scene,
you know you're begging for information from the dead. I
know that sounds quite bizarre, but you know, there's that
old adage that we always talk about um of We
speak for the those who can no longer speak for themselves,
and we read things into the life that they had
led the during the events of their death, and certainly
(15:10):
what happened to the bodies afterwards. And that's important here
in uh Kathleen Peterson's death, Jackie, there's a big factor,
Joe that I want to talk about. Going back to
the blood just a little bit. The next theory that
we're looking at here is the fact that Kathleen could
have been murdered by her husband. So if Kathleen did
(15:31):
not fall down the stairs and cause these seven lacerations
as you described, to her head, then that means she
would have been it in the head. She would have
been bludgeoned. And I find it very interesting, Joe, that
there was one huge piece of evidence that points to
the fact that she really could not have fallen down
(15:52):
the stairs and remained in that supine position. What was it?
That's the fact that she's got blow on the soles
of her feet. You know, unless you want to go
off chasing rabbits, theoretically, you begin to think about this
and you think, well, you know, did some never do
well come up and paint the soles of her feet
(16:13):
with her own blood? And Obviously that's not going to
be the case. So how how do we arrive at
a position where the blood winds up on the soles
of her feet? And the only explanation is that after
she was struck and blood began to seep from her
head or pour from her head, or you know, actually
spray from her head if it's an arterial strike, then
(16:35):
we have to believe that she walked, she walked through
a pool of blood, her own blood there that's distributed
on the treads of the stairs, that there was no
awareness on her part that she is essentially under attack.
For me, you know, I visualized her in this environment
(16:57):
and she's standing there, she struck, or perhaps someone comes
in from the top above her and strikes her. As
she's at the base of the stairs and blood begins
to seet down, she gets it onto the soles of
her feet. One other indicator here that's absolutely fascinating to
me is the fact that when her hands are actually examined,
(17:21):
they find bits of hair caught on her hands and
dried their uh visa via the blood, And there's actually
contused areas on the back sides of her hands, which
you know, almost gives you the impression of someone raising
their hands above their head. They have an awareness they're
being struck in the head. Right, just follow me here
(17:41):
and that area where you're stowing. You know, what, what
do we do when we sense that we have injured
our head? One of the it's a natural reaction to
reach up and place our hand there to check ourselves
or to protect ourselves. Was that what Kathleen was doing.
And in the interim, blood is transferring to her fingers,
the pumps her hands and she pulls away in her
(18:02):
own hair is caught there. So you've got this very
dynamic situation that's taking place there at the base of
that staircase. Jack. So then we need to move on
and look at what possibly could have caused those lacerations,
since we now don't believe they were caused by the fall.
One theory that was raised was the lack of what's
called a blowpoke. It is a fireplace utensil that that
(18:27):
could have been the murder weapon. So what kind of
a wound would a fireplace utensil cause? And is it
consistent that it would have caused seven lacerations as you described, Yeah, Yeah,
there's a high probability that it could you're talking about
a cylindrical shaped object, which essentially is a metal tube. Um,
(18:49):
it would you would have to be able to utilize
this instrument so that you could uh deliver energy from
a single strike where you would raise it, say, for instance,
above your head or swinging it from the side, and
hit a point of impact at that at that moment
in time. And what happens That energy that you're generating.
(19:11):
Let's just say, for instance, you're raising above your head
and you're striking downward. That energy that you're generating by
that force as you're bringing that thing down onto the
top of her head transfers to that point of impact
along the shaft of that blowpoke or an object similar
to that, and it transfers to the skin. And what
(19:33):
happens then, well, it results in these lacerations. And just
kind of on a little aside here. Um, many people
get very confused when they hear the term laceration. My
friends in the medical community, they will use laceration very broadly.
Somebody comes into an emergency room, You'll hear and all
the you know, the medical shows and whatnot, and they'll
say they've got a lack Well that that's an abbreviation
(19:57):
for a laceration, but it could you know that could
endo it also a sharp fourth injury. This is not
sharp force, and how do we delineate that. Well, when
we examine these types of injuries and the morgue, and
you have a blunt force laceration where someone is struck,
what will happen is that it will generate, first off,
a very jagged wound. It will be very irregular. The
(20:21):
edges or what it referred to as the margins will
not be neat because there's actually a tearing. And if
anyone wants to get an idea as to what this
looks like, if anyone at home has like say, simply
a pencil and an orange, you take the orange and
you place the shaft of the pencil onto the surface
of the orange and you press down. What happens, well,
(20:43):
the orange begins to rise around the sides of the
shaft of that pencil. That's basically what happens with the laceration.
The skin as it's impacted, kind of wraps itself for
just a moment around the sides of that cylindrical object,
and the skin then begins to rip or tear. And
that's why you get this real nasty looking injury that
(21:07):
rises up. Now, if this we're safe, for instance, um
ma chetty wound or an axe or something like that
that has a milled edge. Edges are gonna be very
very neat it all. It's not necessarily all look like surgery,
but there will be very well defined the forensic pathologists
call it defined margins. With this, you're not gonna have
(21:27):
that because not only is the skin gonna tear, guess
what else is gonna happen. You'll get these little abraided
areas along the edge, and that gives you an indication
that something has been torn at that moment time. Now,
could it be generated from fall? Yeah, but it's gonna
be a single impact. I don't know of anybody worth
their salt out there in forensic practice that's gonna say
(21:50):
that an individual would sustain this many lacerations from a
single fall. Generally you're gonna see one maybe maybe too,
but you're gonna fall a great distance in order to
make that happen. So you brought up blunt force versus
sharp force injuries. But Kathleen, with even with all of
these lacerations in her skull, she didn't have any skull
(22:12):
fractures and there was no brain swelling. Wouldn't you expect
that in a blunt force trauma. Well, I think everybody
automatically flees to this idea that if you have a
laceration and that's associated with blunt force trauma, that there's
going to be, say, for instance, a depressed skull fracture
underlying that laceration. And that's just not the case. And
(22:35):
when you begin to combine this with uh, the other
elements that we have going on, and let's just let's
just play Devil's advocate here for a second. Let's say
she was just struck once and it split her head open.
Now we could say that she might bleed to death,
but it would take a much longer amount of time.
What begins to take place here, though, after all of
(22:56):
these strikes, is you have a schemia that's letting in
and so you have an individual that's losing let me interrupt,
a schemia. What is that? A schemia is a condition
that arises from a lack of oxygen aated blood that's
being uh supplied to the brain. So essentially it's being
shunted or it's being um impeded to making it back
(23:20):
through the system because you're bleeding out. Essentially you have
a big defect in your body. And in Kathleen's you
know circumstances, she had seven of these things, Jackie. It's
not just one, she had seven. So she's gonna bleed
out from these multiple areas. And listen, the longer someone
is down in this environment where they've got what are
referred to as just like agonal respirations, their hearts still pumping,
(23:43):
and you just allow them to lay there, you've got
more time for them to kind of dwindle away. Now,
one of the things that the forensic pathologists stated in
this case, that's that's quite fascinating. You know people have wondered, well,
you know there's there's no hemorry essentially on the brain.
There was some uh, subarachnoid that was there that arises
(24:06):
from a concussive event. Okay, I'm sorry, subarachnoid, check out
of let me say what again. Yeah, So with subarachnoid,
the arachnoid surface of the brain is actually the surface
of the brain, as opposed to say subdural subdural dura,
meaning the sack that the brain is essentially encased in
(24:26):
and your cerebral spinal fluid kind of circulates around it.
You can get actually a subdural hematoma, which is hemorrhages
trapped in between the dura sack and the surface of
the brain, which has the arachnoid surface. The arachnoid surface
is actually the surface of the brain, but this is
inside of the brain. And this has arisen from what
(24:48):
the forensic pathologist has characterized as a concussive injury. And
she didn't just have one concussive injury, Jackie, she had
multiple concussive injuries. And of course this is the opinion
of the forensic pathologists because there's not a lot of
evidence to bear this out. She is essentially speculating what
(25:09):
she can do because she is a court qualified expert,
that she died as a result of multiple concussive injuries
to the brain. So you know, you think about, well,
what is a concussion. Will anybody that has ever heard
allowed boom that goes off and it kind of rattles
your cage just for a second, that's a concussion, uh,
(25:30):
concussive event. So you've got her brain that is reacting
to these blows where her brain is literally kind of
um a sloshing back and forth inside of her skull.
She's disoriented at that moment time she goes down, maybe
into an unconscious state. And all the while, all the while,
her heart is still beating, her lungs are still working.
(25:52):
But guess what. The blood is not going where it
should go. The blood is going all over the floor.
The blood is going all over the treads at the stairs,
and that's what led to her death. One other point
to consider Joe and talking about these blunt force injuries
to her head, if she had fallen down the stairs
as was stated, you would have expected there to be
(26:13):
some kind of injury to the neck. I would have
to think being hit with not very much accuracy if
you're just swinging at someone's head, you know, could hit
other parts of the body. So what are we looking
at in form of any kind of neck injuries that
Kathleen had. Yeah, you know, you think about this is
a very dynamic event when somebody falls down a set
(26:38):
of stairs. And one of the things that you know
when we check for this at the scene, actually, as
medical legal death investigators, we we look for what's referred
to as crepitus, and crepitus is kind of a I
don't want to put anybody off by saying this, but hey,
this is body backs. This is what we talked about.
There's kind of a crunchiness that takes place in the neck,
(26:58):
and if the neck is broken, I'm just talking about
the initial external examination. You can actually feel this kind
of crunchiness in the neck and it gives you an
indication that something is wrong. Of course, that has to
be verified, you know, just prior to autopsy at the
morgue where you're going to do an X ray of
the body. But in Kathleen's case, there's no evidence of
(27:19):
a broken neck. All of her vertebral bodies were intact. Okay, However,
I'm not concerned with the back of her neck, Jackie.
I'm what's fascinating to me about this whole case is
one little injury that doesn't get talked about a lot,
and that is this cartilaginous fracture that's taken place on
(27:40):
the thyroid cartilage. And if everybody at home will essentially
take your index finger and feel on the left side
of your throat where say, for instance, your your Adam's
apple is, and you just go above it, we say
in in in our in our parlance, we say superior.
There is a little old bitty area up here. You
(28:02):
can kind of feel it through your skin, called corn
you And it's a little cartilaginous body, you know, Jackie,
she had a fracture. She had a fracture there. The
cartilage was actually fractured. People don't think about cartilaginous fractures,
but they do occur, and in my experience at least,
and this is way way up in the neck, Jackie,
(28:23):
I mean way up. We're not here's here's that infamous
little bone. We're not quite at the level of the highoid,
but we're just below it, okay. And so at that level,
at that level, that little feature is actually fractured. You
know what takes to do that. It takes pressure, Jackie.
It takes pressure directly applied to their or. I guess
(28:46):
you could say that if someone was struck uh with
an instrument, you might could achieve that, But what they're
seen at the scene doesn't necessarily match up, for instance,
with uh, this blowpoke striking that area. So I don't know.
I think that many people that might look at this
(29:06):
might think that direct pressure was applied to that specific area,
you know, maybe consistent with a couple of hands, such
as in a case of throttling, or where the hand
is configured into a ce essentially with a thumb dominant
on the on the right side and the fingers digging
into the neck on the left side and applying direct
pressure to that area until that little area of cartilage snaps. Now,
(29:30):
how in the world does it? Perfectly healthy woman, and
she was healthy. Her coronary ardors were almost completely clear, Jackie.
She has not had a heart attack, she has not
had a stroke, She doesn't really have that much in
dwelling natural disease going on. How does she how does
she sustain that specific injury? You know, we can talk
about the back of the head all day long, but
(29:50):
how does this anterior or front of the neck insult occur?
She did not have any bruising around her neck, did
she know? She She didn't nothing that was truly significant
in this particular case, and so that would uh, you know,
she had several other areas of insult that were she
had some injuries on her back, she had some injuries
(30:13):
on her arms, and of course, you know, as I mentioned,
just a moment ago. There were those insults of course,
on the backs of her hands where she had clutched,
you know, hair in her hands that was dried in
there and kind of stuck to the surface, or what
referred to as the palmer aspects of the hands where
the hair had come away from her head. It goes
(30:54):
without saying I think that injuries can tell us a
lot about a case and about what occurred, uh in
the moments just prior to death. But you know, Jackie,
I gotta tell you, in Kathleen Peterson's case, we've got
so many injuries, there are so many insults, and to
say that this is a dynamic case I think is
rather understatement of the facts. It is Joe. In fact,
(31:18):
some would say it's fanciful in some aspects because of
this third theory that Kathleen Peterson's death was caused by,
of all things, an owl. All you have to do
is google the owl theory and you'll find more than
you ever want to know. It has been put out
(31:39):
there that Kathleen was attacked by an owl which caused
her fault. Some are saying that her injuries on her
head came from talents. How do you address that Joe. Well,
first off, I would address it by saying that none
of that evidence has ever made it into court. That
the genesis of that evidence, actually it comes arises from
(32:01):
a neighbor of the Peterson's who happens to be an
attorney in Durham. That he came up with this idea
that perhaps it was in fact, uh particular species of
owl that attacked Kathleen Peterson as she was running into
the house and suddenly, uh, you know, the awl may
or may not have chased her, she tumbled down the
(32:23):
staircase and struck her head. There was, um, there was
a single owl feather that was entered into uh, entered
into evidence, as I think probably an incidental finding. And
then you know, I think kind of use the word fanciful.
I think that it is fanciful, um that this has
(32:43):
been uh you know, the foundation for this, this idea
that a bird of prey attacked her at this particular time. Now,
I will say this. You know, owl's are known to
move around at night, hence the term night owl. Okay,
they move around night. They're kind of nocturnal animals. So
I guess you could put that forward. But again you've
(33:06):
got to give me something more than that, because they're
saying that these injuries that she has sustained on the
back of her head, uh may may be consistent with
the talents of an owl, where essentially the skin has
been uh insized by these talents and in torn and
you have these evulsions, and evulsions are part and parcel
(33:31):
of lacerations, and it gives you an idea of the
amount of force that was used. One in particular is
rather than ghastly, there's there's kind of a triangular shaped
evulsion that measures several centimeters in length and it it's
kind of pie shaped, um, you know, like a slice
of pizza essentially, and it's flapped back over. I don't
(33:53):
think that that's indicative of, say, for instance, a bird
of prey, but it goes to the ferocity with which
she was struck. You know, this is a tearing event
that takes place with this blunt force trauma where the
cylindrical object is being driven down onto the external surface
of her of her scalp, and it tears it away.
(34:16):
And the reason you kind of get this pie shape,
if you will, is the fact that she was struck
once on one side and then there was another strike
that took place almost immediately adjacent, and it led to
this tearing away a tremendous amount of force. It wasn't
significant enough so that it fractured the external table of skull,
(34:36):
but it was significant enough so that the skin itself
was was ripped away. So I find all this information
that you're giving me about the lacerations and the injuries
to the skull fascinating. But I've got to go back
to the blood, the blood amount that is found on
the floor. There is blood, as you said, on the
bottom of her feet, there's blood on the wall, and
(35:00):
you kind of alluded to and we we got away
from it earlier, the difference between blood spatter and and
blood droplets. How is all of this going to come
into plagia because we have heard contradicting evidence about what
happened to that blood was the blood smear on the
wall and effort to wipe it away? Was the blood
(35:22):
droplets aspiration from her breathing out blood from her lungs?
Address that for me, I have to say, as a
forensic scientist, Um, you have to be you have to
take great care when you move forward with blood stained evidence.
That it is written in stone as to how you
(35:47):
apply your assessment, and let me kind of break it
down for you, so so our listeners understand. Let's say,
for instance, you're talking about a latent print, okay, where
print has been left behind by a suspect. Okay, we
dust that area, we find the print, we raise it,
and we lift it. Okay. Then we have a database,
(36:09):
a template, if you will, that we will go back
and we will examine that print, see if it matches
up with anything, and then we can begin to apply
quantities or values to that print, and in the end
we have almost a mathematical assessment that validates that print.
(36:29):
You don't have that with blood stain. You don't what
template are you going to use? Now we talk about
blood stain in terms of low velocity, medium velocity, and
high velocity, and kind of that dynamic that takes place
as blood is sprayed about or spread about in those
sorts of things. Um, how are you going to measure
(36:51):
that and come back with a consistent template. And that's
one of the reasons I think it was all the
way back in two thousand nine Jackie Um there was
actually a federal study that was done relative to to
blood stained evidence and questioning kind of the science behind it.
And you know, you're gonna have two separate people that
will interpret this, and they can interpret it any number
(37:14):
of ways, because there is no hard and fast rule
to constructing or reconstructing a scene relative to the dynamics
of the blood stained. So you know, you can look
at a wipe or swipe on a wall and you
can get an idea that, yeah, probably something there happened
relative to somebody attempting to clean up. But when you
(37:34):
get what in this case would be medium velocity, which
is consistent with uh, someone swinging a bat, swinging a hammer, uh,
swinging a cylindrical metallic cylindrical object, you can generate that
kind of velocity because of the leverage that's involved in
this generating that injury, and you'll get these kind of
(37:55):
particulate bits of of spray that are deposited it all
over the place. With that, with that, you begin to think, well,
what could be the point of origin. Well, you know,
the prosecution said, well, this is definitely arises from a strike,
multiple strikes, But then how are you going to talk
(38:16):
about the overlay, you know, and the dynamic of that
The movement of it in this kind of three dimensional
environment where you've got blood that's overlaying other blood stains
and this sort of thing. Then you've got the defense.
I think one of their witnesses got up on stand
Jackie and said, oh, well, the blood that you're seeing
on the wall here, this is aspirate. This is coming
(38:38):
about as a result of her coughing up blood and
spraying it onto the wall. Well, okay, I've seen that
before famously. I saw it in the Jodi Arius case
which Travis Alexander all over the sink. It was bloody aspirate,
and that's medium velocity. It's very fine. But here's the problem.
(38:58):
Her airway had no blood in it. Her lungs had
no blood in them, and they were normal way. It's
not like they were heavily congested. In order to get
blood into the airway, in order to aspirate and spray
it out, you have to have a point of origin.
This was there. There was no source for the blood
to have been sprayed. So that again is a big problem.
(39:20):
And I think, in my opinion at least, that both
the prosecution's blood analysis and the defenses blood analysis that
cancel one another. Out in this case, so all were
left with at the end of the day. In Kathleen
Peterson's case is the assessment of the injuries. How did
those injuries come about? And I can tell you, based
(39:41):
upon what I've seen thus far and based upon my experience,
I have to tell you I don't think an al
did this well. Joeah, jury did the exact same thing
that you're doing here. Weighed all three theories and came
up with murder. Michael Peterson was convicted and sentenced to
life in prison for the murder of his wife. However,
in two thousand and twelve, he was granted a retrial
(40:03):
after it was uncovered that a witness for the prosecution
had given false evidence under oath. Michael released from jail
in two thousand and seventeen. That was about eighty nine
months in prison, and after that he entered an Alfred plea,
which means he was able to maintain his innocence and
he would be sentenced to his time served and no
(40:25):
further charges would be made against him. Joe, Yeah, you're right, Jackie,
And I think you know, reflectively, you begin to think
about the swirl of interest in this particular case and
the public is rightly, rightly interested in this because you know,
even as someone that I considered myself to be rather
(40:46):
seasoned when it comes to death investigation, I have to
tell you, in all of my years, I've never encountered
a case quite this complex, certainly one that I've never
been Um, JOSEPHS got more and this is body packs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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