October 10, 2022 • 58 mins
On December 9, 2001, Michael Peterson, an acclaimed novelist and one-time mayoral candidate, found his wife Kathleen dead at the bottom of their staircase in Raleigh-Durham, NC. Primarily due to the junk science of blood splatter analysis, Peterson was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
David and Sonya are a criminal defense duo who fight for victims of injustice, misconduct and faults of the system. Their podcast, Abuse of Power, dissects how law enforcement and the justice system have failed those they are meant to protect.
David was Michael's first lawyer on the case involving the death of his wife, and he still is to this day. David notably appeared in the documentary, The Staircase, as Michael's lawyer. Sonya covered the case as a television reporter in Raleigh-Durham, and has been following the story since the beginning. David and Sonya have supported and advocated for Michael throughout his entire wrongful conviction experience. This episode is one of Michael’s very few recent press appearances, and Wrongful Conviction is the first ever podcast to have Michael Peterson as a guest.
To learn more about the junk science of blood splatter analysis:
https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/147-wrongful-conviction-junk-science-bloodstain-pattern-evidence/
To listen to the Abuse of Power podcast, visit:
https://www.audible.com/pd/Abuse-of-Power-with-David-Rudolf-and-Sonya-Pfeiffer-Podcast/B09MJLWHKS
This episode is part of a special series in our Wrongful Conviction podcast feed of 15 episodes focused on individual cases of wrongful incarceration, guest hosted by formerly incarcerated returning citizens and leading criminal justice advocates, award-winning journalists and progressive influencers.
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Jason Flam. Through this podcast, I aim to highlight
how frequently our criminal legal system shatters the lives of
innocent people, whether junk science has introduced at trial, police
or prosecutor, a misconduct or simply a misidentification. Each story
is devastating on its own, but when we zoom out
and take in the sheer breadth of the issue, we
(00:20):
can see a pattern forming across our entire system. Who
better to take us on that journey than the brilliant
journalists and writers who regularly cover these stories. Kathleen Peterson
was found by her husband, Michael Peterson, bleeding and struggling
(00:41):
to breathe at the bottom of a staircase. It was
the middle of the night on a summer ninth two one.
Michael called one and held her as she lay dying.
When emergency services arrived, there was blood all over the walls,
the floor, and on Michael's clothing, which led Durham Police
(01:01):
Detective Art Holland to quickly assume this was a murder.
Michael became a suspect in Kathleen's death, and Durham Police
pursued this theory to the exclusion of all other evidence.
After a highly publicized trial, Peterson was convicted and sentenced
to life in prison without parole. His attorney, David Rudolph,
(01:25):
was able to overturn the conviction eight years later, and
Michael was released. After waiting for a new trial for
five years and after turning seventy years old, Michael was
tired of fighting. He decided to take an Alford plea,
a plea where the defendant maintains his innocence but admits
(01:46):
that the evidence presented could result in a jury finding
him guilty. This is probably a case you've heard about
and might already have an opinion on. There is a
popular Netflix documentary called The Staircase, and this year HBO
produced a mini series of the same name. But despite
all that coverage and drama, Michael Peterson has refused to
(02:10):
speak to the media about the case until recently, and
that's why we wanted to speak with him today to
give him the opportunity to tell his side. It's an
important story that highlights so many of the problems with
the American criminal justice system. This is wrongful conviction. Good afternoon.
(02:43):
I'm Sonia Peiffer. I'm a criminal defense and civil rights
attorney based in Toronto, Ontario and Charlotte, North Carolina and
co host of the podcast Abuse of Power on Audible.
And I'm David Rudolph. I'm also the co host of
Abuse of Power with Sonia, who is my wife and
law partner. Yes, for those who don't know, we are married.
(03:05):
And we met while I was a television reporter and
Raleigh Durham assigned to cover the Peterson case and you
were representing Michael, and Michael is here with us today
to talk about this case that really changed all of
our lives. Hi, Michael Peterson, I'm in Durham, North Carolina,
almost seventy nine years old. Uh, still a felon and
(03:25):
still a writer. Let's jump right in, Michael, because you
mentioned two things that I think people know about you already,
That you're a writer and that, yes, you are a
convicted felon. But before we talk about how you moved
to Durham and then met Mary Kathleen, you had a
whole other life. I don't think a lot of people
know about who Michael Peterson was before all of this.
(03:48):
Can you talk a little bit about how you grew up.
I was born in Tennessee. I think I stayed there
maybe four weeks. Uh, my father is a military officer.
We moved. I don't think I stayed in a particular
grade more than one year. It was very what can
(04:08):
I say, transient childhood, but very fulfilling, and I loved it.
I wouldn't trade it for anything, because I lived in
so many different places. So you went to Duke for
undergrad I mean I have to ask tar heels or devils.
Oh please, you do not want to profanity relation a
(04:29):
podcast here. So after university you enrolled in the military,
and by this point you had also married your first wife, Patty,
and you and Patty also lived overseas. Tell me about
that part of your life. Uh, well, she is military also,
and uh god. We lived Germany with Japan, traveled everywhere
(04:53):
together for many, many many We were married twenty five
years and she unfortunately last year massive heart attack, very
very very sad day. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I
did hear about that, and I know David spoke to you.
But yeah, you and Patty have a special relationship. And
then you and Patty had two kids together. Tell me
(05:14):
about your two sons, Clayton and Todd. They were both
born in Germany. So I want to talk about Germany
because as we continue talking today, that's going to resurface
as as you know well when it comes to your trial.
But in Germany, you and Patty became parents a second time.
Um explained to our listeners who George and Elizabeth Ratliffe
(05:38):
are and how it came to be that you and
Patty were the guardians of their daughters. When we first
met Liz, oh she was a teacher and Patty was
a teacher, and they became very very close friends. And
then we met George and he really was a wonderful guy.
George died in three He was on a mission uh
(06:01):
the invasion of Granada and he died. And then Liz
was left with two very small, very small children, and
she had a nobody knew at the time, a serious
medical condition. She was suffering from von Villa Brown's disease.
And I think that the stress of raising two small children,
the loss of her husband, it was it was too
(06:24):
much for her. And she died. And unknown to me,
the military flew up and said, did you know that
George had asked you to adopt his children or take
care of the children if anything had happened to him,
and I said, no, George and talked to me about that.
He said, well, it's in the will and I said okay.
So then and Liz had the same will, and when
(06:45):
she died in nineth I became the defect of guardians
of Margaret and Martha. You and Patty were still together
at the time, Is that right? Oh? Yes? Yes? What
was it like bringing those two young girls into your family?
I think it was more of a strain on Patty,
and that's I think, really essentially what broke up our
(07:07):
marriage as that Patty, and I don't mean this in
any negative way whatsoever, she felt it would be better
if others raised Margaret and Martha one of their relatives,
and so I said, no, I'll keep the children, and
so I raised them, and then I met Kathleen and
that became another journey. Let's talk about Kathleen. How did
(07:31):
you two meet? Uh? Kathleen was when we came back
from Germany with the two girls. Uh. They were four
and five at the time, I think, and Kathleen and
her husband, uh Fred were living down the block in
another house and I we met at Margaret's fifth birthday party.
(07:51):
Because Caitlin was the same age, and we just became
very close after that, more and more close. And you
mentioned Caitlin. Caitlin is Kathleen's daughter from her first marriage, right, correct,
And that's Caitlin Atwater. And how did your relationship with
Kathleen developed? Uh, well, it's one of these neighborhood stories.
(08:16):
And uh, we just saw more of each other and
realized that we were very much suited for one another.
And over time your relationship really became something quite special.
I mean, something that I think other people would say
they envied in a relationship. Would you agree with that? Oh?
I think so. I mean we had a great, great relationship.
She was, Oh god, she was well sexual and funny
(08:41):
and smart. She was used to say that, for God's sake,
don't tell anybody your college board scores. I don't want
anybody know living for someone so stupid. Uh, And it
was just fun. Every day with her was fun. So David,
I want switch and and talk with you now. And
(09:02):
moved to Kathleen's death and so it was called a crime.
But let's start with the death. On December ninth, two
thoe when Kathleen was found by Michael and Michael, I'll
ask you about that in a little bit. But December night,
two thousand one, Kathleen is found inside the home she
(09:23):
shared with Michael and Forest Hills. Can you talk about
what was known at that time and initially how the
discovery of Kathleen's body was treated. I think initially, at
least in the press, it was just treated as a
prominent author's wife was found dead in their home. And
(09:45):
I don't think initially, at least for the public, Uh,
there was any connection to it being a crime that
changed relatively quickly. And David, I'm going to ask you
to describe the scene a little bit, because, as we'll
talk about later, what the scene looked like became a
(10:09):
fact that really influenced investigators. So could you describe that, sure,
because it was a horrendous looking scene. Uh, you know
when you walked in, and I did early on to
meet with Michael. We did not meet in a diner
eating a pistronomy sandwich, as the HBO series indicated. But
(10:31):
when I when I came in, uh, you know, Michael
showed me the scene and there was blood all over
the walls and all over the floor, you know, dried blood. Uh.
And you know, the immediate reaction when you saw that
was Wow, something really terrible happened here. But you know
(10:53):
what I didn't realize when I first saw that, and
obviously what the police didn't realize when they saw it,
was that the scalp bleeds incredibly. It is the most
vascarrized part of a human body. And so when somebody
is bleeding out from deep wounds in their scalp, there
(11:15):
is a massive amount of blood. And the massive amount
of blood was not indicative of what caused the wounds.
It was just indicative of the fact that the wounds
bled a lot, that she was conscious for some period
of time. Uh, and therefore there was blood all over.
But when you first looked at it, Uh, it looked
(11:37):
like a crime scene. I mean it did. And Michael,
you were the first one to see that scene. What
do you remember about walking upon that scene that the
blood seemed Kathleen there, what do you remember about that?
When I came into these we had been at the
pool and then I came into the house. Uh. She
(12:01):
had a teleconference next morning, So I stayed outside with
the dogs for a while and then came in and
then I went to go in the back staircase and
there she was lying there at the bottom of the stairs,
and I, you know, I saw the blood, but I
was not it didn't I didn't focus so much on
the blood as I focused on Kathleen lying on the ground.
(12:24):
And that's when I called nine one one and infamous
one one call, and you know, I said, she fell
down the stairs. And people asked me afterwards, but why
do you think she fell down the stairs as well?
If you find somebody at the bottom of the stairs,
or obvious thought is that she must have fallen. And
that's what I did think. Was it surreal though? I
(12:46):
mean to come upon that after you had had this
evening together by the pool, I mean will describe that
it was one of those what you know, what what's
going on? What happened? Uh? There' she was talking and alive,
and then suddenly I walked in and she's she was dying.
(13:06):
She was still breathing faintly, faintly, and you know, I've
seen enough death in Vietnam to know that she was dying.
And so I, as you know, I put her down
and rand to the call one ran to open the
door for them, and uh and then was holding her
when E MT. Came in and surreal, well just shocking,
(13:32):
I think it's a better word. And so you just
described you coming to Kathleen and holding Kathleen and calling
Niman one. So you yourself, of course you're you're now
covered in blood, right, yeah, I suppose. I mean again,
the blood was not a significant thing, you know, to me?
That was it. I mean was significant was that Kathleen
(13:56):
was dying. David, Let's let's talk now about the investing gaistion. Right,
So we we sort of set that scene. Michael calls nine.
Eight minutes later, paramedics show up. And then what Well,
after the paramedics showed up, First of all, there was
no U protecting the scene. People were walking in and out.
(14:20):
The police showed up. Uh, and Art Holland has said
that he walked into the scene and immediately came to
the conclusion that this was a crime. You know, he
reacted to the amount of blood at the scene, and
so we have a classic case of confirmation bias and
(14:43):
tunnel vision. He immediately forms his conclusion that there's a
murder here, that there's a crime here. Who's the only
person in the house. Well, it's Michael Peterson. Uh, you know,
the the assumption in these situations is that the spouse
must be the perpetrator, and that's where they went. It
(15:07):
was supposed to be an investigation of what happened here,
and instead there was an assumption about what happened, and
then the focus became Michael is the perpetrator because there
was no one else to blame. And I want to
break down for listeners, UH, what you said about tunnel
vision and confirmation bias, because those are two different things,
but they really work hand in hand. Right, So tunnel vision,
(15:31):
that's what you're talking about. Art Holland comes in, he
sees blood. In his mind, he thinks this is a homicide,
so now he is focused only on that homicide. Everything
else is blacked out, Like when you enter a tunnel
confirmation bias is then processing all of that information that
you find through that lens through that tunnel vision lens.
(15:52):
And that is the way the investigation continued, not just
with Art Holland, right, but then they have a so
called blood spot expert I hate to even use that word,
in Dwyane Deaver, who also shows up on the scene. Right, Well,
he shows up that very night a little bit later
on uh, and he's infected by art Holland's tunnel vision
(16:17):
and art Holland's confirmation bias. So he's there not to
really explore what the blood spatter means, assuming that one
can even get any sort of information from that that's worthwhile.
He's there to again assist art Holland improving that this
(16:37):
was a murder and that Michael Peterson did it, and
so he engages in what he calls pulling strings. David,
let me ask you to explain that pulling strings and
point of origin. I know it's very familiar to you,
but explain for our listeners what that means, what it
(16:57):
is that Dwyne Deaver was trying to eve. When you
have a massive blood spatter and you're trying to determine
from where that spatter originated, UH, you can take a
look at the angles of the spatter on the walls
and work backwards from there with various spatter UH selections
(17:23):
and try to find what is called an area of origin.
And that's the best that you can do. The science
is absolutely clear that yes, you can do that to
find an area of origin, but you can't do that
to find a specific point of origin. The area of
(17:45):
origin is gonna be like twelve by eighteen inches. And
the problem was, if he had done that properly, the
area of origin would have been the walls and the
and the steps. Well, that wouldn't have helped our Holland's
case at all. So instead, what he had to do
is find what he called points of origin, and that
(18:08):
was the first step in in essence, framing Michael Peterson
for this murder. And when we talk about origin, a
point of origin or an area of origin, what you're
talking about is impact. If it were a fall at
what point on the stairs at her head hit at
what place on the wall, that's what you're talking about,
(18:29):
right exactly where did the blood start to flow. And
you mentioned Art Holland coming back with a search warrant,
that's another thing falling right into his tunnel vision. And
this is where he he went out and he got
a search war right away that evening, that very evening,
right oh, within within an hour, within less than an hour,
(18:51):
that's where he was headed. So let's talk about the injuries, David,
because of course there wasn't autopsy, and the autopsy found
that this was blunt force trauma. Actually not the autopsy initially, Uh,
what debor Ratish found initially was that the cause of
(19:11):
death was a loss of blood exanguination. And then we
found out later from going through the file. Uh, the
chief medical examiner came in and essentially told her, no,
you need to put on the autopsy that the cause
of death was blunt force trauma. That was not the
(19:34):
cause of death. We all agree that would cause Kathleen's
death was the loss of blood. So why all of
a sudden do we have blunt forced trauma as the
cause of death. That is a question that I don't
think has ever been satisfactorily answered. Well, and you know,
you talk about tunnel vision, you talk about it infecting
(19:55):
other people. This is yet another example. So initially Deborati
says cause of death is blood loss. Then she later
changed it to blunt force trauma. But there were problems
with that being the cause of death, right because blunt
force trauma usually has some well known associated conditions, right
(20:18):
like subdural hematoma edema. None of that existed here. Kathleen
didn't have any of the injuries that are normally associated
with blunt forced trauma. She had no injuries to her brain,
There was no subdual, There were no contusions to the brain,
there were no fractures on her arms. Uh, there was
(20:39):
nothing that was consistent with blunt force trauma. So when
you look at that, you say to yourself, Okay, how
is that possible? How is it possible that none of
the things that I know as a lawyer are normally
associated with blunt forced trauma are there? And so I say, okay, well,
(21:00):
let's take a look at all the autopsies going back
ten years and see if we can find even one other,
even one other which had none of those injuries. And
so that's what we did, and in fact, there was
not a single other blunt forced trauma death that didn't
(21:21):
have at least one and often several of those kinds
of injuries. Kathleen Peterson was the only case in the
previous ten years where they claimed blunt forced trauma was
the cause of death, but there were none of those
associated injuries. And we'll talk about the trial in a
(21:42):
little bit, but back to the investigation. Michael, do you
remember talking to investigators that night on December nine? Oh? Yes,
I mean right away. Uh, you know, they came in
and my son Tad arrived with his girlfriend Pigment. At
the party, they sept rated everybody and it was Todd
(22:02):
who instantly simply because of that and also the way
that they were just acting, he picked up right away.
He said, Dad, they're trying to get you. And that
didn't make any sense to me. Number one, I was
in shock in Suitland. But why so he called my
brother who was an attorney in Reno and uh for
(22:24):
which later it was like, oh, we had lawyered up.
But my brother Bill talked to Holland and said, do
not question Michael Peterson. I would have been happy to
answer anything. I had to cooperate. That's on the reason
why not. And Holland kept trying to do that, put
his arm around me, and Todd said no, Dad, no, nope,
(22:47):
don't talk not just snap me out of it. And
I realized, oh, yeah, they really are definitely out to
get me. So let's talk about your arrest now. Because
(23:10):
it wasn't immediate. I mean, this was December nine two one,
But sounds like you were well aware that eyes were
on you. Tell me about when you got arrested. What happened.
David wanted me to go to Charlotte at least get
out of Durham because he knew the arrest was coming,
but all I could think of was the rap Ruth
(23:32):
case in which he had fled. As a matter of fact,
I said, no, if they're going to arrest me, they're
gonnaarrest me, and I'll surrender if this is what they want.
So I made a decision that I would go to
the courthouse and surrender. Uh for that, and I was
but in jail for two weeks. David, what do you
(23:53):
remember about that, because by now you were hired, right.
I was hired relatively early on, before the case even
went to a grand jury. What I was originally talking
to Michael about was the fact that I was afraid
that the police are going to just swoop in before
we had a chance to arrange a surrender. Because surrenders
(24:15):
get arranged. I was able to reach the district Attorney's office.
We were able to arrange a time for Michael to
to show up and surrender himself. In part, the reason
to do that is because it helps to set up
the bail situation, and eventually we were able to get
a judge to set a bond from Michael that Michael
(24:37):
could make, which is an enormously helpful thing. If your
client is in it makes the case much more difficult
to defend. So December two thousand one is when Michael
was charged with first degree murder and then released in January.
So now it is January two thou two. The trial
(24:58):
is a little more than a year in two thousand three, David,
can you talk about the two theories at trial? What
was the States case? What was your case? Our case
was sort of set from the very beginning when Michael
Uh said she's fallen down the stairs, because that was
(25:19):
the logical conclusion. Everything that Michael told me from the
first day that I met him always checked out, and
so yeah, I would go and talk with Michael and
he says, well, you know, we were watching a movie
America Sweethearts, and we get the receipt from Blockbuster which
shows that he rented that movie that day. He says, well,
(25:41):
Todd and his UH and his friend the doctor, stopped
by the house around ten o'clock on their way to
a party. So I called the doctor and she confirms
everything was exactly normal. They were watching a movie. Everything
was absolutely normal. Michael was normal, Kathleen was normal. There
(26:03):
was no tension uh, you know, Michael tells me that
he had a wonderful relationship with Kathleen. We interview all
of their friends, every single one of them confirms that.
So literally every fact that Michael told me I was
able to confirm. So for me, that was the end
(26:23):
of the matter. It was okay, she fell down the stairs.
And for me, it was then a question of how
do we explain all the blood to a jury because
that was the big problem. The police, of course, had
their own theory, and that was that Michael somehow beat
her to death, although they didn't have a murder weapon
for probably a year. Uh so their theory had had
(26:48):
its problems. Of course, our problem was the amount of
blood and the spread of the blood over the walls.
So let's talk about the States case. Let's first start
with Dwayne dr because I think it's fair to say
that Dever was the lynchpin for the state. Would you
agree with that, No doubt about it. I mean, Deva
(27:11):
was the person who he was the only person who
could put a weapon in Michael's hand as explaining the
injuries and the blood. That's what he was there for.
And indeed he was the person who established that it
was first degree because his opinion was that there was
some period of time between the first blows and the
(27:35):
what he described as the second blows. So that's where
the state argued the premeditation occurred. So Devera was responsible
for the overall theory, uh, and for the specific theory
regarding first degree. He was. He was. He was their
case too create what he called experiments, which weren't experiments
(28:02):
at all. They were attempts to recreate certain facts that
he saw in the scene, uh in a way that
would implicate Michael. They were almost cartoonish when you first
looked at him, but they videotaped these, and the police
uh obviously relied on him. The d A rel I
(28:23):
mean in d A showed them a trial, which was
sort of a surprise to me because I found them
to be almost laughable. But but apparently the jury didn't well.
And when you say laughable, I mean, look, I know
this is not a laughing matter. But seriously, he had
like a foam skull, and he put a sponge on
top of the skull and climbed up a ladder and
(28:45):
put like the skull up top and then dropped it
after putting some red stuff on the sponge to see
what would happen right exactly exactly, and of course that
that experiment didn't go well for him, uh, because it
didn't prove what he wanted it to prove. His big success,
(29:06):
his huge success was quote proving that the blood spatter
on the inside of Michael's shorts came from a blow
to the head. And and he spent hours trying to
create that, uh situation. And when he was finally able
(29:30):
to after multiple attempts, you see his assistant in the
background doing a little you know, victory dance like she
scored a touchdown in a football game. And and that was,
you know, the tip off to me that this was
all about proving a certain thing, not about finding out
what happened. So we can call that junk science, no doubt.
(29:52):
Absolutely there was also debor ratish. We talked about what
she found in the autopsy, and you press entered her
at trial with volume upon volume upon volume of the
autopsies from blunt forced trauma depths over the previous ten years,
none of which looked anything like Kathleen. So I think
(30:16):
those are sort of, let's call them the heavyweights, the
state expert types, But there were other critical pieces of
evidence that came into the trial that were entirely unfair,
as later acknowledged by the judge. And let's start with Germany. So, Michael,
earlier we talked about Elizabeth Ratliffe and George Ratliffe, and
(30:39):
you mentioned that Elizabeth passed away. One thing I have
come to just get my hairs up about is every
time someone says Elizabeth Ratliffe was found at the bottom
of the staircase, the fact of the matter is that's
not quite true. I was a reporter. I went to Germany.
I saw that condor or that little home. You walk
(31:00):
in the door, there's a little step up and then
there's a staircase. And she was found like on that
little step up. So she could have been walking in
the door and fall down. I mean, there was there
was no evidence that she fell down the stairs. But
yet you did have this death in Germany, a woman
that you knew, whose children you were now raising, and
she was someone who I believe you were one of
(31:23):
the first people to see upon her death. Is that right?
Her nanny was the first one. She had been going
for the weekend and came back to the house and
opened the door and found Liz there, and she immediately
ran over to our house. We lived a hundred two
(31:43):
hundred yards away. I was asleep. Patty was getting up
because Patty and Liz were going to go to school
together and drive together. So Patty, uh was you? Woke
me up and said something happened to Liz. So Patty
ran over first, and then I was maybe three four
minutes later I came on the scene. And let's talk
(32:05):
about the scene. The fact that there was no blood,
the fact that there was no evidence of an intruder.
This was not a scene at all like the scene
where Kathleen was found. Fair oh, fair right. And what
had happened right away was the Barbara, who was the nanny,
(32:27):
called German and the German police immediately came along with
a medical doctor, and the German doctor did a spinal
tap and the German doctor said, this woman had a stroke.
And then the body was brought to Frankfort Gentle Medical
Center and the thoughts topsy was done on Liz, and
(32:48):
the pathologist there said that she had had a stroke.
So at the time, and because Liz had been complaining
for days, and he even called her mother and said
this I'm having the worst headaches I've had in my life.
So when it was said that she had a stroke,
everyone accepted, well, of course she had a stroke. Uh,
(33:09):
And that's what I and everybody believed at the time.
And then the prosecution finds out about this. Now, first
of all, David, you were aware of this when you
started representing Michael. This This didn't get thrown on you
by either the media or the prosecution. You were well
aware of this when before Michael's trial, right, you know,
it was it was always stroke. But Ron Jarette, who
(33:35):
was a former police officer, as soon as he learned
that she her body had been found where it was,
he said, the police are going to try to use this,
the d A is going to try to use this.
And so literally within the first few months of us
being involved, Ron and I flew to Germany, UH and
(33:57):
we investigated it. We spoke with the prosecutor, we spoke
with the doctor, we spoke with the Army c I
D agent, We got his report, we look through the
German files. Everyone agreed. So so the first issue is that, yes,
the state learned about this. Yes, the state tried to
(34:19):
get in and they did get it in at trial,
and you were therefore forced to rebut all of this evidence,
Let's talk about those witnesses that the state brought forth.
First of all, who were they and how were they
treated by the prosecution when they showed up in Durham, David. Well, Uh,
(34:39):
they consisted I believe, of three women. Uh, one of
whom Barbara Magnino was the nanny who never ever raised
anything about Liz's death being suspicious. But now, of course,
in retrospect, given Kathleen's death, she's convinced that there must
(35:01):
have been something going on, and she now remembers all
this blood all over. And then there was another witness,
Mary Beth Burner I think was her name, Uh, and
she came in. She had initially given a statement to
Art Holland which was didn't even mention Michael when she
(35:23):
talked about the death of of Liz, didn't even mention him.
Now she comes in and she's had what as she
calls it, flashbacks, uh, where she sees blood all over
and Michael's acting suspicious and Michael calls it a stroke
before the doctor gets there. Uh. And and all of
(35:43):
this nonsense interrupted just one thing on that on the witnesses.
Those were friends of mine and Patti's, and to this day,
I do not understand why they did that. I mean,
they just totally made up that blood stuff. And it
was one of the more heartbreaking things to Patty that
(36:04):
her friends had said that I don't know where and
this was twenty years later, and it was all false.
So in addition to the evidence the state brought in
about Elizabeth Ratliffe, including much of the false evidence, they
brought in another piece of the state's case that I think,
(36:26):
uh was really prejudicial, and it has been acknowledged as such,
was your bisexuality Michael and these emails that were found.
They said it countered your argument that he had a
perfect relationship with Kathleen, right, Like, that was the the
legal basis forgetting it in. That was the That was
(36:48):
the legal basis for getting it in, according to the judge.
But by the time fred and Black got up in
her closing argument, there was nothing about that. It was
all about how you know, what Michael was doing was
pure t filth uh and uh and how he was
a pervert. Uh. And that was the argument. And that's
(37:10):
really why they put it in, right, And that's what
you do right when your your other evidence is weak.
So let's talk about your case though, because you also
put on a case. Just quickly run through for me
who you put on and why what your goal was
put it on a defense case? Sure? Well, our defense
(37:30):
was to counter the expert evidence. Uh. And so we
had we had two blood spatter crime scene people, Henry
Lee and his associate, who contradicted Dwayne Deaver's testimony. And
we had a biomechanical expert who was an expert in
(37:52):
head injuries. Uh. And he testified about how this could
have happened. And indeed, we had an animation to show
how this could have happened because it was difficult to
picture how the falls took place without having seen it. Uh.
And so that's what we did, and I thought it
(38:14):
was a very persuasive animation to explain the injuries on
Kathleen's head. So again those injuries that was problematic for
the state, as well as the fact that they didn't
have a murder weapon until, as you put it, maybe
a year later, which they determined to be a blowpoke,
(38:35):
which by the way, they didn't even have to show
the jury at the beginning of the trial, right, right,
they came in with the with the Candicees blowpoke and said,
see this is what Michael had in his house. Uh.
It's mysteriously missing. Uh. And it was always there before,
(38:58):
according to Candice. Uh, and now it's missing. And this
must be the murder weapon because it's light and it's stiff,
and it wouldn't crack her skull or cause brain injuries,
but it would cause the kind of UH injuries to
the scalp that she had. That was Debora radish Is testimony,
which was completely false, as we proved later on when
(39:23):
we were able to actually find the blowpoke in a
corner where the police had put it, not recognizing that
it was even relevant. At the time you mentioned Candice
and Michael, you had mentioned Candice as well. Candas Zamperini
was Kathleen's sister. She became a very important person in
this case in terms of UH. I would say a
(39:44):
player for the prosecution. Would that be a good way
to characterize her? What was your relationship with Candice before Michael.
There was a lot of jealousy between the sisters, Uh
and I can many times they came to visit us
and we go up to visit I can remember a
couple of times they would be fighting and uh, her
(40:05):
husband and I would just sort of rolled our eyes
and oh my god. Um. But it was a good relationship.
And when Kathleen died, she was right there. She took
over everything, arranged funeral, cemetery, plot everything, um. And then
it became very bad because the police convinced her that
(40:26):
I had killed Kathleen, and I understood that. Why then
her sentiments changed and she really hated me in the
same sense if somebody had come to me and said
the police had said, oh, this person killed your brother,
well I would have hated that person, no question about that. Michael,
(40:47):
you said, the police convinced Candice that you killed Kathleen,
But it was actually the prosecutors and not just Candice
but also Caitlin, Kathleen's daughter. What the prosecutors did was
flat out wrong. It was improper. I mean, the prosecution
essentially formed team State of North Carolina using Kathleen's own ken. Yes,
(41:11):
so so initially Candice was very supportive of Michael, as
was Caitlin. Both of them said to me, there's no
way that Michael would have done this, no way. Indeed,
Caitlin was the family spokesperson when Michael was first lead
out of jail, and she said that to the media.
(41:31):
Uh so what change? What change was the police and
prosecutors brought them in, showed them the photographs and had
Deboradish explained to them that these were clearly the result
of an attack, a homicidal attack, and that changed everything.
(41:58):
So let's go back to the trial. The state puts
on their case, you put on your case, they rebut
you rebut right, and then the jury goes out and
they deliberate for a week. So Michael, I want to
talk about when the jury returned and what it was
like for you when you heard the verdict. Well, again,
(42:20):
it had been days and days that they were out
and we had to stay in the courtroom. So Margaret
and Martha and Todd and Clayton, we were all there together,
and I don't think I'm going to be convicted. I
just don't think it's going to happen. And of course,
the next day when they came in and I stood
up and they said guilty, it was shocked, It really was.
(42:44):
But you know, it's not the first shock I've had
in my life, and so I immediately thought of my children, oh,
oh god, what this does to them after all that
they've suffered and lost, you know. So I turned to
them and I said it's okay. So uh. It wasn't
(43:05):
later when I was locked up in a cell in
the basement, Oh my god, what happened? You know, I've
lost my family, I've lost my everything, everything, And then
it really hit. At the time, it was like just
getting to blow guilty and let's talk about prison. I mean,
(43:36):
you went from um, you know, that blow in the
courtroom and the shock and trying to process with your
family two then immediately being taken to prison. What was
that experience like? Prison was? I think for me a
little different in the fact that I was really famous.
Everybody had watched this even in prison. They were watching
(43:59):
court TV into the news, so everybody knew who I
was when I got there, and the fact that I
was old sixty eight or something that now you're fifty,
you fifty eight, I felt like sixty eight. I taught
G E d Uh for a couple of years, earning
a dollar a day and got seventy five guys their
(44:20):
G E. D S. I was doing everything I could
to stay busy and keep my mind off the the
tragedy of losing you know, my children and everything. So again, life,
you know, whether it's war or anything, it's pretty much
what you make of it. And I decided right away, well, okay,
(44:40):
this is it. I'll just make the best of it.
And so I did. And in meantime, on the outside,
there's the appeal process going on. David, can you just
briefly walk us through direct appeal post conviction what happened? Yeah, Well,
on the direct appeal, we were pretty confident because, uh,
(45:01):
number one, they had introduced evidence pursued to a search
warrant which was completely insufficient. Uh. FREDA. Black had made
arguments and closing that were completely improper. So we were
optimistic that the verdict was going to be reversed. And
(45:22):
then they decided, well all of that was just harmless error,
that that wouldn't have affected the verdict. And then what
happened was that Dwayne Deaver was exposed as a fraud,
not in this case, but in the Greg Taylor case. Uh.
And once that happened, then I saw an avenue for
(45:46):
a post conviction petition that would succeed because Dwayne Deaver
was in fact the lynchpin of the case. And so
that's where we went. And so when you say Dwayne
Deaver was exposed to be a fraud, I mean, let's
put a fine point on that, right, he it was
more than being a fraud. I mean he was not
passing confirmatory reports on it was preliminary reports. He was
(46:11):
doing these made up experiments. I mean, explain what you
mean by that? Well, yeah, I was being too kind.
He was a liar. Uh, he was. He was someone
who was hiding exculpatory evidence. Uh. He was in essence
setting up people by his lab results in case after
(46:31):
case after case, to the extent that the State of
North Carolina had to hire two former FBI agents to
come in and audit the lab. And as a result
of that, they shut down the blood spatter uh division
of the lab because it was rife with with inaccuracies.
(46:53):
And so once we had all of that, uh, we
were able to go back. And you know, Michael had
from the start was in favor of the documentary being
made because he felt like it would um level the
playing field. I don't mean to speak for you, Michael,
but uh, you know I think that was your Your
thought was that, hey, having these these UH Award winning,
(47:17):
Academy Award winning documentarians there would keep things a little
bit more honest. We were able to get all the
clips from the French filmmakers of Diverse testimony, and that
had a very visceral effect, I think on the judge,
because it's one thing to read it in a transcript,
(47:37):
it's quite another thing to watch this guy on the
witness stand where you're the judge and he's lying to
you and to the jury, and that was extremely powerful.
So I think in fact, Michael's instinct of having those
filmmakers there is what ultimately enabled us to get him out.
(48:00):
And ultimately what your motion was, your motion for a
new trial was based on the fact that there had
been false and misleading testimony, fabricated evidence, and Michael deserved
a new trial, exactly, exactly right. What's so interesting about
that is a lot of times in cases of wrongful convictions,
we looked to the thing that made a difference. Right,
(48:21):
it was DNA testing. It was a tape that turned
up and someone saw the real perpetrator or someone finally confessed.
And hear what I hear both of you saying, is
it was the documentary. So Hudson's ruling. Mike, what was
that like? What was it like to hear him say
you get a new trial? What was that like? Oh,
(48:44):
it's like being resurrected almost. I'm not sure how Lazarus felt,
but you know, when you're gone and have lost everything
and suddenly someone returns your life to you. And there
were my children in court and it was there, and
oh my god, it was It was just it wasn't
vindication so much as it was just getting life back.
(49:07):
And at the time, I mean, everyone was ready to
dismiss the charges. I think, if I remember right, Judge
Hudson was ready to do it. Frankly, I think the
d A was. But then in step Candice Sambourini and
her sister. What what happened then? David? Everyone was was
done with this case, you know, and and everybody realized
(49:29):
that the trial hadn't been fair, that this Germany stuff
should have never come in. That was a force, that
the sexuality stuff should have never come in. Uh. They
now didn't have the blood spatter expert anymore. I mean,
how are they going to proceed that? They had no
evidence at that point. So I think Judge Hudson fully
(49:50):
expected the prosecutors say we don't have enough to proceed.
I think the d A was hoping to say that. Uh.
But Candice and Laurie, the two sisters, were adamant that
they objected to that. But the d A was not
willing to do the right thing over the objections of
(50:14):
these two women. And when you watch Candice's venom at
at the ultimate Alfred Plea hearing, I guess you can
sort of understand why, because she was she was beyond
beyond the pale in in how venomous she was. So
after the new trial is granted, of course, the state
(50:37):
appealed and lost their appeal, and and oftentimes what happens
is then everything's dismissed. That didn't happen here. You mentioned
the Alfred plea. Michael talked to me a little bit
about why you were okay with an Alfred plea and
how it was explained to you. Well, when I got
out of prison, I believe I was sixty eight at
(50:57):
the time, uh, and I weren't ankle brace looked for
two years. So I lived with us for the longest time,
and I'm getting older and older. Someone. It finally came
when David worked out this Alferd plea, and again I
wasn't convinced that the jury would find me not guilty. Again.
(51:17):
I mean, you know, burned once, you're a little early.
The second time I was with my children, you know,
a life, I was writing, everything was good. Did I
want to risk that. I did not want to go
through that for myself or especially for my children. And
then to bring my grandchildren into the help, we'd still
be fighting this thing. So no, just just ended. David.
(51:39):
Just for the listeners, just break down an Alford plea,
Why it exists, what it means? Yeah, well, uh, what
it is is a way of resolving the case without
the defendant admitting to the essential facts. So it's it's
essentially a mechanism where everybody can declare victory or defeat equally. Uh,
(52:05):
and the case just ends. And Michael was adamant about
two things. Number one was that he would never say
that he had killed Kathleen. Absolutely would never say anything
close to that. And number two, he would not go
back into incarceration even for ten minutes. In other words,
he had to be released and the case had to
(52:27):
be over right then and there. He wasn't going to
go back to the jail to be processed. Those were
my marching orders. And and once the prosecution agreed to
both of those things, as I said to Michael, Okay,
so if we go back to trial and you're found
not guilty, is that going to change anybody's mind who
has already decided you're guilty. No. If you take an
(52:50):
offered play, is that going to convince anybody who believes
you're innocent that you're guilty. No, So there was no
practical reason to go back to trial. Nothing would change
at that point. And as Michael said, he was older,
he had grandchildren, and it was time to put this
(53:12):
to rest. And so, Michael, what have you been doing
with your life since finally putting this to rest? I've
been writing, written god to four books, five books? Uh,
you know, since then, since I got out, I've traveled
and planned to do more of it and plan to
continue writing. I told my children over and over, Hey,
(53:33):
don't hate. That's just the most useless, destructive emotion that
you can have. So just get over and live the
life that you can now. I mean, you got today,
so uh live today. And that's you know what I've
been doing. What about you know a closing argument for
listeners here, what do you want to say to folks,
(53:56):
Michael about your experience about your case? Can they learn
from it? What? What would you want to leave people with?
I think what what to me boils down to as
a matter of having an open mind. You know, back
in the old days, Uh, you know, if if if
the police had arrested somebody or shot somebody, well they
(54:16):
were right, of course, you know, we just believed that then. Uh,
and I probably did myself as a you know, rich
white guy. We don't believe that anymore. At times have changed.
What you believe isn't necessarily true. What you've been told
isn't necessarily true. You need to think. And people aren't
(54:37):
really comfortable with that. They like the oh no, it's
got to be this way or that way. Uh, this
kirk of guardian either or well it really isn't that.
It's all sort of gray. So think and keep an
open mind. And David, what about you? You know? I
(54:58):
mean On Abusive Power Are podcast, we talked about a
lot of the issues that were at play in this case,
all sorts of misconduct, junk science, tuntle vision and confirmation bias,
all of that. What in Michael's case, in this experience,
what's the what's the word? What's the thought you want
to leave with listeners? What Michael's case illustrates is how
(55:22):
fundamentally flawed the criminal justice system is and has someone
like Michael, who never had done anything criminal in his
life could suddenly find himselves convicted of first degree murder
and sentenced to life in prison based on the testimony
(55:43):
of Dwayne Deaver. UH is a wake up call. And
and so what I've tried to do since then is
to broaden my message, you know, not just to talk
to juries in particular cases, but through to the podcast,
through a book I've just written, UH to to try
(56:06):
to educate people about the flaws in the system. And
as Michael said, you need to keep an open mind
because things are not always as they seem. UH. And
indeed there's lots and lots of gray in the world
and in the criminal justice system. Thank you for listening
(56:31):
to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest host, Sonia Peiffer. I'd
like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wardis.
The senior producer for this episode is Jackie Polly and
our producers are Lila Robinson and Jeff Clyburne. Our editor
is Alexandra Guidi. The music in this production is by
(56:52):
three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. You can find
the podcast I Make with David Abusive Power on Audible
That's at Audible UK. Follow the show on Twitter at
Abuse of Power pod. You can follow me on Instagram
at Sonia Feiffer and on Twitter at Fife for Sonia.
David is on both platforms as David S. Rudolph. Be
(57:16):
sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction,
as well as at Lava for Good on all three platforms.
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
in association with Signal Company Number one. Next week, on
(57:49):
the guest hosted episode of Wrongful Conviction, Pulitzer Prize finalist
and co host of the podcast ear Hustle arl On
would my friend, Irlan Woods is going to talk to
an axonre Ee that he met while still serving time
at San Quentin Prison. Rlon will talk with Karamut Connley
about the wild twists and turns of the California justice
system and their shared experience of life behind bars. This
(58:13):
is a must listen episode. Tune in next week. It's
going to be Monday in the Wrong Conviction Podcast feed
I'm Jason Flam. Through this podcast, I aim to highlight
how frequently our criminal legal system shatters the lives of
innocent people, whether junk science has introduced at trial, police
or prosecutor, a misconduct or simply a misidentification. Each story
is devastating on its own, but when we zoom out
and take in the sheer breadth of the issue, we
(00:20):
can see a pattern forming across our entire system. Who
better to take us on that journey than the brilliant
journalists and writers who regularly cover these stories. Kathleen Peterson
was found by her husband, Michael Peterson, bleeding and struggling
(00:41):
to breathe at the bottom of a staircase. It was
the middle of the night on a summer ninth two one.
Michael called one and held her as she lay dying.
When emergency services arrived, there was blood all over the walls,
the floor, and on Michael's clothing, which led Durham Police
(01:01):
Detective Art Holland to quickly assume this was a murder.
Michael became a suspect in Kathleen's death, and Durham Police
pursued this theory to the exclusion of all other evidence.
After a highly publicized trial, Peterson was convicted and sentenced
to life in prison without parole. His attorney, David Rudolph,
(01:25):
was able to overturn the conviction eight years later, and
Michael was released. After waiting for a new trial for
five years and after turning seventy years old, Michael was
tired of fighting. He decided to take an Alford plea,
a plea where the defendant maintains his innocence but admits
(01:46):
that the evidence presented could result in a jury finding
him guilty. This is probably a case you've heard about
and might already have an opinion on. There is a
popular Netflix documentary called The Staircase, and this year HBO
produced a mini series of the same name. But despite
all that coverage and drama, Michael Peterson has refused to
(02:10):
speak to the media about the case until recently, and
that's why we wanted to speak with him today to
give him the opportunity to tell his side. It's an
important story that highlights so many of the problems with
the American criminal justice system. This is wrongful conviction. Good afternoon.
(02:43):
I'm Sonia Peiffer. I'm a criminal defense and civil rights
attorney based in Toronto, Ontario and Charlotte, North Carolina and
co host of the podcast Abuse of Power on Audible.
And I'm David Rudolph. I'm also the co host of
Abuse of Power with Sonia, who is my wife and
law partner. Yes, for those who don't know, we are married.
(03:05):
And we met while I was a television reporter and
Raleigh Durham assigned to cover the Peterson case and you
were representing Michael, and Michael is here with us today
to talk about this case that really changed all of
our lives. Hi, Michael Peterson, I'm in Durham, North Carolina,
almost seventy nine years old. Uh, still a felon and
(03:25):
still a writer. Let's jump right in, Michael, because you
mentioned two things that I think people know about you already,
That you're a writer and that, yes, you are a
convicted felon. But before we talk about how you moved
to Durham and then met Mary Kathleen, you had a
whole other life. I don't think a lot of people
know about who Michael Peterson was before all of this.
(03:48):
Can you talk a little bit about how you grew up.
I was born in Tennessee. I think I stayed there
maybe four weeks. Uh, my father is a military officer.
We moved. I don't think I stayed in a particular
grade more than one year. It was very what can
(04:08):
I say, transient childhood, but very fulfilling, and I loved it.
I wouldn't trade it for anything, because I lived in
so many different places. So you went to Duke for
undergrad I mean I have to ask tar heels or devils.
Oh please, you do not want to profanity relation a
(04:29):
podcast here. So after university you enrolled in the military,
and by this point you had also married your first wife, Patty,
and you and Patty also lived overseas. Tell me about
that part of your life. Uh, well, she is military also,
and uh god. We lived Germany with Japan, traveled everywhere
(04:53):
together for many, many many We were married twenty five
years and she unfortunately last year massive heart attack, very
very very sad day. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I
did hear about that, and I know David spoke to you.
But yeah, you and Patty have a special relationship. And
then you and Patty had two kids together. Tell me
(05:14):
about your two sons, Clayton and Todd. They were both
born in Germany. So I want to talk about Germany
because as we continue talking today, that's going to resurface
as as you know well when it comes to your trial.
But in Germany, you and Patty became parents a second time.
Um explained to our listeners who George and Elizabeth Ratliffe
(05:38):
are and how it came to be that you and
Patty were the guardians of their daughters. When we first
met Liz, oh she was a teacher and Patty was
a teacher, and they became very very close friends. And
then we met George and he really was a wonderful guy.
George died in three He was on a mission uh
(06:01):
the invasion of Granada and he died. And then Liz
was left with two very small, very small children, and
she had a nobody knew at the time, a serious
medical condition. She was suffering from von Villa Brown's disease.
And I think that the stress of raising two small children,
the loss of her husband, it was it was too
(06:24):
much for her. And she died. And unknown to me,
the military flew up and said, did you know that
George had asked you to adopt his children or take
care of the children if anything had happened to him,
and I said, no, George and talked to me about that.
He said, well, it's in the will and I said okay.
So then and Liz had the same will, and when
(06:45):
she died in nineth I became the defect of guardians
of Margaret and Martha. You and Patty were still together
at the time, Is that right? Oh? Yes? Yes? What
was it like bringing those two young girls into your family?
I think it was more of a strain on Patty,
and that's I think, really essentially what broke up our
(07:07):
marriage as that Patty, and I don't mean this in
any negative way whatsoever, she felt it would be better
if others raised Margaret and Martha one of their relatives,
and so I said, no, I'll keep the children, and
so I raised them, and then I met Kathleen and
that became another journey. Let's talk about Kathleen. How did
(07:31):
you two meet? Uh? Kathleen was when we came back
from Germany with the two girls. Uh. They were four
and five at the time, I think, and Kathleen and
her husband, uh Fred were living down the block in
another house and I we met at Margaret's fifth birthday party.
(07:51):
Because Caitlin was the same age, and we just became
very close after that, more and more close. And you
mentioned Caitlin. Caitlin is Kathleen's daughter from her first marriage, right, correct,
And that's Caitlin Atwater. And how did your relationship with
Kathleen developed? Uh, well, it's one of these neighborhood stories.
(08:16):
And uh, we just saw more of each other and
realized that we were very much suited for one another.
And over time your relationship really became something quite special.
I mean, something that I think other people would say
they envied in a relationship. Would you agree with that? Oh?
I think so. I mean we had a great, great relationship.
She was, Oh god, she was well sexual and funny
(08:41):
and smart. She was used to say that, for God's sake,
don't tell anybody your college board scores. I don't want
anybody know living for someone so stupid. Uh, And it
was just fun. Every day with her was fun. So David,
I want switch and and talk with you now. And
(09:02):
moved to Kathleen's death and so it was called a crime.
But let's start with the death. On December ninth, two
thoe when Kathleen was found by Michael and Michael, I'll
ask you about that in a little bit. But December night,
two thousand one, Kathleen is found inside the home she
(09:23):
shared with Michael and Forest Hills. Can you talk about
what was known at that time and initially how the
discovery of Kathleen's body was treated. I think initially, at
least in the press, it was just treated as a
prominent author's wife was found dead in their home. And
(09:45):
I don't think initially, at least for the public, Uh,
there was any connection to it being a crime that
changed relatively quickly. And David, I'm going to ask you
to describe the scene a little bit, because, as we'll
talk about later, what the scene looked like became a
(10:09):
fact that really influenced investigators. So could you describe that, sure,
because it was a horrendous looking scene. Uh, you know
when you walked in, and I did early on to
meet with Michael. We did not meet in a diner
eating a pistronomy sandwich, as the HBO series indicated. But
(10:31):
when I when I came in, uh, you know, Michael
showed me the scene and there was blood all over
the walls and all over the floor, you know, dried blood. Uh.
And you know, the immediate reaction when you saw that
was Wow, something really terrible happened here. But you know
(10:53):
what I didn't realize when I first saw that, and
obviously what the police didn't realize when they saw it,
was that the scalp bleeds incredibly. It is the most
vascarrized part of a human body. And so when somebody
is bleeding out from deep wounds in their scalp, there
(11:15):
is a massive amount of blood. And the massive amount
of blood was not indicative of what caused the wounds.
It was just indicative of the fact that the wounds
bled a lot, that she was conscious for some period
of time. Uh, and therefore there was blood all over.
But when you first looked at it, Uh, it looked
(11:37):
like a crime scene. I mean it did. And Michael,
you were the first one to see that scene. What
do you remember about walking upon that scene that the
blood seemed Kathleen there, what do you remember about that?
When I came into these we had been at the
pool and then I came into the house. Uh. She
(12:01):
had a teleconference next morning, So I stayed outside with
the dogs for a while and then came in and
then I went to go in the back staircase and
there she was lying there at the bottom of the stairs,
and I, you know, I saw the blood, but I
was not it didn't I didn't focus so much on
the blood as I focused on Kathleen lying on the ground.
(12:24):
And that's when I called nine one one and infamous
one one call, and you know, I said, she fell
down the stairs. And people asked me afterwards, but why
do you think she fell down the stairs as well?
If you find somebody at the bottom of the stairs,
or obvious thought is that she must have fallen. And
that's what I did think. Was it surreal though? I
(12:46):
mean to come upon that after you had had this
evening together by the pool, I mean will describe that
it was one of those what you know, what what's
going on? What happened? Uh? There' she was talking and alive,
and then suddenly I walked in and she's she was dying.
(13:06):
She was still breathing faintly, faintly, and you know, I've
seen enough death in Vietnam to know that she was dying.
And so I, as you know, I put her down
and rand to the call one ran to open the
door for them, and uh and then was holding her
when E MT. Came in and surreal, well just shocking,
(13:32):
I think it's a better word. And so you just
described you coming to Kathleen and holding Kathleen and calling
Niman one. So you yourself, of course you're you're now
covered in blood, right, yeah, I suppose. I mean again,
the blood was not a significant thing, you know, to me?
That was it. I mean was significant was that Kathleen
(13:56):
was dying. David, Let's let's talk now about the investing gaistion. Right,
So we we sort of set that scene. Michael calls nine.
Eight minutes later, paramedics show up. And then what Well,
after the paramedics showed up, First of all, there was
no U protecting the scene. People were walking in and out.
(14:20):
The police showed up. Uh, and Art Holland has said
that he walked into the scene and immediately came to
the conclusion that this was a crime. You know, he
reacted to the amount of blood at the scene, and
so we have a classic case of confirmation bias and
(14:43):
tunnel vision. He immediately forms his conclusion that there's a
murder here, that there's a crime here. Who's the only
person in the house. Well, it's Michael Peterson. Uh, you know,
the the assumption in these situations is that the spouse
must be the perpetrator, and that's where they went. It
(15:07):
was supposed to be an investigation of what happened here,
and instead there was an assumption about what happened, and
then the focus became Michael is the perpetrator because there
was no one else to blame. And I want to
break down for listeners, UH, what you said about tunnel
vision and confirmation bias, because those are two different things,
but they really work hand in hand. Right, So tunnel vision,
(15:31):
that's what you're talking about. Art Holland comes in, he
sees blood. In his mind, he thinks this is a homicide,
so now he is focused only on that homicide. Everything
else is blacked out, Like when you enter a tunnel
confirmation bias is then processing all of that information that
you find through that lens through that tunnel vision lens.
(15:52):
And that is the way the investigation continued, not just
with Art Holland, right, but then they have a so
called blood spot expert I hate to even use that word,
in Dwyane Deaver, who also shows up on the scene. Right, Well,
he shows up that very night a little bit later
on uh, and he's infected by art Holland's tunnel vision
(16:17):
and art Holland's confirmation bias. So he's there not to
really explore what the blood spatter means, assuming that one
can even get any sort of information from that that's worthwhile.
He's there to again assist art Holland improving that this
(16:37):
was a murder and that Michael Peterson did it, and
so he engages in what he calls pulling strings. David,
let me ask you to explain that pulling strings and
point of origin. I know it's very familiar to you,
but explain for our listeners what that means, what it
(16:57):
is that Dwyne Deaver was trying to eve. When you
have a massive blood spatter and you're trying to determine
from where that spatter originated, UH, you can take a
look at the angles of the spatter on the walls
and work backwards from there with various spatter UH selections
(17:23):
and try to find what is called an area of origin.
And that's the best that you can do. The science
is absolutely clear that yes, you can do that to
find an area of origin, but you can't do that
to find a specific point of origin. The area of
(17:45):
origin is gonna be like twelve by eighteen inches. And
the problem was, if he had done that properly, the
area of origin would have been the walls and the
and the steps. Well, that wouldn't have helped our Holland's
case at all. So instead, what he had to do
is find what he called points of origin, and that
(18:08):
was the first step in in essence, framing Michael Peterson
for this murder. And when we talk about origin, a
point of origin or an area of origin, what you're
talking about is impact. If it were a fall at
what point on the stairs at her head hit at
what place on the wall, that's what you're talking about,
(18:29):
right exactly where did the blood start to flow. And
you mentioned Art Holland coming back with a search warrant,
that's another thing falling right into his tunnel vision. And
this is where he he went out and he got
a search war right away that evening, that very evening,
right oh, within within an hour, within less than an hour,
(18:51):
that's where he was headed. So let's talk about the injuries, David,
because of course there wasn't autopsy, and the autopsy found
that this was blunt force trauma. Actually not the autopsy initially, Uh,
what debor Ratish found initially was that the cause of
(19:11):
death was a loss of blood exanguination. And then we
found out later from going through the file. Uh, the
chief medical examiner came in and essentially told her, no,
you need to put on the autopsy that the cause
of death was blunt force trauma. That was not the
(19:34):
cause of death. We all agree that would cause Kathleen's
death was the loss of blood. So why all of
a sudden do we have blunt forced trauma as the
cause of death. That is a question that I don't
think has ever been satisfactorily answered. Well, and you know,
you talk about tunnel vision, you talk about it infecting
(19:55):
other people. This is yet another example. So initially Deborati
says cause of death is blood loss. Then she later
changed it to blunt force trauma. But there were problems
with that being the cause of death, right because blunt
force trauma usually has some well known associated conditions, right
(20:18):
like subdural hematoma edema. None of that existed here. Kathleen
didn't have any of the injuries that are normally associated
with blunt forced trauma. She had no injuries to her brain,
There was no subdual, There were no contusions to the brain,
there were no fractures on her arms. Uh, there was
(20:39):
nothing that was consistent with blunt force trauma. So when
you look at that, you say to yourself, Okay, how
is that possible? How is it possible that none of
the things that I know as a lawyer are normally
associated with blunt forced trauma are there? And so I say, okay, well,
(21:00):
let's take a look at all the autopsies going back
ten years and see if we can find even one other,
even one other which had none of those injuries. And
so that's what we did, and in fact, there was
not a single other blunt forced trauma death that didn't
(21:21):
have at least one and often several of those kinds
of injuries. Kathleen Peterson was the only case in the
previous ten years where they claimed blunt forced trauma was
the cause of death, but there were none of those
associated injuries. And we'll talk about the trial in a
(21:42):
little bit, but back to the investigation. Michael, do you
remember talking to investigators that night on December nine? Oh? Yes,
I mean right away. Uh, you know, they came in
and my son Tad arrived with his girlfriend Pigment. At
the party, they sept rated everybody and it was Todd
(22:02):
who instantly simply because of that and also the way
that they were just acting, he picked up right away.
He said, Dad, they're trying to get you. And that
didn't make any sense to me. Number one, I was
in shock in Suitland. But why so he called my
brother who was an attorney in Reno and uh for
(22:24):
which later it was like, oh, we had lawyered up.
But my brother Bill talked to Holland and said, do
not question Michael Peterson. I would have been happy to
answer anything. I had to cooperate. That's on the reason
why not. And Holland kept trying to do that, put
his arm around me, and Todd said no, Dad, no, nope,
(22:47):
don't talk not just snap me out of it. And
I realized, oh, yeah, they really are definitely out to
get me. So let's talk about your arrest now. Because
(23:10):
it wasn't immediate. I mean, this was December nine two one,
But sounds like you were well aware that eyes were
on you. Tell me about when you got arrested. What happened.
David wanted me to go to Charlotte at least get
out of Durham because he knew the arrest was coming,
but all I could think of was the rap Ruth
(23:32):
case in which he had fled. As a matter of fact,
I said, no, if they're going to arrest me, they're
gonnaarrest me, and I'll surrender if this is what they want.
So I made a decision that I would go to
the courthouse and surrender. Uh for that, and I was
but in jail for two weeks. David, what do you
(23:53):
remember about that, because by now you were hired, right.
I was hired relatively early on, before the case even
went to a grand jury. What I was originally talking
to Michael about was the fact that I was afraid
that the police are going to just swoop in before
we had a chance to arrange a surrender. Because surrenders
(24:15):
get arranged. I was able to reach the district Attorney's office.
We were able to arrange a time for Michael to
to show up and surrender himself. In part, the reason
to do that is because it helps to set up
the bail situation, and eventually we were able to get
a judge to set a bond from Michael that Michael
(24:37):
could make, which is an enormously helpful thing. If your
client is in it makes the case much more difficult
to defend. So December two thousand one is when Michael
was charged with first degree murder and then released in January.
So now it is January two thou two. The trial
(24:58):
is a little more than a year in two thousand three, David,
can you talk about the two theories at trial? What
was the States case? What was your case? Our case
was sort of set from the very beginning when Michael
Uh said she's fallen down the stairs, because that was
(25:19):
the logical conclusion. Everything that Michael told me from the
first day that I met him always checked out, and
so yeah, I would go and talk with Michael and
he says, well, you know, we were watching a movie
America Sweethearts, and we get the receipt from Blockbuster which
shows that he rented that movie that day. He says, well,
(25:41):
Todd and his UH and his friend the doctor, stopped
by the house around ten o'clock on their way to
a party. So I called the doctor and she confirms
everything was exactly normal. They were watching a movie. Everything
was absolutely normal. Michael was normal, Kathleen was normal. There
(26:03):
was no tension uh, you know, Michael tells me that
he had a wonderful relationship with Kathleen. We interview all
of their friends, every single one of them confirms that.
So literally every fact that Michael told me I was
able to confirm. So for me, that was the end
(26:23):
of the matter. It was okay, she fell down the stairs.
And for me, it was then a question of how
do we explain all the blood to a jury because
that was the big problem. The police, of course, had
their own theory, and that was that Michael somehow beat
her to death, although they didn't have a murder weapon
for probably a year. Uh so their theory had had
(26:48):
its problems. Of course, our problem was the amount of
blood and the spread of the blood over the walls.
So let's talk about the States case. Let's first start
with Dwayne dr because I think it's fair to say
that Dever was the lynchpin for the state. Would you
agree with that, No doubt about it. I mean, Deva
(27:11):
was the person who he was the only person who
could put a weapon in Michael's hand as explaining the
injuries and the blood. That's what he was there for.
And indeed he was the person who established that it
was first degree because his opinion was that there was
some period of time between the first blows and the
(27:35):
what he described as the second blows. So that's where
the state argued the premeditation occurred. So Devera was responsible
for the overall theory, uh, and for the specific theory
regarding first degree. He was. He was. He was their
case too create what he called experiments, which weren't experiments
(28:02):
at all. They were attempts to recreate certain facts that
he saw in the scene, uh in a way that
would implicate Michael. They were almost cartoonish when you first
looked at him, but they videotaped these, and the police
uh obviously relied on him. The d A rel I
(28:23):
mean in d A showed them a trial, which was
sort of a surprise to me because I found them
to be almost laughable. But but apparently the jury didn't well.
And when you say laughable, I mean, look, I know
this is not a laughing matter. But seriously, he had
like a foam skull, and he put a sponge on
top of the skull and climbed up a ladder and
(28:45):
put like the skull up top and then dropped it
after putting some red stuff on the sponge to see
what would happen right exactly exactly, and of course that
that experiment didn't go well for him, uh, because it
didn't prove what he wanted it to prove. His big success,
(29:06):
his huge success was quote proving that the blood spatter
on the inside of Michael's shorts came from a blow
to the head. And and he spent hours trying to
create that, uh situation. And when he was finally able
(29:30):
to after multiple attempts, you see his assistant in the
background doing a little you know, victory dance like she
scored a touchdown in a football game. And and that was,
you know, the tip off to me that this was
all about proving a certain thing, not about finding out
what happened. So we can call that junk science, no doubt.
(29:52):
Absolutely there was also debor ratish. We talked about what
she found in the autopsy, and you press entered her
at trial with volume upon volume upon volume of the
autopsies from blunt forced trauma depths over the previous ten years,
none of which looked anything like Kathleen. So I think
(30:16):
those are sort of, let's call them the heavyweights, the
state expert types, But there were other critical pieces of
evidence that came into the trial that were entirely unfair,
as later acknowledged by the judge. And let's start with Germany. So, Michael,
earlier we talked about Elizabeth Ratliffe and George Ratliffe, and
(30:39):
you mentioned that Elizabeth passed away. One thing I have
come to just get my hairs up about is every
time someone says Elizabeth Ratliffe was found at the bottom
of the staircase, the fact of the matter is that's
not quite true. I was a reporter. I went to Germany.
I saw that condor or that little home. You walk
(31:00):
in the door, there's a little step up and then
there's a staircase. And she was found like on that
little step up. So she could have been walking in
the door and fall down. I mean, there was there
was no evidence that she fell down the stairs. But
yet you did have this death in Germany, a woman
that you knew, whose children you were now raising, and
she was someone who I believe you were one of
(31:23):
the first people to see upon her death. Is that right?
Her nanny was the first one. She had been going
for the weekend and came back to the house and
opened the door and found Liz there, and she immediately
ran over to our house. We lived a hundred two
(31:43):
hundred yards away. I was asleep. Patty was getting up
because Patty and Liz were going to go to school
together and drive together. So Patty, uh was you? Woke
me up and said something happened to Liz. So Patty
ran over first, and then I was maybe three four
minutes later I came on the scene. And let's talk
(32:05):
about the scene. The fact that there was no blood,
the fact that there was no evidence of an intruder.
This was not a scene at all like the scene
where Kathleen was found. Fair oh, fair right. And what
had happened right away was the Barbara, who was the nanny,
(32:27):
called German and the German police immediately came along with
a medical doctor, and the German doctor did a spinal
tap and the German doctor said, this woman had a stroke.
And then the body was brought to Frankfort Gentle Medical
Center and the thoughts topsy was done on Liz, and
(32:48):
the pathologist there said that she had had a stroke.
So at the time, and because Liz had been complaining
for days, and he even called her mother and said
this I'm having the worst headaches I've had in my life.
So when it was said that she had a stroke,
everyone accepted, well, of course she had a stroke. Uh,
(33:09):
And that's what I and everybody believed at the time.
And then the prosecution finds out about this. Now, first
of all, David, you were aware of this when you
started representing Michael. This This didn't get thrown on you
by either the media or the prosecution. You were well
aware of this when before Michael's trial, right, you know,
it was it was always stroke. But Ron Jarette, who
(33:35):
was a former police officer, as soon as he learned
that she her body had been found where it was,
he said, the police are going to try to use this,
the d A is going to try to use this.
And so literally within the first few months of us
being involved, Ron and I flew to Germany, UH and
(33:57):
we investigated it. We spoke with the prosecutor, we spoke
with the doctor, we spoke with the Army c I
D agent, We got his report, we look through the
German files. Everyone agreed. So so the first issue is that, yes,
the state learned about this. Yes, the state tried to
(34:19):
get in and they did get it in at trial,
and you were therefore forced to rebut all of this evidence,
Let's talk about those witnesses that the state brought forth.
First of all, who were they and how were they
treated by the prosecution when they showed up in Durham, David. Well, Uh,
(34:39):
they consisted I believe, of three women. Uh, one of
whom Barbara Magnino was the nanny who never ever raised
anything about Liz's death being suspicious. But now, of course,
in retrospect, given Kathleen's death, she's convinced that there must
(35:01):
have been something going on, and she now remembers all
this blood all over. And then there was another witness,
Mary Beth Burner I think was her name, Uh, and
she came in. She had initially given a statement to
Art Holland which was didn't even mention Michael when she
(35:23):
talked about the death of of Liz, didn't even mention him.
Now she comes in and she's had what as she
calls it, flashbacks, uh, where she sees blood all over
and Michael's acting suspicious and Michael calls it a stroke
before the doctor gets there. Uh. And and all of
(35:43):
this nonsense interrupted just one thing on that on the witnesses.
Those were friends of mine and Patti's, and to this day,
I do not understand why they did that. I mean,
they just totally made up that blood stuff. And it
was one of the more heartbreaking things to Patty that
(36:04):
her friends had said that I don't know where and
this was twenty years later, and it was all false.
So in addition to the evidence the state brought in
about Elizabeth Ratliffe, including much of the false evidence, they
brought in another piece of the state's case that I think,
(36:26):
uh was really prejudicial, and it has been acknowledged as such,
was your bisexuality Michael and these emails that were found.
They said it countered your argument that he had a
perfect relationship with Kathleen, right, Like, that was the the
legal basis forgetting it in. That was the That was
(36:48):
the legal basis for getting it in, according to the judge.
But by the time fred and Black got up in
her closing argument, there was nothing about that. It was
all about how you know, what Michael was doing was
pure t filth uh and uh and how he was
a pervert. Uh. And that was the argument. And that's
(37:10):
really why they put it in, right, And that's what
you do right when your your other evidence is weak.
So let's talk about your case though, because you also
put on a case. Just quickly run through for me
who you put on and why what your goal was
put it on a defense case? Sure? Well, our defense
(37:30):
was to counter the expert evidence. Uh. And so we
had we had two blood spatter crime scene people, Henry
Lee and his associate, who contradicted Dwayne Deaver's testimony. And
we had a biomechanical expert who was an expert in
(37:52):
head injuries. Uh. And he testified about how this could
have happened. And indeed, we had an animation to show
how this could have happened because it was difficult to
picture how the falls took place without having seen it. Uh.
And so that's what we did, and I thought it
(38:14):
was a very persuasive animation to explain the injuries on
Kathleen's head. So again those injuries that was problematic for
the state, as well as the fact that they didn't
have a murder weapon until, as you put it, maybe
a year later, which they determined to be a blowpoke,
(38:35):
which by the way, they didn't even have to show
the jury at the beginning of the trial, right, right,
they came in with the with the Candicees blowpoke and said,
see this is what Michael had in his house. Uh.
It's mysteriously missing. Uh. And it was always there before,
(38:58):
according to Candice. Uh, and now it's missing. And this
must be the murder weapon because it's light and it's stiff,
and it wouldn't crack her skull or cause brain injuries,
but it would cause the kind of UH injuries to
the scalp that she had. That was Debora radish Is testimony,
which was completely false, as we proved later on when
(39:23):
we were able to actually find the blowpoke in a
corner where the police had put it, not recognizing that
it was even relevant. At the time you mentioned Candice
and Michael, you had mentioned Candice as well. Candas Zamperini
was Kathleen's sister. She became a very important person in
this case in terms of UH. I would say a
(39:44):
player for the prosecution. Would that be a good way
to characterize her? What was your relationship with Candice before Michael.
There was a lot of jealousy between the sisters, Uh
and I can many times they came to visit us
and we go up to visit I can remember a
couple of times they would be fighting and uh, her
(40:05):
husband and I would just sort of rolled our eyes
and oh my god. Um. But it was a good relationship.
And when Kathleen died, she was right there. She took
over everything, arranged funeral, cemetery, plot everything, um. And then
it became very bad because the police convinced her that
(40:26):
I had killed Kathleen, and I understood that. Why then
her sentiments changed and she really hated me in the
same sense if somebody had come to me and said
the police had said, oh, this person killed your brother,
well I would have hated that person, no question about that. Michael,
(40:47):
you said, the police convinced Candice that you killed Kathleen,
But it was actually the prosecutors and not just Candice
but also Caitlin, Kathleen's daughter. What the prosecutors did was
flat out wrong. It was improper. I mean, the prosecution
essentially formed team State of North Carolina using Kathleen's own ken. Yes,
(41:11):
so so initially Candice was very supportive of Michael, as
was Caitlin. Both of them said to me, there's no
way that Michael would have done this, no way. Indeed,
Caitlin was the family spokesperson when Michael was first lead
out of jail, and she said that to the media.
(41:31):
Uh so what change? What change was the police and
prosecutors brought them in, showed them the photographs and had
Deboradish explained to them that these were clearly the result
of an attack, a homicidal attack, and that changed everything.
(41:58):
So let's go back to the trial. The state puts
on their case, you put on your case, they rebut
you rebut right, and then the jury goes out and
they deliberate for a week. So Michael, I want to
talk about when the jury returned and what it was
like for you when you heard the verdict. Well, again,
(42:20):
it had been days and days that they were out
and we had to stay in the courtroom. So Margaret
and Martha and Todd and Clayton, we were all there together,
and I don't think I'm going to be convicted. I
just don't think it's going to happen. And of course,
the next day when they came in and I stood
up and they said guilty, it was shocked, It really was.
(42:44):
But you know, it's not the first shock I've had
in my life, and so I immediately thought of my children, oh,
oh god, what this does to them after all that
they've suffered and lost, you know. So I turned to
them and I said it's okay. So uh. It wasn't
(43:05):
later when I was locked up in a cell in
the basement, Oh my god, what happened? You know, I've
lost my family, I've lost my everything, everything, And then
it really hit. At the time, it was like just
getting to blow guilty and let's talk about prison. I mean,
(43:36):
you went from um, you know, that blow in the
courtroom and the shock and trying to process with your
family two then immediately being taken to prison. What was
that experience like? Prison was? I think for me a
little different in the fact that I was really famous.
Everybody had watched this even in prison. They were watching
(43:59):
court TV into the news, so everybody knew who I
was when I got there, and the fact that I
was old sixty eight or something that now you're fifty,
you fifty eight, I felt like sixty eight. I taught
G E d Uh for a couple of years, earning
a dollar a day and got seventy five guys their
(44:20):
G E. D S. I was doing everything I could
to stay busy and keep my mind off the the
tragedy of losing you know, my children and everything. So again, life,
you know, whether it's war or anything, it's pretty much
what you make of it. And I decided right away, well, okay,
(44:40):
this is it. I'll just make the best of it.
And so I did. And in meantime, on the outside,
there's the appeal process going on. David, can you just
briefly walk us through direct appeal post conviction what happened? Yeah, Well,
on the direct appeal, we were pretty confident because, uh,
(45:01):
number one, they had introduced evidence pursued to a search
warrant which was completely insufficient. Uh. FREDA. Black had made
arguments and closing that were completely improper. So we were
optimistic that the verdict was going to be reversed. And
(45:22):
then they decided, well all of that was just harmless error,
that that wouldn't have affected the verdict. And then what
happened was that Dwayne Deaver was exposed as a fraud,
not in this case, but in the Greg Taylor case. Uh.
And once that happened, then I saw an avenue for
(45:46):
a post conviction petition that would succeed because Dwayne Deaver
was in fact the lynchpin of the case. And so
that's where we went. And so when you say Dwayne
Deaver was exposed to be a fraud, I mean, let's
put a fine point on that, right, he it was
more than being a fraud. I mean he was not
passing confirmatory reports on it was preliminary reports. He was
(46:11):
doing these made up experiments. I mean, explain what you
mean by that? Well, yeah, I was being too kind.
He was a liar. Uh, he was. He was someone
who was hiding exculpatory evidence. Uh. He was in essence
setting up people by his lab results in case after
(46:31):
case after case, to the extent that the State of
North Carolina had to hire two former FBI agents to
come in and audit the lab. And as a result
of that, they shut down the blood spatter uh division
of the lab because it was rife with with inaccuracies.
(46:53):
And so once we had all of that, uh, we
were able to go back. And you know, Michael had
from the start was in favor of the documentary being
made because he felt like it would um level the
playing field. I don't mean to speak for you, Michael,
but uh, you know I think that was your Your
thought was that, hey, having these these UH Award winning,
(47:17):
Academy Award winning documentarians there would keep things a little
bit more honest. We were able to get all the
clips from the French filmmakers of Diverse testimony, and that
had a very visceral effect, I think on the judge,
because it's one thing to read it in a transcript,
(47:37):
it's quite another thing to watch this guy on the
witness stand where you're the judge and he's lying to
you and to the jury, and that was extremely powerful.
So I think in fact, Michael's instinct of having those
filmmakers there is what ultimately enabled us to get him out.
(48:00):
And ultimately what your motion was, your motion for a
new trial was based on the fact that there had
been false and misleading testimony, fabricated evidence, and Michael deserved
a new trial, exactly, exactly right. What's so interesting about
that is a lot of times in cases of wrongful convictions,
we looked to the thing that made a difference. Right,
(48:21):
it was DNA testing. It was a tape that turned
up and someone saw the real perpetrator or someone finally confessed.
And hear what I hear both of you saying, is
it was the documentary. So Hudson's ruling. Mike, what was
that like? What was it like to hear him say
you get a new trial? What was that like? Oh,
(48:44):
it's like being resurrected almost. I'm not sure how Lazarus felt,
but you know, when you're gone and have lost everything
and suddenly someone returns your life to you. And there
were my children in court and it was there, and
oh my god, it was It was just it wasn't
vindication so much as it was just getting life back.
(49:07):
And at the time, I mean, everyone was ready to
dismiss the charges. I think, if I remember right, Judge
Hudson was ready to do it. Frankly, I think the
d A was. But then in step Candice Sambourini and
her sister. What what happened then? David? Everyone was was
done with this case, you know, and and everybody realized
(49:29):
that the trial hadn't been fair, that this Germany stuff
should have never come in. That was a force, that
the sexuality stuff should have never come in. Uh. They
now didn't have the blood spatter expert anymore. I mean,
how are they going to proceed that? They had no
evidence at that point. So I think Judge Hudson fully
(49:50):
expected the prosecutors say we don't have enough to proceed.
I think the d A was hoping to say that. Uh.
But Candice and Laurie, the two sisters, were adamant that
they objected to that. But the d A was not
willing to do the right thing over the objections of
(50:14):
these two women. And when you watch Candice's venom at
at the ultimate Alfred Plea hearing, I guess you can
sort of understand why, because she was she was beyond
beyond the pale in in how venomous she was. So
after the new trial is granted, of course, the state
(50:37):
appealed and lost their appeal, and and oftentimes what happens
is then everything's dismissed. That didn't happen here. You mentioned
the Alfred plea. Michael talked to me a little bit
about why you were okay with an Alfred plea and
how it was explained to you. Well, when I got
out of prison, I believe I was sixty eight at
(50:57):
the time, uh, and I weren't ankle brace looked for
two years. So I lived with us for the longest time,
and I'm getting older and older. Someone. It finally came
when David worked out this Alferd plea, and again I
wasn't convinced that the jury would find me not guilty. Again.
(51:17):
I mean, you know, burned once, you're a little early.
The second time I was with my children, you know,
a life, I was writing, everything was good. Did I
want to risk that. I did not want to go
through that for myself or especially for my children. And
then to bring my grandchildren into the help, we'd still
be fighting this thing. So no, just just ended. David.
(51:39):
Just for the listeners, just break down an Alford plea,
Why it exists, what it means? Yeah, well, uh, what
it is is a way of resolving the case without
the defendant admitting to the essential facts. So it's it's
essentially a mechanism where everybody can declare victory or defeat equally. Uh,
(52:05):
and the case just ends. And Michael was adamant about
two things. Number one was that he would never say
that he had killed Kathleen. Absolutely would never say anything
close to that. And number two, he would not go
back into incarceration even for ten minutes. In other words,
he had to be released and the case had to
(52:27):
be over right then and there. He wasn't going to
go back to the jail to be processed. Those were
my marching orders. And and once the prosecution agreed to
both of those things, as I said to Michael, Okay,
so if we go back to trial and you're found
not guilty, is that going to change anybody's mind who
has already decided you're guilty. No. If you take an
(52:50):
offered play, is that going to convince anybody who believes
you're innocent that you're guilty. No, So there was no
practical reason to go back to trial. Nothing would change
at that point. And as Michael said, he was older,
he had grandchildren, and it was time to put this
(53:12):
to rest. And so, Michael, what have you been doing
with your life since finally putting this to rest? I've
been writing, written god to four books, five books? Uh,
you know, since then, since I got out, I've traveled
and planned to do more of it and plan to
continue writing. I told my children over and over, Hey,
(53:33):
don't hate. That's just the most useless, destructive emotion that
you can have. So just get over and live the
life that you can now. I mean, you got today,
so uh live today. And that's you know what I've
been doing. What about you know a closing argument for
listeners here, what do you want to say to folks,
(53:56):
Michael about your experience about your case? Can they learn
from it? What? What would you want to leave people with?
I think what what to me boils down to as
a matter of having an open mind. You know, back
in the old days, Uh, you know, if if if
the police had arrested somebody or shot somebody, well they
(54:16):
were right, of course, you know, we just believed that then. Uh,
and I probably did myself as a you know, rich
white guy. We don't believe that anymore. At times have changed.
What you believe isn't necessarily true. What you've been told
isn't necessarily true. You need to think. And people aren't
(54:37):
really comfortable with that. They like the oh no, it's
got to be this way or that way. Uh, this
kirk of guardian either or well it really isn't that.
It's all sort of gray. So think and keep an
open mind. And David, what about you? You know? I
(54:58):
mean On Abusive Power Are podcast, we talked about a
lot of the issues that were at play in this case,
all sorts of misconduct, junk science, tuntle vision and confirmation bias,
all of that. What in Michael's case, in this experience,
what's the what's the word? What's the thought you want
to leave with listeners? What Michael's case illustrates is how
(55:22):
fundamentally flawed the criminal justice system is and has someone
like Michael, who never had done anything criminal in his
life could suddenly find himselves convicted of first degree murder
and sentenced to life in prison based on the testimony
(55:43):
of Dwayne Deaver. UH is a wake up call. And
and so what I've tried to do since then is
to broaden my message, you know, not just to talk
to juries in particular cases, but through to the podcast,
through a book I've just written, UH to to try
(56:06):
to educate people about the flaws in the system. And
as Michael said, you need to keep an open mind
because things are not always as they seem. UH. And
indeed there's lots and lots of gray in the world
and in the criminal justice system. Thank you for listening
(56:31):
to Wrongful Conviction. I'm your guest host, Sonia Peiffer. I'd
like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wardis.
The senior producer for this episode is Jackie Polly and
our producers are Lila Robinson and Jeff Clyburne. Our editor
is Alexandra Guidi. The music in this production is by
(56:52):
three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. You can find
the podcast I Make with David Abusive Power on Audible
That's at Audible UK. Follow the show on Twitter at
Abuse of Power pod. You can follow me on Instagram
at Sonia Feiffer and on Twitter at Fife for Sonia.
David is on both platforms as David S. Rudolph. Be
(57:16):
sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on
Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction,
as well as at Lava for Good on all three platforms.
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
in association with Signal Company Number one. Next week, on
(57:49):
the guest hosted episode of Wrongful Conviction, Pulitzer Prize finalist
and co host of the podcast ear Hustle arl On
would my friend, Irlan Woods is going to talk to
an axonre Ee that he met while still serving time
at San Quentin Prison. Rlon will talk with Karamut Connley
about the wild twists and turns of the California justice
system and their shared experience of life behind bars. This
(58:13):
is a must listen episode. Tune in next week. It's
going to be Monday in the Wrong Conviction Podcast feed
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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