this case has it all. it's got money. it's got a big house. it's got sex. it's every element you ever want. >> a woman dead at the bottom of a staircase. >> i said, you need to read this. you need to understand that mom did not die from falling down the stairs. >> there were secrets on the harddrive, on the computer, huh? >> big secrets. >> a simple case of murder, or was snit? >> a review of the slide showed

what? traces of bird feather? >> yes. >> in trying to solve one mystery, police may have solved two. >> here i have two women that appeared to die the same way. e lightning don't strike the same place twice. >> that's a whole lot of women dead at the bottom of the stairs in this guy's life. don't you think? >> but what looked like the end of this story -- >> it's really stuff made for tv drama. >> -- was just the beginning. >> i always had hope. it had to be made right. shut with a resounding clank. >> i was a wreck. i really was. >> when the sun woke him up through razor wire every day for the rest of your life. >> that's where everything both

begins and ends. >> a convicts glimmer of a successful appeal and retrial may keep desperate hope hay live. >> i always had hope. it has to be made right. >> but in the real world of criminal justice, most of the time once you're inside, you're done. >> this was a reality that we couldn't change. >> but not every case ends the way you would expect. meet michael pierce, his case which defies all odds became known as the staircase murder. the sensational investigation and trial that ensued would rip a family apart. the secrets, the sleaze, on display for everyone to gorge on. >> my mother would be absolutely appalled. this is the last thing she would ever, ever want to that to her husban husband. >> let's go back to the night, early december 2001 and scroll

up the driveway of a gracious house in the better neighborhood of durham, north carolina. the homeowners, michael and kathleen peterson are back on the patio as the story goes, finishing a bottle of wine. ful in the living room the christmas tree is already up. the grown peterson children expected home for the holidays. kathleen was always happiest in the season as her daughter kaitlin remembers it. >> she loved christmas. she loved being in the mood playing christmas from the start of december all the way through new year's. >> it was the kids actually who brought michael and kathleen together. she was separated. michael was raising his two young boys and two young girls, margaret and martha. the girls became playmates with kathleen's daughter. >> i guess that was when i first met michael, before he was ever romantically involved with my mother. >> as the kids started spending more time together, so did kathleen and michael. before long, they ran an idea by kaitlin, a big one, about

becoming a family together. >> they sat me down and said, you know, kaitlin, how would you like if martha comes to live with you. and i immediately thought, a permanent sleepover. >> and that's exactly how michael presented it to his two girls. >> he put it, we're going to have a long sleepover. and we said, yeah! >> her younger sister, martha. of course we wanted to live with kaitlin and kathleen and play barbies and be a -- yeah, be a family together. >> michael's two boys from his first marriage todd and clayton were almost out of the nest by the time their dad moved in with kathleen. still, clayton has memories of dropping by the family. >> i would go over all the time. i would babysit the girls and spend time over there. we were very close. >> new york call was a worldly u.s. marine vet and was now a full-time writer. one of his vietnam books got a big advance, money that went

towards buying the big house. >> he said, we're thinking of moving into this house, and they drove us over. we didn't go inside. we just looked, and we thought, oh my goodness, you know, this is amazing. >> there in his office he would write his war stories and churn out columns on city politics for the local paper. stick in the eye stuff. he would battle losing candidate for mayor of durham. kathleen, meanwhile, was a top business exec who had risen through the ranks of a telecommunications company. she received a masters degree in engineering from duke, even appearing on the cover of the the university magazine. she was nothing if not a superer mom juggler. >> power points by day, martha stewart by night. her younger sister was in awe of her. >> not only did she raise the children with quite an

accomplished corporate career, they entertained like several dinner parties a month. oh, dinner for 50, she would do it. >> and kathleen would even whip up nightly three-course meals with michael presiding at the table. >> fun to be with, incredibly well read. zblf he was always the entertainers at dinners. he would carry the conversations and have the most funny stories. >> so the children were delighted when after years of living together, michael and kathleen made it official and got married. >> i always thought, you know, this is what i'll register as the happiest day of my life. >> and for kathleen, it just may have been. >> she was thrilled to be marrying michael, all three girls were bridesmaids in her wedding. i remember the wedding, the three girls singing "we're going to the chapel." the day they married, my sister glowed. >> kathleen and michael were a durham power couple. for more than a decade, their life together had been parties,

art openings, charity events. to candice, her sister had never been happier. >> she liked prestige of being able to say, i'm with this man who is an author and well traveled. but as christmas of 2001 approached with the girls away at college, kathleen was jittery. she was taking vale ining valiu. her job was overwhelming as of late. more than anyone, she welcomed the upcoming time off for the holidays. and so on that mild december night out back by the pool, as the story goes, michael and kathleen embarrassed his surprise good news that day. a big time homillywood producer was nibbling at his options for a movie. >> they definitely liked to drink wine. they could probably have two bottles of wine and, you know, start showing it a little bit. >> what happened next would be the subject of a decade of debate.

it seems that kathleen left michael to finish his cigar by the pool. she had do get on the computer to read an e-mail for a conference call in the morning. still, another work crisis. michael says he went back inside the house about 2:00 a.m., only to discover something ghastly. kathleen, soaked in blood at the bottom of the back staircase. >> 911. what's your emergency? >> [ muted ] street. please. >> by dawn, the news of kathleen's fall, only the vaguest of details was reaching the sisters at college. family members delivered the awful news. >> she said, um, something's happened. >> your mom has fallen down the stairs. it was an accident. you know, you should come home. >> by the time kathleen's daughter kaitlin got the word, it was as shocking as it was definitive. >> she looked me straight in the

eyes and she said, kaitlin, it's your mom. she's dead. those words still ring clearly in my head. >> what had happened on that back staircase pooled now in blood? did kathleen peterson fall down the stairs? that was one possibility. but detectives were considering another. >> i remember feeling that something was going badly with the police. [ molly ] this is one way to keep your underwear clean. here's another. try charmin ultra strong. it cleans so well and you can use up to four times less than the leading bargain brand. thanks mom! make me proud honey! [ female announcer ] charmin ultra strong has a duraclean texture that's soft and more durable to help your kids get clean while still using less. and it's four times stronger than the leading bargain brand. so you can keep the biggest kids in the family clean too. [ laughter ] [ female announcer ] used by more plumbers than any other brand, try charmin. it's clog-free or it's free. still running in the morning? yeah. getting your vegetables every day?

when i can. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] could've had a v8. two full servings of vegetables for only 50 delicious calories. two full servings of vegetables the girl's field hockey practice was a mudfest. the showers get trashed, let's bubble! mega shower foamer stays where you spray with ultra cling technology. wide angle spray covers more of the mess! that's nice teamwork! we work hard so you don't have to. with roc® multi correxion® 5 in 1. proven to hydrate dryness,

illuminate dullness, lift sagging, diminish the look of dark spots, and smooth the appearance of wrinkles. high performance skincare™ only from roc®. how can you see yourself in new glasswithout your glasses? at lenscrafters, our unique camera and screen system lets you compare yourself in four different frames at time. making sure all your vision choices are clear. lenscrafters loves eyes we brought a kfc dip'ems ut. bucket to the party, and people cannot get enough! 20 delicious extra crispy tenders, 6 amazing sauces... even bacon ranch. mmmm. they are flocking to it. it's like we're rock stars with groupies. yeah, just standing next to it is making us more attractive. mhmmm. you're like a 7, i'm like a 6. you guys likin' the chicken? it's pretty good?! woooo!! i literally know nobody here. ♪

early on a sunday morning, a few weeks before christmas, kathleen peterson'sister candace answered the phone. it was her brother-in-law michael with unimaginable news about kathleen. >> she had fallen down the stairs. it was still vague. we couldn't tell if she fell down the stairs or fell off a ladder. there is no question i could think, are you sure she's dead? >> yes, michael was sure. candace headed to her sister's house, shocked to find police everywhere. >> the whole thing was sealed off with crime scene tape. this is a mansion, huge property. >> the police were cautioning her not to go inside. >> they kept saying, you may not want to go in. there is so much blood.

this is really awesomely scary. >> but candace needed to find something to bury her sister in. so as soon as the officers would allow, she enters. that's when michael showed her the back staircase where he said kathleen had taken that fatal tumble. >> my sister's blood is washed in pools up against the wall. there is blood just everywhere. >> and now a disturbing thought took root in candice and then began to grow. what if kathleen's death wasn't an accident? she couldn't go there. >> i still want to believe it was an accident. i don't want something horrible to happen. >> but all that blood, up the walls, could it all be from a fall down the stairs? and that's precisely what was bugging this detective ever since he arrived at the house the day before in the early morning hours after kathleen died. >> i've seen falls. i've had family members fall and

to me it did not look anywhere like a fall. >> but the medical examiner who came to the house thought that kathleen could possibly have died from a fall down the stairs. >> he could see some lacerations or feel some lacerations on the back of mrs. peterson's head, and he stated that this could be the result of a fall. >> and certainly the emts had encountered a distraught michael peterson. he was found cradling kathleen, crying so hard he had to be pulled away. but still investigators wanted to be sure that this was an accident. >> you know, sorry for your loss but that since the process. >> it would take the investigators the better part two of days to go through the 9,000 square foot house. >> it was, you know, very time consuming. you don't want to go through it real speedy. you want to make sure that you cross all your ts and dot all your is. >> the crime scene tech started

by photographing the stairwell. documenting the pool of blood and spray up the wall. outside, drops on the walkway on the front door. on kathleen's body, a bloody shoe print on the back of the sweat pants. in the kitchen, bloodstains on the cabinet, underneath a drop of blood on the counter. and right beside it, an open wine bottle and two glasses suggested that perhaps a night of drinking had in fact led to a tumble down the stairs. even kathleen's daughter kaitlyn couldn't rule it out. >> she knew how to hold her alcohol. but that's not to say she didn't drink a lot. she could easily drink a large amount of alcohol and was up until 2:00 in the morning. >> meanwhile, michael peterson and his kids had taken refuge at a neighbor's house. michael and his brother bill kept watch on the police investigation across the street. >> we walked by the house several times to see what the police are doing. >> bill, a lawyer, advised michael not to talk with the cops. >> i'm thinking as an attorney now. i don't know what is going on. all i know is the police obviously think something is

going on. >> bill worried it was payback time. he was concerned that his big brother had put a bulls eye on his own back with the columns he wrote for the local paper. turned out he often targeted the cops. >> he was extremely critical of them on a regular basis. >> he gave them a stick in the eye? >> constantly. >> so he was taking on the good old boy system there? >> very much so. >> michael's daughters were also worried. they knew very well their father relished being the provocateur. now the police were swarming their house, walking the yard, looking under bushes and trees. >> i remember feeling that something was going badly with the police. >> it was a few days after kathleen's death whether michael called a family meeting to reassure them. he told them that no matter what they heard, no matter what the police tried to concoct, he what never have hurt kathleen. >> he specifically wanted us to know that he did not do it. and he told us that, you know, they had been there and they had

been drinking. that he had gone out to the pool. he came back and found her at the bottom of the stairs. i said we believe you. >> but would the police? they seemed intent on peeling away the veneer of the peterson's marriage. what was going on behind the closed doors in the mansion on cedar street? >> they were asking questions about kathleen and michael's relationship and if i knew of anything. i thought they were happily married. she was very much in love with him. >> but the detectives were beginning to believe the perfect marriage was anything but. >> coming up -- the peterson's marriage behind closed doors. and the bombshell in the coroner's report that would tear a family apart. >> i said you need to read this. you need to understand that mom, she did not die from falling down the stairs. how much whiter can your smile be? introducing new colgate® optic white® whiten & protect toothpaste. this shell is made of calcium that can absorb stains like teeth. brush one side with a regular whitening toothpaste

and the other side with optic white®. it whitens deeper... and it can stay white! even after dipping it again, colgate®'s white seal technology helps prevent stains from coming back. for a whiter smile that stays white, new colgate® optic white whiten & protect. eating healthier,tion by drinking plenty of water, but still not getting relief? try dulcolax laxative tablets. dulcolax is comfort-coated for gentle, over-night relief. dulcolax. predictable over-night relief you can count on.

[♪]

detective holland of the durham police department didn't like what he was seeing in the stairway when he arrived at the peterson's sprawling mansion on

cedar street. even though the on-scene medical examiner thought the wife kathleen had possibly died from a fall down the stairs, the detectives told him there was simply too much blood. >> this doesn't look like an accident. >> he calls in a specialist to analyze the blood in the stairway. >> we had to change gears what was called an accidental fall changed over to a suspicious death. >> so while the forensics team did the collecting, the detectives started to peek behind the curtain of this durham power couple. in addition to the forensic evidence you're gathering, you have to ask this question what is going on in this marriage? >> right. >> that's a big part of your investigation? >> right. >> detectives told kathleen's sister candace aside to ask if she noticed any trouble in her sister's marriage. >> the police took me in a police room to interview me privately. >> in her grief, candace was hesitant to say anything bad about her now widowed

brother-in-law. she always liked him. >> he was a fun person to sit and chat with across the dinner table. he was interesting. he was a little bit arrogant about intelligence. but he was a very smart man. i was his big environment defender. >> she told investigators everything was fine in her sister's marriage. it was only later that a conversation she had with kathleen a few months before she died started haunting her. >> she was very, very concerned about her job stability at her company. and they were making layoffs. >> and kathleen confided in her. the financial pressures were growing. her income was shaky and her expenses exploding. >> i didn't realize how much credit card debt she had. >> $143,000 on plastic. the big house turned out was a money pit and there was a big college tuition bills. >> we have three kids going to college and good colleges, expensive private colleges. >> kathleen's daughter kaitlyn knew how heavily the financial stress was weighing on her mom.

she was writing big checks not only for her tuition at corn he will but also helping out margaret and martha. michael had taken responsibility for them after their mother died when they were young. >> there was a lot of financial problems. i sensed that. >> and to make matters far worse, kathleen had been plowing a big part of her six figure income back into her company's stock. the peterson has gone all in with the dot-com mania. >> michael kept coming to kathleen all day long saying nortel is worth this. now it's worth that. now it's worth this. he was fascinated with look how rich we're getting off nortel stock. >> but by late 2001, the bubble had burst. the stock tanked and most of kathleen's nest egg went with it. >> and that's when i really got to see the unon skin being peeled back and layers of how really stressed she was financially. >> a few weeks before she died, candace felt kathleen was staring at her own personal fiscal cliff. >> the financial structures were about to explode right before

christmas. this was like the perfect storm coming together. >> and when investigators looked at the couple's credit reports, they saw just what kathleen's sister had feared. >> they're living above their means. if he wasn't writing a book or had any royalties coming in, he had no income. >> and michael's dip into local politics had caused only more stress in the marriage. when he ran for mayor, he had been called out publicly in a lie, a whopper of one. the war action novelist didn't have a purple heart as he claimed. he got hurt not by taking hills and vietnam but in a car accident in japan. >> when he became public about the lie, it did cost kathleen friendships. she had to decide whether stand by michael or keep the friendships. and the friendships were lost. >> the petersons had taken a big hit. and the whole ugly incident did make candace wonder about her brother-in-law's judgment. >> why would you lie and then run for mayor when you know you're going to be totally vetted in terms of the truth of your military history and background? >> and perhaps most revealing of all, when investigators searched

peterson's computer, they discovered things that showed he may not have been a faithful husband. >> starting to see a different picture? >> exactly. >> and now with kathleen dead, all these things were beginning to stack up against michael. were the problems in the marriage starting to add up to a motive for murder? and then there were the forensics. the blood pattern analyst completed his initial findings. >> he told me he felt strongly that this was a homicide. >> the lead detective saw a marriage on the rocks and a scene he believed had too much blood for a simple fall down the stairs. just a few days before christmas, michael peterson was charged with the murder of his wife. he turned himself in. his children were stunned. >> to lose kathleen and then to lose dad basically, we were all grief stricken and in shock. >> as the officers booked michael into the county jail, the family stood unified behind him. kathleen's daughter kaitlyn echoed her stepdaughter's claims that the cops were harassing him. >> my mother would just be absolutely appalled. this is the last thing she would

ever, ever want to happen to her husband. >> it was hardly the christmas that the peterson family had so looked forward to. kathleen dead, their father in jail. >> just a kid, you know, in the house by yourself trying to piece together christmas. >> but soon another bombshell and this one would blow the family apart. two months after christmas, the coroner released the results of the official autopsy. >> multiple lacerations to the back of her head. like she was bludgeoned to death. severe, long, linear lacerations. >> not consistent with a fall? >> not consistent with a fall. >> if kathleen's sister candace was harboring suspicions about what happened to her sister, the medical examiner's report is the thing that pushed her over the edge. >> huge lacerations that basically scalped her.

it was murder. that one picture, that was it. >> after reading the autopsy report herself, kathleen's daughter kaitlin agreed with her aunt. she called her stepsister margaret. >> i said you need to read this. you need to understand that mom, she didn't die from falling down the stairs. she was beaten to death. >> but kaitlyn's childhood playmates, her stepsisters, stood strong with their father. >> dad told me he didn't do it, and i believe him. i trust him. >> the stepsisters never spoke again. kaitlyn removed her belongings from the house. >> i lost obviously far more than my mother. i did lose my family, my home. >> there is a lot of love there in our family and then to just have that dissolve was very, very painful. >> could the family agony get any worse? it could and by a wide margin because now michael peterson was not only accused of killing his wife kathleen, but was also facing questions about the death of another woman on another staircase years before.

>> it's horrific. it's a nightmare. >> what authorities would discover was, well, beyond eerie. >> coming up -- an incredible coincidence or proof positive of murder? >> here i have two women that appear to die the same way, two women that are associated with mike peterson. lightning doesn't strike the same place twice. across america, people are taking charge of their type 2 diabetes... ...with non-insulin victoza. for a while, i took a pill to lower my blood sugar, but it didn't get me to my goal. so i asked my doctor about victoza. he said victoza works differently than pills, and comes in a pen. and the needle is thin. victoza is an injectable prescription medicine

that may improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. it is not recommended as the first medication to treat diabetes and should not be used in people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. victoza has not been studied with mealtime insulin. victoza is not insulin. do not take victoza if you have a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to victoza or any of its ingredients. symptoms of a serious allergic reaction may include swelling of face, lips, tongue or throat, fainting or dizziness, very rapid heartbeat, problems breathing or swallowing, severe rash or itching. tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. serious side effects may happen in people who take victoza including inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis) which may be fatal. stop taking victoza and call your doctor right away if you have signs of pancreatitis, such as severe pain that will not go away in your abdomen

or from your abdomen to your back, with or without vomiting. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you have any medical conditions. taking victoza with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. the most common side effects are nausea, diarrhea, and headache. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. if your pill isn't giving you the control you need... ask your doctor about non-insulin victoza. it's covered by most health plans. do you know what happens when you eat activia ♪ ♪yday? activia helps regulate your digestive system. because when your tummy smiles, you smile too! activia. feeling good starts from the inside. love the kisses. love the snuggles. and love the extra savings, 3 days only, during the petsmart fetch 'n save sale! save up to 40% on hundreds of items, plus, select tropical fish are just $1 each. at petsmart®. this is international business.

it's very complicated stuff. that was my major. >>there are concerns about your readiness... well, your overseas operation is giving you standard currency risk exposure issues. your internal processes aren't in line with the most current regulatory standards; and your cfo is learning mandarin when he should be learning cantonese. the forbes school of business at ashford university when can you start? monday.

in police work a good tip can make your day. and it can also make your life a lot more complicated. just such a tip came to the desk of the detective working the kathleen peterson case. >> i think it was two or three days after her death is when i first had contact with the family members of elizabeth rally. >> elizabeth rally was the mother of the two girls that michael peterson was raising, margaret and martha. elizabeth's relatives had a story to tell about what had happened to her, another woman in michael peterson's life on another staircase.

let's leave the house on cedar street for a few moments and go back in time, almost 20 years. across the atlantic to germany. frank furt in the early 1980s. michael peterson was living with his first wife patty and their two sons near a u.s. air force base. michael was working on a novel while she taught grade school to children of the military. margaret and martha's mother elizabeth worked alongside patty. >> michael and patty were our parents' best friends. i remember actually patty was saying that our birth mother was like a sister to her. >> whether the girls' father and air force officer died on a mission, the peterson's and the rest of the community stepped up to help. it took for a couple of years for the widow to pull herself together. but just as she rediscovered

some zest in life, death found the ratliff family again. it was november 24th, 1985. elizabeth and her young daughters had gone to the peterson's for dinner. later michael peterson brought them home. the next morning another good friend of the circle and her husband were summoned to elizabeth's town house by the girls' hysterical call. come, there is a horrible accident. she already rounded up michael peterson a few doors down. >> as we walked in, michael was at the bottom of the staircase. liz was covered with a coat. there was a puddle of blood going from where she was laying all the way down under the staircase. >> elizabeth ratliff was dead. she skid him what happened.

>> he said she probably had an aneurysm like her father. when i started to think about someone falling down the stairs, i thought well that's possible. the stairs are, you know, pretty aneurysm like her father. when i started to think about someone falling down the stairs, i thought well that's possible. the stairs are, you know, pretty steep and, you know, they're slippery and wooden. >> but as amy thought about it, there was just too much blood for a slip and fall. blood not just where elizabeth lay but high up along the staircase walls, too. >> if you fell down the stairs, why would there be blood splurted up the side of the wall? it didn't make any sense to me. >> and she said there were household details out of order. like the table that liz set out every night with the girl's breakfast plates. it was bare. the snow boots she left by the front door, still on her feet. >> liz never wore her boots in the house. she always took her boots off. that was another clue to me that something was wrongment she was either running for someone or trying to escape. >> had elizabeth been attacked before? had her death not been by natural causes? amy beth thought a full fledged investigation would ensue, but as she tells it, michael peterson spoke to the news that day and said she had been

complaining of severe headaches and she had a hereditary bleeding disorder. perhaps she had a stroke and fallen down the stairs. the questions amy beth expected to be asked never were. >> i thought why aren't they talking to people? why aren't they asking questions? no one did. >> later that day, peterson phoned elizabeth's sister margaret blare in rhode island with the dreadful news. >> margaret, there's been an accident. liz fell down the stairs and died. what you are saying? i just totally went numb. >> margaret could not believe it. >> i mean my sister. he's saying she died. she's young. she has two beautiful little children. babies, really. and, of course, i have a thousand questions afterwards. >> but any questions regarding foul play in elizabeth's death were laid to rest by the results of an autopsy performed at a

u.s. army hospital in germany. elizabeth died, the examiner said, from a brain recommendage, natural causes. her body was flown to texas for burial beside her husband. at the funeral, sister margaret anxious for further details wasn't going to hear anything more from michael peterson. >> michael was very aloof and very strange. >> did he speak? >> no. he didn't really say a lot at all. he never talked about what happened to liz. >> liz's will had designated the petersons and not her family as the girls' legal guardians. >> you didn't that i was strange? >> well, actually, you know, i can understand how that could happen. this was her world now. liz loved these people. and trusted him. >> not long after the new peterson family now with two boys and two girls moved back home to north carolina. the marriage of patty and michael though wouldn't last.

michael struck up a relationship with kathleen. then there was their decade together raising kids, his best seller, her business success, her social world. fast forward. to december 2001 and comes the uncanny, eeri parallel involving another death on another staircase. margaret, elizabeth's sister, got a call from one of the girls. >> she said, margaret, there's been an accident. kathleen fell down the stairs and died. >> i'm like, do you know what you're saying? the same thing happened to elizabeth. she said, i know. >> margaret decided she had no choice but to pick up the phone and call the detective working the kathleen peterson case. >> do you know that my sister in 1985 had an accident. she fell down the stairs and died and michael was the last person to be with her? >> its detective did not know that. >> here i have two women that appear to die the same way.

two women that are associated with mike peterson. >> the detective started digging into the elizabeth ratliff story. he learned that pathologist who attributed elizabeth's death to natural causes back in 1985 couldn't say for certain what had caused her brain hemorrhage. had she been the victim of a stroke, a fall, or foul play? the north carolina authorities decided the only way to know for sure would be to have the body exhumed from the grave in texas and look for themselves. disturbing what they found. >> coming up -- dead women tell no lies, say some. >> the lacerations were very similar to the ones that had been perpetrated upon kathleen peterson. >> now pandora's box is open. >> when "dateline" continues. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ [ crowd shouting ] it's go time. ♪ so, if you're what ysleeping in your is youcontact lenses, it's go time. ask about the air optix® contacts so breathable they're approved for up to 30 nights of continuous wear. ask your doctor about safety information as serious eye problems may occur. visit airoptix.com for a free one-month trial. i knew how it felt to be trapped with no restroom in sight. overactive bladder, that's when i took control with the oxytrol for women patch. it's safe and effective when used as directed. it reduces frequency, urgency and accidents. oxytrol for women. let's step away from the bland and let the color fly. let's get to the one store with more number-one choices and match this

or this without using too much of this. then let's crack open a can and get to it. paint? no. let's do pow. let's do this. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. glidden duo starts at a new lower price of $25.46 a gallon. glidden duo starts at a new lower price [doorbell rings]

hey. hey. what's this? it's u-verse live tv. with at&t u-verse... you can watch live tv from your device. hey. hey. anywhere in your home. [doorbell rings] hey. hey. so you won't miss a minute of ncaa march madness. call now to get a u-verse bundle for the same great price for 2 years. guaranteed.

as time went by, margaret blare had come to accept michael peterson's explanation of her sister's death years before. a tumble down the stairs in a germantown house. >> i just believed what i was told. about the severe hemorrhage and presuming that a doctor had, you know, made this diagnosis. >> and for close to two decades, the aunt from rhode island watched from afar as margaret and martha were raised by the petersons in germany and then in north carolina with michael's second wife kathleen. visits with the girls had been all too brief. >> they would come visit me back and forth. but, you know, i just fell apart every time i had to send them back to north carolina. >> but when she learned that kathleen had also been found dead at the bottom of the staircase, margaret began to fear her sister elizabeth's accidental fall might be anything but. >> whether i talked to her friends, i found out that blood had been dripping down the wall.

well, that doesn't happen when you have a cerebral recommend wrath. >> margaret recalled after elizabeth's funeral there was one relative asking questions about michael peterson. >> there was a member of my family who said i think michael peterson has something to do with liz's dpej. >> said that very thought? >> yes. >> and at that time, i can remember saying people don't go around killing people. you know, that is absurd. >> but now authorities in north carolina were starting to feel those grave suspicions might be warranted. after reviewing elizabeth ratliff's case, investigators led in part by then durham assistant district attorney greta black concluded the only way they were going to figure out how elizabeth died was to dig up her grave. >> we decided that it probably would be worth while to try to exhume her body to determine

whether the findings in germany were accurate or not. >> to do that, they had to get the okay from elizabeth's daughters margaret and martha. the girls who believed in their father's innocence as fiercely as they mistrusted the authorities struggled with the decision. >> the hardest thing i ever had to do was to write off on the exhumation of our birth mother. >> but ultimately they agreed. >> i signed off on it because we wanted to be like there is no way that this could have happened. like, please, look at the evidence. i will do this to free our dad of the accusations. >> on a beautiful blue sky day, the remains of elizabeth ratliff were exhumed from the resting place in texas. her body was driven to north carolina where it would be studied by the same medical examiner who ruled kathleen peterson's death a homicide. >> there was a risk here. >> you opened that coffin and found that authorities in german had been correct in ruling it a death by natural causes. >> we decided it needed to be

done. >> rofl dice. >> exactly. >> the detective looked through a morgue window as the top was pried off the coffin. >> it was so airtight, it was hard to use the crank to get the casket to open once it was raised, you could see part of elizabeth ratliff's face and hair. it was remarkable. >> they were stunned. the body was practically intact. >> her finger nail polish was still on. her dress was still perfectly in place. >> she had her wedding dress on. that was very difficult. >> the m.e. took a closer look at the injuries to elizabeth's head. she was finding lacerations, deep gouges in the scalp, seven. seven lacerations? >> it was amazing. it was uncanny. the lacerations were very similar to the ones that had been perpetrated upon kathleen

peterson and in her findings, she made a decision that miss ratliff had been murdered. now pan dor why's box is open. who killed her? >> the answer was obvious to the authorities. there were now two women in michael peterson's life, both dead in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs. both believed bludgeoned. kathleen's sister candace thought that peterson had killed both women. >> i had a better chance of being struck by lightning than finding two people who i intimately know at the bottom of a staircase. >> but to martha and margaret, the whole thing seemed absurd. the fact that michael was being accused of killing kathleen, the woman they called mom was bizarre enough. but now their birth mom, too? what would their father have gained by killing elizabeth ratliff? >> he would have gotten two screaming little kids out of it and that's it. like there is nothing -- there's no reason for it. >> for the investigators in

north carolina though, the death in germany became a strong building block in the circumstantial case for murder. >> i'm just thinking that my case was getting a whole lot better. >> and what's more, detectives learned that michael peterson had a secret life. secrets, lines were about to spill out in the durham courthouse. enter, brad the male escort. >> what type of service did you perform? >> oh, wow. that is pretty broad. >> coming up, michael peterson's walk on the wild side. >> what compelled me about this story is the notion that you never know who you're married to. check it out.

i can't believe your mom has a mom cave! today i have new campbell's chunky spicy chicken quesadilla soup. she gives me chunky before every game. i'm very souperstitious. haha, that's a good one! haha! [ male announcer ] campbell's chunky soup. it fills you up right. how can you see yourself in new glasswithout your glasses?p. at lenscrafters, our unique camera and screen system lets you compare yourself in four different frames at time. making sure all your vision choices are clear. lenscrafters loves eyes [ male announcer ] good days start here when you wake up with mccafe. and starting monday, a small cup of our freshly brewed coffee is free. it's another reason to love mccafe.

a small cup of our it took a lot of jugglings free. to keep it all together.k. for some low-income families, having broadband internet is a faraway dream.

so we created internet essentials, america's largest low-cost internet adoption program. having the internet at home means she has to go no further than the kitchen table to do her homework. now, more than one million americans have been connected at home. it makes it so much better to do homework, when you're at home. welcome to what's next. comcastnbcuniversal. in the summer of 2003, michael peterson would stand trial for the bludgeoning death of his wife kathleen. he pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. >> i'm innocent of these charges. and we'll prove it in court. >> but as the trial began, a prosecution team was determined to introduce the jury to the man behind the microphone on the courthouse steps. the person they saw as the real michael peterson. >> he actually two sides to him. some people say dr. jeckle and mr. hyde.

there was a side that outsiders saw and there was a side that insiders saw that was very different. >> so this case is about pretempts and appearances. it's about things not being as they seem. >> a woman who wrote a book about the case and hosts "true crime" on investigation discovery, says as the tile got under way, it was clear that michael and kathleen's marriage was far from the perfect ones their friends envied. >> what compelled me about this story is the notion that you never know who you're married to. and in this case, kathleen peterson had no idea that she was married to a wolf in sheep's clothing. >> scratch beneath the glossy veneer, the beautiful house,

sparkling dinner parties, and prosecutors would tell the jury, they find a marriage in shambles. more than the couple's money problems, more than the loss of social standing, after michael got caught lying about his military record, the there was what investigators found when they searched his home office. >> there were secrets on the hard drive of the computer. huh? >> big secrets. >> and the prosecution would begin to reveal those secrets in graphic detail to a packed north carolina courtroom. while kathleen toiled away at her executive job to pay the couple's mounting bills, michael's writing career was hitting a wall. >> he had free time on his hands and we believe that he somewhere along the way began to form relationships with men that he particularly met on the computer. >> not women, but men. the prosecution's theory was this. the night kathleen died she asked michael if she could use his computer to receive an e-mail about a sunday morning

conference call. >> kathleen was not allowed in michael's office, nobody was. but that night because she had that important meeting in the morning, michael allowed her to get this one particular e-mail. she forgot her laptop at work. >> it was in his office that prosecutors believe she stumbled upon a series of explicit e-mail exchanges between her husband and an escort. his name, soldier top brad. his website was a beef cake pose complete with dog tags. >> he performed every service under the sun. happily for pay. he was a male prostitute. >> you have great reviews and i would like to get together peterson wrote in one e-mail. i've never done escort but used to pay to blank a super macho guy who played lacrosse. i'm very bi and that's all there is to it. >> what type of service did you perform? >> oh, wow.

that's pretty broad. >> on the witness stand, the escort told the jury that just three months before kathleen's death he and michael peterson had arranged to meet. >> we were to hook up. >> and what were you planning on doing? >> having sex. >> the hookup never happened. but combine that revelation with the other combustibles in the couple's life, like the financial stress, and you have all the ingredients the prosecution told the jury, for a fatal confrontation. >> if kathleen had known this, she would never have stayed in that marriage according to her family members. she was not one to be cheated on. forget about having somebody who is being a bisexual with other men. >> further evidence that michael attacked kathleen ferociously, the prosecution stated, was as clear as the spray of blood up the staircase wall. >> the amount of blood, the positioning of the blood, the location of the blood, i was overwhelming. >> in general terms, the greater the force, the softer the drop.

>> to take the jury vividly up the back stairs, the prosecution called the state's blood pattern expert. he told the jury with certainty that kathleen peterson had been beaten to death. he testified the droplet pattern high up the walls is what you expect to see with a weapon rising, striking, and casting off blood with each new blow. >> i believe there is a minimum of four blows that have occurred in this scene. >> what's more he testified, this bloodstain was found on the inside of peterson's shorts. he done tests that he said proved the only way it could have gotten there was if peterson had been standing over his wife beating her. >> the individual wearing these pants at the time of that impact was in close proximity to the source of blood when it was impacted. >> the blood pattern expert also pointed out something especially chilling to the jury. technicians who responded to the scene had noticed drops of fresh

blood on top of dry blood on one stair step. did that mean the assault happened in two stages? >> there were two attacks. kathleen peterson was beaten and fell and then to make sure she was dead, she was beaten again. >> further evidence to support the theory of two attacks showed up in lab tests, the prosecution argued. kathleen's head injuries had produced something called red neurons, which they say form after oxygen is withheld from the brain for at least two hours. >> that gives mr. peterson at least two hours to do this. before the 911 call was placed. >> what was he doing during all that time? the state argued he was staging the scene. detectives saw what they thought were white marks on the stairs. to them it was an attempted cleanup. and there were two wine glasses on the kitchen counter suggesting an evening of too much drink followed by a tumble down the stairs.

thing was, kathleen fingerprints weren't on ether glass. kathleen's blood alcohol content was low enough she could have passed a roadside breathalyzer test. was the writer of fiction making up another story? covering up murder as an accident? >> it seemed that somebody had poured a whole bottle of wine down the drain to make it look like they had been drinking more than they had. >> so this is staged? >> it was staged. >> yet, if kathleen was bludgeoned to death as prosecutors thought, investigators hadn't found the murder weapon. it has been a gift from candace to her sister a decade before. >> i found it to be a great gift. i definitely saw it be i the fireplace. if he had, that could explain those blood drops on the walkwa

walkway. >> blood dropping from the murder weapon as it was potentially disposed of somewhere outside the dwelling. but the state thought it was what the medical examiner found on top of the kathleen's head that was the most compelling. seven tears to the scalp. >> do you recall any case where someone died falling down the steps and there were multiple lacerations? >> no. >> were you able to determine in your opinion what the manner of her death was? >> the manner of death in this case is homicide. >> injuries that were eerily similar to those suffered by the peterson family friend from germany all those years before, elizabeth ratliff. and the jury almost in a trial within a trial heard that story. the long ago friends from germany testifying to their suspicions about michael peterson's involvement in another stairway death. another one with so much blood. >> the blood was up so high that i couldn't figure out how did the blood get up there? >> it was the thing that wrapped up the state's case.

>> do you really believe that lightning strikes twice in the same place? >> michael peterson had been the last person to have seen not only kathleen peterson alive, but also elizabeth ratliff. >> that's a whole lot of women dead at the bottom of the stairs in this guy's life, don't you think? >> so there was the prosecution's case for conviction. blood evidence, a staged scene and the trigger. the violent confrontation between husband and wife that resulted when a secret appetite for men was exposed. and not a bit of that made any sense, the defense was about to tell the jury. the prosecution said it was missing. guess what turned up? >> my heart started pounding. >> and the defenses answer to that damning blood evidence. when "dateline" continues. everything your mouth does in a day is building up layer, upon layer, of bacteria. and to destroy those layers?

you need listerine®. its unique formula penetrates these layers deeper than other mouthwashes, killing bacteria all the way down to the bottom layer. so for a cleaner, healthier mouth, go with #1 dentist recommended listerine®. power to your mouth™. also try new listerine® naturals. the only mouthwash that combines the power of listerine® with naturally sourced ingredients. with olive garden's new cucina mia for just $9.99. italian dinner first, choose unlimited soup or salad. then create your own pasta with one of five homemade sauces. and finish with dessert. three courses, $9.99. at olive garden. i have a big meeting when we land, but i am so stuffed up, i can't rest. [ male announcer ] nyquil cold and flu liquid gels don't unstuff your nose.

they don't? alka seltzer plus night fights your worst cold symptoms, plus has a decongestant. [ inhales deeply ] oh. what a relief it is. basically my whole life. this is viva® vantage. it has a stretch. it stretches! [ abbey ] can your paper towel do that? -no. -no. i'm like actually trying to break it. that stretch means scrubbing power. i need to get some. [ abbey ] new viva® vantage. the towel more people prefer. [ abbey ] new viva® vantage. we've all met bill. he shows up once a month asking for money. you can't avoid him, but you can stop him from wasting 150 million pounds of paper every year. ask bill to go online. green bill is much cooler. the more you know.

what happened on that back staircase? was it the violent culmination of a perfect storm as the prosecution held? or was it really something not criminal at all? an unfortunate accident. for months michael peterson's girls, margaret and martha sat in court suffering as they called their dad a killer. >> they would accuse my father of double murders? or the wife murder? or the staircase murders? and we couldn't stand up and say wait a second, this isn't true. >> but now it was lead defense attorney, david rudolf's turn to convince a jury of that. kathleen's death, he said, was a simple fatal accident. nothing else made sense. >> the truth is that kathleen peterson after drinking some wine and some champagne and taking some valium tried to walk up a narrow, poorly lit stairway

in flip-flops and she fell and she bled to death. >> there had been no violent confrontation that night, no explicit discovery of e-mails by kathleen. all that he believed was a fantasy of the prosecution team. michael peterson was bisexual, sure, but that didn't mean the petersons weren't an extraordinarily happy couple. >> did michael have sexual needs that he fulfilled outside the marriage? okay, he did. but that didn't mean that their relationship was anything other than great. >> even brad, the escort, testified that peterson wrote to him about how much he loved his wife. >> in his e-mails, unlike most of my clients, he indicated that he had a great relationship. most clients don't want to say anything about their relationships. he indicated he had a warm relationship with his wife and nothing would destroy that. >> and the defense says kathleen could have known about his

sexual inclinations. his brother said it was no secret to him. >> were you shocked to learn that your brother has at least bisexual inclinations? >> no. i've known that since i was 14. >> and even if kathleen had discovered her husband's bisexuality that night, bill says an explosive fight wasn't the likely outcome. >> i think she would be the kind of person that would talk through something like that, even seeking external help if she felt she needed it. >> as for the peterson's money problems, not so, the defense argued. contrary to being on the brink of financial collapse, the couple's net worth, assets minus debt, was a tidy pile. the state's financial analyst admitted as much in cross examination. >> the situation in december of 2001 was a couple worth approximately $1.5 million after paying off their debts? that's correct. >> the defense now had to scale the mt. everest of the case, the forensics, explaining to the jury all that blood. how could a simple fall have

resulted in spatter so high up the staircase walls? >> the defense would call dr. henry lee to the stand. >> celebrity medical examiner dr. henry lee of o.j. case fame would show the jury in theatrical fashion just how kathleen, falling and staggering about, coughing up blood could have accounted for the spray. >> an injured person walking, can move, can shake her head, can move the arm, can step forward. >> obviously the blood all around was due to her being alive and moving around for some period of time. it didn't have to do with what inflicted the wounds. >> and the blood on his shorts, that could have happened, the defense said, as michael peterson was cradling his wife. the other evidence proved michael peterson tampered with the scene. drops in the house and on the walkway outside, none of that could be trusted attorney rudolf

told the jury. >> the blood in that area had been completely altered. the scene at the house had been completely contaminated. >> the defense argued the police had failed to secure the staircase for their first hour on the scene, allowing michael and even his son, todd, to track kathleen's blood throughout the house. >> michael goes up to kathleen, with the police watching, hugs her. todd takes him, puts him on the couch where there's blood transfer. and then todd says can i go get some soda and a glass and the police say sure, and here goes todd walking around the kitchen with blood on his hands. >> the defense believe the blood evidence was misinterpreted by overzealous investigators who may have had it in for peterson from the start. remember those newspaper columns taking pot shots at the local

pd? perhaps, his family thought, this was payback time. >> they had not made a lot of friends with the police force, so perhaps they could have been doing a little extra to them. >> as to the supposedly suspicious death of margaret and martha's mom, elizabeth ratliff, the defense treated it as a weird coincidence, but here in durham, north carolina, completely irrelevant. peterson was never charged with ratliff's murder and maintains he had nothing to do with her death. >> what you had was a sort of circular argument. because she died at the foot of a stairway, then kathleen peterson must have been murdered. and because kathleen peterson was murdered at the foot of a stairway, then elizabeth ratliff must have been murdered. the reality is that elizabeth ratliff died of a stroke, and that was determined by an autopsy at the time. and it was never suspicious until kathleen died.

>> peterson's brother agrees. investigators have been called to the scene in germany and found no indications of foul play. >> two dead women at the bottom of a stairwell? >> 17 years apart? coincidence do happen. >> then those ghastly lacerations on kathleen's head, which the state medical examiner attributed to a beating. defense attorney rudolf countered with an expert of his own, who noted what he didn't fine, no skull or bone fractures. >> kathleen peterson's injuries were the result of a fall and not the result of a beating. >> there was absolutely no fractures anywhere. no fractures to her fingers, to her arms, to her skull, and there was absolutely no injury to the brain. and that's just almost an impossibility if what you're

doing is beating somebody with a metal object. >> just as unlikely, rudolf said, was the prosecution's contention that the brutal attack took place in a cramped stairwell. if michael peterson had been beating his wife with a metal object, wouldn't there have been nicks and dings in the walls? the defense took the jury on a tour of the cedar street home to show them, there were none. >> it just defies imagination to think that he could have done that in that space and not caused some collateral damage. >> and for a final exclamation point, the defense had a perry mason moment up its sleeve. the prosecution had insisted throughout the murder weapon used to bludgeon kathleen peterson was the fireplace blow poke, only police never found it. but near the end of the trial, a stunning revelation. >> my heart started pounding. >> peterson's son, clayton, said while fixing his car he'd come

across the missing blow poke. it was there all along and the cops had simply missed it. >> here it was in the basement sitting there in the corner covered with dust and cobwebs. clayton ran upstairs to tell his father. >> dad thought that it was a setup and that the police were going to come storming into the house. >> in court the defense played the moment for all it was worth, getting the lead detective to agree that if this was the murder weapon, it was completely intact. >> do you see any dents in there? even like a tiny little indentation? >> it doesn't appear to have any dents. >> that was the blow poke. well, if it is, then what was the murder weapon? >> lawyer david rudolf thought he'd peppered reasonable doubt all the way through the state's circumstantial case. the perfect storm that wasn't to the murder weapon that was no more than a dusty fireplace tool. the peerson camp was confident. >> we are so positive that he was going to get off, because in

our minds, it was the clearest thing in the world. >> but would the jury agree? the verdict. >> i thought that we had won that case hands down. >> i didn't do anything. >> we the 12 members of the juror unanimously find the defendant to be -- here you go sweetie, wait up do you want to take this in the house for mommy. quite a haul. oh yeah. ahh. i'm so ready for spring. i hear you. i went to walmart and i got every sort of gardening thing under the sun. i mean flowers, bulbs, fertilizer, malt. the works. how'd you do that. do what? get them to help you like that. yeah, i bribe them. best day ever. some of my best work. everything you need to get ready for spring. save money. live better. walmart. but, please don't try this at home. because you simply can't do this at home. go and smell the roses!

makes everything algood even better...ilk from the bowls of cereal you make... to all the delicious recipes you bake. because inside every carton is the goodness of blue diamond almonds. almond breeze. almondiciously good!

[♪]

after five months of trial, one of the longest anyone could remember in north carolina history, the peterson case was finally in the hands of the jury. >> i had this moment of doubt where i was like what if it doesn't happen? what if he gets convicted? and i was like, no. there's no way. >> the peterson kids were confident their dad would be going home with them. and michael's brother bill, a lawyer himself, was certain the prosecutors had not proven their case. >> i thought that we had won that case hands down. i could not see anyone coming away from that trial with the

conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that my brother inflicted a beating that caused her death. i just did not see it. >> but it seemed as though the jury would never come back. day one, no verdict. ditto day two and day three. >> the jury's deliberating and you're waiting and waiting and waiting? >> yeah. we were getting more and more optimistic, too. the longer the jury's out, we're thinking they're having trouble, they're having doubts. >> finally, on day four, they got word. the jury had a verdict. >> we were absolutely terrified. we knew the magnitude of this decision. >> a hush, and then the clerk began to read. >> we the 12 members of the jury unanimously find the defendant to be guilty of first-degree murder. >> i felt violently ill. we all sort of reached over and grabbed each other as if we were trying to hold on to the family. it was definitely a terrible moment in my life. >> as soon as we heard the first juror say guilty, i just was weeping like i was being taken

over by grief and shock. >> is there anything you want to say before the court imposes judgment? >> i would like to say -- >> michael peterson turned to his kids. >> he said, it's okay. it's okay. i think on his part he was just trying to calm himself down but also i think he felt like his role was to protect us. >> he was acknowledging that we had a huge loss and that we had just lost everything and that it was going to be okay and he was going to find some way to make it okay again. >> michael peterson turned to face the judge for the reading of the sentence. >> the defendant is imprisoned in north carolina department of corrections for the remainder of his natural life without the benefit of parole. >> for kathleen's sister candace, the verdict was nothing to celebrate. >> makes me cry when i heard it. there's no joy in this. it's just great sadness. >> and peterson's defense

attorney, david rudolf, was racked with woulda, coulda, shoulda doubts. >> i was devastated. it made me question myself. >> as one of north carolina's most battle hardened criminal defense attorneys, he knew how slim the chances were for a retrial once a case went on to the appellate court. >> i can't imagine a worse fate than being in jail for something you didn't do, particularly when it's a loved one who's died. you don't even have a chance to grieve that person. >> bill peterson, who had moved to durham to be with his brother through the trial, was in disbelief. >> i went back to the house and i broke down. that's the worst day of our lives. our collective lives. absolutely the worst. >> the brother stepped in to help in whatever way he could. there was the big house to sell. margaret and martha about to be

without a roof over their heads would have to move to nevada with him. he visited michael in prison to get things started. >> my brother had to sign some papers, power of attorney for me so we could wrap up his life. he came up and tried to reach his hands through the glass and crying. that was bad. >> the peterson children resigned themselves to the harsh reality that prison was now their father's home. they visited him whenever they could. >> i would just sob every time i left. you hold it together for dad because there's -- why would you cry in front of dad? that's not going to help him. when you leave, you're sobbing in your car. >> years passed. the girls, now young women, watched their father age. still, michael peterson told his daughters he wasn't giving up. >> we would have hope for every single appeal and every single time it would get beaten down. >> by the end of 2007, the north carolina supreme court rejected michael peterson's request for a new trial. for peterson, it seemed to be

the end of the line. >> he wasn't going to come out. that was the hard part. >> with little to lose, he spoke in prison with jones who had written a book on his case. >> i know i'm not guilty. i know i didn't hurt kathleen. it's very difficult for me to accept the fact that i'm a prisoner, a convicted murderer. it's just -- well, it's just nonsense. >> peterson said he loved his wife and his interest in men was not an issue in the marriage. >> did kathleen know -- >> yes, of course, she knew. it was not a major factor in our lives. there's love and then there's sex. and that's what that was. >> peterson told jones he and kathleen were enjoying a pleasant evening at home the night she died. >> we had sex. she took a bath. we came downstairs. she started to cook. it was a -- a pasta thing. >> it was a night like many others peterson said until he

found kathleen at the bottom of the staircase. >> people would say, how do you know she fell down the stairs? well, well, you know, you come in, been drinking a lot. she was drinking a good -- great deal. you find somebody at the bottom of the stairs. hmm, i guess they fell down the stairs. he said he never would have hurt kathleen. >> i didn't do anything. i guess basically still in my heart in my -- i like to believe kathleen fell down the stairs. but nobody buys that one. >> his words were, but nobody buys that one. >> wrongfully accused, wrong free convicted. >> absolutely. wrongfully accused. wrongfully convicted. he's going to find a way out of this. >> out in a coffin or out the front gate? the coffin seemed more likely. but then, life can take some very strange twists and turns. coming up -- a new theory of how kathleen peterson died. >> review of the slides showed what? traces of bird feather? >> yes. >> when "dateline" continues.

you gotta see this, look. you need to see this! guys, you need to see this. [ splat ] ew, gross. awesome. ♪ my love is calling ♪ [ watch ringing ] you need to see this. [ ringing continues ] it's ringing! it's ringing! yeah, it does that. hello? [ woman ] hey. ♪ wish my tv curved. ♪ do you want to go to the plage with me? ♪ can i see that? [ laughter ] you need to see this. take a look at this. ♪ going down, down, down wow. ooh. ♪ this 4k resolution is incredible. shh! ♪ do you want to go to the plage with me? ♪ this is unbelievable. are you seeing this? [ male announcer ] from big to small, the most incredible things happen on a samsung. ♪

love the kisses. love the snuggles. and love the extra savings, 3 days only, during the petsmart fetch 'n save sale! save up to 40% on hundreds of items, plus, select tropical fish are just $1 each. at petsmart®. so, if you're what ysleeping in your is youcontact lenses, ask about the air optix® contacts so breathable they're approved for up to 30 nights of continuous wear. ask your doctor about safety information as serious eye problems may occur. visit airoptix.com for a free one-month trial. do you know what happens when you eat activia ♪ ♪yday? activia helps regulate your digestive system. because when your tummy smiles, you smile too! activia. feeling good starts from the inside.

i've been claritin clear for 6 amazdays. at the first sign of my allergies, my doctor recommended taking one claritin every day of my allergy season for continuous relief. so i did! it's been 21 days and i'm still claritin clear. 16 days of relief from itchy, watery eyes. 28 days of continuous relief from sneezing and runny nose, since i've been taking claritin every day of my allergy season. get the #1 doctor recommended non-drowsy allergy brand. live claritin clear. every day.

there are pleasant places to idle away your golden years but north carolina's nash correctional institution isn't one of them. but that's where michael peterson, father, novelist and wife killer according to a jury of his peers, was incarcerated.

just another number in a cell block with other felons, life without the possibility of parole. >> the only way michael was going to get out of prison was in a coffin. >> out in reno, though, peterson's look alike younger brother hadn't given up hope, not yet. bill peterson, the lawyer, had been digging ceaselessly for years to come up with something new in his brother's case that the court might consider, but it was the longest of long shots after the appeals fizzled. >> did the lawyer in you say that's it? >> no. that's when the real hard work started. out of money, out of lawyers. that's when the burden fell on me and whoever would help me. >> bill peterson spent hours in the durham county courthouse combing through the district attorney's piled high boxes of evidence. was there something that had been overlooked? and he wasn't the only supporter nursing alternate theories of kathleen peterson's death. there is a neighbor on cedar street, an attorney, who had an intriguing idea for what he believes happened that night.

his scenario of an accidental death has come to be known as the owl theory. >> we've seen owls in the area. he thought that this was very plausible. he put together a theory himself. >> here's how brother bill envisions the owl theory happening. kathleen who spent the day putting up christmas decorations goes out front that night while michael is back by the pool. she's checking on her laundry -- lawn display beneath the trees. >> the owl flew down and landed on kathleen's head and then tore her scalp in a manner that would be consistent with the lacerations found on her scalp. >> bleeding, kathleen leaves drops on the walk and a smear on the door as she struggles getting into the house, getting only as far as the staircase where she joins the defense's depiction of falling, passing out, coming to and rising again, only to fall for the final time. the d.a.'s office had been

approached with the owl theory during the trial and dismissed it outright. >> what's wrong with the owl theory? >> the lack of feathers, the lack of other things that might be left behind if an owl had, in fact, viciously attacked her was basically why it didn't seem to make sense. >> the cops are making a big joke out of this. they put a picture of the owl on the most wanted list. >> so the peterson jury never did hear about an owl theory. but zip ahead five years. the neighbor who was advocating for it still looking for something to back his theory up. sure enough, there it was in the original case notes file. a feather. >> you have to magnify them 400 times just to see them. >> tim thompson, owner of associated microscopes, was hired to examine the slide of that feather at the district attorney's office. >> they grow under the claws of an owl. when they attack something, they leave behind the small particle feathers.

>> thompson peered through his microscope, studying a clump of hair found clutched in kathleen peterson's hand. tangled in the hair is not one, but two minute feathers. a surprise he says both to the detectives and the assistant d.a. with him. >> they were just surprised that their lab people had not found it. >> bill peterson was surprised, too. here was further proof that an owl may have attacked kathleen. >> a review of the slides showed what? traces of bird feather? >> yes, yes. exactly right. in her hair. that's another very, very compelling fact. >> what was most compelling about the idea that an owl attacked kathleen, supporters thought, was how it accounted for the distinct lacerations on her scalp. had the three main talons of an owl like these caused a bleeding head wound with these tears? >> we had an expert saying it's

consistent with the owl claw. >> you think of the characteristic trident kind of talon claws. >> yeah. yeah. as we all know, a scalp wound causes plenty of bleeding. she panicked. obviously she'd run in the house to get away from the owl. that she did. and ran down the stairwell. >> and if an owl attacking human sounds like so much urban legend, don't tell that to byron unger. he owned a company about ten miles away from the peterson home. he was leaving work with his manager one night when an owl swooped down from the trees and swiped his colleague on the head. this surveillance camera caught the entire freakish event. and if that weren't strange enough, it happened to byron himself two weeks later. >> i've never been hit so hard by something that felt like a baseball bat. knocked me probably five feet to the ground. >> knocked you? >> on the ground. scattered me. i was bleeding so bad i thought i lost my eye. >> his wife waiting for him in the car dialed 911. >> they didn't believe my wife. they thought we were crazy when we said my husband has been attacked by a bird or an owl.

>> show me in the head. >> got me right here in to my eye a little bit and up in to my hair really bad. the side of the face and all up in here hit by talons. >> is that what happened to kathleen peterson? but critics see problems with the idea that an owl attacked kathleen. problems like, why isn't there more of a trail of blood from the front door to the staircase? and why would she go up the staircase at all? writer jones is one who thinks the owl theory falls apart. >> michael was supposedly then outside as well? wouldn't he have heard his wife being attacked? wouldn't he have rushed to the other side of the lawn to see what was the matter? >> and kathleen's sister candace does not believe for an instant that an owl was responsible for what she sees as her sister's bludgeoning death. >> i'm supposed to believe an owl ripped her apart, there's no ripping on her arms of an owl's talons. the thing is so ludicrous. >> in the summer of 2009,

peterson's neighbor filed a motion on the owl theory requesting that michael peterson be granted a new trial. the trial judge dismissed it. the owl theory was dead in court but lives on still in the court of public opinion. >> there are people a lot smarter than me who absolutely are convinced this is what happened. >> so with the motion for a new trial denied, with the owl shooed out of court, it really did finally seem to be the last chapter for the novelist. but a surprise ending or at least a surprise development was in store, and no one could have seen it coming. coming up -- >> so this is junk science, voodoo? >> it's complete voodoo. they don't have the evidence they think they need to convict the person and so they make it up. >> problems with the state crime lab lead to questions about one of the prosecution's star witnesses.

by 2010, seven years after michael peterson's conviction, his daughter, martha, had given up hope her father would ever be released from nash correctional institution. >> dad was probably going to be in prison until he died. this was the reality that was

never going to change. >> but in the cell blocks at the same prison had been another inmate who would account for an astonishing reversal of fortune for michael peterson. his name is greg taylor. >> i had a wife and daughter and suburban home and career and also had some habits from my youth regarding drugs and alcohol that led me into a ditch one night. >> after a night out, taylor was accused of a brutal crime. the murder of a woman in an industrial section of raleigh, north carolina. from day one, he says he professed her innocence. >> any time they offered me a chance to prove i'm innocent, i jumped at it. >> but the police didn't believe him. perhaps because investigators found a spot of what looked like blood on the fender of his truck. taylor had abandoned it just yards from where the woman was found. the crime lab backed up the cops' suspicions.

>> the blood was the issue right from the very beginning. there's no way i could be telling the truth with the victim's blood on my truck. >> at trial, taylor was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. he appealed the conviction all the way to the u.s. supreme court. unsuccessfully. >> you figured you were going to die in prison? >> yes, sir. >> taylor's fate began to change when his case fell into the hands of a north carolina attorney who fights to reverse wrongful convictions. she got ahold of the original blood analysis. >> it's one of those moments i'll remember forever. >> the documents showed the substance on taylor's truck did test positive for indications of blood in a preliminary test. but the lab workers had performed additional, more refined tests that had never been reported to the authorities. those tests showed there was never blood on taylor's vehicle. >> why wouldn't that lab person call up the detective, the prosecutor, and say i've got some bad news for you. the theory of the victim's blood on the car, it's not. >> yeah. you're thinking with common sense.

you're thinking with moral obligations, ethical obligations. >> did that not happen? >> that did not happen. >> when a three-judge panel heard the evidence that greg taylor was convicted for murder in part for blood on his truck that wasn't blood at all, the decision was unanimous. >> greg is innocent of the charge of first-degree murder. >> taylor, they ruled must be released from prison immediately. >> they literally destroyed my life. my family. >> how many days? how many years? >> 6,149 days, almost 17 years. >> wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted? >> yes, sir. >> what does the story of greg taylor have to do with michael peterson? everything it turns out. because the agent who prepared the report for taylor's lab work is a name you've heard before. special agent dewayne deaver. remember him? >> my opinion is that this is a scene of a beating. >> he was a star witness for the prosecution in the peterson trial.

the blood pattern expert that put michael peterson in the staircase bludgeoning his wife. peterson's attorney, david rudolf, believed that deaver's testimony was crucial to the state winning a conviction. >> what he did was to give the jury a scenario of how this allegedly happened and that michael peterson was there and inflicting the blows, and that was all from his reading of the blood evidence. >> after greg taylor's exoneration, one section of the crime lab at the sbi, the state bureau of investigation, came under intense scrutiny. the state attorney general's office retained independent investigators to see if there were other cases where lab agents failed to report test results. >> they went through all the sbi files and tried to match up cases that were similar to greg taylor. >> reporter joseph neff covered the story of misconduct at the state bureau of investigation for raleigh's "the news and observer." he says the attorney general review found more than 200

problem cases. the worst examples had the same agent in common. >> there are a handful of cases that were egregious in their mind. all five the work of deaver. >> the developments got defense attorney rudolf thinking. if the blood pattern analysis linked to misconduct in other cases, what damage might he have done to michael peterson's? quite a bit according to the lawyer. for starters, rudolf said, he wasn't truthful about his professional experience on the stand. >> he had he said written 200 reports involving blood spatter analysis. not true. he said he had been to the scenes of falls 15 times. in fact, he had never been to a scene of a fall. >> what's more, an investigation by reporter neff revealed that the methodology behind some of the blood pattern experiments that deaver and other agents conducted was flawed, designed to produce pro-prosecution results.

>> all of the tests that we found were absolutely unscientific. we talked with experts around the country and described them to them and the experts say, you know, this is -- this is junk science. >> like this test conducted far -- for a 2009 murder case. deaver videotaping the experiment, attempting to match a blood stain on the accused's shirt. >> that's a wrap. >> that's a wrap. >> just like the movie. >> so this is junk science, voodoo? >> complete voodoo. they don't have the evidence they think they need to convict the person and so they make it up. >> in the peterson case, he conducted experiments which he said showed that the blood stain on the inside of michael peterson's shorts was evidence that peterson had been standing over his wife beating her. remember that? >> the individual wearing these pants at the time of that impact was in close proximity to the source of blood when it was

impacted. >> this was considered huge at trial. blood evidence that put peterson in the stairway. here's a tape of that experiment. on the second attempt, reporter neff said the agents got the results they wanted. >> she does a touchdown dance like she is in the end zone and just scored. running across the lot pumping her fist. >> when peterson's brother bill saw the experiment videos, he was appalled. >> it is all reverse engineered stuff. it's all designed to get a result. to me, it is not scientific at all. >> dwayne deaver was fired. neither his work on the peterson case nor as an analyst and field agent was the cause for the termination. he is fighting the dismissal. he said he maintained an outstanding job performance rating, personnel file and reputation and that he did nothing wrong. for the peterson defenders, though, the implication was clear. the jury had been misled by a witness whose credibility as an

expert had been damaged. after all, the state and its closing argument had played on his credibility to try to secure a conviction. >> you believe that deaver is just a liar? and he has no reason in the world to lie to you. >> defense attorney rudolf filed a motion asking for a new trial, and the judge this time was ready to listen. will michael peterson soon be a free man again? >> it's really stuff made for tv drama. [ male announcer ] at ragu, our mission is to make dinner more delicious. with eleven plump tomatoes in every jar, our sauce is now richer, thicker, and more delectable than ever. ragu is bursting with so much taste, it brings families where they belong. together. ragu. make dinner taste better. ♪ [ female announcer ] we eased your back pain,

you turned up the fun. tylenol® provides strong pain relief while being gentle on your stomach. but for everything we do, we know you do so much more. tylenol®. we know you do so much more. the girl's field hockey practice was a mudfest. the showers get trashed, let's bubble! mega shower foamer stays where you spray with ultra cling technology. wide angle spray covers more of the mess! that's nice teamwork! we work hard so you don't have to. moonachie, new jersey, firefighters were still rebuilding their own house with limited funds for the most important necessities. ugh...this toilet paper's like sandpaper. [ male announcer ] that's when the charmin relief project came to the rescue. holy charmin. [ male announcer ] delivering over 10,000 rolls of bath tissue. charmin not only saved the day. charmin saved our butts. [ male announcer ] making a firehouse feel like home again. one more way the charmin relief project is helping people enjoy the go. one more way the charmin relief project how can you see yourself in new glasswithout your glasses?

at lenscrafters, our unique camera and screen system lets you compare yourself in four different frames at time. making sure all your vision choices are clear. lenscrafters loves eyes still running in the morning? yeah. getting your vegetables every day? when i can. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] could've had a v8. two full servings of vegetables for only 50 delicious calories.

a decade after he was arrested for killing his wife kathleen, an older-looking michael peterson was back in a north carolina courtroom arguing for a retrial on the grounds that the state's crucial blood pattern expert had given false testimony against him. but as far as kathleen's sister candace was concerned, prison was where peterson deserved to rot. >> ten years without my sister. ten years without her and ten years the rest of us been alive and had our freedom but not kathleen. >> as the years passed, the hurt of missing her sister remained raw. she is determined to hold her former brother-in-law responsible. >> my sister's dead for eternity. oh no, no, no. he murdered my sister. he took the prime of her. he should be held accountable for what he did. >> but peterson's attorney,

david rudolf, was just as determined to free his client from prison. over the course of a seven-day hearing, rudolf dissected the original testimony of blood attorney expert deaver. >> the agent lied to this court and our jury, not once or twice, but repeatedly. >> and with the peterson supporters holding their breath, the same judge that presided over the murder trial laid out his thinking point by point, rhetorical questions. >> is a new trial required for newly discovered evidence, due process violations and perjured testimony? the answer to those questions is yes. >> did dewayne deaver misrepresent himself to the jury?

yes. did his testimony make a difference in this case? yes. >> it will be the court's order that mr. peterson receive a new trial. >> and there it was. michael peterson would be getting a new trial. his family was overwhelmed. >> i just about fell out of the chair. the bench. just almost flipped over. >> i was weeping with joy and shock and could not believe that there was hope. >> i was, like, my dad's getting out. we're going to have our dad back. >> for the peterson children, now there was only joy. >> lots of hugs. lots of happy, happy photographs. so we're all like jumping up in to the air in a silly picture of just so, so happy. >> for defense attorney david rudolf, the judge's decision was a chance for redemption. criticizing the agent's work on the case, 69-year-old michael peterson was released on a $300,000 bond. he got to hold his grandchild. then, thanked his supporters and shared his hopes for vindication.

>> i have waited over eight years, 2,988 days, as a matter of fact, and i counted, for an opportunity to have a retrial. he got to hold his grandchild. then, thanked his supporters and shared his hopes for vindication. >> i have waited over eight years, 2,988 days, as a matter of fact, and i counted, for an opportunity to have a retrial. i want to thank judge hudson for giving me that opportunity. so that i can vindicate myself and prove my innocence in a fair trial this time. >> he was placed under house arrest. his every move monitored by an electronic ankle bracelet but that was just a detail to his son clayton. >> he wasn't in prison. he wasn't in jail. he wasn't behind bars.

he was a free man again wearing clothes. >> for the girls, margaret and martha, the dark cloud that lay over the family name for nearly a decade had lifted. >> we were part of the peterson family and we are not afraid to say it. we were so stigmatized before, you know, and like hiding it. >> but there was still a past that michael michael peterson could return to prison. the state appealed the decision to grant peterson a new trial. just last spring both sides were back in court. >> the defendant in this case received a fair trial and there does not need to be a new trial in this case. >> in the end the state court of appeals unanimously upheld the ruling, granting michael peterson a new trial, and with plans for a new trial moving ahead, the prosecutor may have to try a different case. as defense attorney rudolf and peterson left the court house, they walked away believing some of the critical blood evidence will be inadmissible the second time around. >> i think their case is very, very badly compromised because of deaver. he was all over the crime scene.

>> however, prosecutors could still opt also not to retry michael peterson. in that case, reporter neff who investigated misconduct at the state crime lab says one witness may take the blame. >> a lot of people might regard michael peterson as a killer who got out on a technicality. >> that is widely perceived. there is the possibility that michael peterson may be guilty and he may never go back to prison. if that indeed is true, that's because of the dwayne deaver's misconduct. >> the days in the mansion on cedar street are long gone, with it, the standing among durham's upper crust. he passes the days quietly now. spending time with those closest to him. he works out at the gym, reads at the library and writes about his experiences in prison. he still wears his wedding ring, his kids visit when they can. >> he's always been there for us, of course, i'm going to be there for him. it's just second nature. >> peterson for now is free from his prison cell but not from the suspicions that still surround

him. >> my father's still somewhat reclusive because while there are a lot of people that believe he's innocent and support him, there are other people who despise him and believe he's a murderer. >> for kathleen's sister candace, if her former brother-in-law is retried, it will bridge up all the pain again. but there's no way, she says, that she will back down. >> i have to relive how my sister died. she died one of the worst, worst ways. she was beaten and she knew the person who she loved was beating her. there's no way i'm not going to get justice for her. >> so the hopelessly divided again on opposite sides of aface north carolina courtroom. either way it falls, one family's justice will be another's cosmic miscarriage. everyone older now but no less passionate in their convictions about what really happened on the staircase. that dreadful accident one side

will say. that savage murder the other. and now a message from the president of the united states. [ cheers and applause ] >> well, good evening, my fellow americans. as of tonight, russian forces still occupy the crimean peninsula inside ukraine, and crimean lawmakers have begun steps to secede. and in these past few days, i've heard so many questions from the american people. questions like "is this the first step towards war?" "what can the united states do?" and "hold up, what's crimea?" [ laughter ] now, now we've taken every reasonable step to end this crisis. thursday, i spoke with president putin on the phone for an hour. d