She ended her fax with a solemn encouragement: “Be Careful!” Fear of Michael Peterson was now a constant and stressful presence in Candace’s life.
Peterson’s attorneys intensified the defense’s efforts in February by hiring Dr. Henry Lee as an expert witness—a man many considered the world’s foremost forensic scientist and whom others insisted was nothing more than a “hired gun” in the worst definition of the phrase. He was well known to the public at large from the work he did for O. J. Simpson’s defense and the assistance he rendered to the prosecutors in the JonBenét Ramsey murder in Colorado. In the pasty thirty-five years, he had testified in more than a thousand cases.
Lee arrived in Durham on February 13, his face hidden by reflective sunglasses as he emerged from behind the tinted windows of a chauffeured limousine and entered the Cedar Street home. He spent the afternoon at the mansion examining the stairwell and other points of interest.
On Monday, February 17, the state medical examiner’s office released Kathleen Peterson’s autopsy report. In Ithaca, New York, Caitlin Atwater sat down at a computer in the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority house at Cornell University. She steeled herself and went on line to view the document.
Bile rose in her throat as she glanced through the 11 pages of the report. She went back to the beginning and read each page slowly enough to absorb every word. A numbness settled in her mind as she detached the words from her emotions.
The diagram did not make sense to her. Although she understood some of the report, the technical language in other places obscured her understanding. One thing she knew with certainty when she finished reading was that her mother had not died from an accidental fall.
She placed a call to Tulane to talk with her stepsister, Margaret. She gave Margaret the Web site address for the autopsy and pleaded with her to look at it. “You need to read this. You need to understand this. Mom did not fall down the stairs. She was beaten to death.”
Margaret refused. First Caitlin’s mother had died. Now, her childhood bond with Margaret was shattered, and like an old mirror, it left only distorted reflections of what used to be.
Soon, she received a telephone call from Michael Peterson. She refused to take it. She would not speak to him or see him until the trial. In an interview with Raleigh’s News & Observer she said, “I don’t want to see into the eyes of someone who could have done that to my mother.”
The defense responded with passion to the document from the medical examiner’s office. Peterson denied the allegations in the report that he called other people before he dialed 9-1-1. He insisted that his phone records would prove that he did not place those calls. The local telephone service provider said that local, toll-free calls cannot be traced at a later date and would not appear on the records.
Peterson also denied the medical examiner’s contention that Kathleen lay bleeding for hours. “I had nothing to do with Kathleen’s death,” he insisted. The lawyers urged the press and the public not to jump to hasty conclusions.
Candace Zamperini dropped a bombshell on the defense the week following the publication of the autopsy report and photographs. She said she felt that the release would lead to the discovery of the truth. She added, “Mr. Rudolf does not represent Kathleen’s family, nor has he ever spoken to any family member. Although Michael Peterson was Kathleen’s husband, he also stands accused of her murder. Therefore, the assumption that he is Kathleen’s ‘family’ no longer applies.”
On February 19, Nortel Networks released another check to Michael Peterson for Kathleen’s pension fund. After taxes, he netted over $94,000. He went on a manic shopping spree. He bought items for every room of the house—rugs, artwork and furniture. He enhanced the family room with the addition of a $10,000 large-screen plasma TV. He bought a room full of exercise equipment and a small refrigerator for his bedroom to keep white wine chilled and his wine glasses frosted—all right by his side.
On March 1, 2002, at 10 A.M., Christina Tomasetti, Todd Peterson’s date on the night of Kathleen’s death, was scheduled for her third interview at police headquarters. Instead of Christina, a letter arrived for Investigator Holland. Thomas Loflin II, Christina’s new lawyer, was the author of the correspondence.
He advised Holland that the meeting was cancelled and that all communication would now be with him. Loflin requested all notes of the prior interviews and a list of questions that the police would like to ask his client.
The defense submitted paperwork on the afternoon of Monday, March 4, claiming that there was not enough evidence to obtain a search warrant and that police withheld evidence from the magistrate who issued it. The document also asserted the sole motivation of the police was retaliation against Michael Peterson for the critical columns he penned about the department. It called the whole search process invalid and demanded that all evidence seized be thrown out of court.
On March 31, Judge Hudson ruled that Peterson’s rights were not violated in the searches of his home. The evidence the defense wanted suppressed would be part of the trial.
Nortel Networks issued a final check for $212,790 to Michael Peterson for the amount of Kathleen’s deferred income. Michael Peterson received about $340,000 from Nortel as a direct result of Kathleen’s death.
He still had hopes of getting his hands on his wife’s $725,000 life insurance policy, which paid double for accidental death. Yet the defense team maintained from the time of Michael’s arrest and all throughout the trial that no financial motive existed.
Wacky rumors about the Michael Peterson case raced up and down the streets of Durham and rippled through Internet chat rooms. Not one person, not one shred of evidence ever surfaced to give the least bit of credibility to the lethal stories that circulated. It did, however, point to one truth—Durham was obsessed with the most sensational case in recent memory and the residents had no clue yet of how much more was in store.
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ABC’s 20/20 aired a profile of Dr. Henry Lee on April 5, 2002. In it, there was footage of the forensic specialist walking through the Peterson house. The stairway where Kathleen died was the focus of that portion of the program.
Kathleen’s family was outraged. Although the show did not identify the crime scene, the sisters recognized it. Veronica Hunt did not see the show, but she heard all about it, and she felt betrayed. She spoke out to Sonya Pfeiffer of WTVD news about the letter she received from Michael Peterson protesting his innocence.
“Things in the letter were totally new to me. My family has kept me sheltered from many details of my daughter’s gruesome death.” She said that now that the crime scene and all the blood in it was shown on television, she was more aware and wanted to know the whole truth.
Patty Peterson granted an interview to the same reporter. Her selection of words was peculiar. She did not say that she knew her ex-husband did not kill Kathleen. Instead she said, “My assumption and my hope is they are going to find the truth and that he is innocent.”
When asked if she had ever known her ex-husband to lie, she said, “No, not directly. I have no knowledge of that.”
“Did he ever hit you?” Sonya asked.
“I would say no,” Patty answered.
The reporter wanted to know if she would still support Michael if he admitted his guilt. Patty said, “It would be totally contrary to my experience with him as a human being for forty years. I’ve known him in his youth, his middle age, as a soldier serving his country, as a loving father, as a man who has loved me and other individuals.”
Her answer left questions in the air. Was the crime or a confession contrary to her experience? And would it be contrary to her experience with him as a husband?
In direct opposition to the families of victims of other crimes, Candace Zamperini appeared before the North Carolina legislature to urge them not to pass a bill that would limit public access to autopsy photos. It was these photos, she told the assembly, that convinced her that her sister was murdered. She knew if the law they were consid
ering had been passed already, she would have never seen them, because Michael Peterson would refuse to allow their release. After her appearance at the hearing, Mike blasted her for sensationalizing the issue and for putting herself above medical experts.
The value of Kathleen’s estate—over a quarter of a million dollars—was announced in early May 2002. She died without a will, making Michael Peterson and Caitlin Atwater her heirs. Michael renounced his right to administer his wife’s estate and the responsibility fell to Caitlin.
Then the other shoe dropped. The media learned of the death of Elizabeth Ratliff in 1985. They knew that the Durham police were looking into her demise and its possible connection to the murder of Kathleen.
All of Durham was atwitter. They could talk of nothing else but the similarities between the two women’s deaths. Both suffered injuries and severe head trauma. Both were found at the bottoms of stairways. Michael Peterson, by his own admission, was the last person to see both of them alive. But strangest of all was the eerie physical resemblance of the two women whose deaths were separated by sixteen years and two continents.
Eleanor Peterson was shocked by the new information she learned about her son. Ann peered through a shroud of denial that now hung about her like a tattered veil. But to the media, the family presented a united front protesting Michael’s innocence.
In early May 2002, Judge Orlando Hudson announced that he would be the jurist for the trial of State of North Carolina vs. Michael Iver Peterson. He warned attorneys to be more temperate in their comments to the press, but stopped short of issuing a gag order.
He granted Michael Peterson permission to leave the state to attend the sixtieth wedding anniversary celebration of his parents in Reno, Nevada, in July. Michael Peterson would take a trip to Reno that summer. But it would not be in July. And no one would be celebrating.
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In early June, Judge Hudson set Michael Peterson’s trial date for May 12, 2003, with the week before scheduled for jury selection. Once again, he warned the lawyers to limit their comments to the media. He also ordered them to comply with the law in sharing information.
Ann Christensen received a call from her mother, Eleanor Peterson, in the last week of June. She called to tell Ann she had broken her hip and was in the hospital. Ann suspected all was well, but doubt propelled her to book a flight and head to Reno.
Wednesday night, June 26, Eleanor was quite ill. As Ann kissed her goodnight, Eleanor grabbed her arm and said, “I don’t think I’m going to make it out of this one.”
At 6 A.M. the next morning, Bill called Ann from the hospital. “Get here right away.”
Eleanor had slipped into a coma. By that afternoon, it was clear that Eleanor was not going to survive. Ann told the nurses that they had to keep her alive until Michael arrived. “You won’t believe this, but he just lost his wife. He has to be able to say goodbye to his mother.”
Eleanor’s youngest child, Jack Peterson, arrived from Las Vegas. Both he and Bill wanted to let their mother go. By now, her body functioned only by the grace of the machines. Ann refused to allow the equipment to be disconnected. She wanted to wait for her oldest brother.
At 10:30 that night, Michael arrived at the hospital. He held his mother’s hand. He kissed it with tenderness. Then he said, “Enough of this nonsense. Let’s turn it off.”
The plugs were pulled at 10:45 and Eleanor Peterson slipped quietly into the eternal night. Michael stayed in Reno for the funeral. None of Eleanor’s children discussed the courtroom awaiting Mike back in North Carolina. They did not mention Kathleen. They talked only about their mother. And they cried in each other’s arms.
While Michael mourned the death of his mother, the Durham police—armed with a search warrant—were back in his home. Under the watchful eye of David Rudolf, they took measurements of the stairwell and other pertinent locations throughout the house. They retrieved fibers from a kitchen rug and from a blanket on a sofa.
In August, Caitlin talked to her stepsister Margaret one last time. Margaret had no interest in talking about Kathleen’s death or Michael’s impending trial. When Caitlin pushed, Margaret responded, “I don’t need that in my life.”
She might as well have told Caitlin that her mother was irrelevant. Conversation over. Relationship done. Destruction accomplished—courtesy of Michael Peterson.
It was now eight months since the death of Kathleen Peterson and her gravesite still had no headstone. The plot was in Michael’s name and, legally, that small piece of land was his property. No one but the owner could erect anything on it.
Kathleen’s family begged him to put up a marker. He did not. Candace tried every trick she had to lay a guilt trip on him and make him take action. She failed.
According to the contract with the cemetery, a headstone had to be put up within six months of the internment. That time was up. Candace asked what would happen now.
Their first response was: “We don’t know. It’s never happened before.” They checked their policies and told her that they would have to put up a small marker and bill the estate for it. Candace pleaded with them to give her a little more time. Recognizing the unusual circumstances, they agreed.
Candace was nervous about the outcome of the upcoming primary elections in Durham. She requested an interview with Sonya Pfeiffer of WTVD on September 6, 2002.
She had nothing against opponent Mark Simeon. It was just that she wanted an experienced D.A. to present the case before the jury. She also told the reporter that a murder weapon had been identified by the state.
Peterson’s attorneys threw a hissy fit. They presented motions in court accusing Hardin of hiding evidence, using the case to his political advantage and attempting to influence the pool of potential jurors. Hardin denied that the interview was his idea in timing or substance. Candace insisted that she acted on her own. She admitted that the murder weapon theory was hers and that no one in the district attorney’s office had told her that they had identified the weapon.
The drama of the State of North Carolina vs. Michael Iver Peterson hit an even higher pitch in October. In court early that month, it was revealed that police and prosecutors wanted to know whether Todd Peterson was involved in an attempted cover-up in the death of his stepmother. They did not, however, uncover grounds to take any legal action against Todd. That same day, the attorneys bickered once again about the sharing of information and were admonished—again—by Judge Hudson.
In the middle of October, the public learned that the media frenzy had exceeded their expectations. Denis Poncet and Jean-Xavier de Lestrade of the French company, Maha Productions, were on the scene. Maha—a Sioux Indian word meaning “he who swims against the tide”—received national recognition in the States earlier that year. Their HBO movie, Murder on a Sunday Morning, won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film. The cable show involved racial profiling, police oversights and a wrongfully accused 15-year-old boy.
Maha did not have a movie deal for Kathleen Peterson’s Sunday morning death yet, but they were already taping, certain that a deal would evolve soon. Many, however, were not confident that the product would be unbiased. Word spread through town that Denis Poncet was in Vietnam at the same time as Michael Peterson and that he was at UNC-CH when Michael was in law school. Poncet denied knowing Michael Peterson, but the extraordinary access he got to the defense made Durham wonder.
While everyone else was focused on Kathleen’s death, D.A. Hardin had filed a request in the Texas courts for permission to exhume Elizabeth Ratliff’s body at the end of the month. Caitlin Atwater trumped that with her dramatic move on October 29.
Her attorney, Jay Trehy, knocked on the door of 1810 Cedar Street just after 9 A.M. He served a court order and directed movers to retrieve Caitlin’s belongings—bedroom furniture, clothing and personal effects. He said his client was too fearful to enter the home herself.
Just before 3:30 that afternoon, Trehy filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Durham against Michael
Peterson. The suit asked for compensatory and punitive damages for the daughter of Kathleen Peterson.
A claim had also been filed on Caitlin’s behalf in a courtroom in Greenville, North Carolina. In it, she requested that she receive the proceeds of her mother’s life insurance policy. Kathleen had submitted a change of beneficiary form on her policy, removing her ex-husband Fred Atwater, and adding her new husband, Michael Peterson. She forgot, however, to sign the form.
Documents filed by Caitlin’s attorneys concluded that if Fred Atwater was not the beneficiary, then Kathleen’s daughter should be. North Carolina’s slayer statutes prohibited Michael from receiving the money, since it did not allow a person convicted of killing another to profit from the death.
Michael Peterson carried a double burden—the death of his wife and his indictment for murder. That stress would be enough to induce writer’s block in the most seasoned and productive scribe. Not for Peterson—he sent the first one hundred pages and an outline of a new book to his agent. In March, HarperCollins made a sixfigure offer for the book Mike would co-author with Colonel Arthur Boyd. Then the publisher discovered that one of the writers was indicted for murder. They withdrew their offer quicker than a Marine could shout “Semper Fi.”
When the first anniversary of Kathleen’s death rolled around in December, Kathleen’s sisters, brother, mother and daughter were in agony about Kathleen’s stillunmarked grave. Candace’s patience had expired. She took her case to the press. She said that although Michael sold the plot to the estate, he would not sign the papers to make the transfer legal.
Written in Blood Page 17