A Perfect Husband

by Aphrodite Jones

  At first, when Heather and Ben had arrived on the scene, the Durham police were refusing to let them enter. But immediately, Todd appeared at the front Cedar Street entrance, asserting that it was okay for his friends to come in. He needed someone to check on his dad. Todd insisted, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The police, trying to walk on eggshells in the midst of such family grief, didn’t argue with Todd. They permitted his friends to enter.

  Todd took his friends around the front entrance of the house, around the spiral staircase. The three walked into the kitchen through the formal dining room, and once there, Heather and Ben tried to console Mr. Peterson. But the man was so distraught over the loss of his wife, there was nothing they could do or say. He was all bloody, but he didn’t really need any medical attention. He was just in shock.

  Peterson kept mumbling and crying. He couldn’t believe his wife, Kathleen, was dead. He just didn’t believe it. He didn’t know how he could live without Kathleen. He didn’t know how a thing like this could have happened. The two of them were having a few drinks. The two of them were celebrating. The last thing he knew, he had gone out to the pool area, and had taken the dogs outside for a while. He thought Kathleen had gone upstairs to bed. He couldn’t understand how something like this could have happened.

  It was impossible to think that his Kathleen was gone.

  She was his life....

  For some time , Michael Peterson could not be convinced that Kathleen was dead. To appease his father, there was a point when Todd asked to see the body himself, and the uniformed officers let him approach.

  When Todd knelt down, police used a flashlight to help him take a look at his stepmom. Without asking, Todd touched Kathleen’s leg. There was no sign of life.

  With the flashlight blaring, everyone in the room got a close-up view of Kathleen Peterson’s head, which seemed to be propped up at the foot of the stairs. People were aghast at all the blood around Kathleen’s body, all the blood staining her clothes.

  They noticed bruises, and such a strange look of pain on her face....

  Four

  Throughout the first hour, before the Crime Investigation Department arrived, Michael Peterson was basically doing as he pleased. Michael was walking around, dazed and confused, shaking back and forth, pacing, making circles around the kitchen. At one point, Mr. Peterson even managed to get to the kitchen sink, where he began to wash his hands, but one of the officers stopped him. Peterson was advised that the blood on his hands would have to remain.

  A state medical examiner from Chapel Hill had been sent to investigate the scene as well. His initial findings: Kathleen Hunt Peterson appeared to have hit her head on the steps. The blood spatter in the stairwell appeared to support the scenario described by Kathleen’s husband, Michael.

  Mr. Peterson had admitted to putting paper towels under Kathleen’s head. He also admitted to partially wiping up the blood in the stairwell with paper towels. The medical examiner with whom Mr. Peterson spoke, Dr. Kenneth Snell, only six months out of his residency, had handwritten a report that concluded that Mrs. Peterson had hit her head at least twice on the stairs, causing scalp lacerations and abrasions. His findings suggested that Mrs. Peterson’s landing at the base of the stairs, on her back, was an accident.

  When the medical examiner discussed his opinion with the Durham police, it was unclear whether they were going to wait to see what an autopsy might reveal. Some of the Durham police believed the fall was an accident; others weren’t sure what they had.

  Certain patrol officers, those who had first responded, couldn’t quite match the scene with an accident. There was too much blood; it was incongruent with a fall. Still, none of the Durham police officers initially dispatched to the Peterson mansion had the authority to designate it a crime scene. They had to wait for a homicide detective.

  In the meantime, Officer A. D. McCallop escorted Michael and Todd Peterson to the back patio, where he asked the man and his son to sit quietly. Michael and Todd were being kept under police guard, informally, until backup could arrive.

  “What is this? Do I need to call a lawyer?” Michael Peterson wondered aloud.

  No one answered him.

  Michael Peterson was not going to be treated in any manner that was disrespectful. For years, Peterson had written columns criticizing the Durham Police Department. Now, suddenly, in his darkest hour, he began to get the feeling that the police were trying to turn the tables on him. He started making rumblings to his son. He thought he was being framed.

  At that point, Todd became irate. He didn’t understand why he and his dad were being held prisoners in their own home. Todd decided he wasn’t about to keep quiet. He insisted that Ben Maynard join him outside, and Ben was permitted to do that. Todd and Ben spoke more softly; they continued to comfort Michael.

  While outside on the patio with the three civilians, uniformed officers carried on with their notes. They spotted some type of spill next to a silver kettle out on the patio; it was some type of clear fluid. There was also a perfect drop of blood, which police photographed; it was on the slate porch, just outside the back door of the residence.

  Then as the temperature began to drop outside, the uniformed officers agreed to take the three men back into the house. Michael and Todd were placed in Mr. Peterson’s office, kept under guard. Ben Maynard was placed in the foyer. Heather and Christina had already been separated from the rest of the civilians, asked to wait in the den, asked not to talk to each other. The officer guarding them suggested that the young women try to get some sleep. It was going on 4:00 A.M., and everyone was tired. Heather did dose off for a while, glad to have some relief from all the heartache.

  Between 4:15 and 5:00 A.M., Officer McCallop guarded Michael and Todd in the senior Peterson’s office. Todd was refusing to cooperate. Todd would not follow orders. He felt he was being treated inappropriately, that the police had no authority to act in that manner. No one had done anything wrong in that house.

  Michael promised Todd that it all would be over soon. The two of them just had to be patient. In an effort to take his mind off things, Michael decided to go check his computer. He mumbled something about Kathleen’s e-mail and began surfing the Internet. It seemed like he was looking through his e-mail list.

  Among the backup police who entered all the confusion surrounding Kathleen Peterson’s death was Sergeant Terry Wilkins. A seasoned officer who knew the significance of each moment that ticked away, he knew he had to protect the integrity of the crime scene. All the Durham police officers who arrived at the scene did their best to make order out of the chaos. Yellow crime-scene tape was placed in front of both entrances; the female civilians were questioned. After Michael and Todd each refused to make any statement, Wilkins made the decision to separate Michael Peterson from his son. It was a touchy-feely time for them, he understood, but nonetheless, he couldn’t afford to allow Peterson, a man covered in blood, any more opportunity to create a story.

  If indeed there was a crime, which was not yet official—Wilkins did not want anyone’s perceptions of the situation to be changed or tainted.

  When Detective Art Holland arrived and viewed the scene, he took a quick look inside and immediately classified it as a suspicious death. Holland would be calling CSI to process the area, but not without a search warrant. Once the warrant was under way, Detective Holland, now the official lead criminal investigator in the Peterson case, requested that the Durham PD set up a Mobile Command Post at the back side of the mansion, on Kent Street. Holland made calls way up the chain of command, to his major and his captains. Detective Holland, with twenty-two years of experience on the police force, was making sure that there was little room for error.

  Because Michael Peterson was a well-known individual in the community, because the mounting case was sure to gain regional attention, high-ranking officers also volunteered to help out at the scene. The Durham police were taking no chances. They used all their power to keep the scene intact
.

  But Michael Peterson saw this heavy police presence as a witch-hunt. He always knew the day would come when the Durham police would attack him. He was completely outraged that they would use the unlikely occasion of his wife’s death to make trouble for him. There was not one shred of evidence, not one thing that pointed to him as a suspect. And all of the family members knew that. In the hours surrounding Kathleen’s death, and later through the private family grieving times, all through Kathleen’s wake and funeral, the family was further upset about the way the Durham police were mistreating Michael.

  The idea that Michael could have killed Kathleen was ludicrous. Even Kathleen’s biological daughter, Caitlin Atwater, made public statements to defend Michael Peterson. He was such a great stepdad, such a great human being. He and her mom were soul mates. They were two peas in a pod; they never fought, never argued. There was nothing but mutual respect and love between them.

  Michael understood his family’s pain. He felt bad for his kids, who had to endure, not only the loss of their mother, but now, a public media spectacle. Michael assured his family that the police would find nothing to charge him with. Still, he was all the more grief-stricken, just sick to his stomach, to think that he would have to endure all this public scrutiny. He was overwhelmed by his loss and, at the same time, profoundly sorry that Kathleen had to be involved in the Durham PD’s latest public scandal.

  As he wallowed in sorrow, Peterson mused about why the Durham police had it out for him. He thought about all the columns he had written, bashing the cops, attacking them for not taking care of Durham’s drug problems, for not addressing Durham’s drive-by shootings. He thought about the column where he made a mistake and wrote that the Durham PD only solved 5 percent of all crimes. Peterson recalled that Police Chief Teresa Chambers had written to him personally, to let him know that he should be ashamed of himself for his shabby reporting. The Durham PD had a 47 percent clearance on homicides, the chief wrote, going down the list of her department’s accomplishments.

  Peterson realized that the police had been gunning for him from the moment they arrived at the house, and he would later explain that to his five kids. He wanted them to understand where all the suspicions were coming from. He wanted them to know that perhaps, because he’d been such an outspoken critic of law enforcement and local government, he had brought this witch-hunt upon himself.

  Still, Peterson was annoyed, on the night of his wife’s senseless death, that the police had taken the opportunity to crawl all over his home. They were all standing around, on guard, for an alleged crime that wasn’t a crime. The Durham police were heartless. They were making the family’s tragedy all the more difficult.

  Michael would assure the family—among them his brothers, Kathleen’s sisters, and all five children—that he had no doubt about being cleared of any wrongdoing. He didn’t worry a bit that the police wanted to spend so much time searching. Michael said he knew that no murder weapon could be found, that eventually police would realize that there was no murder. The idea that the police had pulled warrants to search the house, Michael surmised, was their form of harassment, of revenge.

  As far as Michael Peterson could tell, the police officials were setting up their CSI teams in order to grab the attention of the local media. Kathleen Peterson was a pillar of the community; her untimely death would be sure to hit the local news by Monday. If police could drum up some false charges, that would make for better press coverage. In the meantime, Peterson would remain calm.

  As he sat alone in his office, waiting to be given his freedom, Peterson called his attorney friend, Kerry Sutton. He wanted her to come over to the house that same morning, to see if she could assert his constitutional rights. The idea that Kathleen’s body was found, that he was grieving and was unable to be with his wife, was unnatural. Ms. Sutton, an adept attorney who had once been Michael Peterson’s political campaign manager, made her way over to the mansion before 9:00 A.M.

  When the police told her that she would not be allowed into the house, that she would not be permitted to see Mr. Peterson, Sutton called their bluff and insisted that they either arrest her client, Michael Peterson, or let the man go free. She was not about to see the esteemed Mr. Peterson being held against his will, not without evidence of his guilt. It was an outrage that this grieving man was being treated as a criminal.

  Sutton and other attorneys would later explain that the fact was, Kathleen’s fall down the stairs caused a lot of blood, and some of that blood had gotten on Michael because he had held Kathleen when he came upon her. Everyone who was at the scene had witnessed that.

  As for all the police suspicions, the attorneys were convinced that there was not enough evidence to show probable cause.

  Five

  On Monday morning, the local papers in the Triangle area of North Carolina made their initial reports about Kathleen Peterson’s death. She was the wife of Michael Peterson, who had run unsuccessfully for Durham’s city council earlier that year. Durham Police media spokesman, Major Dwight Pettiford, told the press that police were still looking into Mrs. Peterson’s death. Though the major wouldn’t confirm the extent of the investigation, the local news reported that the Durham PD mobile substation on Kent Street had about a dozen police cars parked outside it.

  The details of Kathleen Peterson’s death would remain shrouded. Major Pettiford told reporters very little. He mentioned that Durham police were not sure whether anyone else was in the house with Michael and Kathleen during the early-morning hours of December 9, 2001. The police spokesman said they were waiting for a statement from Michael Peterson, who had not yet been interviewed because he was spending time with his family.

  Regarding the extent of Kathleen Peterson’s injuries, the Durham police could not comment. They were waiting for an autopsy report. Mrs. Peterson’s body had been sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Chapel Hill, and the preliminary results were not available.

  Maureen Berry, a dear friend and neighbor to the Peterson family, told a local reporter that she had been awakened by a fire truck and an ambulance at about 2:30 on Sunday morning. Ms. Berry had gone over to the house to talk to Michael and his son Todd, and she learned of the sad news from Mr. Peterson himself. He said that he had been sitting out by the pool, that Kathleen had gone upstairs to bed, that when he went inside, he found his wife lying near the back stairway.

  Everyone who knew Kathleen was devastated by the news. Kathleen had not only been a loving wife, mother, and stepmother, she was one of those people who lived life to the fullest. She was an intelligent, extremely capable woman, a woman who was blessed with so many attributes. There wasn’t a soul who had a bad word to say about her. Kathleen was considered a giving human being, a model citizen.

  Not only was she a top executive at Nortel Networks, Kathleen had a creative side, and was a patron of the arts who served on the board of the North Carolina Ballet and the Durham Arts Council. She was full of life. She and her husband threw annual parties for the American Dance Festival. Kathleen loved to dance.

  The fact that Kathleen died in her lovely home was all the more upsetting to friends and family, who had attended Kathleen and Michael’s wedding in that grand old mansion, just a short five years prior to her death. People recalled Kathleen’s delight on that occasion. Throughout her wedding, she was glowing, dressed in formal white. People remembered that even as a lovely bride, Kathleen was helping out. Even in her wedding gown, the woman with stars in her eyes still acted as the proverbial hostess.

  The same day that the news of Kathleen’s death hit the local papers, her children, siblings, and other family members, including her eighty-year-old mother, were making their way to Durham in utter shock and disbelief. There had been no funeral arrangements announced. There was still an investigation taking place in the Peterson house, so Michael hadn’t the time or energy to make any arrangements.

  Michael was too distraught; he was concerned about trumped-up charges, and h
e had already placed calls to his brother Bill, an attorney, who was flying in from Reno, as well two other attorneys in the area. Michael was advised to sign a power of attorney over to his son Todd, and on that day, he did so. It was just a further precaution. He had no idea what to expect from the Durham officials.

  Peterson knew one thing for sure: They had an ax to grind.

  At 8:50 A.M., on that same Monday, December 10, 2001, Captain R. T. James arrived at Cedar Street to respond to demands being made by attorney Kerry Sutton. Captain James crossed the crime scene tape, which secured the outer perimeter of the property, and was looking for Sutton, who had been denied access to the scene by a patrol officer. Captain James was prepared to have a brief chat with Sutton about police securing the crime scene, but the young female attorney had disappeared before the captain arrived.

  After receiving another call, Captain James returned back to the Cedar Street mansion, later entering the house at about 12:30 P.M. He took a tour of the residence, walking through all of the fourteen rooms, donning a pair of disposable boots to keep from disturbing any evidence in the house.

  Mrs. Peterson’s body had been removed by the medical examiner, but there was still a lot of blood in the stairway where her body had been found. Captain James offered to be of assistance to the officers searching the residence. He touched nothing while he was inside the house. After about a half hour, he left.

  While inside the residence, Captain James made a specific trip to the second floor, by way of the front spiral staircase. He went to take another look at the door and wall leading down the back stairway. He observed a few blue stains running down the back-stairway wall. They appeared to be remnants of luminol, an enhancement chemical that allows experts to see blood distribution, stains not visible to the naked eye.

  Six

  Though Michael and Kathleen Peterson had only been married five years, they had lived together in the Cedar Street house for over a decade. The idea that they lived together unwed, especially with children from previous marriages, didn’t always sit well with the more traditional members of Kathleen’s family. . . . But that was all ancient history now.