A Perfect Husband

by Aphrodite Jones

  “But why do I have to be the only one?”

  “Your mother’s estate is in your hands. There might be a question about her life insurance policy. Why don’t we drive down there together to see what they have to say?”

  But Caitlin needed time. She asked her father to call Art Holland and stall. Fred Atwater delivered a message that Caitlin was thinking about returning to Durham, that he was hoping she’d be willing to listen to the facts. As soon as Caitlin felt open to it, Fred would call Detective Holland again to make an appointment.

  On the ride to Virginia, Caitlin kept pondering the question. Deep inside, Caitlin felt nervous about it. She didn’t want to face the police at all, especially when she was still convinced that this whole charge was about a grudge. There were so many police who hated her stepdad. And Michael had kept warning her to stay away. Her brothers and sisters were convinced of a conspiracy. As she looked to the sky, Caitlin kept asking her mother for guidance, but she wasn’t getting any signs. For the first time in her life, it seemed she was truly on her own.

  When she arrived at her Aunt Candace’s place, Caitlin could sense that Candace, Lori, and her grandmother were all uneasy. After their initial hellos, after everyone had their feet up with sandwiches and coffee, there was a tone in the air, a thickness that could be cut with a knife. At first, no one was saying anything outright. Everyone was talking around the situation . . . but as each of them started to open up—Veronica, Candace, and Lori—it became clear that the circumstance surrounding Kathleen’s death was more serious than any of them ever thought.

  Her aunts and grandmother were trying to prod Caitlin, to find out exactly what she might know. They believed she might be aware of some foul play in the marriage. Having been the only one out of all of them who lived in that house with Michael and Kathleen, they were hopeful that Caitlin would have some answers, or at least some clues about the Petersons’ relationship.

  “They sit me down, and they just say they’ve heard all this stuff about the bisexuality that they didn’t know about,” Caitlin recalled. “And one of the things that really freaked me out was when they asked me why I thought Michael was at the YMCA all those long hours every night, and all this stuff. And then, I was, like, the bisexuality thing was taking on a whole different level for me. And I didn’t really want to think about it.”

  As her aunts filled her head, and her grandmother listened, Caitlin wasn’t laughing about Michael’s bisexuality anymore. When it had been just a book on a shelf, when it had been a joke that she and her sisters played as kids, that was one thing. But now, having to consider the idea that Michael could have been having affairs with men on a daily basis—Caitlin wanted it to be a fluke.

  No one was pushing her. Her aunts were gently asking, just to see if Caitlin knew of any evidence that things were not happy in Michael and Kathleen’s marriage. They were hoping Caitlin would have some story to tell. They were hoping that the reason Caitlin hadn’t talked to the police was that she was hiding something, that she was frightened because she knew too much.

  But Caitlin had nothing significant to relate about Michael’s sex life. She considered her mom’s relationship with Michael to be quite normal, quite loving, but it was also none of her business. In Caitlin’s view, there was never any hint that Michael and her mom had problems in the bedroom. But then, Kathleen wasn’t the type to discuss things such as that. Ever.

  As for anything else unusual, there was a time when Michael hit her mother once. It was no big deal, but it was something her mom had mentioned. Caitlin said that was the only incident she could recall in the thirteen years her mom and Michael had been together. It wasn’t anything they ever talked about. It was just something Kathleen had mentioned once, a few years back. Caitlin hadn’t ever thought anymore about it.

  “Well, honey, the thing is, there’s a lot of blood in that stairwell. I’ve seen it,” Candace said, “and we’ve all become concerned.”

  “We’re going to go talk to Art Holland ourselves,” Lori told her niece, “and it’s not that we want to cause trouble, but frankly we think we need to do this. And we think you should be going back down with us to Durham to see what the police have to say.”

  “Well, I don’t really want to look at the blood in the stairwell,” Caitlin argued. “I mean, it’s not something I really want to see.”

  “We understand that, Caitlin,” Candace said. “We’re not asking you to do that. But we’ve been talking to the police, and there’s some questions that we have. . . . ”

  But Caitlin couldn’t be convinced. She told her aunts that she might go, but she wouldn’t give them anything more than a “maybe.” Caitlin wanted to get down to Atlanta. She was meeting one of her best friends, Jen, in Virginia, and together they were driving to be with Becka and other buddies, close friends of Caitlin’s who were her biggest support system. They were all going to be together for New Year’s.

  Caitlin didn’t want to jump to conclusions. She was thinking very factually. She was questioning everything, everything Michael said, everything Todd said.

  She was trying to determine what facts she knew, and what facts she didn’t know.

  “It was weird, because it felt like none of this had to do with my mom. It was already like a mystery, like a true crime novel,” Caitlin confided. “It wasn’t emotional to me at the time, because I was finding out facts, learning new information, and it was just like reading a book. My feelings were very separated. I was just working in the mode of, like, let’s just get to the bottom of this. Even when I read the autopsy report, it was just words. It wasn’t like it was my actual mom.”

  Nineteen

  Caitlin had become influenced by her family’s reaction. She was feeling pressured, and everything was scaring her. By the time she arrived in Atlanta, she was totally spooked. On New Year’s Eve, she got a series of calls from both Todd and Martha. They were leaving messages on her cell phone, saying it was urgent that she call them back.

  Todd and Martha wanted Caitlin to return to Durham for a TV interview. They were making her feel guilty about not sticking with the family. At that time, Michael was still in jail, and the kids were being hounded by the local media. They had arranged to tape a TV segment for the local news, and they wanted Caitlin to be present so that all five children could stand up for Michael.

  Caitlin returned their calls and said she was stuck in a snowstorm in Atlanta. The roads were dangerous, she wasn’t sure about doing TV interviews, and besides, this was about her and her mom. This was not about Michael. When she told Todd that she felt she should be able to do whatever she wanted to do, Todd began acting suspicious. He knew Caitlin had been to see her aunts near DC, and he was worried that Caitlin was jumping to the conclusion that Michael was guilty.

  But Caitlin hadn’t made any decision about that. She was angry that Todd was giving her an attitude. Both he and Martha were making her out to be some kind of bad person, accusing her of turning against the family. She tried to reason with Martha, she even tried to placate Todd by saying she’d try to find a way back to Durham, but really, all she wanted was some time to herself.

  “There was no evidence that he was guilty of murdering my mom,” Caitlin recalled, “but people were coming out with all these rumors about Michael being gay, and I didn’t want to be unsupportive of him. But I also wasn’t going to do a TV interview to say he was wonderful, because in my mind there was evidence that he probably cheated on my mom, and that wasn’t okay.”

  The more Caitlin thought about Michael, the more she heard rumors that he’d approached gay male friends of the family—the more uneasy she felt about his leading a double life. Even if it was hearsay, too many people were coming up with details about Michael being sexually active with men. As Caitlin thought more about Michael’s past, she realized he’d been courting some strange friends over the years. Back then, she hadn’t ever thought about it. Back then, she was a kid with her own set of problems, and Michael’s “friends”
were of no concern to her.

  “Michael would kind of adopt people at the gym,” Caitlin confided. “There was this one guy, Roy, who was a wrestling guy and he’d stop by our house. This was when I was in junior high school. And thinking back, the guy was so blatantly gay. I started wondering, like, what was that guy doing at our house?”

  As Caitlin tried not to think about it, as she sat in Atlanta with her friends, dodging phone calls from Todd and Martha, her friends convinced her to call Todd and give him another excuse. Todd and the others had already agreed to the first TV interview, and now the local papers were calling as well. Todd wanted a statement from Caitlin; he felt it was the very least she could do. Todd felt Caitlin should support Michael. Todd was concerned about public opinion. He needed to show Peterson solidarity, and he wasn’t going to let up.

  “I didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t agree to be interviewed as a family,” Caitlin confided. “They wanted my theory on how innocent I thought Michael was, and at first I said fine, I would talk about it. I said I’d call them later. But then, they kept calling and calling, and I couldn’t get over how greedy they all were. They were insisting on getting my written statement. And I finally did tell them that I couldn’t do any interview. That I was not going to talk about the questions.”

  As it happened, when the Peterson kids taped the first TV interview, Clayton had his girlfriend, Becky, with him. To the outside public the TV interview made it seem like there were five kids supporting Michael Peterson. Even though Becky hadn’t been asked any questions, she had just been a presence for the cameras, any outsider looking at the television would have mistaken Clayton’s girlfriend as one of the Peterson kids.

  When Caitlin heard about that, she was furious. She felt Todd was being manipulative. It suddenly occurred to her that Michael was probably behind the PR campaign. When another story about the Peterson kids ran in the News & Observer, Caitlin was horrified to see that Todd had acted as her spokesperson. Todd had done a good job of making it appear that Caitlin was just distraught, that she wasn’t participating in the interview because she was too emotional. But by that time, Caitlin had already called her father and had agreed to attend a meeting in Durham. Unbeknownst to Todd, she already had sat down with Detective Art Holland and Durham district attorney Jim Hardin.

  Based on that first meeting, Caitlin and Fred Atwater had come to think about Michael Peterson in a whole new light. The officials had hard evidence pointing to Kathleen having been murdered. The autopsy revealed seven scalp lacerations to Kathleen’s head. Caitlin didn’t want to look at the crime scene photos, but Fred had seen them. Like Candace and Lori, he, too, was disturbed by the overwhelming amount of blood. From the looks of the photos and the crime scene video, there was no way Kathleen could have died by having fallen down the stairs.

  To make matters even more disturbing, the DA had presented some revealing information about Michael Peterson’s past. Hardin could not offer proof, he could not yet give the full details, but there were suspicious circumstances that lead authorities to believe that Peterson might have been connected to another death during his days in Germany. . . .

  Twenty

  In early February 2002, David Rudolf confirmed to media that he had hired famed forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee, who had testified for the defense in the O.J. Simpson murder case. It was in part due to Dr. Lee’s testimony that the Los Angeles jury had found O.J. Simpson innocent of any crime. During that trial, Dr. Lee stated that he found three “imprints” on the terracotta walkway on Bundy, the famous crime scene that Lee himself photographed. Lee further testified that these imprints did not match the size-twelve bloody shoe prints, made by Bruno Magli shoes, that prosecutors said belonged to O.J. Simpson.

  In Dr. Lee’s O.J. Simpson testimony, his findings revealed a “parallel-line imprint,” as well as another “imprint,” which did not match O.J. Simpson’s shoes. This inferred the possibility of a second assailant being at the crime scene. Dr. Lee’s testimony, therefore, challenged the prosecution’s theory that O.J. Simpson was a lone assailant. In essence, Dr. Henry Lee managed to challenge the core of the prosecution’s case against the former NFL star.

  In response, one of the FBI’s senior experts on shoe prints, William Bodziak, testified that Dr. Lee’s findings were faulty, that one of the “imprints” Dr. Lee had photographed from the walkway on Bundy was actually an indentation in the cement, a trowel mark made by workers in the laying of the cement years earlier. But it was Dr. Lee’s testimony that stayed in the minds of the jury. His theory that shoe prints at the scene might have come from a second assailant was enough to place a reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds.

  Even though Dr. Lee was struck down by comments refuting his findings, even though testimony by FBI shoe print expert Bodziak debunked Dr. Lee’s “parallel-line imprint” theory on virtually every level, the jury in the O.J. Simpson case remained impressed by Dr. Lee. They didn’t seem to care about the disputed facts. They saw Dr. Lee as a highly intelligent, world-renowned gentleman. His discredited testimony, therefore, hadn’t had any sway with the jury whatsoever.

  In the trial of the century, it was Dr. Henry Lee who had the greatest impact. He was a man who came off as worldly and sophisticated. He was seen as a sincere expert, a man who worked more often for the prosecution than the defense. By the vast majority, Dr. Lee was considered to be the best in his profession. And, after the O.J. Simpson verdict, media from all over the country hailed him as America’s top forensic expert.

  In most everyone’s view, Dr. Henry Lee was the best witness money could buy. So when local media in North Carolina discovered that the nationally known forensic scientist, the coauthor of twenty books, was on his way down to Durham—headed there from his home base at the University of New Haven in Connecticut—they were anxious to report the story, printing glowing portraits of the “forensic sleuth.”

  David Rudolf had asked Dr. Lee to make a special trip down, to take a look at the stairwell in the Peterson mansion, and Lee arrived on Valentine’s Day, 2002, entering the gorgeous abode on Cedar Street, where he was greeted by a very humble Michael Peterson.

  Of course Michael Peterson was ecstatic, as was David Rudolf. They knew Dr. Henry Lee wouldn’t be there if he hadn’t believed in Peterson’s innocence. Dr. Lee would be looking for anything exculpatory. In particular, he would look at the bloodstain patterns to determine exactly how Kathleen Peterson might have taken such a terrible fall. Both Peterson and Rudolf believed that Dr. Lee was the right man to determine what, if anything, could be gleaned by the blood patterns and other forensic evidence left behind on the staircase. Certainly, having a man such as Dr. Henry Lee on their side would bode well for Michael Peterson.

  There was much local fanfare regarding the presence of Dr. Henry Lee. Not only had both top newspapers written stories about him, ABC’s 20/20 had flown in a news crew to film Dr. Lee in the Peterson stairwell. Himself a media star, having testified not only for the defense of O.J. Simpson, for the defense of William Kennedy Smith, and in the famous unsolved case of JonBenet Ramsey, Dr. Henry Lee had caused quite a stir in the Triangle region of North Carolina.

  Once the hubbub settled, after Dr. Lee had jetted off on a plane, David Rudolf reminded local media that the case against Michael Peterson was circumstantial, again accusing police of mishandling the crime scene. The attorney told the media that he viewed the blood evidence on Peterson’s stairs as one of the most important factors in the case. The interpretation of the cast-off spatter, Rudolf asserted, would be something that people would interpret differently, and David Rudolf looked forward to the Michael Peterson case becoming a battle of the experts.

  Up until that point, the autopsy results and photographs had remained sealed. The public remained in limbo about the culpability of Mr. Peterson, and his attorney was asking that the gruesome photos of Mrs. Peterson be kept under seal, partially as a courtesy to the family, who had been through so much agony over Kathleen’s
unfortunate death.

  Within days after Lee’s whirlwind tour through Durham, Kathleen Peterson’s sister Candace Hunt Zamperini felt compelled to contact a columnist at the Herald-Sun newspaper. Acting as a spokesperson for the Kathleen Hunt Peterson’s family, Candace wrote a statement regarding David Rudolf and his public presumption that he was representing the entire Peterson family in their desire to keep Kathleen’s autopsy results and photographs away from the public eye.

  Candace stated that, even though the release of the devastating autopsy photos would fill her family’s heart with sadness, Kathleen’s family had agreed that the documents and photographs needed to be made public in order that the truth about Kathleen’s death be discovered. Candace also wrote a comment about David Rudolf, whom she insisted did not represent Kathleen’s family. She noted the “confusion” that had “arisen from misrepresenting the relationships of people in Kathleen’s life,” asserting that Mr. Rudolf had never spoken with her or any member of Kathleen’s family.

  Candace said that she and the rest of Kathleen’s family took “great umbrage with Mr. Rudolf taking the liberty to speak for any of us” concerning the case against Michael Peterson. Candace made it clear that, while Michael had been Kathleen’s husband, he stood accused of murder, thus he no longer held the position of “family,” as far as she or any of Kathleen’s immediate relatives were concerned. Candace pointed out that Kathleen’s family was comprised of her mother, two sisters, one brother, and one daughter, all of whom were united in the common mission of discovering the truth about Kathleen’s death.

  Two days after Candace’s scathing comments hit the local paper in Durham, David Rudolf sent a letter to Kathleen’s sister at her home in Virginia. Rudolf had read that Candace and other members of Kathleen’s family were upset because he was claiming to speak for her family. He said that, to his knowledge, he had never done such a thing, but if in some way he had “created that impression,” he was truly sorry. Rudolf said that he hadn’t meant to cause Candace or any of Kathleen’s family any additional pain. He explained that he was only trying to “effectuate the wishes of Michael and his children” by asking that Kathleen’s autopsy photos not be available to anyone.