I am not too fond of true crime – it gets me too bogged down in negative thoughts and weighs heavily on me weeks or even months later. But one day, we all watched the Pride and Prejudice series starring Colin Firth, and the algorithm then offered me The Staircase, which stars him and Toni Collette.
The true crime is the death of Kathleen Peterson from a fall on the stairs. Because of the large amount of blood, the police started investigating and soon arrested and convicted her husband, Michael Peterson, of murder. Years later, he was discharged because of technical issues with blood splatter evidence. Michael Peterson then pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. This type of plea allowed him to formally maintain his innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to potentially convict him at a new trial. The court credited him with the eight-plus years he had already spent behind bars, closing the 15-year legal case and setting him free without further imprisonment.
I remembered the original trial at the time because Kathleen Peterson was from Nortel Networks – a company my hubby had interviewed at the time, but declined their job offer. Very soon after that, it started to fall apart with massive layoffs and later filed for bankruptcy. Her death came during the last death throes of the company, and so made even bigger news than it would normally have. Combined with the excessive amounts of blood, a broke and unfaithful husband, there was tons of coverage in the press at that time.
About the show
The Staircase mini-series consists of 8 episodes that cover the life of the couple, the circumstances leading to her death, the investigation, and the trial of Michael Peterson, the various appeals, and then the final release. It’s a lot to pack in, covering almost 16 years of their lives.
There’s an awful lot going on. The series doesn’t really comment on Michael’s innocence or guilt. It shows both possibilities – murder or accident, giving equal weightage to both. This must have made it very hard on the actors, but Colin Firth especially does an amazing job portraying the narcissism and ego of the man, while still creating doubt whether he was an actual murderer.
The circumstances, though, seem terribly suspicious. Peterson was, at a minimum, an unfaithful husband, broke, and financially dependent on his wife. Through the last weeks of her life, we see Kathleen going above and beyond for his children from his first wife, and his adopted children. Some of it might have been guilt? She was supposedly the reason his first marriage fell apart.
Whatever the reason, she’s struggling to cope with a possible layoff, support such a huge family, and deal with her husband’s shiftiness. And OMG, is he shifty! He gave me the creeps, and it was very frustrating to watch him lie to her over and over and get away with it. There is a scene where she breaks down in anger, and we see something shift in him, in his eyes. Damn! It was cold! At that moment, I was almost 100% sure that he had murdered her.
The police, however, botch the investigation, somehow securing a conviction that gets overturned a few years later. Their entire case seemed to hinge on the blood splatter on the walls, which just does not seem convincing enough. Later, amateurs would posit just as convincing theories – the infamous owl attack theory, which first sounded very outlandish, but could explain the gashes she suffered at the back of her head.
The case gets even more outlandish because a documentary crew is filming it as the trial goes on. Even worse, the editor of the documentary falls in love, sight unseen, with Michael Peterson, leaves her family, and moves to Durham to fight for his innocence, only to get dumped almost as soon as he’s set free.
And then, there is the mystery behind yet another woman who fell down the stairs – the mother of his adopted daughters. There, too, he was first on the scene. There, too, he received some financial benefits.
This coincidence was enough to convince me he is a killer. After all, if you are not an ER doctor or a nurse, how many people does one know (well enough to have discovered the body) who have fallen down the stairs and died? That alone made it very difficult for me to believe in his innocence.
I watched the series with my hubby, and he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and we had some pretty heated discussions over it. But at the end, neither of us could strongly defend our stances enough, and we gave up on ever getting a resolution on this.
Have you watched the show? What do you think of the evidence? Guilty or innocent?
