I generally take the opposite side of any case that Nancy Grace opines on, so I'm fully behind Mike Peterson even though he appears to be weird af.

My biggest question is how the hell can you murder someone by causing them to bleed out from wounds to the head, but not fracture their skull or cause brain injury??

Also while that first death in Germany is suspicious, I'm not sure I'm buying the results of autopsy performed after the body has been buried 18 years (not to mention flown across the globe and driven across the country). Probably would have given it more weight if it were done by ME in Texas.

All the NC authorities sure felt confident about what the results would show, which seemed strange.

On that note though, Mikes reaction to her being exhumed was suspicious to me.

My thought regarding the first death in Germany was that I put little stock in an on-the-spot decision made by the German M.E. when this is an American military wife in an American community and the potential suspects are likely Americans/American service men.

If I'm that German M.E. in the 1980's I'm thinking, "this might look suspicious but no way am I getting involved in some weird international murder scandal involving the American military!"

DannyDuberstein said:

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Just finished it. I think he killed her. I think the state did not prove it though and he should have never been convicted.

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This was my synopsis as well.

And how about those hillbilly test jurors that say they couldn't understand Henry Lee. Always interesting to see the perspective of someone who has probabaly rarely ventured more than 50 miles from where they were born. But watch out though, because if you ever end up on trial, some folks like that will make up part of a jury of your "peers".

And, perhaps this will sound elitist, but I don't think my peers would be able to sit on a jury for 5 months. I mean, what do these people do for a living?

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And, perhaps this will sound elitist, but I don't think my peers would be able to sit on a jury for 5 months. I mean, what do these people do for a living?

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unmade bed said:

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I generally take the opposite side of any case that Nancy Grace opines on, so I'm fully behind Mike Peterson even though he appears to be weird af.

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I can relate.

FL_Ag1998 said:

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My thought regarding the first death in Germany was that I put little stock in an on-the-spot decision made by the German M.E. when this is an American military wife in an American community and the potential suspects are likely Americans/American service men.

If I'm that German M.E. in the 1980's I'm thinking, "this might look suspicious but no way am I getting involved in some weird international murder scandal involving the American military!"

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The defense should have had a 3rd autopsy done to confirm after the NC one.

Exactly!

Way way WAY too long

Agree 100%. I skipped some episodes just to get through it.

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At first Duane Deaver was only suspended from the SBI while they conducted an investigation into his past work. It was discovered that throughout his almost 25-year career at SBI that he had falsified evidence in 34 different cases and he was ultimately fired from the agency in 2011. But his history with the SBI is a little more complicated than that.

After his dismissal, the State Human Resources Commission ruled on Duane Deaver's behalf in 2014 that the analyst was wrongly terminated in 2011, WARL reports. He should have been demoted and had his pay cut by 10%, the commission decided. The agency was forced to rehire him and award him 30 months of back pay before firing him again.

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This greatly infuriates me.

And the dead wife's sisters are crazy.

I used to think same thing. After listening to the hour-long interview with Candace (I think; the blond) on the BBC podcast, I don't think so any longer.

Yeah, you can't just watch the documentary, you need to listen to the podcast before making any assumptions or judgements about the people involved.

Glad I stumbled on this thread. I watched this series a couple of weeks back and had lingering questions that have been answered by some here. Like others, I agree he more than likely committed the murder, but the state's case was strong enough for me to convict if I had been a juror. Of course I may have felt differently if I had sat in for the whole trial and seen all of the evidence.

The one thing that bothered me was the motive behind the potential murder. What was Michael gaining by killing his wife? She was the breadwinner of the family (maybe with good life insurance?) and her finding out about his alternative lifestyle didn't seem big enough to me for him to commit murder. It wasn't like he was going to run away with his prostitute friend once his name was cleared and live happily ever after. It was pretty stunning to see him go from the huge house the family lived in before the trial to the little apartment after.

Overall this just makes me feel so much worse about our justice system. Having the exhumed body go all the way back to North Carolina instead of just examined in Texas was one of the biggest "they're trying to **** him" clues. Waste of tax payer money.

I just finished this last weekend and just got around to this thread.

I don't know what to think as far as him killing her but I do know there was a lot of reasonable doubt and the state did not come close to proving their case.

One thing that really struck me was the final comments by the judge at the end of it all....





He stated that the two things that he questioned now when looking back on it were allowing the bisexual stuff and the Germany death in. WTF man?!?!? Unless I missed something those were the two things that didn't change and/or weren't compromised. On top of that it was his decision to let those in. If he wouldn't have let them in now why did he let them in then? There was no difference in that evidence in 2002 and in 2016.

That just baffled me that those were the things he questioned and that he said that in his interview.

The test for allowing it in is more prejudicial than probative. He probably thought it wasn't going to be that prejudicial and then he actually sees how prejudicial it was. So with hingsight he reconsidered that decision.

So I'm on episode 10 of the podcast. I haven't heard anything different that makes him sound more guilty than the show. Should I continue on or is it more of the same?

ellebee said:

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So I'm on episode 10 of the podcast. I haven't heard anything different that makes him sound more guilty than the show. Should I continue on or is it more of the same?

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Hmmm, then yeah, the last few episodes won't convince you.

I did find it interesting that the strangulation was barely mentioned in the podcast either

I'm kinda an idiot about this kind of stuff but how would one go about listening to the podcast? Is there a website or do you have to have an ap to download podcasts?

If you have an iPhone, there is an app called "Podcasts". You'll launch it and search for the title of the podcast, and from there you can download it.

unmade bed said:

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I'm kinda an idiot about this kind of stuff but how would one go about listening to the podcast? Is there a website or do you have to have an ap to download podcasts?

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I Just finished it,
As others have said, it was light years too long, how many scenes with his daughters supporting him do you need?
It was very one sided, I purposely didn't read anything on it until I was done, and they left out some of the most prejudicial evidence against him.

spoilers:


He allegedly staged wine glasses in the kitchen that didn't have her fingerprints.
They were massively in debt, to the point he was asking family emeber for help to pay for his kids student loans, and he was the beneficiary of a 1.4 million dollar policy.
He deleted computer files about his money debts the day before and after the murder.
His footprint was found on her back, which was not facing up Shane she was found.
There was clear forensic evidence she was dead long before he called 911.
The strangulation evidence, barely touched on in the movie.
Oh, and just for good measure, the movie's editor had a decade long affair with him.

Then the stuff that was in the movie:
A second dead staircase woman.
Blood on the inside of his shorts.
Blood everywhere at both scenes
The fact that he was a proven liar on a number of major things.
And then the thing no one seems to talk about, he spent several points in his last interview talking about how he hadn't talked about his bisexuality with Kathleen, when he spent the whole movie claiming she knew.

He is a well constructed fraud, from the first scene he was in that was clear. It is a shame a more balanced story wasn't told, when I got done watching it, I felt dirty, like I had helped aggrandize a murderer.

Should have been much shorter -
I was very early to the series, and very early to bail

Talk about a one sided take.

No way guy is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

claym711 said:

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Talk about a one sided take.

No way guy is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

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believing someone committed a crime and talking the jury standard of reasonable doubt based on admissible evidence are two different arguments. I am only making the former, if I sat on the jury with a different standard to meet I might have a different view. But after 10 hours of the doc and reading a bunch on the case, we all formed our opinions, legal standard or not. I actually expected him to be acquitted as I was watching, but that didn't change my view on whether he killed her.
By the way, the golden boy son Clayton was convicted of threatening to firebomb duke's admin building 4 years before Kathleen's death and was given four years in the pen - I mention it becuase it further erodes the perfect family narrative... and Rudolph's wife was a reporter on the case who was secretly passing notes to jurors, and got destroyed by Kathleen's sister in her victim statement. Both those things were conveniently left out too.

oragator said:

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claym711 said:

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Talk about a one sided take.

No way guy is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

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believing someone committed a crime and talking the jury standard of reasonable doubt based on admissible evidence are two different arguments. I am only making the former, if I sat on the jury with a different standard to meet I might have a different view. But after 10 hours of the doc and reading a bunch on the case, we all formed our opinions, legal standard or not. I actually expected him to be acquitted as I was watching, but that didn't change my view on whether he killed her.
By the way, the golden boy son Clayton was convicted of threatening to firebomb duke's admin building 4 years before Kathleen's death and was given four years in the pen - I mention it becuase it further erodes the perfect family narrative... and Rudolph's wife was a reporter on the case who was secretly passing notes to jurors, and got destroyed by Kathleen's sister in her victim statement. Both those things were conveniently left out too.

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This. There was a ton of info not shown in a documentary, have to believe on purpose. To dismiss all the stuff not shown in the documentary and only take what was shown in the Staircase as your proof of his innocence, that's the definition one-sided. And like oragator said, I'm not talking about legal standard of proof based on what the jury saw, I'm talking about what is available for the general public to see right now.

What's the deal with the makers of all of these murder documentaries/podcasts falling in love with the defendant? Didn't that happen on Serial as well?

People keep talking about how there was no fracture or intracranial hemorrhage as evidence that it could not have been the blow poke that caused the injury, clearly these people have not worked in an ER. I see these exact kind of injuries from baseball bats, iron rods, beer bottles and almost invariably there are no skull fractures or intracranial hemorrhages. I've had multiple patients nearly die from isolated scalp hemorrhages. Peterson did it, the head wounds are consistent with what I see almost daily following someone who has been assaulted with a blunt object to the head.

Wow.