Peterson's case is the subject of the French documentary miniseries The Staircase, which started filming soon after his arrest in 2001 and followed events until his eventual Alford plea in 2017.
[citation needed] After graduating, Peterson took a civilian job with the United States Department of Defense, where he was assigned to research arguments supporting increased military involvement in Vietnam.
That year he also married Patricia Sue, who taught at an elementary school on the Rhein-Main Air Base in Gräfenhausen, West Germany.
[6] Peterson wrote three novels based "around his experiences during the Vietnamese conflict":[3] The Immortal Dragon, A Time of War, and A Bitter Peace.
The autopsy report concluded that the 48-year-old woman sustained a matrix of severe injuries, including a fracture of the superior cornu of the left thyroid cartilage and seven lacerations to the top and back of her head, consistent with blows from a blunt object, and had died from blood loss ninety minutes to two hours after sustaining the injuries.
Although forensic expert Henry Lee, hired by Peterson's defense, testified that the blood-spatter evidence was consistent with an accidental fall down the stairs, police investigators concluded that the injuries were inconsistent with such an accident.
According to Radisch, the total of seven lacerations to the top and back of Kathleen's head were the result of repeated blows with a light, yet rigid, weapon.
According to their analysis, the lacerations were not consistent with blows of any sort, because there was a lack of underlying injury, such as skull fractures or bruising, swelling and hemorrhaging of the brain.
Hardin and his prosecution team (among them Mike Nifong) attacked Peterson's credibility, focusing on his alleged misreporting of his military service and what they described as a gay life he led and kept secret.
According to Assistant District Attorney Freda Black, Kathleen: "would have been infuriated by learning that her husband, who she truly loved, was bi-sexual and having an extramarital relationship—not with another woman—but a man, which would have been humiliating and embarrassing to her.
Before Peterson's trial, the Durham court ordered the exhumation of Ratliff's embalmed body, buried in Texas, for a second autopsy in April 2003.
found sufficient evidence drawn from the results of the second autopsy, along with new witness statements describing the scene,[11] to overturn the earlier findings and list Ratliff's cause of death as "homicide".
On October 10, 2003, after one of the longest trials in North Carolina history, a Durham County jury found Peterson guilty of the murder of Kathleen, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On November 12, 2008, attorneys J. Burkhardt Beale and Jason Anthony of Richmond, Virginia, who were now representing Peterson, filed a motion for a new trial in Durham County court on three grounds: that the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence about the blow poke, that the prosecution used an expert witness whose qualifications were disputed, and that one juror based his judgment on racial factors.
In late 2003, a new theory of Kathleen's death was raised: that she had been attacked by a barred owl outside, had fallen after rushing inside, and had been knocked unconscious after hitting her head on the first tread of the stairs.
[17] The owl theory was raised by Durham attorney T. Lawrence Pollard, a neighbor of the Petersons who was not involved in the case but had been following the public details.
[19] The SBI crime lab report listed a microscopic feather and a wooden sliver from a tree limb entangled in a clump of hair that had been pulled out by the roots found clutched in Kathleen's left hand.
Prosecutors have ridiculed the claim, and Deborah Radisch, who conducted Kathleen's autopsy, says it was unlikely that an owl or any other bird could have made wounds as deep as those on her scalp.
[24][25] On March 2, 2017 (following his Alford plea), Peterson's attorney filed a motion to allow him to pay for a bird expert at the Smithsonian Institution to examine feather fragments found in Kathleen's hair to determine whether or not she had been attacked by an owl.
[26] In 2023, Pollard endorsed the theory presented in the book Death by Talons by Tiddy Smith, which posits that a bird attack was not restricted to the outside path, but continued inside the Petersons' home.
Pollard subsequently filed affidavits[a] to support a motion that Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson order the state Medical Examiner's Office to turn over all documentation related to Kathleen's autopsy to Peterson's attorneys.
A new motion was filed in August 2010 by David Rudolf, one of Peterson's original attorneys, who acted pro bono in proceedings challenging the SBI testimony.
[31] On December 16, 2011, Peterson was released from the Durham County jail on $300,000 bail and placed under house arrest with a tracking anklet.
[13] His release on bond followed a judicial order for a new trial after Judge Hudson found that Deaver had given "materially misleading" and "deliberately false" testimony about bloodstain evidence, and had exaggerated his training, experience, and expertise.
[32][33] Former North Carolina Attorney General Rufus L. Edmisten said that any evidence gathered after Deaver arrived at the scene might be deemed inadmissible in a new trial.
On February 24, 2017, Peterson entered an Alford plea to the voluntary manslaughter of Kathleen, asserting his innocence but agreeing there was enough evidence to likely result in a guilty verdict.
The filmmakers started their project within weeks of Kathleen's death and Peterson's murder indictment; jury selection took place in May 2003 with the case itself going to trial in July 2003.
[4][40][c] In November 2012, de Lestrade released a sequel, The Staircase II: The Last Chance, which premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.