On January 26, Mike Peterson filed a claim on Kathleen’s assets with her employer. In ten days, Nortel Networks issued the first check for $29,360—the balance after taxes were deducted from Kathleen’s long-term investment funds. In the past two years, the value of this account had suffered a dramatic drop.
David Rudolf moved to have Kathleen’s autopsy photos sealed and not released to the public. He claimed that the release violated the privacy of the victim’s family. He lost that battle with this response from the attorney general’s senior deputy on February 8: “The status of autopsy reports as public records was established more than 25 years ago by this office. Since then, it has been the attorney general’s consistent opinion that autopsy reports constitute public records. Our office opined in 1995 that legislation would be the appropriate avenue to clearly exempt autopsy reports from the public records law.” The existing law dictated that only District Attorney Jim Hardin could have the records sealed.
Three days later, Candace sent a fax to Investigator Holland with a description and a drawing of a possible murder weapon—a blowpoke, a gift Candace gave to her sister years earlier. She described it as a forty-inch-long hollow tube of solid brass. She explained that when you blow through the top, air comes out at the bottom through a small hole. It got airflow into a fire and was strong enough to move logs around in a fireplace.
She ended her fax with a solemn encouragement: “Be Careful!” Fear of Michael Peterson was now a constant and stressful presence in Candace’s life.
Peterson’s attorneys intensified the defense’s efforts in February by hiring Dr. Henry Lee as an expert witness—a man many considered the world’s foremost forensic scientist and whom others insisted was nothing more than a “hired gun” in the worst definition of the phrase. He was well known to the public at large from the work he did for O. J. Simpson’s defense and the assistance he rendered to the prosecutors in the JonBenét Ramsey murder in Colorado. In the pasty thirty-five years, he had testified in more than a thousand cases.
Lee arrived in Durham on February 13, his face hidden by reflective sunglasses as he emerged from behind the tinted windows of a chauffeured limousine and entered the Cedar Street home. He spent the afternoon at the mansion examining the stairwell and other points of interest.
On Monday, February 17, the state medical examiner’s office released Kathleen Peterson’s autopsy report. In Ithaca, New York, Caitlin Atwater sat down at a computer in the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority house at Cornell University. She steeled herself and went on line to view the document.
Bile rose in her throat as she glanced through the 11 pages of the report. She went back to the beginning and read each page slowly enough to absorb every word. A numbness settled in her mind as she detached the words from her emotions.
The diagram did not make sense to her. Although she understood some of the report, the technical language in other places obscured her understanding. One thing she knew with certainty when she finished reading was that her mother had not died from an accidental fall.
She placed a call to Tulane to talk with her stepsister, Margaret. She gave Margaret the Web site address for the autopsy and pleaded with her to look at it. “You need to read this. You need to understand this. Mom did not fall down the stairs. She was beaten to death.”
Margaret refused. First Caitlin’s mother had died. Now, her childhood bond with Margaret was shattered, and like an old mirror, it left only distorted reflections of what used to be.
Soon, she received a telephone call from Michael Peterson. She refused to take it. She would not speak to him or see him until the trial. In an interview with Raleigh’s News & Observer she said, “I don’t want to see into the eyes of someone who could have done that to my mother.”
The defense responded with passion to the document from the medical examiner’s office. Peterson denied the allegations in the report that he called other people before he dialed 9-1-1. He insisted that his phone records would prove that he did not place those calls. The local telephone service provider said that local, toll-free calls cannot be traced at a later date and would not appear on the records.
Peterson also denied the medical examiner’s contention that Kathleen lay bleeding for hours. “I had nothing to do with Kathleen’s death,” he insisted. The lawyers urged the press and the public not to jump to hasty conclusions.
Candace Zamperini dropped a bombshell on the defense the week following the publication of the autopsy report and photographs. She said she felt that the release would lead to the discovery of the truth. She added, “Mr. Rudolf does not represent Kathleen’s family, nor has he ever spoken to any family member. Although Michael Peterson was Kathleen’s husband, he also stands accused of her murder. Therefore, the assumption that he is Kathleen’s ‘family’ no longer applies.”
On February 19, Nortel Networks released another check to Michael Peterson for Kathleen’s pension fund. After taxes, he netted over $94,000. He went on a manic shopping spree. He bought items for every room of the house—rugs, artwork and furniture. He enhanced the family room with the addition of a $10,000 large-screen plasma TV. He bought a room full of exercise equipment and a small refrigerator for his bedroom to keep white wine chilled and his wine glasses frosted—all right by his side.
On March 1, 2002, at 10 A.M., Christina Tomasetti, Todd Peterson’s date on the night of Kathleen’s death, was scheduled for her third interview at police headquarters. Instead of Christina, a letter arrived for Investigator Holland. Thomas Loflin II, Christina’s new lawyer, was the author of the correspondence.
He advised Holland that the meeting was cancelled and that all communication would now be with him. Loflin requested all notes of the prior interviews and a list of questions that the police would like to ask his client.
The defense submitted paperwork on the afternoon of Monday, March 4, claiming that there was not enough evidence to obtain a search warrant and that police withheld evidence from the magistrate who issued it. The document also asserted the sole motivation of the police was retaliation against Michael Peterson for the critical columns he penned about the department. It called the whole search process invalid and demanded that all evidence seized be thrown out of court.
On March 31, Judge Hudson ruled that Peterson’s rights were not violated in the searches of his home. The evidence the defense wanted suppressed would be part of the trial.
Nortel Networks issued a final check for $212,790 to Michael Peterson for the amount of Kathleen’s deferred income. Michael Peterson received about $340,000 from Nortel as a direct result of Kathleen’s death.
He still had hopes of getting his hands on his wife’s $725,000 life insurance policy, which paid double for accidental death. Yet the defense team maintained from the time of Michael’s arrest and all throughout the trial that no financial motive existed.
Wacky rumors about the Michael Peterson case raced up and down the streets of Durham and rippled through Internet chat rooms. Not one person, not one shred of evidence ever surfaced to give the least bit of credibility to the lethal stories that circulated. It did, however, point to one truth—Durham was obsessed with the most sensational case in recent memory and the residents had no clue yet of how much more was in store.