After the financial testimony, 9-1-1 telecommunications operator Mary Allen took the stand. Now it was the prosecution’s turn to hit the play button and fill the courtroom with the voice of Michael Peterson. Once again, Peterson displayed tears and a tormented face for the jury.
The faces of Margaret and Martha Ratliff radiated acute distress. Margaret shook and sobbed as she listened. Todd Peterson tried to comfort her by putting an arm around her, stroking her hair and rubbing her shoulder.
Corporals Juanita McDowell and Scott Kershaw, two of the first Durham police officers to arrive at 1810 Cedar Street followed Allen. They related the people and events they encountered on the scene that night.
On direct examination, Freda Black walked Sergeant Terry Wilkins through the early morning hours of December 9, 2001. On cross-examination, David Rudolf was intent on proving that the Durham police had botched the scene to such a great extent that no information they had to offer was reliable and that none of their conclusions were valid.
“You know that telephone that was on the counter there?”
“Yes.”
With a heavy tone of accusation in his voice, Rudolf asked, “Did she [Corporal McDowell] ever tell you that she asked Todd Peterson to get her that phone?”
“I believe I do remember hearing her mentioning that she needed to use a phone from the residence because as a corporal, she did not have a city phone to use.”
“And you’re aware, are you not that generally speaking—by the way are you familiar with this book, Practical Homicide Investigation?”
“Somewhat familiar with it.”
“That’s sort of standard—I won’t say standard—but a lot of police departments use this as a reference?”
“I would say they do,” Wilkins admitted.
“Are you familiar with the fact that one of the things that this book talks about is never using the telephone at the scene?”
“Yes I am.”
“Because that’s a problem in terms of possible contamination, right?”
“That’s correct.”
Rudolf pushed him harder. “So that wasn’t an appropriate thing for Corporal McDowell to do?”
“It was not the perfect thing to do,” Wilkins conceded.
“Okay. Um. She should have observed where Todd Peterson got that phone, right?”
“Yes. I would have preferred that.”
“If you had been there you would have required it, right?”
“If I had thought of it, I would have required it.”
“And, particularly if that phone was sitting in the stairway? In blood?” the defense attorney emphasized. “That would have been something you would have wanted documented as Todd Peterson was permitted to go and get that, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Indeed, you would not have let him go and get that phone, would you?”
“No, sir.”
Using the report that Wilkins filed, Rudolf pointed out all the places where he had mentioned blood in his report and got him to admit that never once had he described it as dried blood.
He then handed him Corporal McDowell’s report and asked the same about her report.
“I don’t see any mention of it being dried, no,” Wilkins replied.
Rudolf slapped two more scene reports in front of Wilkins and his identical line of questioning produced similar answers in response. Satisfied that he had laid enough foundation for doubt with this witness, Rudolf ended his cross-examination. After a lunch break, Black rehabilitated Wilkins with a few brief questions. Then the defense attorney wrapped up the witness’s testimony with a masterful re-cross.
“If you had been present at 2:50 A.M. on December ninth, would you have allowed Heather Whitsun to walk in that door saying she was a medical doctor and not even asking for her name or her I.D.? Would you have done that?”
Trying to prevent the path of probing she saw ahead, Freda Black was on her feet. “Objection. Speculation.”
The judge squashed her attempts with just one word: “Overruled.”
If Wilkins could have fled the courtroom at that moment, he would have done so with great joy. He knew where this line of questioning was going and his reluctance to follow that road was etched across his face and punctuated by his stiffened body language. Nonetheless, he answered, “I probably would not have. Again, I don’t know what Corporal McDowell or Corporal Kershaw had been told, so I couldn’t base my assessment unless I knew exactly what they had been told.”
“I wasn’t asking you to criticize them. I was simply asking what you would have done.”
“I probably would not have.”
“You wouldn’t have allowed Todd Peterson to go up to Kathleen Peterson’s bloody body, correct?”
“I wouldn’t if I could have stopped him in time.”
“Right. You certainly wouldn’t have given him permission to do that?”
“No.”
“You certainly wouldn’t have given Michael Peterson permission or allowed him to go up to Kathleen Peterson’s body?”
“No I would not.”
“You certainly wouldn’t have allowed Michael Peterson and Todd Peterson to embrace after Michael Peterson was covered in blood?”
“No.”
Rudolf continued to pound on Wilkins, forcing him to condemn one judgment call of a colleague after another. He wrapped up with one final question: “And the reason why you wouldn’t have done any of that [was] because each one of those had the potential for contaminating the scene, didn’t it?”
“Correct.”
“That’s all I have.”
Relieved that the ordeal was finally over, Sergeant Wilkins rose from the witness stand and took his place on the bench behind the prosecution table. He gave a sympathetic look to the former police officer who took his place to corroborate the official version of the night’s events.
Next to testify was Sergeant Fran Borden, the criminal investigation division officer on call on December 9, 2001. His head of thinning white hair, a bushy white moustache, wire-rimmed glasses and round face gave him the aura of a young, kindly grandfather. The now-retired fourteen-year veteran of the homicide division had been to more than 500 death scenes. He stood before the jury and used a diagram of the house to describe his actions and observations.
He spoke of Kathleen being coated in blood. As he proceeded to describe in further subjective detail, Rudolf interrupted with “Objection to commentary. There are pictures that will show what was there.” It was an odd comment for that attorney to make. It directly contradicted his argument during the defense opening where he explained that a picture has a point of view, but the narrative tells the whole story.
Borden continued telling the jurors that he had never seen a serious fall where the neck aligned with the spinal cord. It did not make sense to him. That was one of the reasons that he’d made the decision to officially label the area as a crime scene. He took the jury through the steps he’d followed after that declaration until he’d left the home after 9 that morning.
On cross-examination, Rudolf established that Borden was the spokesperson for the police department in 1998 and 1999. He got Borden to admit that at one point, the chief of police had cut off all official communication with The Herald-Sun because of her displeasure with Michael Peterson’s columns.
Rudolf asked Borden questions about other articles critical of the department, but unfortunately for the defense, the jury, once riveted to every word of Borden’s direct testimony, now slouched or rested their heads in their hands and appeared to lose interest in this line of questioning.
Then, Borden loaded his gun and took aim at the defense allegation of bias by the Durham police. “Actually, Mr. Peterson’s columns, a lot of officers agreed with them—especially his columns referring to what he called the Thirteen Dwarves of City Council. And he recommended that police officers and teachers and other public servants obtain higher raises at a time when the city council was giving themselves a pretty substantial raise.”
“Of course,” Rudolf interjected, “what you didn’t agree with were his columns that were critical of the police department. […] When he would say things like the Durham Police Department intentionally didn’t reveal rapes because they were hiding the crime rate, you didn’t agree with that, did you?”
Borden looked the defense attorney dead in the eye. “You stand corrected, sir. Part of the reason I was let go as the media officer is because I wanted better communication—open communication—with all our news sources. Why? Because through the news media we were solving much more crime back when we were […] more in tune with each other—when we liked each other. Chief Chambers came in and had a problem. And because I advocated more cooperation, I lost that job.”
Finally, Rudolf switched the examination to questions about the fatal night at 1810 Cedar Street. “Before you went inside there, when you spoke with McDowell and Wilkins, were you told, for example, that Todd Peterson had been allowed to go up to Kathleen and hug her?”
“No, I was not.”
[…] “Were you told that Michael Peterson was allowed to go up to the body and hug her?”
“No, I was not.”
Were you told that Michael Peterson and Todd Peterson, both having blood on them, were allowed to embrace each other?”
“No, I was not.”
Rudolf continued hammering away, his voice stretched thin with exaggerated impatience. “Did you say to either of the officers there: ‘Listen, did anyone other than the people giving first aid go up to the body?’ Did you ask that question?”
“No, I did not ask that question.”
“That would be an important thing to know,” Rudolf badgered. “Wouldn’t it?”
“[…] I would certainly hope I would receive that information.”
“But you didn’t ask for it?”
“Sometimes we don’t have to ask, Mr. Peterson, we just get … Excuse me, Mr. Rudolf.”
Rudolf kept up a relentless attack on the credibility of his conclusions and the appropriateness of actions taken at the scene. “By the way, when you were considering the scenarios of how Kathleen Peterson could have fallen, […] did you consider or ask yourself how she got blood on the bottom of both her feet?”
“I wondered about that. I wondered—I wondered about a lot of things, Mr. Rudolf. […] We did not have the luxury of information because no one was talking to us.”
Freda Black began her re-direct by establishing from Sergeant Borden that all officers on the scene wore protective gear and that he had experience at scenes where individuals had fallen down stairs. Then she asked if anyone took a statement from Christina Tomasetti so that she could go home to her husband.
“I believe so. I don’t know,” Borden answered.
“You do know she was having an affair with Todd Peterson that night, don’t you?”
An outraged Rudolf shouted, “Objection to that.”
“Sustained,” Hudson replied.
Black continued, “Now you were also asked …”
“Move to strike,” Rudolf interrupted.
A smug grin crossed Todd Peterson’s face as the judge sent the jury out of the room. Bill Peterson gave his nephew an exasperated glance of disbelief.
Once the jury was out of hearing, Rudolf argued, “Judge, as far as I know, what Ms. Tomasetti did that night was to go to Mr. [Todd] Peterson’s parents’ home, meet him, go to a party with a very large group of people, come back to the house to pick up her car, found the police officers there. And then, unless some police officer got her together with Todd Peterson that night, I believe she spent the night quite by herself.”
“So, I don’t think she would have had an affair with anyone that night, assuming that she even were so inclined. Moreover, Ms. Tomasetti is married. […] It was an improper question. It demeaned and slandered Ms. Tomasetti, who is in fact married. That goes over the airwaves. For all I know, her husband is watching.”
Judge Hudson tried to hide his amusement at this turn of events by holding finger-laced hands before his face, but the twinkle in his eye gave him away. “Apparently, you know something more than Mr. Rudolf, Ms. Black.”
“I know Todd Peterson told members of Kathleen Peterson’s family that his intention was to come home and have sex with her at the Peterson home.”
Hudson interrupted and told the prosecution to save that line of questioning for Todd Peterson if he took the witness stand. The judge struck that bit of courtroom theatrics from the record. Todd Peterson’s face glowed from this notorious moment in the sun.
Caitlin’s eyes drifted over to Margaret and Martha, the two young women she once regarded as sisters. They seemed like deer caught in the headlights. She tried to be empathetic, but it was hard. Mike was the only parent they had left. But what about her mother?
Her mother had meant so much to them. In fact, since Kathleen’s death, Martha had referred to her as “the best mother I ever had.” Caitlin was surrounded by support from her family, her sorority sisters and other friends. But it was not the same. There was a large place in her heart reserved for her mother. And there was a second spot that was also lonely and bereft—that empty hole belonged to Margaret and Martha Ratliff.