Four
Throughout the first hour, before the Crime Investigation Department arrived, Michael Peterson was basically doing as he pleased. Michael was walking around, dazed and confused, shaking back and forth, pacing, making circles around the kitchen. At one point, Mr. Peterson even managed to get to the kitchen sink, where he began to wash his hands, but one of the officers stopped him. Peterson was advised that the blood on his hands would have to remain.
A state medical examiner from Chapel Hill had been sent to investigate the scene as well. His initial findings: Kathleen Hunt Peterson appeared to have hit her head on the steps. The blood spatter in the stairwell appeared to support the scenario described by Kathleen’s husband, Michael.
Mr. Peterson had admitted to putting paper towels under Kathleen’s head. He also admitted to partially wiping up the blood in the stairwell with paper towels. The medical examiner with whom Mr. Peterson spoke, Dr. Kenneth Snell, only six months out of his residency, had handwritten a report that concluded that Mrs. Peterson had hit her head at least twice on the stairs, causing scalp lacerations and abrasions. His findings suggested that Mrs. Peterson’s landing at the base of the stairs, on her back, was an accident.
When the medical examiner discussed his opinion with the Durham police, it was unclear whether they were going to wait to see what an autopsy might reveal. Some of the Durham police believed the fall was an accident; others weren’t sure what they had.
Certain patrol officers, those who had first responded, couldn’t quite match the scene with an accident. There was too much blood; it was incongruent with a fall. Still, none of the Durham police officers initially dispatched to the Peterson mansion had the authority to designate it a crime scene. They had to wait for a homicide detective.
In the meantime, Officer A. D. McCallop escorted Michael and Todd Peterson to the back patio, where he asked the man and his son to sit quietly. Michael and Todd were being kept under police guard, informally, until backup could arrive.
“What is this? Do I need to call a lawyer?” Michael Peterson wondered aloud.
No one answered him.
Michael Peterson was not going to be treated in any manner that was disrespectful. For years, Peterson had written columns criticizing the Durham Police Department. Now, suddenly, in his darkest hour, he began to get the feeling that the police were trying to turn the tables on him. He started making rumblings to his son. He thought he was being framed.
At that point, Todd became irate. He didn’t understand why he and his dad were being held prisoners in their own home. Todd decided he wasn’t about to keep quiet. He insisted that Ben Maynard join him outside, and Ben was permitted to do that. Todd and Ben spoke more softly; they continued to comfort Michael.
While outside on the patio with the three civilians, uniformed officers carried on with their notes. They spotted some type of spill next to a silver kettle out on the patio; it was some type of clear fluid. There was also a perfect drop of blood, which police photographed; it was on the slate porch, just outside the back door of the residence.
Then as the temperature began to drop outside, the uniformed officers agreed to take the three men back into the house. Michael and Todd were placed in Mr. Peterson’s office, kept under guard. Ben Maynard was placed in the foyer. Heather and Christina had already been separated from the rest of the civilians, asked to wait in the den, asked not to talk to each other. The officer guarding them suggested that the young women try to get some sleep. It was going on 4:00 A.M., and everyone was tired. Heather did dose off for a while, glad to have some relief from all the heartache.
Between 4:15 and 5:00 A.M., Officer McCallop guarded Michael and Todd in the senior Peterson’s office. Todd was refusing to cooperate. Todd would not follow orders. He felt he was being treated inappropriately, that the police had no authority to act in that manner. No one had done anything wrong in that house.
Michael promised Todd that it all would be over soon. The two of them just had to be patient. In an effort to take his mind off things, Michael decided to go check his computer. He mumbled something about Kathleen’s e-mail and began surfing the Internet. It seemed like he was looking through his e-mail list.
Among the backup police who entered all the confusion surrounding Kathleen Peterson’s death was Sergeant Terry Wilkins. A seasoned officer who knew the significance of each moment that ticked away, he knew he had to protect the integrity of the crime scene. All the Durham police officers who arrived at the scene did their best to make order out of the chaos. Yellow crime-scene tape was placed in front of both entrances; the female civilians were questioned. After Michael and Todd each refused to make any statement, Wilkins made the decision to separate Michael Peterson from his son. It was a touchy-feely time for them, he understood, but nonetheless, he couldn’t afford to allow Peterson, a man covered in blood, any more opportunity to create a story.
If indeed there was a crime, which was not yet official—Wilkins did not want anyone’s perceptions of the situation to be changed or tainted.
When Detective Art Holland arrived and viewed the scene, he took a quick look inside and immediately classified it as a suspicious death. Holland would be calling CSI to process the area, but not without a search warrant. Once the warrant was under way, Detective Holland, now the official lead criminal investigator in the Peterson case, requested that the Durham PD set up a Mobile Command Post at the back side of the mansion, on Kent Street. Holland made calls way up the chain of command, to his major and his captains. Detective Holland, with twenty-two years of experience on the police force, was making sure that there was little room for error.
Because Michael Peterson was a well-known individual in the community, because the mounting case was sure to gain regional attention, high-ranking officers also volunteered to help out at the scene. The Durham police were taking no chances. They used all their power to keep the scene intact.
But Michael Peterson saw this heavy police presence as a witch-hunt. He always knew the day would come when the Durham police would attack him. He was completely outraged that they would use the unlikely occasion of his wife’s death to make trouble for him. There was not one shred of evidence, not one thing that pointed to him as a suspect. And all of the family members knew that. In the hours surrounding Kathleen’s death, and later through the private family grieving times, all through Kathleen’s wake and funeral, the family was further upset about the way the Durham police were mistreating Michael.
The idea that Michael could have killed Kathleen was ludicrous. Even Kathleen’s biological daughter, Caitlin Atwater, made public statements to defend Michael Peterson. He was such a great stepdad, such a great human being. He and her mom were soul mates. They were two peas in a pod; they never fought, never argued. There was nothing but mutual respect and love between them.
Michael understood his family’s pain. He felt bad for his kids, who had to endure, not only the loss of their mother, but now, a public media spectacle. Michael assured his family that the police would find nothing to charge him with. Still, he was all the more grief-stricken, just sick to his stomach, to think that he would have to endure all this public scrutiny. He was overwhelmed by his loss and, at the same time, profoundly sorry that Kathleen had to be involved in the Durham PD’s latest public scandal.
As he wallowed in sorrow, Peterson mused about why the Durham police had it out for him. He thought about all the columns he had written, bashing the cops, attacking them for not taking care of Durham’s drug problems, for not addressing Durham’s drive-by shootings. He thought about the column where he made a mistake and wrote that the Durham PD only solved 5 percent of all crimes. Peterson recalled that Police Chief Teresa Chambers had written to him personally, to let him know that he should be ashamed of himself for his shabby reporting. The Durham PD had a 47 percent clearance on homicides, the chief wrote, going down the list of her department’s accomplishments.
Peterson realized that the police had been gunning for him from the moment they arrived at the house, and he would later explain that to his five kids. He wanted them to understand where all the suspicions were coming from. He wanted them to know that perhaps, because he’d been such an outspoken critic of law enforcement and local government, he had brought this witch-hunt upon himself.
Still, Peterson was annoyed, on the night of his wife’s senseless death, that the police had taken the opportunity to crawl all over his home. They were all standing around, on guard, for an alleged crime that wasn’t a crime. The Durham police were heartless. They were making the family’s tragedy all the more difficult.
Michael would assure the family—among them his brothers, Kathleen’s sisters, and all five children—that he had no doubt about being cleared of any wrongdoing. He didn’t worry a bit that the police wanted to spend so much time searching. Michael said he knew that no murder weapon could be found, that eventually police would realize that there was no murder. The idea that the police had pulled warrants to search the house, Michael surmised, was their form of harassment, of revenge.
As far as Michael Peterson could tell, the police officials were setting up their CSI teams in order to grab the attention of the local media. Kathleen Peterson was a pillar of the community; her untimely death would be sure to hit the local news by Monday. If police could drum up some false charges, that would make for better press coverage. In the meantime, Peterson would remain calm.
As he sat alone in his office, waiting to be given his freedom, Peterson called his attorney friend, Kerry Sutton. He wanted her to come over to the house that same morning, to see if she could assert his constitutional rights. The idea that Kathleen’s body was found, that he was grieving and was unable to be with his wife, was unnatural. Ms. Sutton, an adept attorney who had once been Michael Peterson’s political campaign manager, made her way over to the mansion before 9:00 A.M.
When the police told her that she would not be allowed into the house, that she would not be permitted to see Mr. Peterson, Sutton called their bluff and insisted that they either arrest her client, Michael Peterson, or let the man go free. She was not about to see the esteemed Mr. Peterson being held against his will, not without evidence of his guilt. It was an outrage that this grieving man was being treated as a criminal.
Sutton and other attorneys would later explain that the fact was, Kathleen’s fall down the stairs caused a lot of blood, and some of that blood had gotten on Michael because he had held Kathleen when he came upon her. Everyone who was at the scene had witnessed that.
As for all the police suspicions, the attorneys were convinced that there was not enough evidence to show probable cause.