Nineteen
Caitlin had become influenced by her family’s reaction. She was feeling pressured, and everything was scaring her. By the time she arrived in Atlanta, she was totally spooked. On New Year’s Eve, she got a series of calls from both Todd and Martha. They were leaving messages on her cell phone, saying it was urgent that she call them back.
Todd and Martha wanted Caitlin to return to Durham for a TV interview. They were making her feel guilty about not sticking with the family. At that time, Michael was still in jail, and the kids were being hounded by the local media. They had arranged to tape a TV segment for the local news, and they wanted Caitlin to be present so that all five children could stand up for Michael.
Caitlin returned their calls and said she was stuck in a snowstorm in Atlanta. The roads were dangerous, she wasn’t sure about doing TV interviews, and besides, this was about her and her mom. This was not about Michael. When she told Todd that she felt she should be able to do whatever she wanted to do, Todd began acting suspicious. He knew Caitlin had been to see her aunts near DC, and he was worried that Caitlin was jumping to the conclusion that Michael was guilty.
But Caitlin hadn’t made any decision about that. She was angry that Todd was giving her an attitude. Both he and Martha were making her out to be some kind of bad person, accusing her of turning against the family. She tried to reason with Martha, she even tried to placate Todd by saying she’d try to find a way back to Durham, but really, all she wanted was some time to herself.
“There was no evidence that he was guilty of murdering my mom,” Caitlin recalled, “but people were coming out with all these rumors about Michael being gay, and I didn’t want to be unsupportive of him. But I also wasn’t going to do a TV interview to say he was wonderful, because in my mind there was evidence that he probably cheated on my mom, and that wasn’t okay.”
The more Caitlin thought about Michael, the more she heard rumors that he’d approached gay male friends of the family—the more uneasy she felt about his leading a double life. Even if it was hearsay, too many people were coming up with details about Michael being sexually active with men. As Caitlin thought more about Michael’s past, she realized he’d been courting some strange friends over the years. Back then, she hadn’t ever thought about it. Back then, she was a kid with her own set of problems, and Michael’s “friends” were of no concern to her.
“Michael would kind of adopt people at the gym,” Caitlin confided. “There was this one guy, Roy, who was a wrestling guy and he’d stop by our house. This was when I was in junior high school. And thinking back, the guy was so blatantly gay. I started wondering, like, what was that guy doing at our house?”
As Caitlin tried not to think about it, as she sat in Atlanta with her friends, dodging phone calls from Todd and Martha, her friends convinced her to call Todd and give him another excuse. Todd and the others had already agreed to the first TV interview, and now the local papers were calling as well. Todd wanted a statement from Caitlin; he felt it was the very least she could do. Todd felt Caitlin should support Michael. Todd was concerned about public opinion. He needed to show Peterson solidarity, and he wasn’t going to let up.
“I didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t agree to be interviewed as a family,” Caitlin confided. “They wanted my theory on how innocent I thought Michael was, and at first I said fine, I would talk about it. I said I’d call them later. But then, they kept calling and calling, and I couldn’t get over how greedy they all were. They were insisting on getting my written statement. And I finally did tell them that I couldn’t do any interview. That I was not going to talk about the questions.”
As it happened, when the Peterson kids taped the first TV interview, Clayton had his girlfriend, Becky, with him. To the outside public the TV interview made it seem like there were five kids supporting Michael Peterson. Even though Becky hadn’t been asked any questions, she had just been a presence for the cameras, any outsider looking at the television would have mistaken Clayton’s girlfriend as one of the Peterson kids.
When Caitlin heard about that, she was furious. She felt Todd was being manipulative. It suddenly occurred to her that Michael was probably behind the PR campaign. When another story about the Peterson kids ran in the News & Observer, Caitlin was horrified to see that Todd had acted as her spokesperson. Todd had done a good job of making it appear that Caitlin was just distraught, that she wasn’t participating in the interview because she was too emotional. But by that time, Caitlin had already called her father and had agreed to attend a meeting in Durham. Unbeknownst to Todd, she already had sat down with Detective Art Holland and Durham district attorney Jim Hardin.
Based on that first meeting, Caitlin and Fred Atwater had come to think about Michael Peterson in a whole new light. The officials had hard evidence pointing to Kathleen having been murdered. The autopsy revealed seven scalp lacerations to Kathleen’s head. Caitlin didn’t want to look at the crime scene photos, but Fred had seen them. Like Candace and Lori, he, too, was disturbed by the overwhelming amount of blood. From the looks of the photos and the crime scene video, there was no way Kathleen could have died by having fallen down the stairs.
To make matters even more disturbing, the DA had presented some revealing information about Michael Peterson’s past. Hardin could not offer proof, he could not yet give the full details, but there were suspicious circumstances that lead authorities to believe that Peterson might have been connected to another death during his days in Germany. . . .