Thirty-two

On December 12, 2001, sixteen years after Elizabeth’s death, Detective Art Holland received a phone call from Margaret Blair. The Durham police paged Holland with an urgent message from a woman in Rhode Island. The call had something to do with Margaret and Martha Ratliff.

“That’s when it all started. She told me who her sister was, and that she died in Germany in 1985, found at the foot of the steps, ” Holland confided. “Now I’ve got two women dead at the foot of a flight of steps, and both women know the same man.”

The call from Elizabeth’s sister came just days after Kathleen Peterson’s death, at a time when all of Michael Peterson’s friends and neighbors were telling Holland about the good character of Michael Peterson, and what a perfect husband he had been to Kathleen.

The day after Kathleen’s demise, Blair had spoken to both of her nieces to express her sympathy for the loss of their stepmom. The girls were in shock. Both of them knew the history of their mom, Elizabeth, who had died from a fall down the stairs. Margaret and Martha both thought it was just a horrible coincidence.

Even though she was their same blood, by the time of Kathleen Peterson’s death, Margaret Blair had become a virtual stranger to her nieces. There was nothing she felt she could say to them. It was obvious that they both believed their dad, Michael, was completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Her nieces thought that Michael Peterson was being taunted by the local media and Durham police. The Ratliff girls had clearly fallen under Michael’s spell. Over the years, there were problems that Michael Peterson had created between Margaret and her nieces. There were sticky situations, some fights over the girls, but Michael had won those battles. He had managed to make Margaret Blair feel unnecessary.

Back in 1985, when Margaret Blair had first learned that Michael Peterson was legally in control of Elizabeth’s daughters, she was surprised that her sister had left the care of her children to someone outside their family. There had been a time in the early 1990s, when Margaret Blair had tried to adopt Margaret and Martha. It was a time when the girls were spending their summers with Blair at her home in Rhode Island, and Margaret and her husband had become very attached to Elizabeth’s daughters. Even though her sister’s will had specified that Michael and Patricia Peterson be their guardians, Margaret Blair hoped that the Petersons might relinquish their legal rights.

Margaret Blair fought to become their legal mom.

But those years had become a difficult period for everyone. As it happened, Margaret and Martha Ratliff felt torn between two households. Margaret Blair ran a very strict Christian home, and the Ratliff girls, very young and impressionable, were led to believe that because Michael Peterson and Kathleen Atwater were living together, because Michael was still technically married to Patricia, they would be better off living full-time in Rhode Island.

It wasn’t merely the fact that Michael and Kathleen were living in sin, it was the reality that the Ratliff girls were being shifted around from place to place. They had lived with Michael and Patricia in Durham, they had lived with Michael and Patricia in Germany for a while, and then they wound up living with Michael and Kathleen and her daughter Caitlin in a kind of makeshift family.