'I Didn't Murder My Wife': The True Story Behind 'The Staircase' | This Morning

[Music] it's the new tv drama starring colin firth and tony collette based on an actual murder trial but what's the real story behind the hit series the staircase well back in 2001 kathleen peterson was found dead at the bottom of her staircase by her husband michael peterson but police soon began to suspect it wasn't an accident well following that heavily publicized trial michael was convicted of his wife kathleen's murder and sentenced to life in prison but in 2017 michael's legal team successfully reduced his charge to manslaughter and he was released and he joins us now to share his side of the story thank you for coming in thank you yeah thank you um so she is found at the bottom of the stairs 38 injuries to her body deep lacerations on her skull face back hands arms and wrists so extensive injuries what happened did you push her down the stairs no i did not did you did you hit her with a poker no i did not so explain those i can't that's one of the strangest things because we hired forensic pathologist doctor the major one in america dr henry lee and litzma jan litzma who's the foremost neurosurgeon and they looked at all the evidence and they said no she was not beaten to death and i don't know i never myself could figure it out when i first saw the lacerations i was horrified i really was i saw him in my lawyer's office and he showed me those god that's awful so i understand why people have focused on that uh they're little holes it's a central focusing thing isn't it if someone falls down the stairs because i think you also said that she may have fallen a number of times i mean many people fall down the stairs get up walk back upstairs and fall down again well i think i don't think it was that my understanding of it was and again this is hard to believe this but it was you know over 20 years ago was that the theory part of it was that yes she fell and then she tried to get up and she slipped in all the blood i don't know i haven't i don't know what it was or what happened to her i you know there are numerous theories but i myself i'm probably one of the last believers still in the fact that i think she fell she had alcohol she had valium uh flexural i don't know i i honestly i wish i could tell you i wish my my attorney has his own theory now is what happened it's quite convenient though isn't it it's quite convenient not to know or not to be able to remember it helps you it's it's one of those things that i can remember when um actually was sophie who told me wouldn't you feel better to know that kathleen died because of an owl attack or an intruder and i thought well no i mean would that make her less dead would that bring her back no you reach a point where i don't know and you can i'm and i'm happy not knowing we'll come to some of the theories a little bit later but i wanted to because the prosecution within the original court case were making suggestions as to what may have triggered the attack because that's what they were accusing you of initially and they were saying that uh the the timeline worked that before the attack that she would have found these images these pornographic images on your laptop yeah that would have image yeah and that would have caused a um argument that would have triggered this yeah right well that was a theory but it was absolutely proven by the prosecution's expert computer witness that no that that computer had not been opened or looked at after four o'clock in the afternoon so the theory that oh at 11 o'clock at night she decided to actually she would she there's a possibility because she was getting email notices from canada she was supposed to go to canada that she opened it saw the pornography and that somehow resulted in a fight in which i killed her which is ridiculous on the face of it but as it turned out no the computer was never used so it's continuously thrown out there that that is what caused it it's one of those prosecution theories like the blowpoke that were disproved they didn't happen did she know about your sexuality i think i'm always asked that and no we did not discuss it did she know i'm sure she did she was the least bigoted prejudiced person i've ever known it's in a marriage there are things that don't need to be said sometimes in fact better not said and i think this was one of those there was also a theory around that it was money because there was a life insurance policy uh accidental damage that you would have received i think it was something like 1.4 million dollars so that it was actually financially motivated well first off uh she never signed the insurance policy so that wasn't even an issue i didn't know about it uh as far as the debt it's another one that they tried to prove the prosecution oh we were horribly in debt the prosecution's witness on finances said no that mike and kathleen were worth a great deal money a regular money and it sort of disputed the idea that we were in desperate need of money we were not under any circumstances kathleen had deferred 80 of her income it went into a retirement fund if we'd ever needed or she felt she needed more money she would have deducted less from her retirement and would live on that but no pardon me no you carry on so i mean she's not the first woman to be found dead at the foot of the stairs that you know um so in germany uh first with your first wife patty friend of hers elizabeth fell down the stairs and uh and died well that sort of follows you around doesn't it what happened with liz that that really surprised everybody certainly me and my children and you know even morgan martha though liz's children that she was found at the bottom of the stairs german police german doctors american pathologists american police investigated it was a stroke and the body was brought to frankfurt military hospital the autopsy was done half of her brain was sent to walter reed hospital one of the major hospitals in america they examined the brain and they said she had a stroke so i always believed everybody believed that she had a stroke and died there was no blood no one had a any suspicion nobody even suggested that liz had however they've really did it they have reopened that case however the germans reopened it of course and didn't they enclosed it immediately but did they close it immediately or was the cause of death changed after the autopsy report to homicide oh no not no uh in america in north carolina it was in germany it was not okay um i mean i guess the big the big question here as well is you know if why if you are innocent as you've always have proclaimed to being why then accept manslaughter yes well there's a good reason when this came about when i was released and they wanted to retry it i was 73 years old my attorney david rudolph said he would not represent he'd done as much as he could he didn't want to represent me in the next case i had grandchildren i had children who had gone through probably more than what i went through because when i was convicted i went to prison and that was the end of it i was it basically and i news isolation my children had to live through all of this and it was terrible for them so at the age of 73 did i want to go back to trial to prove that i didn't do anything so that i could be free well i was already free so i would have been risking possible number one the emotional damage to my children and my grandchildren by this time to be free or to go back to prison no no this is this is not a good bet so i took what is now considered an alfred plane which you said i didn't do anything i am not guilty i will plead guilty to a very smaller charge so that you will set me free but i would be convicted of manslaughter but i would be free and so to me that was just the better the better thing um sophie burnett who is the editor of the documentary visited you in prison uh believed you were innocent you then struck up a relationship and so and you mentioned her name earlier on i mean some would say that if you are dating the editor of the documentary that there's a fair chance that she's going to go easy on you especially if she thinks you might be innocent well sophie edited the first i think it's four episodes of uh the staircase and then they brought in new editors i did not know sophie i had no idea until she wrote me in prison in 2004 i think it was after the whole thing had been completely done and some other editors had edited the uh the trial and the after trial so and i know that she and i know jane uh de la strad who is the documentary director producer who won an academy award they feel very wronged by what is going on it's impugning their integrity and certainly sophie's integrity in fact they told her hbo that we will not put you in this episode any of them so this is the hbo drama i think that's correct on sky atlantic this is the column first that's right and she said she would cooperate as long as it was understood that she would not be a character on any of this and i did not know her until 2004 long after i'd been you know i'd gone through all the trial and had been convicted and was in prison so to suggest that you know she had done something many years earlier to twist her she may have been falling for you whilst watching that uh i wouldn't know that i don't know yeah nebraska did i ask i always would ask her you know why my god you're married you have a wonderful career you have a child why are you coming you know to see me and part of it was i knew you were innocent from all of that but to suggest that she had skewered the documentary to make it look that way no she didn't do that and besides jean who was the director never would have allowed that that's questioning both of their integrities do you um the the hbo uh series with the colin first have you seen any of that and you've made that choice not to watch it absolutely not no no no one in my family has watched it and to me it's a very simple matter i was in the marines and i was in war for a year i came back i did not want to see a war movie i didn't want to see platoon i want to see saving private ryan i was in prison for eight years when i got out i didn't want to see a prison movie i'd lived it i'd seen it i don't want to see shawshank redemption or anything i let her go and with kathleen she died i was there when she died i do not and definitely do not want to watch a fictionalized account seeing her die three times and i know my children wouldn't even touch that well i suspect he probably rules out harry potter as well because there was one report that said that she was attacked by an owl oh yes there is in fact my attorney right now believes that absolutely is the is she was savaged by an owl at the top of the stairs no no no no no no no that's another one that was misconceived there was an owl in the house no it was outside that she went outside for some particular reason probably it was during christmas we were going to put up decorations they all attacked her outside she ran into the house went up the up the staircase bleeding from the old attack and then slipped and fell there was never ever a consideration there were owl was in there and she had owl there was an owl feather in her hair i think and then some in in her hand which is where this theory that's where it came from larry pollard who a lawyer and a great hunter uh said that those lacerations on her head which looked sort of like that were absolutely the talents of a predator or an owl and how many reports of owl attacks on people right now really many many many many if you google uh owl attacks you'll just see hundreds what do you what do you actually think happened because you must have gone through this so much in your head i still think she fell i i mean it sounds inconceivable when you look at the damage but i is the other day oh the author i don't know we had owls in the property but if she had a nail feather in her hair and an owl feathers in her hand and you think she still fell well you know i just it's very it's very difficult for me still to wrap myself around that and i don't go there when it was said that you know because the district attorney when when larry went to the district attorney the district attorney said where's the feather where's the feather the entire theory was uh you know ridiculed that kind of thing uh wanted better alive owl uh it was just totally ridiculed and in my own mind in prison when i first heard about it i thought uh i don't know about that one but now when you find out oh there was a feather in her hand and there was that feels up there yes it sounds very plausible and that's what my attorney believes now how are your family how is everybody how are they able to sort of move on from all this because this story dealing and reeling from the initial incident but also the attention and now the series and having you taken away and then coming back into their lives how are those relationships we're all fine dr margaret margaret made reservations for me in london uh when i finish here we get along fine i think as i said a few minutes ago they suffered more than i did because okay you're guilty they lock me up i go into prison i'm in there with murderers you know it's never even brought up you know people say oh you know make a little bit of fun of it but everybody in there has their own tragic story to tell so it's just not even there my children however are living this forever it goes on is it holding them that you come on the tv and talk about it does it help help them that you i know the drama is going out and so you know that that is something that you may feel you want to defend but do they mind you still talking about it i don't think so we haven't talked about it i mean they said when i told them when i had heard the first reports that this hbo thing was going to be extraordinarily graphic and brutal i emailed him and said hey you might not want to watch it now email back we weren't even thinking of watching it they want to move on with their lives so 20 years ago uh margaret martha were teenagers now that yeah almost well she did turn 40. they don't want us in their lives anymore can i ask you when you meet people do you feel that the majority of people think you are guilty or that the majority of people think you're innocent i think those who are aware of the story it's probably split half and half and i'm okay with that oh yeah because i mean if i was walking around and so many people were thinking such a terrible terrible thing about me i don't know how i'd cope with that well at my age 78 you really you don't give a damn much about it anymore but even then as my son todd said dad those people who believe that you're innocent will always believe you're innocent those who think you're guilty will always believe you're guilty so you know there's no point in even pursuing it anymore i i'm coming on now just to tell people that hbo show is not terribly accurate uh in fact the french are considered the documentarians are considering a lawsuit against hbo yeah well um a documentary uh the 2004 documentary is obviously you can see that uh the memoir is out now the drama series uh is in eight parts on sky atlantic in a remarkable twist of fate our team member who was looking after you yesterday grabbed you just as you were about to fall down the staircase and saved you you did yes yes apparently yeah stop you falling down the staircase i remember no i don't i remember telling him we were discussing that and i said you know who probably the most famous person in england who fell down the stairs and died we have to go there you

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Published: Wed May 25 2022