The Reluctant Face of True Crime
If you’ve heard of Michael Peterson, you probably have a strong opinion about whether or not he murdered his wife, Kathleen, who was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in their Durham, North Carolina, home on December 9, 2001. Nearly 16,000 people were murdered that year, according to the FBI, and few of those cases gained much attention at the time—nor do they attract much discussion two decades on. Peterson’s case, by contrast, has demonstrated a strange staying power, becoming a poster child for a new golden age—or dark age, depending on one’s view—of true-crime content.
Peterson’s initial trial drew national interest, thanks in part to its unusual details: a well-to-do novelist, former mayoral candidate, and rabble-rousing columnist for the Durham Herald-Sun; a sprawling mansion; revelations about Michael Peterson’s bisexuality; and the death of a family friend under somewhat similar circumstances in Germany in 1985. Peterson maintained—and maintains—his innocence, but in 2003, he was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.
For most murder cases, that’s the end of the story, but this one was only getting started. In 2004, the documentary filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade released an, produced while he was embedded with Peterson’s defense team. In prison, Peterson attracted a group of , who insisted he was innocent and had been railroaded. One theory held that Kathleen had not fallen accidentally or been murdered by Michael, but had been . No side was especially easy to credit: Peterson was, on the one hand, an and (it must be said) an odd and difficult person; the Durham district attorney’s office was, on the other, horribly dysfunctional, and the blood-spatter analysis of the sort that helped convict him has been . Peterson exhausted appeals, but after a forensic analyst involved in his case was discredited, he was released and granted a new trial. In 2017, he entered an Alford plea—an agreement in which a defendant acknowledges that sufficient evidence exists to convict him, while maintaining his innocence—in exchange for not having to serve more prison time.
