The Staircase - sorry if repeat

[Bob Gutowski]

Is anyone else watching this reality series on an apparent domestic murder (with mucho blood evidence and Abby Borden-like autopsy pictures) on Sundance?

[Bob Gutowski]

I got the 2 disc set and watched it, and I don't think this man is guilty. I think I'm going to write to him in prison.

[Kat]

I don't know anything about this. I don't get that channel.

Are you saying this is an open case and there's a disc set one can purchase?

Why would you write the man in prison?

[Bob Gutowski]

No, he's been found guilty of the bludgeoning murder of his wife. IMO, he was so judged because he had occasional sex with men outside his marriage (which otherwise seems to have been a settled, very happy one), and did use the Net to look at gay porn (which his wife knew about, according to one of his sons).

Also weighing against him was that a female family friend also died similarly, in a fall down a staircase, in Germany, 18 years before the current case, which took place starting in December, 2001.

The defendant seems, by everyone's account, to have had a loving, soul-mate type relationship with his wife.

So, anyway, he called 911 to report that he'd found her at the base of a small staricase in a puddle of blood. Here's where my Borden training comes in. The defense showed that every beating murder in the past twenty years in the state had produced either a skull fracture or bruising of the brain, but the autopsy photos of his wife revealed massive splits in the scalp, which would've produced heavy bleeding, but no trauma to the skull or brain.

How does someone beat someone else to death gently?

It seems to me that the physical evidence certainly points away from him. He's a former millionaire (after vast legal fees), and was a best-selling author. It's too bad we don't have the same Scottish verdict that would've been so helpful in the Borden case: not proven.

He was, IMO, tried for his morals, his "otherness," and his status as a professional storyteller (the dragon-lady associate prosecutor called him, unaware of her error, "a fictional author").

I feel for him. His appeal is supposed to be proceeding. I recommend the documentary.

[Kat]

I think I have seen this case covered on late-night Court TV.
The 2 ladies fallen down the stairs reminds me.

That's a big coincidence.

Do you think of corresponding because you work in a defense attny office?

[doug65oh]

Are you - this is the Michael Petersen case, isn't it? NC v. Petersen, the trial was on CourtTV a - oh whenever it was, a year, two years ago...

Here's the set Bob's referring to, at http://video.barnesandnoble.com/search/ ... 3332&itm=5

[Bob Gutowski]

Yes, partially because of where I work, and partially of what I've learned over the years about domestic murder thanks to the Borden case and all my co-theorists!

Also, as a gay man, I feel his sexuality was used against him, as if he could not be very happy with his family and yet need another part of him to be taken care of. I think in New York or in Europe the sexuality issue would've been looked at and mostly shrugged off.

ON THE OTHER HAND:

http://www.peterson-staircase.com/index.html

[Bob Gutowski]

With the further reading I've done, I have to say he's looking more and more guilty to me.

Amusingly for us, one of the detectives at the crime scene was named...Borden!

[Kat]

That's too weird!

How have you been informing yourself in the interim, that makes you lean more toward guilty?

[Bob Gutowski]

I found a rabid anti-Peterson, anit-THE STAIRCASE site, and I ignored the bile, but I did focus in on the blood evidence, which is troubling. The fact is that much of the blood of this woman who had supposedly JUST fallen down the steps and been shortly thereafter benn found by her husband was already dried, and there were signs that blood had been wiped up. Also, would a distraught husband necessarily think to take off his shoes and socks to avoid tracking blood around the room? This is one of those times when the absence of blood, as on Lizzie, was more suspicious than the presence of blood.

I went thence to several other sites, and to a few books. His behavior right after the murder was as odd as Lizzie's, with a big run over to the corpse to embrace it that somethink was to account for any fresh blood on his clothing.

There are also financial issues, with the wife having an enormous credit card debt, and the couple actually living way beyond their means. There's still the question of how comfortable Kathleen Peterson was with her husband's bisexuality, or whether she knew at all - or whether her discovery of it on the computer THAT VERY NIGHT led to domestic violence.

[Kat]

Thanks Bob. That's very complicated isn't it?

Since you call it a domestic killing- it's usually the spouse tho, correct?

[Bob Gutowski]

"Domestic" covers, I believe, both spouse or a member of the immediate family, like our Lizzie.