At 6 A.M. on December 10, detectives filed back into the Forest Hills home. The stars of the exterior search were Master Officer Trent Hall and his canine partner, Bosco, whose specialty was article searches. When Hall drove out to the Peterson home the night before, he hed not anticipated this turn of events. He had to set aside all of his personal concerns this morning andâhe and his partner had a job to do.
Deployed with one word from Hall, Bosco was off and searching. He sniffed through grasses and massive mountains of kudzu, down a hill covered with a dense grove of bamboo leading to the unpaved section of Cedar Street, to the outside shed and around it. Bosco searched the whole property in a back-and-forth circular pattern for about one hour and forty-five minutes. He did not find a weapon.
Lieutenant Connie Bullock then deployed five teams into different areas marked with flags. When a team finished their designated area, they reported back to the mobile unit, where the completed section was marked on the map, and were assigned a new area to search. The contents of the trash can and a recycling bin got intense
scrutiny. When all the areas of the grounds had been covered, Bullock sent some of the officers inside to help with that search. He sent the rest of them home.
Holland and his homicide team scoured the inside of the home and the four vehicles at the residence: a Volkswagen Cabriolet, a Mitsubishi Montero, a Mitsubishi 3000 GT and an aged Jaguar.
While the search of the home and property were under way, Candace Zamperini and Lori Campell drove down from Northern Virginia to Durham. On the way, they talked about what happened to their sister and how it could have occurred. In their minds, they envisioned the front stairs, where four and a half years earlier, a radiant Kathleen had descended to take her marriage vows. Did she tumble over the railing and fall to the floor? Did she trip and cascade down the steps? They talked about Duke Chapel and how nice it would be to hold the service there. They hoped it would be available and wondered about the process for securing it.
At one point during the ride, Lori blurted out her darkest thought: “He did this to her. He didn't love her.”
The sisters went straight to 1810 Cedar Street, arriving at about 4:30 in the afternoon. They pulled up to an unexpected sight. Up to that moment, they thought the police went to the house to have a cursory and casual lookâjust a routine check to confirm that the death was an accident. They did not think they would find yellow crime-scene tape all around the perimeter. They did not anticipate the legions of television trucks, cameramen
and other members of the press corps lying in wait. Their minds went blank trying to absorb it all.
A police officer was at their side in an instant to tell them that they could not enter the house. He pointed out the mobile unit. Candace and Lori gaped at it in disbelief.
Across the street, in the driveway of Maureen “Mo” Berry's house at 1819 Cedar, Candace and Lori saw Todd waiting for their arrival. He waved them over. Todd told them that since his dad was just too upset to talk about what happened, he would fill them in. He said that he had gone to the house earlier in the evening with Christina Tomasetti. Mike and Kathleen were watching
America's Sweethearts
with Julia Robertsâhe repeated that assertion several times throughout the conversation as if it were a vital piece of information.
He said that Kathleen had been “drunk, drunk, drunk” and stumbling through the house when he was there. He told them that he and Christina left for a party in the neighborhood. He'd returned to the house with the intention of getting Christina into his bed. When he arrived, however, emergency vehicles were at the house and he jumped out of the car and ran inside. He complained about the actions and insensitivity of the police.
After talking to Todd, the two went inside. They spent an awkward hour and a half in the home of a stranger. It was a long time in the presence of the stilted social interaction that is natural in the aftermath of unexpected death.
Most of the members of the Peterson family were at
the home of Kerry Sutton, who was now serving as Mike's criminal attorney. Before heading over to join them, Candace wanted to make a stop at the Mobile Police Station. Lori waited for her in the car. Candace introduced herself to Lieutenant Connie Bullock and said, “I'm here for my sister. She died. When can I get into the house?”
“I'm not sure. But I think maybe later tonight.”
Candace left the unit dissatisfied and followed Todd over to Kerry Sutton's house. The place was full of people, among them Mike Peterson; his brothers, Bill and Jack; his sister, Ann Christensen; Margaret and Martha Ratliff; Mike's friend and webmaster, Guy Seaberg; and, of course, Kerry Sutton.
After an exchange of greetings, Mike said, “Candace, now that you're here, I'd like you to take care of all the funeral arrangements.”
“Yes, I will. I will take care of everything for the funeral.” She then asked Mike where Kathleen's body was and other details she would need to know. Mike did not volunteer any information about Kathleen's death. Candace went off by herself to think about the best way to honor her sister and to make a mental to-do list.
Mike turned to Lori and asked, “What music do you think we should play at the service?”
Her thoughts flew at once to a group loved by all the family, the Mills Brothers. She realized that the tune running through her head was “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” Her mouth opened as if to speak. She snapped it closed and shook her head.
After an hour or so, the mourning family left the
Sutton home to return to Maureen's house, where Caitlin Atwater was expected to arrive. Kerry, Mike and Bill urged Candace to try to get the police to allow them into the house. On the way back, Candace stopped by the mobile unit to speak to Lieutenant Bullock again.
“Now I am concerned about when I can get into the house, because I want to get clothing and things for my sister's funeral. If nothing else, could a police officer escort me up to her bedroom so I can at least get some clothing?”
“No. You're probably going to be able to get into the house tonight. No problem. It might not be till nine or ten. I'll let you know.” Bullock warned her about the cleanup that was needed in the house. “There's blood,” he said.
“That's no problem. I am here to take care of things for the family. I will clean up the blood. It won't bother me.”
Having seen the blood covering the floor and the landing and reaching high up on the walls, Bullock raised his eyebrows.
Candace noticed the surprised expression he gave her and reassured him, “I can do this. I can clean up the blood.”
“Well, there's a lot of it.”
“That's okay. I can do this.”
She then gave him her name and a phone number and joined the others at the Berrys' house, where Maureen served dinner. Then, a candle-covered cake was placed on the table in front of Margaret. It was her 20th birthday. Family gathered round and sang a lusty refrain of “Happy Birthday.” It was a
Twilight Zone
moment for Candace. She walked out of the room shaking her head. She could
not believe anyone could think about a birthday with the horror of Kathleen's death still choking the air.
Fred pulled up to Maureen's home a little while later. He dropped Caitlin off and went on his way. Although he wanted to be with his daughter, he did not want to insert any conflict into an already difficult situation. He checked in at the Washington Duke Inn, where Kathleen's family had rooms.
When Caitlin entered the house, Mike whisked her upstairs to talk in private. He went through his story about what happened to her mother. He told her that he was a suspect in Kathleen's death. At that moment, Caitlin did not care who or what was responsible. All she wanted to do was grieve and adjust to her loss. Everything else was insignificant and irrelevant.
Candace's frame of mind was very similar. At some point that evening, she told police that “ ⦠the happiest day of Kathleen's life was the day she married Michael.” “ ⦠[S]he had found her soulmate.” “I thought they were happy people.” And that she knew of no financial problems the couple faced.
Candace did not want to talk to the police that night. She did not want to dishonor Kathleen by discussing personal matters. She wanted to be left alone to absorb the cold fact of her sister's death.
As the families played musical houses, investigators worked in the dark at Cedar Street. Dan George prepared the solution to spray luminol a short distance from the stairwell toward the kitchen. As he sprayed the floor, officers followed behind him looking for any signs of the
faint glow that heralded the presence of blood. Their eyes could not wanderâthe luminescence would only last ten to twenty seconds before it faded away.
A briny smell reminiscent of the seashore wafted through the air with every squirt of the chemical. The observers were rewarded with a footprint, shining and bright with five clearly defined toes, the ball of a foot and a heel. George crawled forward spraying a path where prints appeared like ectoplasmic markings of a ghost as they led the team footstep by footstep to the laundry sink. The feet turned toward the sink, then walked off to the washing machine. Again they turned, marking the spot. There was no way to tell how long the feet stayed at those stopping points or what they were doing while they were there.
George kept spraying and the three men followed, watching the trail of feet travel to the kitchen sink and turn directly in front of it. Then the apparitions of feet pattered over to the kitchen cabinet to the spot where blood was found and turned forward yet again.
At 8:30 that night, the police released the house. They seized a walking stick beside the fireplace and other possible candidates for the implement that applied blunt force to Kathleen's head, but no obvious weapon was found anywhere in the home.
Investigator Holland had discovered something significant in the last two days. By the time he left 1810 Cedar Street that night, he had a strong conviction about Michael Peterson's guilt. He knew without a doubt that Kathleen Peterson was murdered. Now, all he had to do was prove it.
Michael; his brother Bill; his sons, Clayton and Todd; and his good friend Guy Seaberg slipped out of Maureen Berry's home and scurried across the street and into the house. Not one of them told Kathleen's sisters or her daughter that they could now go back inside.
They cleaned up all the blood from the hallway, off the back of the door and any other place they could find outside the stairwell. When they realized that the men were over at the house, Candace and Lori crossed the street to join them. They walked together through the side door and down the hall.
There on the staircase, they saw the blood. Their sister's blood. It chased any possibility of denial out of their hearts and minds. Lori climbed into the stairwell pointing at blood here. Blood there. Blood everywhere. Her sister's blood surrounded her and beat a panicked rhythm into her head. Candace hung back, unwilling, at first, to enter Kathleen's altar of death.
They were incredulous at the volume of blood they saw there. No one told them that some of the scene was already sanitized. In fact, they did not know about the
pool of blood at the foot of the stairs until they saw the crime-scene photos weeks later.
Mike came up behind the women and the three ascended the stairs with deliberate slow steps. When they reached the top, Mike said, “I came up the stairs, I think, to get some towels.” He turned and looked down the steep angle to the landing. “She fell down the whole staircase.”
Candace was shaking and wildness ran loose in her mind. She knew she needed to calm down, and stepped off to a corner by herself. She remembered the example set for her all her life by her older sisterâwhen you're at wit's end, get busy. And so she did.
She went into her sister's bedroom and slid clothing up and down the rack until she found a suitable outfit. She took it, and Kathleen's jewelry box, wallet and passport, and carried the bundle downstairs and set it by the front door. She felt a bit better having done something useful.
She looked again at the red, forbidding spot where her sister breathed her last breath. She knew she had to clean up that blood. Her mother was coming in another day. Candace did not want her to see this. She did not want her mother to be haunted by the image of her daughter's blood spattered all over the walls and steps. Candace could hear the blood screaming at her as if it held the essence of Kathleen's last moments buried in its dried, browning surface.
Todd and Clayton attempted to conceal the stairway from view. They held up a big, cream-colored blanket and tried to staple it to the wall. But the staples buckled
as they emerged from the gun, the old hard plaster denying them penetration. They whisked duct tape up on the corners, pressed it hard onto the plaster, but to no availâit would hold for a hope-birthing second and then give way. The blanket was not big enough to cover the whole doorway anyway.
Cleaning, Candace knew, was the only answer. She looked under the kitchen sink and in the laundry area for supplies. She emerged with a bucket of water, a can of Ajax, a bottle of spray cleaner, rags and paper towels.
As Candace tackled the cleaning, Lori sat in the living room with Clayton. “Poor Margaret and Marthaâlosing both of their mothers,” Clayton said.
Lori sighed and shook her head.
“You know how their first mother died?” Clayton asked.
“No.”
“She fell down the stairs, too.”
Lori fought back an attack of nausea. It was the first time she had heard about Liz Ratliff's death. Clayton's words echoed in her mind, pounding out a painful dirge of doom.
In the stairwell, Candace sprayed a piece of the landing and wiped. All she did was smear the blood. She moved to the woodwork and tried there. More smearsâthere was just so much blood.
She wiped in the lower corner, but working there made her feel uncomfortable, trapped, surrounded by blood. At last, she decided on a logical method. She would start at the top and work her way down. She pointed the spray bottle at the wall at the end of the landing. She pushed in the button and got cleaner on the wall and on the print of
“Toulouse-Lautrec's
Chat Noir
â
Black Cat
âhanging there. She wiped across the cat picture and a stream of cleaner mixed with blood formed a trail down her arm. She looked at it in horror. Her sister's blood. Trailing down her arm. She couldn't take it. Not tonight. She'd worry about it tomorrow. She had to get out of this house. Out of the house that stole her sister's life. She had to get out now.
She fled the stairway and stuffed the used rags and paper towels deep into the waste canâburying them under other trash so that no one else would have to see them. She grabbed Lori and rushed out of the house. They took refuge at the Washington Duke Inn. They will never forget the warmth and solicitousness of the staff. The hotel became their shelter from the storm.
Someone stayed up all night at 1810 Cedar Street. He sat at Michael's computer deleting files, emails and Web pages. It would take experts to retrieve the data buried deep in the hard drive.
In the morning, Candace went to the Howerton-Bryan Funeral Home with Kathleen's clothing, jewelry and identification. She handed Kathleen's passport to the director. She clung to a desperate hope that it was all a mistake. A misunderstanding. She asked him to make sure it really was her sister. With a sorrowful nod, the director dashed that hope on the rocks of Candace's broken heart.
Next, Candace dragged herself over to Maplewood Cemetery, an old, peaceful graveyard only a short distance from 1810 Cedar. A staff member drove her
around and pointed out the single plots available. With listless dread, she selected a $700 plot on a hillside and agreed to purchase it. The spot she selected had room for a footplate, but could not accommodate a headstone.
Candace sat down in front of Michael's computer and opened Microsoft Word to type the obituary notices to send to the newspapers. While she worked, Michael wandered in and out of the room. At one point, he stood by the French doors and looked out on the patio. He said something Candace could not comprehend. She got up and stood beside him and looked out at the swimming pool. She noticed that there was no furniture around it. She thought that was odd. It bothered her in a way she did not understand. She tried to put the puzzle pieces together, but a coherent image did not develop. She returned to the computer and finished Kathleen's obituary.
That same day, a search warrant was served at the funeral home. Because of the discovery of a discarded, used condom in the master bedroom, the investigators needed to conduct a search on Kathleen's body. They obtained samples of her head hair, pubic hair and bodily fluidsâthe same sampling often referred to as a “rape kit.”
Kathleen's brother, Steve Hunt, his wife, Cynthia, and their three children drove to Durham and arrived late Tuesday. They had been to the Cedar Street home on a number of occasions, but tonight they got lost. They called the home and talked to a woman who answered the phone. She told them to look for the TV satellite
trucksâthey couldn't miss it. The revelation jolted the Hunts.
Candace took the phone and told her brother not to come to the house. She did not want his family seeing the blood. She sent them to the Washington Duke Inn.
Kathleen haunted Candace's sleep that night. Candace dreamed her sister approached her, grabbed her and shook her hard. All the while, Kathleen pleaded, “Don't put me in there. Don't put me in there.”
On the morning of December 12, Candace woke up in a cold sweat, knowing that her sister wanted a headstone. She called the cemetery office and said that she was unhappy with the lot she purchased. She really wanted to honor her sister with a headstone. How could she do that?
She was told she would have to purchase four contiguous plots to have the space needed. But she needed to select a new location that day.
Candace's to-do list was growing to an alarming length. This was a job she needed to delegate. She went to see Caitlin, Margaret and Martha. She told them, “I know your mother wants a headstone. Please go pick a place where we can do that.”
The girls agreed to assume that responsibility and set out for Maplewood. It was a difficult task for these young women, but they had each other. They found a lovely spot shaded by a large, ancient tree.
After talking to the girls, Candace went over to Cedar Street to tell Michael about what she had done. She sat down at the computer and opened Microsoft Word
again. This time, she wrote notices about the viewing and the funeral services to hang on the outside doors of the home. An endless line of friends, neighbors and members of the press corps had been rapping on the doors asking for this information. If she posted it, she felt the family would be left in peace.
Sitting still at the computer, she soon got cold in the chilly old house. She asked Michael if he could turn up the heat or build a fire.
He snapped back, “I can either turn the heat on or buy four plots. I can't afford to do both.”
Candace felt as if she had been slapped. She turned back to the work at hand, printing out the notices and posting them on the doors. That chore scratched off her list, she moved on to the most dreaded task of all, cleaning the back staircase. She could not put it off any longer. Her mother was coming that day, and Candace could not let her see it.
A tiny smile flitted across Candace's face as she remembered Kathleenâthe queen of cleanâtelling her that bleach was the best thing. She recalled the intense pleasure Kathleen got when she power-washed the exterior of the house, and grinned. What a woman! For a brief moment, she felt as though her sister was still there by her side. Her burden lifted as memories of Kathleen's voice teased her ears.
She found the bleach, a mop and a scrub brush and was ready to take on the challenge. Before she could enter the stairwell, a photographer walked into the house. He set up extensive photographic equipment and lights.
“What is this all about?” she asked him. “Are you with the police?”
He told her he was not with the police, but would not tell her anything more. After an hour and a half, he packed up and was on his way. Candace again prepared to enter the stairway. This time, Michael stopped her. He told her not to clean the stairway; he was going to take care of it.
Michael had lawyered up with Kerry Sutton and Barry Winston within hours of Kathleen's death. Now, he raised the stakes. David Rudolf, a flamboyant, high-priced Chapel Hill attorney, was called onto the case. Rudolf placed a call to private investigator Ron Guerette, who asked that the scene be secured until his arrival on Friday. This information was relayed to Michael, but he did not share it with Candace. She had no knowledge that this was what he meant when he told her he would take care of the remnants of his wife in the stairwell.
Before she could insist to him that she could do the cleanup, two men dressed for work came into the home. At first glance, they looked like painters. Candace thought, “Good. A few coats of paint will cover it all up.”
Until this moment, she had planned to have people back at the house for refreshments. What happened next made that impossible.
The workmen drilled holes into the doorframe and screwed a piece of plywood over the opening to the staircase. Candace was aghast. She ran to Bill. “Don't do this. Don't do this. Please, don't do this.”
But her desperate pleas were ignored. No one commiserated with her. No one explained why. It was as
if her sister was being entombed in a dark and lonely place and Candace was the only one who cared. Sickened, she left her sister's home and fled to the comfort of the Washington Duke.