Behind The Staircase: All Profits Go To Charity

by Michael Peterson

The night Kathleen Peterson died. My trial and conviction for murder. Eight years in prison with murderers, thieves, rapists, gangbangers, and pedophiles until the conviction is overturned and I am released. What has happened since--good and bad.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

421 pages, Paperback

Published January 31, 2019

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Michael Iver Peterson was born near Nashville, Tennessee, on October 23, 1943. He graduated from Duke University with a bachelor's degree in political science. While there, Peterson was president of Sigma Nu fraternity and was editor of The Chronicle, the daily student newspaper, from 1964 to 1965. He attended classes at the law school of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

After graduating, Peterson took a civilian job with the United States Department of Defense, where he was assigned to research arguments supporting increased military involvement in Vietnam. That year he also married Patricia Sue, who taught at an elementary school on the Rhein-Main Air Base in Gräfenhausen, West Germany. They had two children, Clayton and Todd. In 1968, Peterson was commissioned in the United States Marine Corps and served in the Vietnam War. In 1971, he received an honorable discharge with the rank of captain after a car accident left him with a permanent disability.

Peterson wrote three novels based "around his experiences during the Vietnamese conflict": The Immortal Dragon, A Time of War, and A Bitter Peace. He co-wrote the biographical Charlie Two Shoes and the Marines of Love Company with journalist David Perlmutt, and co-wrote Operation Broken Reed with Arthur L. Boyd.

Peterson also worked as a newspaper columnist for The Herald-Sun, where his columns became known for their criticism of police and of Durham County District Attorney James Hardin Jr., who would later prosecute Peterson for the murder of his second wife, Kathleen.

Reviews

[Dianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The only thing new here is the extent of Peterson's ego

This book is not great, nor is it horrible. Peterson maintains his innocence, and maybe he is? The issue with the book is his arrogance and self - pity. He's simultaneously the tragic hero, the bad ass, the chronic good guy, who is the victim of: the DA, the SBI, the prison system, the warden, the guards, Kathleen's sister, Kathleen's daughter, the news media, and the list goes on. The war hero, with survivor's guilt & PTSD is to be pitied and admired for his bravery. What he leaves out are any of his flaws, and I believe most of the truth about his life in general.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Behind the Scenes... Or Shall I Say, Barbed Wire?

I was as glued to this book as I was to The Staircase.

If you’re reading this or considering doing so, chances are you know about this case, the Owl theory & the Netflix documentary. Based on that assumption, let’s get to what you’re likely wondering if you’ve yet to read the book: no, you won’t be any closer to figuring out exactly what happened on the night Kathleen Peterson died.

This is not a book about Kathleen, per se, but rather a look at the, ‘After.’ By this I mean after the cameras stopped following every move, after the guilty verdict, after Michael Peterson is taken from the court room in handcuffs.

After summarizing much of what we already know, we get a look at Mr. Peterson’s life in prison. With his dry wit, sardonic, somewhat dark sense of humor, I enjoyed Behind the Staircase for what it was: a memoir. That’s how I would suggest looking at it.

Unlike many, I’m not convinced of Michael Peterson’s guilt. I wouldn’t have convicted him based on the actual evidence presented—and that’s based on having read & looked at information on the case for hours. If you’re reading to find something that says, ‘he’s guilty,’ you’ll find it. If you’re reading to find something that says, ‘he’s innocent,’ you’ll find it.

If anything, the most truthful part of the book comes towards the end (spoiler alert, but um, really?!) There’s a point after he’s been released from prison where he comments that its only now that he’s fully been able to begin grieving his wife. That’s the one take away I had from the first episode: he’s gone from having a dead wife to being a murder suspect. In experiencing my own traumas, after a point, it’s about survival mode.

Do I believe Michael Peterson has some eccentricity? Yes. I see the same in many educated, intellectual people. I don’t believe he’s pretentious so much as well read & well traveled. Ultimately, I came away from this book having enjoyed it throughly. I wasn’t looking for answers or anything specific, not consciously. In the end, I do recommend it to anyone who’s interested in The Staircase.

[Kelli Milton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fiction writer

As a fiction writer Michael Peterson is able to make up a believable plot. That’s exactly what he did in this book. I’ve read other books about this case and transcripts and this book contradicts everything! I wanted to believe in Michael’s innocence, but after comparing and contrasting everything from the case he’s not innocent. HE IS A COLD BLOOED MURDERER AND BELONGS IN PRISON! There’s a special place in HELL for Mr Peterson.

[Dillon Wells · Rating 2 out of 5]

I definitely don’t think Peterson killed his wife but my god this book is way too long and the font and spacing is so strange. I liked hearing his perspective on the US’s corrupt criminal justice system but overall a lot of stories of him in prison that were just boring to read.

[Ian Hamilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Peterson’s focus in this memoir is primarily on his time in prison. Much of this wasn’t covered in the Netflix doc, so while it was nice to have “new” content, the whole thing quickly becomes tedious. I have a hard time believing that a lot of this wasn’t embellished anyway. Went in with slightly higher exceptions and left underwhelmed.

[Carey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think I found this audiobook on a recommended list of books for 2022 reading list. I don’t know how it got there. The guy isn’t a particularly good writer and he’s an awful reader of his own memoir. So bad that I was like, he’s totally guilty cause nobody should be able to read about finding their dead wife at the bottom of the stairs void of absolute emotion. Contrast that with how animated he is about time in jail and clearly something doesn’t sit right. But I was plodding along through the book until he wrote the sentence about the jail psychiatrist and he actually RATED her good looks on a scale of 1-10. Well screw you buddy. It’s 2022 and treating woman like sex objects to be rated by assholes like you means I’m sorry I bought your book and gave you any royalties. 100% stop, not reading the rest of the book.

[Randi · Rating 5 out of 5]

So interesting! I actually ended up going through the documentary again to compare it with the book. No spoilers, check it out though.

[Lee-Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a decent read but if you are looking for some more info that didn't make the doc or the series, you'll be disappointed. It's all about his time in prison, nothing else.

[Amanda Snow · Rating 4 out of 5]

TW: Transphobia

I was captivated by the brutal honesty and the dark comedy that took my breath away. For now, all I can say is I will be mulling this one over for a while.

[Bernadette Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘ right away I spotted the Internet Trolls, gruesome looking women sitting like Madame Defarges, only without knitting needles. They glared at me the whole time then went home to post poison’ was Michael Peterson's observation on entering the courtroom for his trail on a charge of murdering his wife.

This book therefore, is your change to get the story not from those courtrooom spinners of poison, but from Michael Peterson himself.

It is his first hand account of being tried and convicted for the murder of his wife, Kathleen found in a pool of blood at the bottom of the staircase in their home.

It follows his journey through the courts, and his time in prison, convicted of her murder, to April 2011 more than seven years after his incarceration, when his defence lawyer Rudolf filed a MAR to ask for a retrial. The Judge ordered a hearing.

At this hearing , the Judge ruled that the prosecutions’ blood spatter’ expert, Deaver had deliberately misrepresented and intentionally misled the court and jury’ Kathleen (Michael’s wife) had no fracture or other injury to her skull, suffered no injuries that caused damage to her brain , had no broken ribs, broken bones, or other injuries associated with a beating’ Deaver’s experiments were ‘unscientific and not acceptable ‘ the judge found. He’d exhibited a ‘pattern of bias in favour of the state and against criminal defendants over the course of twenty years’ His testimony violated the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution and had denied Peterson’s right to due process and a fair trial’ the judge ordered a retrial.

In February 2017 , Michael Peterson took an Alford plea ie., he maintained his innocence, but would be found guilt of manslaughter. Finally he was free.

This book is a harrowing read especially as the prison he served time Nash does really merit being called a Hell. it asked big questions of our idea of justice , if when a man is convicted and sent to such a place, where he is likely to be subject to rape, at risk of being murdered , with a shank or violently hurt some other way, does that constitutes our idea of justice? The biggest thing that emerges from Michael’s account of his time in this prison is the need for prison reform.

Apart from the horrific things he saw ,an ageing Queen who castrated himself because he was rejected by his younger lover, guards laughing as they carried away his body part in a bag ,as he describes it :' I had nightmares for a week after seeing Grandma’s bloody dick put in a baggy by laughing guards’ or the Hole where there were no cameras or witness to beatings that occurred there , one example being Green Eyes who : 'when he got to segregation Mr. Roberts and several guards beat the shit out of him, while he was still handcuffed-not one to lie down without a fight, Green Eyes head butted Mr. Roberts and bit him Hannibal Lector style. Then they really beat him. He didn’t get out of the Hole for a month, it took that long for the bruises to heal and to wrap up the ‘investigation’ Investigations were never complete until bruises healed' to the sexual slavery of weaker males by stronger, but also the extraordinary acts of kindness, he witnessed, the boy who returned him his wedding ring, which he left in the shower, and the young Blood who looked after an old crippled white inmate. Acts of brutality abounded but so did sometimes these miraculous acts of human kindness.

After you have read these descriptions of brutality in prison, you can never forget them.

His story does read like fantastic fiction, it has the’ coincidence' of two dead women, fiveteen years apart at the bottom of the staircase, it has a rogue owl, it has more questions than answers for instance:
Can lightning strike twice? — Two dead women at the bottom of a staircase.

Can there be a malign supernatural agency in a miscarriage of justice , fitting a man so neatly into a frame of guilt?
For example, on hearing that investigators were going to exhume the coffin of Elizabeth Rathcliff, the biological mother of his daughters to revisit her cause of death, he described it as ‘if a demon had jumped up in front of him'

As for juries, are they fit for purpose?

When we sent a person to prison , is this to sanction the rape and murder of them in prisons?

And there is the question of his innocence?

Michael Peterson had been outspoken in his weekly newspaper column and had his 'Stupid of the Week Awards 'for members of his local police force he felt they concentrated more on erring bingo goers and underage kids without licences when real criminal gangs were running wild.

It's fair to think he was unlikely to be popular with the police who were then investigating the death of his wife.

It's a book to read to hear Michael Peterson's own account of his trail and his assertion of his innocence, with the facts for his defence, it is also a first hand witness account of prison conditions that call for urgent reform of the penal system.

A biographical drama was made of Peterson's case, starring Colin Firth as Michael Peterson, called ' 'The Staircase'

After all the pain for his children of going into court and for his daughters the trauma of their birth mother being exhumed from her grave and pictures of her thrust in front of them with her head injuries attributed to him. -then, this film made which was really hurtful to them too.

Michael Peterson is right to object as he did to how his children were depicted and his wife under the very thin guise of it being ‘fictional’ no disclaimer is going to distance the Peterson's sufficiently from the supposedly fictional depiction of them. Firth said how he wanted to ‘create his own creature’ as if really Peterson's life was his to inhabit and make into something of his own.

While the living man underwent the truly terrible suffering of a hellish prison. The extraordinary chutzpah of that. Salt in the wounds of a family already deeply grieving, depicting a character Kathleen who Peterson says was nothing like his wife, and depicting fictional characters based on his children fighting.

Michael Peterson missed a lot of the best times with his growing children as well, as his grief for the woman he loved and lost and when he came out of prison he was also very damaged and depleted from his experience there. The last chapter of his book tells how it was for him, as he tried to return to the world. But he is writing a book called Atman; a study in evil which looks to be very interesting and I will be looking forward to reading that.

Miscarriages of justice do happen and the case of Michael Peterson may be one of them.

[SueCanaan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a true crime junkie. I will binge watch, read, look at news sites. Thanks to lockdown, I watched (and rewatched) The Staircase then LOVED the HBO short series, so when I saw Michael Peterson wrote his own book about the murder, I added it to my tbr. When the price dropped to $3 on Audible, it was a no brainer.

But, meh.

If you were not already intimately aware of the details, this book would be completely useless. AND, sadly, given the knowledge that Peterson lied during his political campaign and was called out for lying, and that his profession is as an author, this book lacks credibility. It was hard to believe everything.

As other reviewers mention, this book is prison-time heavy and I admit to having skipped several of the last chapters in prison. My gosh, he is wordy.

Cannot recommend.

[Taylor Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure if it was just this particular edition, but there were quite a few typos and mistakes. Other than that, it was a very interesting read. I watched a documentary that highlighted the owl theory a couple years ago, which I thought was a reasonable explanation, and I wanted to learn more. I might watch The Staircase sometime. As others have also said, this only covers a small part of what happened that night. It mostly covers what happened while Michael Peterson was in prison, which I found interesting and a good example of the need for prison reform.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Michael Peterson caused the death of his wife— either intentionally or unintentionally. I came to that realization while reading this book. In fact, it cemented it in my mind. This book reads like a war tale inside prison walls- which is what he usually writes about. There is not much introspection here as I think if he dove under the surface, it might blow up the Michael Peterson— wrongfully convicted story that he wishes to maintain.

[Susan VanGundy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book was very poorly edited. There are often blank lines, normally used to notate a paragraph, in the middle of a sentence.
Nothing new is introduced in this book. It’s the same information as The Staircase. The only exception being Michael Peterson’s perspective of prison.

[Ashley Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book!


What a great book with an inside look of what happened. Thank you for sharing such intimate details with us all!

[Michael Bove · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sobering

We are all given life to learn some kind of lessons. Hopefully most of us find an easier furrow to plow.

[Marissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most compelling true crime cases of the last several decades.

[kariannethology · Rating 3 out of 5]

if you can get over his blatant racism, misogyny, and transphobia, it’s a compelling look into the mind of a killer (we all know he did it).

[Matthew Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very good. I do not think he killed his wife and his account of prison is terrifying

[Donna Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly written and most of it unbelievable. It read as if Peterson set out to make himself the hero of something that could never work for him.

[Bailey Irwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

i thought this would be more about the case and his claimed innocence, instead it was more about his time in prison

[Niki Weston Finkbeiner · Rating 2 out of 5]

wow sooo he might not be a murderer but he's definitely a racist!

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really really confused by the terrible quality of this book’s formatting! Huge amount of spacing between paragraphs but worse still is the blank spaces between words, sometimes even dropping down to the next sentence! I understand perhaps if this was self published but Peterson is supposed to an author, can’t he proofread his own work? I found this throughout the book and it was very distracting.
I had watched the Netflix show The Staircase and hadn’t made up my mind as to Peterson’s guilt by show’s end. Thought if I read this book I would have more clarification and could come to a decision. Nope! Still don’t know and perhaps never will. Also know I will never read any of Peterson’s fiction books if this book is any indication of his writing ability!

[Mackenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made think, wow what an egotistical and self-righteous man Michael Peterson is. I went into this book having a reasonable amount of doubt on whether or not he committed the murder of his wife, but if anything this book made me think less of him. A part of me wonders if most of this book is actually fiction, since he seems to get away with so much crap and gets very lucky in many circumstances.

So with that, I’ll say that the book was entertaining and well written, but man I was annoyed by him the entire time I was reading it.

[Jackie Salamone-Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting book, but I wish that Peterson covered more info on his life with Kathleen. His prison experiences were enlightening. He doesn’t seem that affected by his wife’s death. He’s still
an enigma. Still haven’t decided if he or The Owl killed his wife ;)

[Kristy Benito · Rating 3 out of 5]

What’s the truth ? Will we ever really know the true events of what happened that fateful night!
Do you believe micheals version or the investigation one never knows.

[Jess · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable.