Michael Peterson and The Staircase is a controversial topic for one reason:
Many people doubt his innocence.
So, let's take a look at his behavior during
an interview given shortly after being convicted of murdering his wife.
Welcome back, my body language buddies! my name is Jesús Enrique Rosas, I'm the Body Language Guy,
and it would be great if you join us by just liking this video, subscribing and
hitting that bell! let's get down to it!
In the early morning of December 9, 2001, police responded to a distress call in Durham,
North Carolina. They found the body of Kathleen Peterson at the foot of the back
staircase. She had bled out. Despite the claims that she must have accidentally fallen,
Kathleen's husband, the novelist Michael Peterson, was soon arrested and charged with her murder.
Two years later, Peterson was found guilty after over 13 weeks on trial,
sentenced to life in prison without parole. However,
Peterson and his court-appointed lawyer, Thomas Maher, filed an appeal in 2006. But
Peterson's requests for a new trial were repeatedly denied over the next few years.
Yet he managed to arrange a retrial in 2011, following the termination of Duane Deaver,
the blood spatter analyst who had been one of the principal witnesses in his case,
and who was fired after news came out that he had lied about his qualifications and
misrepresented evidence in a number of cases, including Kathleen's death.
Finally, In 2017, Peterson submitted a plea which allowed him to publicly maintain his innocence
while still acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict.
He was eventually sentenced to 86 months of time already served in prison, so he was released.
This case is complex enough and there are hours of footage and evidence. Just to give an idea,
one documentary released in 2004 had more than
600 hours of footage from Peterson's legal and personal records.
In this episode I'm gonna focus on the interview given shortly after the original verdict, when he
was already in jail. As I already mentioned, the fact that Peterson is currently a free man that
could uphold his innocence still raises doubts about the circumstances of his wife's death.
Namely, there are too many loose ends such as his
ongoing affair when this happened, or the kind of bruises on her head.
Now, let's begin with his answer to how he feels now that he's in jail, what's his assessment of
his situation. Both his body language and his words are going to be critical here:
- Happiness is up here, sadness is up here. So... heaven is up here, hell is up here. I'm not going
to make this place hell, it's going to be... I don't think i can make it heaven, but I'm going
to make it as good as I possibly can. Because I don't want to suffer any more than I already have.
There are a few body language clues easy to pick up, to establish a baseline. He is not
eye contact shy, because he keeps his head in a neutral position and looking at the interviewer,
his shoulders are relaxed and he uses illustrator hand gestures to add emphasis to his words.
And... there's the first problem people have with Michael Peterson.
These kind of cases are interesting, because you entertain both possibilites in your mind. Either
he's innocent or he's guilty. And what you try is to imagine each situation and define which
one makes sense with his words, his gestures, his voice, and if there are any contradictions.
This is something that we do automatically, like when you try to guess the story of the
couple having lunch in a nearby table at the food court. And in fact, our intuition is pretty
good at picking up fast clues. The problem is when our rationalization begins to kick in.
And in the case of Peterson, we can't avoid but imagine that, for example, 'If I was innocent,
and I was in his situation, I would never react like he's doing'. And you're right,
because every one of us have different ways of reacting to extreme situations.
But you can make the judgement mistake of thinking that, since you will react
differently, then there's something shady with him.
And that's ok, that's something we can't avoid because we're hardwired to that
kind of emotional reactions. What we can do is realize that we are looking at an unique person,
that they have different ways to react to events,
and focus not in the comparison to us, which is inevitable, but in their own contradictions.
If we watch the next clip, we can make it clearer. He's gonna answer the question,
"what's your most painful feeling right now?" This is the first moment that he refers to Kathleen,
his dead wife. Make sure you pay attention to his choice of words.
- The only thing, the only painful thing is separation. From those you love.
- Losing a house, losing money... that is nothing. I used to write about that in all my books.
- The only thing I miss... first off, Kathleen, but... that's gone. That's
totally gone. And I miss my children, which... they're not gone. But in essence, they are.
This is the way you can compare and have an idea of what the person truly loves,
or likes, or values. The patterns of speech they use as reference.
In this case we got two patterns. He talks about 'my children', which is the most common way to
refer to one's children. But then, why does he refer to Kathleen with the words "That's gone.
That's totally gone". Tell me if it doesn't feel strange that he doesn't say
"She's gone. She's totally gone".
Now, you might have the argument that he's referring to his relationship
or his life with Kathleen. But, that's an abstract, general concept. When you miss
someone, OK, you can miss the moments, the relationship, the connection you had,
the life together. But the strongest feeling is connected to the person.
It's not hard to imagine that you will use the words "He or she is gone". As usual,
I encourage you to put yourself in this situation and use the same words. "That's
gone. That's totally gone" and make sure to discern the feeling you get from it.
I would love to read your opinion in the comments.
Again, everyone reacts differently, everyone's body language display is gonna be unique and
everyone's emotional signals are going to be like their fingerprints. So the only
real reference we can have in this case is the person. That's why it's important
to establish a body language baseline. What is their usual way of expression.
But there is another thing he said in the previous clip:
- Losing a house, losing money... that is nothing. I used to write about that in all my books.
He makes a reference to his books, and that he has written more than a few times that losing money or
your house doesn't really matter. But he could have just said "I used to write about it". And
in fact, in the original clip, before mentioning Kathleen he talks even more about his own writing:
- I wrote about that. Yes, are too lovely, possessions are nice, but... fifteen years
ago I was writing, they're cold, they're lifeless. They're nothing like touch, warmth.
There's a very good reason why he emphasizes so much
that fifteen years ago he was already writing about possessions not meaning anything.
And it's because one of the red flags of this case is that at the time of Kathleen's death,
she had a 1.4 million life insurance policy, and HE was more than one
hundred and forty thousand dollars in credit card debt. Yeah, enough to raise eyebrows.
Now, to understand why so many people don't believe in Michael Peterson's innocence, and
why it has to do with his body language, we should check out the following clip:
- It is so clear in my mind that no, if you did not do anything, you're not going to be punished.
That's not the way the system works. That doesn't happen. So I had this great faith in the system.
That you know, I'm gonna be proven innocent! That everything the district attorney says is
not true. Of course that's gonna happen, because the truth is I didn't hurt Kathleen.
The issue is that most of the time he is calm and collected, maybe too calm and collected,
and his emotional displays are few and far between. The dissonance is when we compare
this state to any of the two options I stated at the beginning. Wether he is innocent, or guilty.
If he were guilty, then that detached attitude, that calmness only "confirms" how cold blooded or
cynical he is about everything. So in that hypothetical option of being guilty,
his body language would make people despise him even more.
If he were innocent, then people could not imagine how someone who's innocent would react
like this after being sent to prison FOR LIFE. And that's a bias we need to overcome. Because
we don't know how he has reacted in private until reaching this level of acceptance.
So, for both options, the outcome in anyone's perception is that there is something
weird, something shady in here. And of course,
any feeling of 'shady' will point to being guilty in some way.
It's normal to fall for this line of reasoning,
precisely because it's based in our own emotions. And our emotions never wait.
They just pop out of the blue so we can react instinctively to situations.
But these circumstances are special and not as clear cut as we might see at first sight. So,
we need to go beyond our first emotional reaction and assess any true contradictions.
In regards to emotional displays, there's another moment of this interview:
- My son Clayden had sent me a letter. He sent me a copy of a
job he just got. He's finishing at Johns Hopkins. He's so happy and so proud. And he sent it to me.
And I said, Oh my God. You have to be there. Why is he doing... Why do we...
- We want to show others, the ones we love... - Making me this offer, I looked at it...
I succeeded, I've done something wonderful... and he doesn't need to do that
His emotional signals here are consistent with someone that feels true sadness,
and it's important to detect that when he says his son sent this success letter to him,
he shows being proud. He sits upright, he raises his chin,
and then realizes and remembers that he must have been there with his son.
As I mentioned, this case has a ton of material, so if you want me to keep
reviewing more videos about it, just let me know in the comments.
If you want to refine your observation skills, all you have to do is download
my 100+ body language tips, right in the description of this video.
My name is Jesús Enrique Rosas and it will always be a pleasure,
my body language buddies! Much Love, and Bliss.