Hi, it's Dennis Murphy with a story for you that's so confounding, I often wish I had

a time machine so I could travel back and see for myself what happened in that gracious

Southern mansion.

On the back staircase, so much blood the wife and mother dead at the bottom.

The husband, saying it must have been a slip and fall accident, and yet he was soon charged

with her death.

You've told us you like your date lines with lots of twists and turns, and this story

was jam-packed with them.

There was the other prominent woman in the husband's life years before in Germany, also

found dead at the bottom of the stairs.

The later comparisons of head injuries on the two victims was downright eerie.

Then there was the gay male escort who turned up at the trial as a suggestion of a motive.

And I leave it up to you what to make of the owl theory.

That's right, a lethal owl who triggered cheap jokes about who'd done it.

But there was nothing funny about the violent death of Kathleen Peterson, a perplexing case

with many moving parts.

So let's take a trip down the back staircase.

You might take him for a retired English professor from one of the universities in the Raleigh

Dora Maria.

Preppy, Whitty, back when a sparkling storyteller welcomed him at so many of the best dinner tables.

But nowadays in this part of North Carolina, Michael Peterson is no-not as the novel

was T in fact is, but as that man, the notorious husband, the one with the wife dead at the

...