Filing challenges Peterson's bankruptcy claim

DURHAM -- A lawyer filed papers in federal court Tuesday accusing Mike Peterson of filing bankruptcy to avoid his stepdaughter's wrongful-death lawsuit.

Attorneys for Caitlin Atwater want a bankruptcy court to allow her wrongful-death lawsuit to go forward. Peterson, who is serving a life sentence in Nash Correctional Institution after his 2003 murder conviction in the death of his wife, Kathleen Peterson, filed for bankruptcy one week before the wrongful-death case was to go to trial. The bankruptcy filing required the Durham civil court to delay the lawsuit and came days before Atwater's attorney was to take a court-ordered deposition of Peterson in prison.

"The filing is simply an effort to stop the court-allowed deposition from going forward, to postpone the trial and to deny Ms. Atwater the civil justice to which she is entitled," the lawyer, Jay Trehy of Raleigh, wrote.

Peterson's attorney in the civil case, Kerry Sutton of Durham, said she was not surprised by Trehy's filing.

"I'd be surprised if he didn't do this. I think he's still tilting at windmills or doing a lot of work for very little gain in the end, but obviously, it's his prerogative," Sutton said.

Two years before his 2003 conviction, the novelist and newspaper columnist had called 911 saying that his wife had died at the foot of a staircase. Prosecutors argued to a jury that Peterson had bludgeoned his wife to death and then staged an accident. Peterson's defense was that her death was accidental.

Peterson's high-profile defense and incarceration left him penniless, according to arguments his lawyers made in court documents after the trial. He claimed on his bankruptcy petition that he has more than a half million dollars of debt and an income of $1,087 a month from the Veterans Benefits Administration.

Because of the murder conviction, a judge determined that Peterson is liable for his wife's death and that a trial would determine the monetary damages.