Tiny feather gives wings to owl theory

Evidence found on Kathleen Peterson

DURHAM -- Larry Pollard is banking on a microscopic feather to give weight to his theory that an owl swooped down and killed Kathleen Peterson.

Novelist Michael Peterson is spending his life behind bars for the 2001 murder in Durham, but Pollard insists he has hit upon a State Bureau of Investigation report that could spring his former neighbor.

Durham District Attorney David Saacks has doubts.

Pollard, a lawyer and businessman, hopes to change the prosecutor's mind with evidence that was handed over to Peterson's defense team before the 14-week trial in 2003 that resulted in a guilty verdict.

With stuffed owls as his props, Pollard stood outside the Durham County Courthouse before a small crowd of local TV news crews and newspaper reporters to bring new attention to his hypothesis.

The French film crew that produced "The Staircase," a documentary of Peterson during the highly publicized trial, also chronicled Pollard's news conference.

For more than four years, Pollard has postulated that an owl, not a fancy fireplace poker as prosecutors said, caused the blunt-force trauma and head wounds that drained the life from Kathleen Peterson in December 2001.

"The District Attorney's Office dismissed it as absurd, citing the absence of feathers, and most people labeled it as ridiculous," Pollard said at the news conference Thursday morning. "Always the same question was asked by the authorities and the press: 'Where are the feathers?' Well, folks, we are here today announcing the feather has been found."

An SBI report lists the presence of a microscopic feather mixed in with hair that Kathleen Peterson had clutched in her left hand.

Pollard dismissed the possibility that the small piece of evidence could have been goose down, often found in pillows and comforters. It would be unusual for a goose to be inside the Peterson mansion, Pollard said, poking critics who questioned how an owl might have gotten into the house, a claim he has not made.

"It's not often you have goose down floating around in the middle of the night," Pollard added.

Pollard has been spending years gathering information about owls and Peterson. His fascination with the case, he says, is as a lawyer who thinks evidence has been overlooked.

But Pollard also has empathy for Peterson's children. When Pollard was 12, his father, Forrest Pollard, was charged with killing a Durham man and later convicted of manslaughter.

Pollard insists that experience has little to do with his persistence in the owl theory.

"My father's case was over 50 years ago," Pollard said. "I really believe it's ... [not] germane. I will say that I do know what it's like to have a father in prison, and if [Peterson] didn't do this, it's both unfair for him and the boys and girls."

Theories abound

Pollard is not the only person to develop theories about the Peterson case. One man has studied the blood on the wall and the staircase and come up with his own scenario that Kathleen Peterson was fatally banged up by a banister-mounted chair lift.

Roger Lane, a historian at Haverford College in Pennsylvania who has written about the societal fascination with murder, said the cultural phenomenon can be traced back in this country to the 18th century, when Charles Brockden Brown, called the father of the American novel, wrote about murder.

For many years, Lane said, a staple of the penny press was homicide cases and courtroom dramas.

In his research, Lane has come across many theories for homicide cases. But one had escaped him until this week.

"I had never heard of an owl theory," Lane said Thursday.