DURHAM - Larry Pollard gets ruffled feathers when doubters quickly dismiss his conjectures that a killer owl, not novelist Mike Peterson, might be responsible for bloodshed in his neighborhood.

Peterson has exhausted all but the slimmest hope of winning another chance at trying to convince a jury he did not kill his wife.

That hasn't stopped Pollard, the inmate's former neighbor, from continuing to tout his notion that an owl, not a fancy fireplace poker as prosecutors postulated, caused the blunt-force trauma and head wounds that drained the life from Kathleen Peterson in December 2001.

More than four years have passed since Peterson was led off in a suit and handcuffs to spend the rest of his life behind bars for his wife's death. Although Pollard has aired his hypothesis numerous times with the media and derided opinionated columnists for making fun of his theory, he has yet to lay out his case for the Durham district attorney.

"I want it to be the best I have," Pollard said.

The lawyer-turned-businessman has spent years gathering information -- from the medical examiner's office, at North Carolina museums, and in his own backyard where photos of owls in nearby trees have been snapped.

This winter, after two Apex businessmen were attacked by a territorial owl, and the attack was caught on a security camera videotape, Pollard renewed his appeal for support.

With stuffed screech and barred owls as props, the longtime Durham resident puts on a dramatic presentation of what he believes happened in the hours before Kathleen Peterson was found dead inside her 11,000-square-foot home on Dec. 9, 2001, face-up in a pool of blood at the base of a staircase.

He twists and torques his stout frame to show how he thinks an owl swooped down on her outside her home, sunk its sharp, bony talons into the back of her head, knocked her down and then sent her running for cover inside with her hands over her bloody wounds.

Police videotape, Pollard says, shows blood on the outside of the door. He explains that by pulling his hand from the back of his head and swiping it on the wall in front of him as if he were trying to open a door.

Then, Pollard speculates, Kathleen Peterson, in a drunken and injured state, made it inside, eventually passed out, maybe once, maybe twice, and then bled to death.

To explain the blood on the staircase walls, Pollard theorizes that the injured woman made it up the flight of stairs, and caused the splatters either on the way up or back down.

None of the defense lawyers who have represented Peterson has alluded to the owl theory.

David Rudolf, Mike Peterson's lead defense attorney for the 14-week trial, said recently that ideas about a possible owl attack surfaced after all the evidence had been introduced in the case.

"It would have been completely out of place in the context of the trial, to, at the last minute, without any expert evidence, to put that before a jury," Rudolf said. "I want to see expert evidence about it. I've been doing this for 35 years, and I've seen a lot of strange things in my time. I've learned over the years to keep an open mind about everything and look carefully at whatever evidence there is."

Peterson is serving a life sentence at the Nash Correctional Institute.

Jim Hardin, the Durham district attorney and lead prosecutor on the Peterson case, said recently that he always thought the owl theory was far-fetched, but nonetheless had bounced the idea off medical examiners. They gave it no credence, he said.

Raptor experts across the country say they know of no such fatal owl attacks.

Pat Redig, founder and honorary director of the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota, has worked with raptors for 40 years and has heard plenty of urban myths about the birds of prey.

"You always hear these stories of people living in the mountains and babies carried away," Redig said, chuckling.

Not once, though, has the veterinary medicine professor heard of anybody dying from blunt-force trauma or the puncture-wound injuries caused by an owl.

"I know of nothing documented," Redig said.

Pollard is not deterred.

Not by naysayers, and not by evidence that persuaded a jury to convict Peterson of first-degree murder.

"If this is potentially exonerating evidence, then the state has a responsibility to look at it," Pollard said. "If they don't look at it and just blow it off, they're doing just what they did with the Duke lacrosse case. All of this may be coincidence. I don't know. But the state has a responsibility, a duty to look at it."

Jay Trehy, the lawyer who represented Caitlin Atwater, Kathleen Peterson's daughter, in a civil case against her former stepfather, calls the theory outrageous.

A jury convicted the novelist. The state Court of Appeals ruled the trial was fair. The state Supreme Court upheld the conviction in November.

"I would say that Mr. Pollard is fishing in a dry well," Trehy said recently. "That is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard. ... That's just crazy."

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