David Rudolf irked by HBO’s ‘Staircase,’ again. Here are his criticisms of Episode 7.
This article contains spoilers from Episode 7 of the HBO Max limited series “The Staircase.”
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If you’ve been following along with our series of stories breaking down each episode of “The Staircase” with David Rudolf, you know this: He’s not a fan of what he’s been seeing.
“It’s just not fun to watch,” says the Charlotte attorney, who in real life spent years defending Durham novelist Michael Peterson in a complicated, high-profile case that saw Peterson convicted for the 2001 murder of his wife, Kathleen — and then set permanently free more than 15 years later, following several wild twists and turns.
The penultimate episode of HBO’s dramatization of the case and the Peterson family drama surrounding it premiered Thursday on HBO’s streaming service.
Rudolf actually seemed to like and be absorbed by the first episode, which depicted the immediate aftermath of Kathleen’s death; he also seemed entertained by the performance by Michael Stuhlbarg, the actor who plays him in the show. But ever since, Rudolf has become increasingly offended by the machinations of the show’s plot, noting that they don’t reflect what really happened and that in some cases the fictions being presented are downright malicious.
The short version of his thoughts after seeing Episode 7? “You spend a lifetime trying to build a reputation and worrying about your integrity, and you do a documentary that hopefully confirms your integrity and commitment to a client,” he says, referring to the award-winning documentary “The Staircase,” which Netflix put out in 2018. “And then this ... comes along and tries to undermine it.”
“I mean, no one who knows me has any doubt about the fact it’s crap,” Rudolf continues. “The problem is, you know, the 42 million people who don’t know me. ... I hate feeling defensive about this stuff. But it’s really a hatchet job.”
Here, meanwhile, is the long version of his thoughts about Episode 7.
Discussing the Alford plea
As seen on TV: In scenes set in a private conference room at the Durham County Courthouse on Feb. 24, 2017, shortly before the hearing in which he’s supposed to enter an Alford plea, Michael Peterson (Colin Firth) tells David Rudolf (Michael Stuhlbarg) that he’s not going to take the deal after all. An argument ensues. “Did you listen to what I read?” Rudolf asks his client with an aggressive tone. “We’re saying you didn’t do anything wrong.” “Yeah,” Peterson responds, “until the very end, where I say I did everything wrong. I’m not gonna say I’m guilty. I can’t.”
Later, Rudolf steps out of the conference room into a hallway, where documentary film director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) and Sophie Brunet (Juliette Binoche), the editor of the documentary, are sitting. “He’s not listening to reason,” Rudolf tells them. “He’s being a fool. A moron.” Brunet — who the show suggests was in a romantic relationship with Peterson at the time — then goes in to talk to him alone; but he keeps digging in his heels. Frustrated, Peterson says he needs to speak with de Lestrade.
The real Rudolf’s reaction: “The whole discussion with Michael in the courthouse about taking the Alford plea, that never happened,” he says. At least, not on the actual day of the hearing. “We had discussions about it in my office,” beforehand, Rudolf says — and indeed, in Episode 12 of the Netflix docuseries “The Staircase,” Rudolf and Peterson are shown meeting to scrutinize the terms of the plea deal two days before the hearing. And Rudolf says Peterson “was reluctant about it. No doubt about that. ... But once we got to court, there was no dispute.”
Rudolf says he spoke recently with both the real-life de Lestrade and the docuseries’ producer, Allyson Luchak, and both confirmed Brunet was not at the courthouse on the day Peterson entered the Alford plea. “She was in France,” he says, noting that Brunet was no longer even in a relationship with Peterson at the time of the actual hearing. “So why show her holding Michael’s hand and giving him advice about the plea?” (In fact, Rudolf says he doesn’t recall ever meeting Brunet at all.)
As for the show’s suggestion that Peterson sought to speak privately with the French documentarian to discuss his desire not to take the plea deal, Rudolf says, simply: “Are you (expletive) kidding me?”
A tie between two deaths?
As seen on TV: After being alerted to a homicide victim with head wounds similar to the ones Kathleen Peterson (Toni Collette) had, Brunet meets with medical examiner Deborah Radisch (Susan Pourfar) to inquire about Radisch’s findings. Radisch tells Brunet: “Cause of death is blunt-force trauma to the head ... and there were no skull fractures. Which means” — “No,” Brunet interjects, in disbelief — “the nature of Kathleen Peterson’s death is no longer an anomaly.” Brunet then sneaks a peek at the unredacted autopsy report when Radisch isn’t looking, and discovers that the victim is Dennis Rowe (Morgan Henard) — a man Michael had been involved with sexually.
Brunet calls de Lestrade to tell him the news, emphasizing that in Rowe’s death there were no skull fractures, “just like Kathleen.”
The real Rudolf’s reaction: In real life, he says, “Dennis Rowe did get murdered (by Tyrone Lacour). ... But to somehow suggest that he was murdered without any skull fractures, and that somehow that had some significance to anyone is, again, an absurdity. There’s nothing else to say about it.”
Brunet tests another theory
As seen on TV: Brunet sets up a meeting with Durham police investigator Art Holland (Cory Allen Scott), explaining, “We’re filming follow-up interviews for our documentary to investigate what we’ve learned over the years.” During their conversation, she presents him with the theory that Kathleen could have been murdered by someone other than her husband — possibly by the same man who murdered Rowe. Brunet is surprised to learn from Holland that Rowe’s killer, Lacour (Donny Boaz), was also a past sexual partner of Michael’s. Meanwhile, Holland is intrigued enough by her theory that he says, “I’m gonna follow up on this.”
Later, though, Holland meets Brunet in a diner to tell her Lacour was in jail the night Kathleen died.
The real Rudolf’s reaction: “It is completely and utterly absurd that Sophie Brunet was meeting with Art Holland. ... I mean, that paints Art Holland in a much more favorable light than I think he deserves to be painted in. I don’t believe he was a reasonable person interested in finding out the truth about what really happened to Kathleen Peterson. He had an agenda. He had an objective. He had a viewpoint. And look, I get it. He’s entitled to his viewpoint. But let’s not paint him as someone who was actually meeting with Sophie Brunet to try to figure out the truth. That just didn’t happen. Period.”
Martha searches for answers
As seen on TV: Against her sister Margaret’s (Sophie Turner) wishes, Martha Peterson (Odessa Young) decides to visit their adoptive mother, Patty (Trini Alvarado), in Germany, where Martha also meets with her former nanny and returns to the house where her birth mother died. At that house, Martha stands near where her mother died, at the bottom of the staircase — which is maybe 12 feet from the front door.
Later, still in Germany, Martha has a conversation with her former nanny, Agnes Schafer (Monika Gossmann). Schafer tells Martha that Martha had tantrums when she was very young that enraged Michael. “He did bad things,” explains Schafer, saying she never actually saw Michael abuse her but remembers seeing bruises on her arms and face. She also tells Martha that “Michael wanted to keep Margaret and give you away.”
Martha then confronts Patty about this; Patty says the bruises were a result of Martha hurting herself during her tantrums, and that they only tried to give Martha up because “it seemed we could not love you enough.”
The real Rudolf’s reaction: “I don’t know where (the show’s filmmakers) got that from. But I had a pretty good relationship with Patty. And Patty was a strange bird. But to think that Patty stood around while Michael beat these children and never said anything, and then stood by him all through the trial — I mean, I never heard anything like that from anyone. There are some crazy women who may have claimed that to the filmmakers. But to put that in there as though it is fact, when these kids have already gone through so much — what purpose did that serve, other than to try to paint Michael as an evil guy? It really just strikes me as immoral. I don’t get it. I don’t know why you would want to trash these kids’ backgrounds. Anyway, that was really shocking.”
One thing Rudolf says the filmmakers did get right about those scenes: “The house in Germany.” At the real house, he says, the front door leads to the landing where the staircase is. “So when you say (Martha and Margaret’s birth mother Liz) died at the bottom of the steps, you could just as easily say, ‘She died just inside the front door.’ That they got right.”
A quid-pro-quo relationship?
As seen on TV: An attorney for the North Carolina Innocence Project, Evelyn Ivins (Deja Dee), starts working on a case involving a man named Greg Taylor (Daniel P. Wilson), who is believed to have been wrongfully convicted in a 1993 beating death. Ivins determines that the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation intentionally hid exculpatory evidence in Taylor’s case — and unravels “a complex web of lies” that indicates the SBI and the district attorney’s office had a quid-pro-quo relationship that involved the SBI shading or hiding evidence “to suit the DA’s needs.”
It opens the door for the Peterson defense team, because Peterson’s conviction was believed to have largely hinged on testimony from blood-spatter expert Duane Deaver (Myke Holmes) of the SBI.
The real Rudolf’s reaction: “That there was a quid pro quo between the Durham DA and the SBI? There was never any evidence of that. ... The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission — the state agency that’s charged with investigating false convictions — took Greg Taylor’s case, and Duane Deaver lied during those hearings. And that’s what set off everything. Then after the Greg Taylor hearing, the governor hired two former FBI agents to conduct an audit of the serology lab, and those two FBI agents found hundreds of cases in which there was misconduct. Many of those cases involved Duane Deaver — including the Greg Taylor case.
“That’s when I said, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. We’ve got a real shot at getting this conviction overturned because Duane Deaver was intimately involved in all that.’ ... That’s when I filed the motion, and asked for discovery. I subpoenaed all of Deaver’s training records, which I never could have gotten before. And I got ’em all. I found out all this stuff about his lies.”
Adds Rudolf: “I guess what they’re trying to do is create this scenario that the prosecution of Michael was tainted by this quid pro quo thing that existed. No, it’s really simple: Duane Deaver was on the team. He was there to help Art Holland prove his case. And he was there to help the prosecutor prove his case. That’s it. You don’t need to go looking for quid pro quos.”
‘Best Lawyers in North Carolina’
As seen on TV: Peterson’s brother, Bill (Tim Guinee), sees the news report about the SBI scandal, in which Ivins says there will be audits of all SBI cases to date, “to ensure other wrongfully convicted men and women get their day in court.” Bill races to Rudolf’s office, and tells him, “We can’t give up.” Rudolf replies, “Hey, nobody said anything about giving up.” Bill says, “But you did. Three years ago. You left my brother to rot in there.”
Rudolf then pulls a copy of Legal Review Magazine out of a desk drawer. It’s the “Top Ten Lawyers of 2003” issue, and Durham DA Jim Hardin (Cullen Moss) is on the cover. “I don’t keep this because I’m in it,” Rudolf tells Bill. “I keep it ’cause I’m not. It reminds me of Michael. The mistakes I made. The ones you only see in hindsight.”
Bill, seething, says: “I don’t care what it takes or how long, you’re gonna make up for these mistakes. You’re gonna figure out how this helps my brother. And you’re gonna do it for free.”
The real Rudolf’s reaction: “I may have made mistakes. I can’t tell you I didn’t. But to basically say that Bill told me that I was gonna make up for my mistakes by pursuing Deaver, and ‘You’re gonna do it for free’? Like, threatening me? It suggests that somehow I got blackmailed into doing what I set out to do from the very first time he was convicted, which was to make it right. So not only did that never happen, there was never any hint of anything like that happening. I never abandoned him.”
As for the magazine ... “Oh, JEEZus. Are you kidding me?? ... I have been in the ‘Best Lawyers in North Carolina’ since — I don’t know, the early 1990s? I had my reputation. It’s why they came to me. To suggest that I was somehow motivated to be in a magazine is insulting.”
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To be continued: Next Thursday, Rudolf will share his thoughts on the final episode of HBO Max’s “The Staircase.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2022 at 4:06 PM with the headline "David Rudolf irked by HBO’s ‘Staircase,’ again. Here are his criticisms of Episode 7.."
