History of Michael Peterson’s Durham home: ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ to ‘Staircase’
The Michael Peterson home seen by millions in the 2018 Netflix documentary series “The Staircase” and depicted in the new HBO Max series of the same name has an interesting history — even apart from it being the site of Kathleen Peterson’s death in December 2001.
The nearly 9,500-square-foot, five-bedroom mansion sits on a sprawling 3.4-acre lot in the heart of Durham, in the Forest Hills neighborhood, and has become a point of interest for true-crime fans who have followed the Peterson saga over the years.
Michael Peterson, a novelist and former newspaper columnist, told police he was sitting by the pool at the house at 1810 Cedar St. on the night of Dec. 9, 2001, and when he went inside around 2:30 a.m., he found Kathleen in a pool of blood at the bottom of a back staircase.
Peterson said he believed she had an accident and fell down the stairs. Durham police and the district attorney’s office believed that he killed Kathleen, and he was charged with murder.
He was convicted in 2003 in one of the longest trials in North Carolina’s history. He was in prison for eight years before his conviction was overturned because of improprieties at the State Bureau of Investigation. Peterson entered an Alford plea while awaiting a new trial in 2017, allowing him to plead guilty to manslaughter while maintaining his innocence.
Here are some of the interesting details about the house at 1810 Cedar St. and its history.
Owners of the 1810 Cedar Street home
▪ The home, built in 1940 by John Adams Buchanan, was designed by Durham architect George Watts Carr Sr., who also designed buildings at N.C. Central University, N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill.
▪ Around 1990, the house was owned by nationally recognized scholar and author Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., who lived there while teaching at Duke. Gates is the host of “Finding Your Roots” on PBS.
▪ Michael Peterson bought the house in 1992, according to OpenDurham.org.
▪ The house was put on the market when Peterson went to prison in 2003, purchased by Jason Balius, the former co-owner of the Mad Hatter Bakeshop in Durham. The house was listed at $1.175 million, but reduced to $975,000. Balius paid $640,000 for the house in 2004 and did renovations before placing it back on the market in 2007.
▪ Clairvoyant and medium Biond Fury purchased the house from Balius in 2008, and paid $1.3 million for it. In late 2018, Fury started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for repairs at the home. The listing for that campaign has since been removed from the website.
▪ In 2020, the 9,372-square-foot house was again listed for sale at $1.9 million, which was in line with the tax value of the home, listed by the Durham County Tax Administration at $1,937,733. Photos accompanying the online listing showed a renovated home with refinished hardwood floors, an updated kitchen and beautiful spiral staircase. There were no photos of the back staircase where Kathleen died, and a photo of the backyard showed the swimming pool to be drained. A large fountain near the pool when the Petersons lived there seemed to have been removed.
▪ The home sold in August 2020 for $1.6 million and the new owner is listed as AZAD III LLC. The company official for AZAD III LLC listed with the NC Secretary of State Office is Ramsey Shehadeh.
From ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ to ‘The Staircase’
The home was a location for the 1990 movie “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which was filmed in Durham and Raleigh and starred Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway and Natasha Richardson. (Not to be confused with the popular Hulu TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which was not filmed at the Peterson house.)
The property was used as the Commander’s home and was featured prominently in the film.
The exterior shots are very recognizable from “The Staircase,” but also the scenes inside the wood-paneled study inside the home. There is even a scene filmed on the back staircase where Kathleen Peterson died.
In addition to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a great deal of the first eight episodes of the 2018 Netflix documentary series “The Staircase” were set at the Peterson home.
The 2022 HBO Max series “The Staircase” was filmed in Georgia, so the Durham home is not used.
More on HBO Max’s ‘The Staircase’
For full coverage of HBO Max’s “The Staircase” and other background on the death of Kathleen Peterson and the murder trial of Michael Peterson, visit: newsobserver.com/topics/staircase.
This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 12:09 PM with the headline "History of Michael Peterson’s Durham home: ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ to ‘Staircase’."
