HBO’s ‘The Staircase’ Episode 6: The Owl Theory takes flight + preparing for Alford
HBO Max has premiered its new series “The Staircase,” a dramatic retelling of the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson and the Durham murder trial of husband, Michael.
The scripted series, starring Colin Firth as Michael Peterson and Toni Collette as Kathleen Peterson, is based on the Netflix documentary series of the same, but draws on other source material and takes dramatic license — which makes for a very different viewing experience than fans of the documentary have known.
The series was created, produced, written and directed by Antonio Campos, with Maggie Cohn as co-showrunner.
HBO Max released the first three episodes — streaming only — on Thursday, May 5, with a new episode debuting each Thursday through June 9 .
We’re recapping episodes. This week we have Episode 6: Red in Tooth and Claw.
Note: The narrative of Campos’ dramatic retelling of the Peterson saga jumps around in time. Even though many of us — locals who lived through the original coverage of the case and those who have watched the documentary series — likely know the significance of various plot points, we’ll try in the recaps to stick with the dramatic timeline and not spoil events that take place in future episodes.
Also note: Remember, this is a dramatic scripted version of events, which means some things depicted may or may not have happened the way we see.
Below the recap you’ll find links to other coverage of “The Staircase,” including a timeline of Peterson events, an update on where major players in the case are now, a closer look at The Owl Theory and more.
‘The first day of the rest of your life’
FEBRUARY 24, 2017: Episode 6 opens with Michael at the Durham County Courthouse, greeting French documentary director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) and editor Sophie Brunet (Juliette Binoche). Michael says it’s weird to be back there, and de Lestrade notes that this time, it’s for a good reason. He walks away and Michael and Brunet snuggle on a bench and hold hands.
Attorney David Rudolf (Michael Stuhlbarg) arrives and tells Michael it’s “the first day of the rest of your life” and that “the sooner we get this done, the sooner you get to Paris.” They go into a conference room to “run through the questions” before seeing the judge. The French film crew records it all.
Rudolf hands Michael a paper titled “Alford Plea script” and it includes Rudolf’s opening statement, expected statements from the judge and what Michael will say.
Rudolf reads from his statement: “Michael Peterson is innocent.”
[What is an Alford plea? What to know about Michael Peterson’s 2017 plea]
SPRING 2006: After credits we go back 11 years. Michael is still in prison and Brunet is visiting. He asks her if she’s found an apartment to rent and he mentions he likes a view. They steal a couple of kisses while the guard isn’t looking.
Then we’re in Paris and we see Brunet going to work (editing “The Staircase”) and hanging out with her little boy, who is dropped off by his father. While she and her son sit at a cafe, she looks at printouts for rentals in Durham. We hear her cell phone ring and someone leaves a message: it’s Larry Pollard, back in Durham, and he has something important to discuss with her.
The scenes go back and forth between Brunet moving to Durham (and doing jigsaw puzzles) and Michael in prison, reading her letters, lifting weights.
‘Scary, but natural’
FALL 2006: Brunet is on a walk in the woods with Pollard (Joel McKinnon Miller), who calls her Miss Sophie. She asks him why they’re in the woods and he tells her to stop and listen to nature.
“Sounds like chaos, doesn’t it?” he says. “Another universe operating within our own with its own set of rules, and sometimes these universes overlap in ways that feel wrong. But disorder is entropy, it’s natural. Scary, but natural.”
He’s out there to tell her about barred owls and that there was one who “bounced” between his place and Peterson’s house and it drove Peterson’s bulldogs nuts (and adds “God rest their souls” — what happened to the dogs!?).
“I have reason, actually many reasons to believe that an owl was responsible for Kathleen’s death,” he tells her. She is skeptical, but Pollard asks for a chance to show her.
Then he reveals that while they seemed to have been walking in a remote, wooded area, they are actually right behind the Peterson house.
No more appeals, but Rudolf remarries
NOVEMBER 2007: Michael is with Rudolf and asks him what’s next — can they file a third appeal?
“Nothing’s next Mike, we lost our second appeal. There are no more.” Rudolf adds that with the documentary out there and public opinion and attitudes changing, he was hoping it would be enough for a retrial, but it wasn’t.
Michael flips out, realizing this means he’s in prison for the rest of his life. Rudolf tells him he has to “step back” from the now-dead case and be with his family. He’s getting remarried, he tells Michael, to ABC11 reporter Sonya Pfeiffer.
“We got to know each other,” Rudolf says. “During the trial.”
“So my attorney was [bleeping] some 25-year-old court reporter and now I’m gonna rot in jail!?” he yells.
Rudolf tells him no, that’s not how it was. “I was focused 100 percent.”
“[Bleep] you,” Michael says and walks to the door of the visitation room, starts banging on it and demanding to be returned to his cell. Rudolf asks him to stop and say a “proper goodbye.”
Michael looks back at him and tells him to say a proper goodbye, and Rudolf stands there silent. Michael says, “Enjoy your family” and walks out.
Next we see Margaret Ratliff (Sophie Turner) working on a film set in Los Angeles, getting a call from Rudolf. He tells her there are no more appeals and that they have to accept that they are living in a new reality. We see Martha Ratliff (Odessa Young) in San Francisco, getting the same call. Then we see Clayton Peterson (Dane DeHaan), holding a baby, and Todd Peterson (Patrick Schwarzenegger) getting the call. Finally, Brunet gets the news.
Over those scenes we hear Rudolf: “I want you to know it’s been an honor to fight for your father. To fight for this family. And I hope that one day you can think of this as closure. We’re out of limbo and we can move on, even if not in the way we had hoped.”
Dreading Thanksgiving
NOVEMBER 2001: Kathleen lies in bed, hears a noise above her (bats in the attic, we presume). Kathleen’s daughter Caitlin Atwater (Olivia DeJonge) comes in and asks if her eyes are acting up again and Kathleen says it’s just stress.
Caitlin lies beside Kathleen and says she wishes Martha and Margie were there. Kathleen says the boys aren’t coming home for Thanksgiving, and adds that Michael “doesn’t want to go to Candace’s either.”
Caitlin says, “I’m surprised we’re even going since Michael usually gets what he wants.” Kathleen apologizes again for missing Parents Weekend at her college.
An awkward prison visit
NOVEMBER 2007: Brunet is at the prison to visit Michael, along with Margaret and Clayton, and Margaret’s new husband, Lucas.
Michael seems depressed. Awkward small talk ensues: Clayton asks if he needs more money, more stamps. “It doesn’t matter how much you send,” Michael tells him.
Brunet tells them that Michael has been writing some short stories and he says he has “stopped all that.” Brunet congratulates Margaret on her marriage, Clayton says that Todd is doing great in Cabo, and Margaret says Martha has a new job at a cafe and that she’s going to therapy.
Brunet adds that she’s working with de Lestrade again, but on a fiction film. “No more documentaries for us,” she says.
She tells them that she’s meeting with Larry, who is investigating the case. “He has an interesting theory,” she says. “He believes an owl may have had something to do with that night.”
Michael closes his eyes and slowly exhales, then rubs his forehead, like hearing this causes him physical pain.
Clayton asks Margaret if she remembers the time Larry had a dead deer in his convertible. Their voices fade out as the camera focuses on Michael. He says, quietly and calmly: “This needs to end.”
Visitation is over and he gets up and walks out without telling anyone goodbye.
Maybe it was the owl?
DURHAM 2006: Brunet is in her apartment eating a microwave dinner. The dining room is filled with boxes from Rudolf’s office — all of the files from Michael’s case. She walks over and removes a file, looks at the autopsy photos of Kathleen and takes her phone from her pocket to make a call.
Next we see Brunet with Pollard, who says he was “all torn up” about Michael losing his last appeal. “He was a good neighbor, a good man. It’s a shame to see an innocent man behind bars,” he says as they climb a set of stairs leading to Pollard’s office.
Inside the office he presents his case.
“This theory accounts for the previously unaccountable,” he says. “I’m the first to admit it’s crazy, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”
He shows her newspaper clippings about owl attacks and notes that the owl almost always attacks the back of the head. December, the month Kathleen was killed, is mating season for barred owls, he says, and they are aggressive and territorial. He shows Brunet that the talons of a barred owl match the wounds on the back of Kathleen’s head.
He lays out his theory of how an owl attack explains all of Kathleen’s injuries, from the scratches on her face to the lack of skull fractures. He walks her through the whole scenario — the two drops of blood near the front door, the smear of blood on a door as Kathleen looked for a towel.
He pulls out a copy of the Durham Herald-Sun from just after the murder, with a photo of the front of the house on the front page. He tells her the white decorative deer shown in the photo were not there the day before. The morning after her death, they are there — one standing and one on its side.
Pollard points to one of those white deer standing in the corner of his office. “She must have put him out there that night,” he says. “And that’s when the owl decided to strike.”
Next we see Brunet on the phone with de Lestrade. “It was an owl!” she tells him. “The story is not over.” She tells him she wants all of the transcripts, documents and images that he has.
[Read more: Who is Larry Pollard from HBO’s ‘Staircase’? The Owl Theory, ‘smoking feather’ and more]
Thanksgiving, 2001
VIRGINIA: We’re at the home of Candace Zamperini (Rosemarie Dewitt), Kathleen’s sister, in Centerville, Virginia. Candace says she is glad to have a chance to host, but wishes it was the whole gang. Kathleen tells her if the whole gang was there her house probably wouldn’t hold them.
Michael watches football with the other husbands while Kathleen and Candace bicker about the food and who is controlling and who is not.
DURHAM: Back at the Durham house, Clayton is telling Todd that Becky gave him an ultimatum and said that he needs to “curb” his drinking because of the DUIs. Todd tells him to tell Becky he’s not drinking but to keep drinking. Clayton wonders if he can even do that, if he can even curb it.
“How do I know I’m not gonna be like dad?” Clayton says. “He cheated on mom, he left her, he still hits her up for money.”
Todd tells him to “look at dad with Kathleen,” pointing out how great their marriage was. Clayton seems unconvinced. The camera shot goes wide and we see that they are setting up a beer pong game and hosting a party.
SAN FRANCISCO: Martha is at a dinner party where people are going around and saying what they’re grateful for. She meets Yasmine, the young woman we see her with later in 2003. They make plans to ditch the party and go somewhere fun.
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND: Margaret is having dinner with her aunt and uncle, Steven (James Healy Jr) and Margaret Blair (Deena Wade). Her aunt comments that everyone needs a break from Michael sometimes and starts to say something about how he was with “you girls,” but her uncle cuts her off.
Back to 2007
PRISON: Michael’s in the cafeteria, still depressed. His weight-lifter friend sits down and tells him that he’s getting soft and needs to start lifting again. Michael throws his tray at someone to start a fight and ends up in solitary.
DURHAM: Pollard is laying out his theory about the owl for Brunet, who is recording him. Brunet studies the testimony, looking for clues. Pollard is reading Kathleen’s autopsy report and discovers a “feather” in the list of items at the crime scene.
Thanksgiving chaos, 2001
VIRGINIA: Candace and Kathleen argue after dinner, and Candace tells her that she seems stressed and looks like crap. Kathleen tells her that yes she’s stressed because she has a [bleeping] job.
Candace tells her: “You think you’re so much better than me and you never miss a chance to remind me of it. Everything I do, all my efforts will always be second best compared to you.”
She walks from the room. Kathleen feels bad and goes after her but Michael stops her and asks what’s wrong, gives her a hug.
DURHAM: Huge party at 1810 Cedar, Todd and Clayton are both wasted. We flip to San Francisco and Martha is having a blast on the dance floor with Yasmine.
VIRGINIA: Michael gets up in the middle of the night and finds Candace eating pie alone. He joins her and tells her: “When she’s like that with us, it’s a little window into how she treats herself. Not even Kathleen is good enough for Kathleen.”
Candace thanks him for saying something to make her feel better. She asks if Kathleen baked the pie they are eating and Michael says yes. “God, that [expletive] bakes a good pie.”
Get it together
NOVEMBER 2007: Michael is sitting in his cell when a guard fetches him because he has cleaning duty. He’s taken to a supply closet where his weightlifter friend is waiting. He tells him Michael cashed in a favor so they could talk about Michael “getting his [expletive] together.” He tells him if he keeps getting thrown in the hole “it’s gonna be a long life.”
“This isn’t life,” Michael replies.
The man tells Michael that no matter what happened in the past — guilty or not — he needs to find a way to “live like this or you die, but make a decision because you can’t do both.” He tells him if he wants to “go” he’ll find him a way: “Something easy, it doesn’t have to hurt.”
This is where we hear his friend’s name for the first time. Michael: “This is it, isn’t it? This is it, Ray, this is how it all unfolds.”
Michael asks Ray why he’s being so nice to him, asks what he owes him. “You don’t owe me,” Ray tells him, and hugs him.
Help for Martha and Todd
NOVEMBER 2007: We see Martha and Todd both talking — Martha in a room to someone, Todd with a group. Martha says she identifies as queer and wants to talk about it, but there is never any room for her stuff. Todd talks to the crowd (perhaps AA) about being sober, and says he’s been clean for 18 days. We see that Martha is practicing with her therapist for what she might say to Michael.
Finding evidence of feathers
NOVEMBER 2007: Brunet and Pollard are in the Durham PD and are being shown evidence slides. Detective Art Holland (Cory Allen Scott) watches and says: “This has got to be the craziest damn thing I’ve ever heard.” They find two slides — after being magnified twice — that are shown to be feathers.
Brunet meets with Medical Examiner Deborah Radisch (Susan Pourfar) and asks her about the feathers. Radisch tells her that she never saw the feathers, that they were too small. Brunet says it accounts for everything, and Radisch says they could have come from anywhere.
Brunet asks her to reconsider the cause of Kathleen’s death.
Radisch: “If an owl did attack Kathleen, we might find talon scratches on the skull or DNA left behind by the animal.” She says she could re-examine Kathleen’s body but she’d have to be exhumed, and to do that, she’d need permission.
Meanwhile, back in prison, Michael learns his friend Big Ray has been transferred.
Thanksgiving hangover, 2001
DURHAM: Clayton wakes up after Thanksgiving with a hangover, with a woman in bed — a woman who is not Becky. She tells him they didn’t do anything and he’s relieved. Then he hears Michael screaming: “BOYS!!”
Michael and Kathleen are home and the house is trashed. They are in trouble, and Kathleen is angry.
Kathleen: “This Thanksgiving was a (bleep) show, OK? So to make up for it we are going to have an incredible Christmas. The house will be fully decorated and everyone is coming home. It will be perfect, is that understood?”
She tells them she’s gonna take a nap and when she wakes up, the house will be clean. Todd jokes it off and Clayton says, “I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna propose to Becky.”
RHODE ISLAND: Margaret looks at old family photos with her aunt.
“Looking at you girls is like looking at Liz,” her aunt Margaret tells her.
Margaret learns that she and Martha were there in Rhode Island for a whole summer when they were ages 6 and 4. Patty was overwhelmed so she gave them custody, her aunt says, but Michael took them back because he didn’t approve of her religion.
She tells Margaret that Michael wanted to give them Martha (when Martha exhibited behavioral problems) and keep Margaret, but the aunt would not split them up. Margaret is upset and calls Martha to tell her, but Martha, with Yasmine, interrupts before she can get the news out. She tells Margaret that she is “so stupid happy and I want to see your face when I tell you why.” Margaret decides not to tell her the upsetting news.
Kathleen dies by owl attack
Brunet calls Caitlin and tells her she wants to talk to her about a theory about her mother’s death.
Then, as in Episodes 2 and 4, we flip back to December 2001 to see a third version of Kathleen’s death.
It starts by the pool. Kathleen goes inside the house through the back door and walks down the hallway to the front of the house. We see her grab a white reindeer from a room and carry it out the front door. She places it on the grass and walks back into the house, grabs another deer, carries it out onto the lawn.
She places the deer and steps back to look.
Then she is attacked from behind by a giant owl and she screams, walking into the house calling for Michael. She starts up the back stairs and after a couple of steps, seems to faint and fall backward, hitting her head on the wall. She struggles and blood covers the walls and floors.
Back on the phone, Brunet asks Caitlin for her permission to exhume Kathleen. Caitlin explodes in anger: “Michael Peterson murdered my other. Is that clear? I sleep great at night knowing he will die in prison. You can direct all future calls to my lawyer.”
Brunet cries and tears apart the jigsaw puzzle she’d been putting together.
‘A lie doesn’t set you free’
NOVEMBER 2007: Brunet and the kids visit Michael in prison. He seems to have accepted that this is “how it’s going to be.”
FEBRUARY 2017: Rudolf reads from his statement just before they go in to the Alford plea. He explains:
“The Alford Plea allows Michael Peterson to maintain his innocence while admitting the evidence against him could lead a jury to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. By entering the Alford plea you are pleading guilty to manslaughter.”
Michael hesitates to because of having to plead “guilty,” but Rudolf reminds him if he does this, he’s free.
“They want me to say I killed Kathleen, I’m not gonna do it. A lie doesn’t set you free.”
Recaps of HBO Max ‘Staircase’ episodes
HBO’s “The Staircase” Episode 1: The death of Kathleen Peterson and an arrest
HBO’s “The Staircase” Episode 2: Peterson prepares his defense, the French arrive
HBO’s “The Staircase” Episode 3: Building a case, Peterson’s trial begins
HBO’s “The Staircase” Episode 4: The verdict and another version of Kathleen’s death
HBO’s ‘The Staircase’ Episode 5: Prison life and a fight about documentary’s balance
More coverage of HBO’s Peterson saga ‘The Staircase’
You can find more coverage of the HBO Max series “The Staircase” and the trial of Michael Peterson at newsobserver.com/topics/staircase. Here are a few of the stories:
▪ HBO Max’s “Staircase” series: What to expect (vs. the Netflix option) and how to watch
▪ The “Staircase” Peterson saga in pop culture: movies, TV, books and podcasts
▪ “The Staircase” updates: Whatever happened to key people (and Durham house)
▪ A “Staircase” timeline: From Kathleen Peterson’s death to her husband’s trial and plea
▪ HBO’s ‘The Staircase’: Who was Kathleen Peterson and where did she work?
This story was originally published May 26, 2022 at 9:00 AM.
