HBO’s ‘The Staircase’ Episode 3: Building a case, Peterson’s trial begins
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 dramatic 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, which makes for a very different viewing experience.
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, and this is Episode 3: The Great Dissembler.
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 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 search for the blow poke
2002: Episode 3 opens with Martha Ratliff (Odessa Young) at college with her girlfriend, who asks her about her mom — her “mom mom” — and how she died. Martha tells her it was a brain aneurysm, and that Patricia Peterson had been a mother to her, but mostly it was Kathleen. “She took care of us,” Martha says.
Martha’s going home to Durham for the summer, saying it might be the last “normal-ish” summer with her family, before the trial starts the next year. Her girlfriend wants to go, but Martha says it could get weird.
Then, speaking of weird, we move on to the blow poke.
We see Duane Deaver (Myke Holmes) bashing a mannequin’s head with a blow poke.
Then Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) is interviewing Durham DA Jim Hardin (Cullen Moss) about the blow poke, and his answers are interspersed with scenes of Durham Police officers searching the Peterson home to try to find it.
We also see Todd (Patrick Schwarzenegger), Michael and Bill Peterson (Tim Guinee) standing outside the house drinking coffee while the police search.
Todd says he doesn’t even remember them getting the fireplace tool from Candace and Michael says, “Why would you? Who the (expletive) gives fireplace tools as a Christmas gift, let alone ONE fireplace tool.” Bill says he thinks it’s kind of handy and Michael shoots him a look.
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Bats and cash
2001: Kathleen has called in help to get rid of the bats, but you can’t just “get rid of them,” she’s told. You have to “relocate them” and “it’s not cheap” — but at least they aren’t in the plumbing. Yet.
Then we see Michael on the phone with his first wife Patty (Trini Alvarado) asking for money to help Todd and Clayton with some credit card debt. He mentions Todd’s website and Patty says Clayton should get a job. Michael tells her Clayton needs to focus on school. Then he jumps up at screams at the dog, who is chewing the furniture: “Do it again! I dare you!”
Michael asks Patty to refinance the house again, but she tells him she can’t.
2002: Caitlin is in her college apartment, on the phone with her lawyer, who is encouraging her to give him permission to go after her mother’s money so that Michael can’t use it to pay for his defense. Caitlin is hesitant and says whatever they do will also affect Margaret and Martha. He tells her they are the ones who decided to back a killer, and Caitlin says they didn’t really have any choice.
Looking for the hookups
Freda Black (Parker Posey) is interviewing Brent Wolgamott (Paul Teal), the male escort Michael has been talking to on the phone. Wolgamott isn’t super cooperative, giving short answers and snickering. But he assures her that despite their emails and conversations, he never met Michael Peterson.
“I can’t believe you want to show these in court,” Wolgamott says, referring to nude photos of himself. He and Black trade quips about the pictures.
Back at the house, Rudolf gets a call from Ron Guerette with the news that the DA is on a crusade to find someone Michael slept with. Tom Maher (Justice Leak) says they should go through the emails with the escort Wolgamott and Bill is surprised: “An escort? What?”
Michael tells him to settle down and asks Todd and Patty to leave the room.
Michael tells them that he never met up with any of those guys. Rudolf points out that in the same emails with the escort, Michael talks about how much he loves Kathleen. “Some emails and some porn are all they got. This is our biggest hurdle and I’m already over it,” Rudolf says.
The defense team is having the same conversation about evidence — or the lack of.
Freda Black: “Do you really think that Kathleen Peterson — that this woman — knew her husband was talking about [censored] this and [redacted] that and God knows what else?”
Hardin says they still have “The Freda Black Show,” but that the connection between the emails sent in September to Brad and Kathleen being killed in December is “a little fuzzy.” Hardin wants “actual infidelity.”
So the police then start questioning all over town looking for men — at video stores, bars, gyms. This is where they find out that Dennis Rowe had slept with Peterson.
Another owl + Michael’s conquests
Oct 2001: Kathleen returns home and sees a strange car in the driveway with massage oils in the front seat. She pauses outside and looks up at the trees, then hears owls hooting above. This is our second incidence of an owl stalking a woman outside the Peterson home, for those keeping track.
Kathleen goes upstairs and hears voices in the bedroom, and seems a little apprehensive, like she’s bracing to find something bad. But Michael has surprised her with a massage. When he tries to stay during the massage and talk about his City Council campaign with the masseuse, Kathleen sends him away to get a movie at Blockbuster.
2002: Back at the Peterson house, investigator Guerette (Robert Crayton) is telling Michael about Dennis Rowe, who claims to have had sex with Michael “four or five times.” Michael is incredulous — “Oh, you’re (expletive) me!” he exclaims. He is told that Rowe has a limp, to jog his memory, but he swears he doesn’t know him.
Meanwhile, Michael is busy scratching at a spot of what looks like blood on the arm of the leather sofa.
Patty volunteers, while Martha looks on in shock: “When we lived in Germany, Mike kept dalliances with many men and women and I didn’t end up at the bottom of the stairs.”
Michael: “My ex-wife, everyone. She’ll be around all week.”
Bill asks to talk to Mike outside. He asks him how many more men there will be, and Mike says he’s not sure, he never kept a diary.
Bill points out that Michael previously told him he’d never had any affairs and Michael insists they weren’t affairs — they never went to dinner, he said, it was just sex.
Bill: “Don’t Michael Peterson me. Sex is affairs. You lied. You slept around on Patty, you slept around on Kathleen.”
Mike explains that he has only had sex with men while married to Kathleen, so it’s different. Bill asks him point blank if Kathleen knew and Michael insists that she did. “She knew and she understood. To say otherwise it is just insulting to her,” Michael says.
Bill then tells Michael he’s going back to Reno for a couple of weeks, to “figure out a balance between home and Durham.” Michael loses it and tells him it’s his job to take care of him.
Bill tells him it’s not all about him and Michael disagrees.
“It is. It is all about me. Make no mistake, for the next little while or for however ... long it takes, it is all about me. And when it’s your ass about to go to prison for the rest of your life, it can be about you!”
Dennis Rowe
Now we’re with Jim Hardin, learning from Dennis Rowe about all the times he had sex with Michael. The first time, Dennis tells him, was about eight years ago “at the sex shop off the 110, then a few years later again at the YMCA.”
Hardin asks if he means the Forest Hills Y and Rowe says yes, and asks if Hardin works out there. Freda Black suppresses a smile as Hardin answers, “On occasion.”
Rowe says he didn’t know who Michael was until he walked into the fundraiser at Michael’s home. When asked about other men Michael may have slept with, Rowe reluctantly suggests they talk to Tyrone Lacour.
“You’re friends with Tyrone Lacour?” Hardin asks — and he asks it in such a way that makes it seem that Lacour is known to him.
Rowe quickly says “No! Not friends.” He explains that they are in a small community, and that he told Lacour about seeing Michael at the campaign event and Lacour looked up Michael’s photo and “thought he looked familiar.”
Hardin looks super pleased, and asks Rowe to write down every detail he can remember about his encounters with Michael Peterson.
‘I started a joke’
Next is one of the best scenes in the series.
2002: We get scenes of Duane Deaver smashing mannequin head after mannequin head, interspersed with scenes of Michael lifting weights at home, while the 1968 Bee Gees song “I Started a Joke” plays.
“I started a joke, that started the whole world laughing, but I didn’t see, that the joke was on me ...” plays as technicians roll away a grotesque cart of bloodied heads, and Deaver smashes more heads, over and over.
Then Durham PD Detective Art Holland (Cory Scott Allen) is asking Tyrone Lacour if he had any anonymous hookups with Peterson. Lacaour uses some offensive language to assert that he isn’t the type to have sex with men.
Back at the DA’s office, Rowe hands Hardin a legal pad with a list of names on it and tells him it’s names of other people in Durham he’s slept with.
“If you’re going to get me up there and ask about Peterson, I’m guessing I’ll also be asked about the other important married men in town I’ve slept with. Some of whom I think you know pretty well,” Rowe says.
Later, Hardin tells Black that many of the people on the list are donors and he suddenly “doesn’t see this playing out very well for us ... outing innocent people on the stand in order to show what Michael Peterson was up to.”
Freda points out that they have “the autopsy, the crime scene, the photos, the emails. We have our theory. A man who was hiding gets caught and explodes.”
Hardin: “It all feels circumstantial. We have a theory about a motive and no murder weapon. Well, I guess we’ve still also got Brad.”
The Omen
2002: Rudolf gives Peterson the good news that they aren’t using the Rowe info, and Peterson feels vindicated.
He tells Rudolf to spend time with his wife and kids and Rudolf says his wife’s not so crazy about him at the moment and adds: “Let’s just say I admire the relationship you and Kathleen had, where she let you be you. My wife and I are just not on the same page.”
Then Michael announces to his house: “Nothing! Nothing! They ain’t got nothing!”
2001: We’re back to the day of Kathleen’s massage. As Michael starts out of the house to get the video at Blockbuster, he gets a phone call from Wolgamott (Brad from Raleigh). He has to cancel their date because his schedule has changed and he’ll need a couple days to recover. They decide to hook up the next time he’s passing through.
Mike heads to Blockbuster, stopping first at the adult video store. We flash back and forth between Michael at the video store and Kathleen walking around the house looking for a shower that works (we’re assuming the bats made their way into the plumbing).
Michael spots a guy he likes at the store and follows him into a back room, where the guy pays to watch a porn clip, and the two have sex.
Then Michael’s at home. He drops a Blockbuster movie on the table — “The Omen” — and joins Kathleen in the kitchen, where she’s making dinner.
They drink wine and Michael tells her they need to keep helping the boys with their finances, because Patty can’t. Kathleen tells him she knows what he’s doing — he’s buttering her up with “a massage and a romantic night and then you ask me to bail your kids out again, because you let them get away with murder, especially Clayton.”
“I know you’re mad at him, I am too,” Michael says.
“You literally bought him a car when things blew up,” Kathleen says.
“Well, nothing actually blew up. That time,” Michael says.
“Clayton got lucky,” Kathleen says. “You are playing me.”
“Is it working?” he asks.
Then he moves behind Kathleen and starts kissing her neck, and she says, “I guess we’ll do what we always do, we’ll figure it out.”
Then he performs a sex act on her as she stands at the stove.
A threat to Rowe
Tyrone Lacour calls Rowe in the middle of the night with a warning.
“I know you gave them my name, Dennis. I will do you like that Peterson bitch, you hear me? You shut your mouth. Shut it.”
Filmmakers dissect Peterson’s behavior
De Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) interviews Michael about his memories of Kathleen as Margaret arrives home. Michael says he likes being in the house because he feels Kathleen there.
Then we’re at a Durham diner where de Lestrade and producer Denis Poncet (Frank Feys) are eating and discussing Michael. Poncet asks de Lestrade what he thinks and de Lestrade says he can’t decide: sometimes he’s convinced he’s lying, but even when he knows he’s telling the truth, it can sound like a lie.
Poncet says he doesn’t trust the 911 call. Poncent can’t believe Michael finds his wife a bloody mess and says “accident.” He says Michael’s behavior on the call was like a bad movie, but de Lestrade defends him. His wife was dying in front of him, de Lestrade points out.
“It’s obvious he did it,” Poncet says.
“I don’t know if it’s that obvious,” de Lestrade responds. “To believe he could do it is to believe I could do it.”
“Jean, I believe we all could,” Poncet says.
Poncet then lets de Lestrade know that the DA’s office is no longer cooperating, and says it’s not too late to pull out of the project and find a case where they can tell both sides. No, we continue, de Lestrade says.
Caitlin visits Nortel
Caitlin visits Kathleen’s office and looks around.
Kathleen’s assistant tells her that no one else has been there or expressed any interest in Kathleen’s things at her office.
Caitlin sits in her chair and looks at a photo on her desk.
No bleach blondes
Rudolf wants Margaret and Martha to do an interview with the local ABC station, which would be shared with all ABC affiliates nationwide. Martha really doesn’t want to do it — neither of them do — but there’s pressure.
The reporter, WTVD/ABC11’s Sonya Pfeiffer, “is a friend, so no curveballs,” Rudolf tells them.
Margaret says they aren’t sure they are ready for the attention. Rudolf continues to push.
“You have to accept that sooner or later everyone’s gonna know who you are,” Rudolf tells them.
They hesitate.
Michael Peterson: “I’m not gonna push you girls to do anything you don’t want to do. ... I’d rather go to prison than put you girls through any more pain.”
Margaret: “We’re OK. We’ll do what we have to.”
Great, says Rudolf. Then he tells Martha to dye her hair because “bleach blonde doesn’t look good on camera.” Embarrassed, she gets up and leaves the table.
Next we see Todd in a bar with a friend talking about doing business in Cabo, then they’re in a bathroom stall doing cocaine.
The next morning Todd is passed out on the couch in his dad’s study. Michael wakes him up.
“Imagine people seeing my son getting wasted around town,” Michael says. “They’re gonna think we’re a family of (expletives). Clayton’s the (expletive), not you. You’re my Centurion, I need you focused.”
Another woman at the bottom of the stairs
In Rudolf’s office, Michael and Todd learn that Caitlin has successfully blocked Michael from getting any more of Kathleen’s money — no more money from Nortel, no life insurance.
Michael: “After everything I’ve done for her. Greedy bitch.”
Then back at the Peterson home, the Ratliff girls do their interview with Sonya Pfeiffer (Teri Wyble) on the side porch. Martha’s hair is now dark.
“Don’t worry, David’s a good friend. I swear I’ll make it painless,” Pfeiffer tells them.
Michael sits off camera and watches. The girls say they don’t remember anything about the time in Germany.
But since the interview is broadcast across the country, Martha and Margaret’s aunt, Margaret Blair, sees the interview and calls the Durham DA’s office. She gets Freda Black, who is working late and dipping into her stash of airplane bottles of booze.
“I’ve been speaking with God and he will not allow me to be silent any longer,” Margaret Blair tells Black.
Cut to Rudolf yelling at Michael: “You found another woman at the bottom of the stairs!?” Michael explains he left her “very much alive and on her way to bed” and then the next morning the nanny found her dead. Michael produces Liz’s autopsy.
Margaret yells on the phone to her aunt, who says Margaret still doesn’t know half of what happened in Germany.
In their bedroom, Margaret and Martha talk about what’s going on.
Martha: “It is kind of a weird coincidence we’ve had two moms die at the bottom of the stairs.”
Margaret: “What are you saying?”
Martha: “I’m not saying anything, I’m just ... we haven’t talked about it. Don’t freak out on me.”
Margaret: “So you think there’s some connection?”
Martha: “I can see why Aunt Margaret’s suspicious. Isn’t it weird?”
Margaret: “All of it’s weird.”
Martha: “It’s like you don’t even remember what happened before Christmas.”
Margaret: “Yes I do, and then Kathleen died and now we have to grow up. Dad has been there for us always. He didn’t have to take us in, but he did. That’s all that matters. Just stop questioning everything, just stop!”
Martha beats herself in the head and screams “I can’t I can’t I can’t!”
Meanwhile, Rudolf asks Patty if it was strange that Mike would be alone with Liz Ratliff.
Patty tells Rudolf, “Under no circumstances would she put carnal desires above our friendship.” Besides, she adds that Michael was never good at hiding his infidelities.
Rudolf wants to speak with the girls privately without cameras and without Mike. We don’t see what they tell Rudolf, but he tells Michael that “everything checks out.”
Hardin’s tragedy
Hardin tells Black that he’s been thinking about the Ratliff girls and asks Black about her girls. Then Deaver calls and says he has replicated the crime scene “to a T” and he’s ready to testify. Hardin seems satisfied now.
He tells Black about his own family tragedy: he lost his younger brother and two younger sisters in a house fire when he was 13.
“Terrible things just happen,” Hardin says. “Innocent children can burn up in a fire. And women can trip and fall down the stairs for no reason. They can.”
Then, they decide they need to dig up Elizabeth Ratliff but need the permission of the girls.
The girls consent, saying they are confident that their mother died of a brain aneurysm.
Trial Day 1
Peterson arrives at the courthouse for the first day of the trial.
He and his family and legal team pile into an elevator. Someone yells to hold the door and it’s Candace and Caitlin and their group. They stare each other down and Michael smiles and closes the door on them.
“You’ll be smiling in prison soon,” Candace says.
The court is in session and Hardin begins his opening: “In a very real sense, this case is about pretense and appearances. It’s about things not being as they seem.”
Recaps previous 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
HBO’s ‘The Staircase’ Episode 6: The Owl Theory takes flight + preparing for Alford
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” updates: Whatever happened to key people (and Durham house)
▪ A “Staircase” timeline: From Kathleen Peterson’s death to her husband’s trial and plea
This story was originally published May 5, 2022 at 8:16 AM.
