HBO’s ‘The Staircase’: Who was Kathleen Peterson and where did she work?
With renewed interest in the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson in Durham and the murder trial of her husband, Michael, we’re revisiting points of interest from the HBO dramatic miniseries “The Staircase.”
Kathleen Peterson’s death has been the subject of books, podcasts, documentaries and, now, an HBO scripted series.
She is portrayed in the Antonio Campos-created series “The Staircase” by Australian actress Toni Collette, who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “The Sixth Sense.”
Unlike Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s Netflix documentary “The Staircase,” the new series is a dramatization, so not all events depicted are real. It premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, May 5.
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Who was Kathleen Peterson?
Kathleen Hunt Atwater Peterson was a Greensboro, NC, native who grew up in Lancaster, Pa., and graduated with bachelors and masters degrees in engineering from Duke University.
Before marrying Michael Peterson in 1997, she was married to Fred Atwater. They had one daughter together, Caitlin.
She was known in Durham for helping to raise money for the North Carolina Ballet and for The American Dance Festival.
According to her published obituary, she was survived by two sisters, Candace Zamperini and Lori Campbell, and a brother, Steven Hunt. Her mother, Veronica Hunt, was also alive at the time of Kathleen’s death. Kathleen Peterson is buried at Maplewood Cemetery in Durham.
Where did Kathleen Peterson work, and what was her job?
At the time of her death at the age of 48, Kathleen Peterson was the director of information services at Nortel Networks in Research Triangle Park.
In the year of her death, Nortel had cut jobs aggressively — October 2001, they claimed to cut 10,000 jobs. Nortel, a Canadian company with a few locations throughout the United States, laid off 2,500 employees in Research Triangle Park alone, the Associated Press reported in December 2001.
Kathleen Peterson’s sister, Candace Zamperini, said in 2001 that before her death, Kathleen was worried about losing her job, though that possibility has never been confirmed by anyone at Nortel.
This story was originally published May 5, 2022 at 8:00 AM.
