‘The Staircase’: Bizarre twists and theories of Kathleen Peterson’s death
nypost.comSpoilers for “The Staircase” documentary and HBO Max series follow.In the early hours of Dec. 9, 2001, novelist Michael Peterson made a panicked, tearful 911 call: He had found his wife Kathleen unconscious and bloody at the bottom of a staircase in their Durham, North Carolina, house.
His explanation to cops, that she had been drinking and had likely taken a sleeping pill and fallen, was deemed unconvincing; he was arrested for her murder shortly thereafter.
The ensuing case would become the subject of one of the defining true-crime documentaries in the genre: Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s “The Staircase.” The eight-part series debuted in France in 2004 and in America in 2005, then arrived on Netflix in 2013 with additional episodes shot by de Lestrade in the years after the initial case.
It riveted viewers even as it wrapped up with the conclusion that, well, we can really never know whether Michael did it or not.Now, the case becomes a dramatization on HBO Max as a miniseries titled, once again, “The Staircase.” Premiering May 5, it stars Colin Firth as Michael, Toni Collette as Kathleen, Michael Stuhlbarg as defense attorney David Rudolf and Parker Posey as prosecutor Freda Black.True-crime author Aphrodite Jones, who covered the case, hasn’t seen the new series but thinks it isn’t likely to tread any new ground if it follows the beats of the documentary. “It’s not what [de Lestrade] included, it’s what he did not include,” Jones — whose 2004 book “A Perfect Husband” profiles the case and became the basis for the 2007 Lifetime movie “The Staircase Murders,” starring Treat Williams — told The Post. “The ‘Staircase’ documentary is a vehicle for Michael Peterson,” said Jones.A novelist couldn’t have written Peterson’s story.
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