HBO’s ‘The Staircase’ Episode 2: Peterson prepares his defense, the French arrive
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 here we will look at Episode 2: Chiroptera.
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.
Episode 2: French filmmakers enter the story
December 2001, Paris: Episode 2 opens in Paris, France, shortly after the death of Kathleen Peterson. Documentary film producer Denis Poncet (Frank Feys) is trying to convince director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (Vincent Vermignon) to consider the Peterson case for their next film. (Backstory: The two had just released “Murder on a Sunday Morning,” a documentary about Brenton Butler, a 15-year-old Black teenager wrongfully accused of murder in Jacksonville, Florida. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2002.)
De Lestrade tells Poncet he wants to feature a case showing American justice “as it really is,” with the defense, prosecution and judge all saying different things about the same events.
(Reality check: The actor playing Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, Vincent Vermignon, is Black. De Lestrade is not.)
A blue Christmas in Durham
December 2001, Durham: Back at the Peterson house, the children are preparing for Christmas while Michael sits in jail. They’re drinking, making dinner and wearing Kathleen’s Christmas sweaters. A sheet hangs over the entrance to the back staircase, which is still covered in blood.
The aunt of Margaret (Sophie Turner) and Martha Ratliff (Odessa Young) calls and upsets Margaret. She wants to talk about what happened to her sister — the girls’ mother — in Germany. Margaret tells her they don’t remember Germany and doesn’t want to talk about it.
Then we switch to Michael in jail, calling home. He jokes with Todd (Patrick Schwarzenegger) about accepting his calls from jail, then talks to Margaret about his concerns that Kathleen’s sisters, Candace Zamperini (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Lori Campbell (Maria Dizzia), are not taking his calls. He reminds her how important it is that the family sticks together.
We immediately switch to a scene at Candace’s house, where the family sits somberly as the phone rings and a voice announces a collect call from the Durham County Jail on the answering machine. Candace asks her husband to stoke the fire, and he goes over to the fireplace and uses a blow poke.
Back at the Peterson house, the kids open presents and Caitlin (Olivia DeJonge) lashes out at Todd, telling him to stop saying Kathleen was drunk the night she died, and questioning why he’s “suddenly calling her ‘mom’” because he never did before.
Kathleen stressed at work
October 2001: Kathleen is wearing a neck brace from her pool injury, sitting up in bed and not sleeping. She gets up with her alarm and Michael asks her details about that weekend’s fundraiser — which she is planning — for his Durham City Council race. She realizes she’ll have to miss Parents Weekend at Caitlin’s college to attend the fundraiser.
She hears something in the attic — almost horror story-style — and looks worried.
Kathleen gives Clayton a ride to work and he talks to her about needing money. “Yeah, there never seems to be enough,” Kathleen says. As she’s driving, she hits a deer, and a police officer shoots it, to put it down.
Then Kathleen is at work, meditating by her window, when her assistant comes in to let her know about a meeting planned for later. Kathleen is very nervous.
The day at the gym
Meanwhile, Michael is working out at the gym (Durham’s Forest Hills YMCA) and pauses to check out the men there. He spots a muscular middle-aged man with a military tattoo. Later, the man joins Michael in the sauna and they talk: he’s from out of town and he asks Michael about “the scene” in Durham.
The two men start to ... get friendly ... and then some other men walk in and interrupt them, and Michael makes a joke about it being hot.
Cut straight to a scene in the locker room where Michael sees Durham DA Jim Hardin (Cullen Moss) and Hardin tells him he saw his latest column in the Durham Herald-Sun. Super interesting conversation (that may or may not have ever actually happened) ensues:
Hardin: “That target on my back’s getting pretty heavy.”
Peterson: “You keep going after the little guys, to rack up wins. If you tackled a real issue, I’d let up. I’m sorry, sometimes the truth hurts.”
Hardin: “Keep on looking for the truth, one day you might trip right over it.”
‘Remember those jean shorts?’
We’re with Michael in jail and Bill Peterson (Tim Guinee) is visiting. He tells Michael he’s getting a check from Nortel for Kathleen’s back pay and they can use that to pay attorney David Rudolf’s retainer.
Michael repeats his worry that Candace and Lori aren’t taking his calls. He then asks Bill to tell the kids about the photos of nude men the police found on his computer. Bill asks if it’s just photos, if he had any affairs. “Oh for Christ’s sake, no affair. Kathleen was the only one,” Michael says. Michael also tells him that Kathleen knew everything.
In what turns out to be a purely comical scene, Bill gathers the kids at the house and tells them about the photos on Michael’s computer — “photos of an intimate nature, and that nature was homosexual ... just stupid, stupid photos,” Bill says.
Clayton: “So dad is gay?”
Bill: “No, he likes women, he loved Kathleen, he just likes the idea of men.”
Martha: “So dad’s bisexual?”
Bill: “Bingo!”
Martha (to the other kids): “Did you guys know?”
Todd shakes his head “no.”
Then Margaret delivers the best line of the episode: “Remember those jean shorts? The really short ones?”
Todd: “Those (expletive) shorts.”
The kids sit, stunned, processing everything. Finally, Todd says, “Well it doesn’t matter. Dad’s dad.”
Bill responds, “Right! Dad’s dad.”
Good talk.
The French do have good taste
Michael is finally out on bail and is met by a media mob outside the jail.
In the car, Rudolf (David Stuhlbarg) tells Michael they have to examine his finances because the DA will argue Michael killed Kathleen because of debt. Michael dismisses the idea of debt because he’d just sold his book and got an advance. How much, Rudolf asks. $10,000, Michael answers. Rudolf gives him a look that reads as “that’s it?”
Rudolf introduces Michael to co-counsel, Tom Maher (Justice Leak), and tells Michael not to sweat Hardin because they’re getting Judge Orlando Hudson for the case. He’s “a good one,” Rudolf tells Michael, noting that they “go way back.”
Rudolf then tells Michael that a French documentary film crew is interested in the case and Michael is intrigued. “The French do have good taste,” Michael notes.
Michael returns home to hugs from the kids.
Catlin’s dad, Fred Atwater, comes by and tells her that Kathleen’s back pay and life insurance came through and that it went to Michael, who hasn’t mentioned it. Caitlin tells him that Candace keeps calling and mentioning things in the house that Michael could have used to kill Kathleen, wanting her to look for them.
Fred tells Caitlin about the autopsy photos of Kathleen, so that she can be prepared, and offers to let her stay with him at his hotel.
October 2001: We see Kathleen back in her Nortel office — the day she hit the deer. Her assistant tells her the other issue got figured out, so the meeting is canceled. But she isn’t sure what it was that got figured out. Then Kathleen gets a call from Caitlin, who is angry that Kathleen is skipping Parents Weekend to do Mike’s fundraiser.
January 2002: We’re in the Peterson home with Michael, Bill and Rudolf on the phone with the French filmmakers. Peterson’s side is reluctant to agree to the terms, but then the filmmakers mention that they have other options, and Michael seems eager to land them.
Michael tells them he has concerns — that he’s worried about how the subject of his bisexuality will be used against him. When filmmakers hear “bisexual” they practically high-five each other.
Caitlin meets with Margaret and Martha in the Durham mall (I spent too much time here thinking about the combo of Orange Julius and PF Changs cups) and says she has concerns about Michael. She doesn’t trust him. She says he lied about the Purple Heart, didn’t tell them he was bisexual and has been keeping things from them. She thinks it’s wrong. Margaret and Martha defend Michael.
Duane Deaver gets it done
January 2002: The scene switches to a warehouse with a model staircase and a small army of SBI agents in lab coats being addressed by Duane Deaver (Myke Holmes). Deaver says they are tasked with figuring out how the murder happened, saying they need to replicate the attack.
“At SBI, we get it done,” he says.
February 2017: We immediately flip forward to 2017, with Michael being driven to some sort of Dollar General-type store to buy stain remover for the spot on his tie. He picks out an item and walks to the cashier who turns toward him — it’s Duane Deaver. Both men are shocked.
“I’ve got to get going,” Michael stammers and runs out.
Note: We haven’t been introduced to the woman with Michael, but she’s French, and she’s played by Juliette Binoche, so those familiar with the case (or even those who have read articles about the casting of the series) know it’s Sophie Brunet. This is not the last we’ll see of her.
“It’s a big day for us,” Brunet tells Michael in the car.
‘All autopsy photos are bad’
January 2002: Rudolf is prepping for the trial, saying there are two stories to present: what happened that night and Michael’s “great love” with Kathleen. He then tells Michael he needs to look at the autopsy photos because he doesn’t want him to be surprised in court.
“All autopsy photos are bad,” Rudolf tells him. “Mike, these are worse.” Michael refuses to look at them and storms out.
Michael tells him he’s a veteran and he’s seen death, it doesn’t mean he needs to see more. He’s not going to look at them, not ever, he says.
Next we see Caitlin doing an interview with former WTVD/ABC11 reporter Sonya Pfeiffer (Teri Wyble), with Tom Maher supervising. Pfeiffer reads to Caitlin from a paper she wrote in high school about Mike and Kathleen’s love. Caitlin is shocked and asks her how she got it.
“Dav — Mr. Rudolf gave it to me,” Pfeiffer answers.
Michael saved it and shared it, Maher offers.
Caitlin excuses herself to go to the bathroom, but once in the hallway she rips off her mic and leaves the building.
Forensics experts work out the evidence
This segment of the episode switches back and forth quickly between the night of Michael’s fundraiser in 2001 (57 days before Kathleen’s death) and a day during trial prep in January 2002, when Rudolf had a team of forensic scientists at the house to examine the crime scene and offer theories of Kathleen’s death.
2001: At Michael’s campaign fundraiser, Lori shows up to help Kathleen and she has an old childhood friend with her: Dennis Rowe (Morgan Henard).
2002: Acclaimed forensic scientists Henry Lee and Werner Spitz — along with an expert on injury biomechanics and a crime scene analyst — arrive at the house.
2001: At the fundraiser, we see Michael on the phone with male escort Brent Wolgamott (aka Brad from Raleigh), making plans to meet soon.
2002: Sitting on the bloody staircase landing, Spitz says one fall can’t explain seven lacerations on Kathleen’s head. What about two falls, Rudolf asks. That would help explain the blood on the soles of her feet, Spitz says. Rudolf seems satisfied.
2001: At the fundraiser, Michael is ranting about DA Jim Hardin when Kathleen introduces him to Dennis Rowe. Both men react strangely and it’s clear they know each other but are pretending not to. Then we see Kathleen sitting on the back staircase taking a call from work.
2002: Henry Lee is on the staircase demonstrating how Kathleen could have died. He pantomimes the entire sequence: the fall, the grasping at the doorway, another fall, the coughing of blood, the squirming. Michael watches for a moment, then turns and walks away.
2001: Michael makes a speech and then the Durham Dance Company performs. As Michael and Kathleen watch, Kathleen looks troubled. She tells Michael: “I’m tired, Mike. All the time, to the bones. I need help.” Michael says, “I know, baby, I know. I’ll make it easier, I promise.”
2002: On the staircase, a tape plays of a woman screaming for help. Michael and Rudolf go out to the pool and they can’t hear it, proving that if Kathleen had fallen and called out for help the night she died, Michael wouldn’t have heard.
2001: After the fundraiser, Kathleen goes through all the checks collected for Michael and looks pleased. Michael is asleep on the sofa. Kathleen calls Caitlin to apologize for missing Parents Weekend and tells her that she loves her and she’ll make it up to her. Then once again Kathleen hears the noise in the attic and this time she goes to check it out. She pulls down the attic door and starts to climb up when a bat flies toward her. She falls back onto the floor.
2002: Rudolf sits with his experts and notes that Kathleen had numerous injuries and that after their work, they can account for “nearly all.” She wasn’t beaten or attacked by an intruder, Rudolf says, she fell twice. He starts to lay out what happened that night.
Kathleen’s death: Take 1
December 2001: The next scene is Michael and Kathleen by the pool on the night she died. She gets up and starts to walk inside, says she needs to get some stuff done before bed.
She walks into the house and starts up the back stairs, wearing flipflops.
She trips and falls back, hitting her head on the door jamb. She collapses on the landing, unconscious. After several seconds, she gasps and stirs and struggles to rise. She’s bleeding profusely now. The rest of the scene plays out exactly as Henry Lee described, and it’s very graphic, very bloody, very upsetting to watch.
2002: Back at the table with the experts, Rudolf picks up the narrative: Michael finds her and she’s still breathing, he holds her and wipes her face, calls 911 and begs for help, but it’s too late.
“Sometimes when we do everything we can, it’s still not enough,” Michael says. Then gets up and leaves the table.
Bill asks: “What about the scratches on her face, what about the broken neck bone? Do we say how she got those?”
“No,” Spitz replies. “Why not?” Bill asks.
“Because you don’t get them falling down the stairs,” Spitz says.
There’s silence and then Rudolf says, “Maybe her throat hit the wood or face banged the wall, I’m not worried about it.”
Caitlin turns
2002: Caitlin and her father, Fred, are at the DA’s office with Hardin and Freda Black.
Caitlin looks at the autopsy photos of her mom and Hardin goes over the toxicology report. “Her blood alcohol was .07 with a Valium level of .15 milligrams per liter. To put it simply, by legal standards, she wasn’t intoxicated when she died,” Hardin tells her. Caitlin cries.
Black tells them that Kathleen didn’t die by accident, that Michael killed her.
Back at the Peterson house, Michael finds out that Caitlin has switched sides and he’s angry. He tells Margaret and Martha not to talk to her.
Rudolf says that Caitlin gets one hour to get her stuff out of the house — out of her home — and she is limited to her bedroom only, and is supervised the whole time. She wants some of her mother’s jewelry, but can’t have it until the estate is settled.
She manages to slip a note to Margaret and Martha inside the bathroom medicine cabinet. They later read the note while in the car, and Margaret balls it up and throws it out the window.
The French hit Durham
2002: Michael tells the family about the documentary crew coming. He tells Margaret and Martha to go back to school and tells Clayton to go back to Baltimore and stay out of the spotlight. He tells Todd he needs to “step up and be the man of the house” while he’s distracted by the case.
The filmmakers arrive and film Michael out by the swimming pool, matter-of-factly telling them what happened the night Kathleen died and how he found her “barely” alive.
De Lestrade comments in French about how uncomfortable Michael acts, then “directs” him to show more emotion. Michael bristles at the suggestion that he should act for the cameras.
Then they all notice someone standing outside on the lawn. It’s Patricia “Patty” Peterson (Trini Alvarado), Michael’s first wife. She waves.
“Hello! I saw that you were busy and I didn’t want to bother you,” she yells out. Then an owl hoots and Patty gazes up into the trees.
Meanwhile at Candace’s house, she notices the blow poke, grabs it and starts beating a pillow with it. Her husband yells at her to stop and she screams, “That son of a bitch used the blow poke!”
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
HBO’s ‘The Staircase’ Episode 6: The Owl Theory takes flight + preparing for Alford
More coverage of HBO’s Peterson saga ‘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
▪ 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 8:05 AM.
