FROM THE VAULT - The Staircase: Michael Peterson - Parts 1&2

**Suruthi** (0:00)
Hello, hello there, if you're listening to this, then it's because you understand that for the month of July, dear listeners, we are taking you on a virtual road trip through the whole of North America.
We haven't been for a few years now, and it's just quite hard, visas are hard, guys. So we're gonna do it with the power of the back catalog and your imagination. What are we doing this week, Hannah?

**Hannah** (0:24)
Well, apparently the staircase, but in a meeting the other week, I had to ask if we had covered it. And apparently we did.

**Suruthi** (0:33)
How dare you?

**Hannah** (0:36)
I just had forgotten about it, which is quite rare for me. So I don't know if I'm actually qualified to be doing this top right now. I can't remember. Fuck.

**Suruthi** (0:44)
Oh my God. Well, I wrote the staircase script, two-parter script. So I do remember it and I fell down a big fucking staircase while researching this. It is a fucking bonkers story.
I mean, obviously you guys are gonna listen to it now. Hopefully you've already heard the episode. If you haven't, don't worry. It's about to be played for you. It took place in North Carolina. Let's say that firstly, while we're here on our big North American road trip, we're stopping off in North Carolina. And honestly, people are like, what comes to mind when you think of North Carolina? It's the fucking staircase case for me.
It is mad. It's basically the story of this woman who falls down or is pushed down a flight of stairs and dies at the bottom. Was she pushed? Did she fall? Was it an owl? Was it her husband? Are owls the new husbands?

**Hannah** (1:31)
Oh, it's the owl one.

**Suruthi** (1:33)
It's the owl case. It's the fucking owl case. I obviously started off thinking, well, obviously, the fucking husband did it. But by the end, I don't fucking know.
And I think it could have been an owl, as you will understand when you listen to this episode again.

**Hannah** (1:50)
I feel like it is creeping back to me. I think I am also Team Owl. So I'll listen to it.

**Suruthi** (1:56)
Thank you.

**Hannah** (1:59)
And you can do it too. You can listen to it right now because here it is.

**Suruthi** (2:04)
Enjoy.
I'm Suruthi, I'm Hannah. And welcome to your end of year RedHanded class. Welcome, everybody. This is it, guys. This is the final two-parter of our RedHanded journey here for 2023

**Hannah** (2:31)
And I just remembered this as I heard you say your own name, which I obviously heard you do many, many times.

**Suruthi** (2:38)
I am always saying my name.

**Hannah** (2:41)
Do you know or have you seen what YouTube has auto-corrected your name to in the subtitles of our videos?

**Suruthi** (2:51)
Is it Surunthi?

**Hannah** (2:51)
No.

**Suruthi** (2:52)
What is it? STI. STI?
What? YouTube.

**Hannah** (3:00)
Someone tweeted us this morning.

**Suruthi** (3:02)
Brilliant.
To not a specific STI. No, it's just, I'm STI.

**Hannah** (3:05)
She's caused me gonorrhea.

**Suruthi** (3:10)
Well, Merry fucking Christmas from STI. Let's start again. Hello, I'm STI.
Fuck off. That is outrageous. Anyway, we'll deal with that later. For now, we've got too much to deal with.

**Hannah** (3:26)
We've got quite a lot to deal with.

**Suruthi** (3:28)
Too many things, almost like having a very vigorous STI, is how it has been to research this case, because I could not stop. It was relentless.
I said on Under the Duvet a few weeks ago that this was by far the hardest case I've ever had to research, because it never ends. Every time you go onto Google and search the name Peterson in some combination of question, it is filled with articles that I have never seen before. I'm like, how is this happening? Every other case you do, you hit a point where you've read everything there is to read.

**Hannah** (4:01)
Or you're coming across what you think are new articles, but they're actually just repeating stuff you already have.

**Suruthi** (4:06)
I've also never seen a case where there are so many articles by reputable places that I feel like that must be worth reading.

**Hannah** (4:13)
Right.

**Suruthi** (4:15)
So here we are. After many a week researching this case, we're ready to finally talk about it and I'm very excited for it to be fucking done.
So, one of the bazillion articles I did read whilst researching this case over the past month or so started with the line. If you've heard of Michael Peterson, you probably have a strong opinion about whether or not he murdered his wife Kathleen. If that is true, which I do believe it is, then I think I am massively in the minority. Because after sitting with this case for weeks, reading, watching, listening to everything I could get my hands on, I still don't know what I actually think. So you can go into this two-parter, guys, because that is what it's going to have to be. It's going to have to be the Christmas RedHanded two-parter.