Customer Reviews

The Staircase

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As someone who's been intrigued since childhood by true crime stories and forensics, I was transfixed by this magnificently crafted documentary when it premiered some years ago on the Sundance Channel. The sinuous way that the narrative unfolds, how starkly the characters on all sides come to reveal themselves, the mystery of what actually happened to Kathleen Peterson, the tragedy of three families torn asunder over two decades, and all of it framed by truly haunting original music...I often found myself gasping in amazement and appreciation. What a rare opportunity to be a fly on the wall, an insider regarding this extraordinary and deeply disturbing story! I remember starting out with a strong feeling of sympathy for the poor husband, Michael Peterson, and identification with the twin tragedies of losing a loved one and being unjustly accused.

Nonetheless, even though the film was clearly sympathetic to the defense - chapter titles like `Prosecution Trickery' and `A Weak Case' leave no doubt - and granted much more time to their arguments and concerns, a gut feeling began to emerge: neither Michael Peterson nor his story added up. How on earth could a fall down the stairs cause those injuries, or result in that much blood? And if it was an accident, why did he take off his shoes? Try to wipe the walls clean? Lie to 911 about Kathleen breathing when she had clearly been dead for some time? Lie to the EMTs about being in the house just prior to the fall and saying it must have happened when he just went out to the pool for a few minutes? Change his story for the detectives when he realized the evidence told a different tale? Despite extensive opportunities to provide a detailed explanation and make a strong case for reasonable doubt - including a computer-simulated multiple-fall scenario - the defense's hired guns failed to persuade, perhaps because Peterson's own comportment was often so damning.

Long after seeing `The Staircase', I realized I was still bugged by the case. I began to read more about the trial, look at the evidence...and was shocked to find a record almost completely different from the film! What director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade left on the cutting room floor was a towering mountain of irrefutable forensic evidence pointing to Peterson as a vicious, calculating killer. Just the blood spatter evidence alone would have been more than sufficient to show that this was murder, committed by Michael: spray patterns high on the walls indicated that a long, thin weapon with the victim's blood on it was whipped around in the stairwell; some of the spatter was from blows where the victim's head was nowhere near the steps, stairlift, or track; fine spatter from struck blows - not footsteps, say - found its way upward into the crotch of Michael Peterson's shorts, proving he stood over her, striking the top of her head; his bloody footprint was stamped onto her pants leg; there were layers of fresher blood on drier blood, with later impacts spraying an area of the wall that had already been wiped down in a furtive attempt to clean up. The blood evidence strongly suggests that Michael thought she was dead and already had attempted to alter the scene when she revived unexpectedly - probably while he was in the kitchen - prompting a second, fatal attack at the foot of the stairs.

`The Staircase' doesn't exactly relate how it was almost immediately obvious to investigators that the scene had been staged; that attempts had been made to hide the bloody trail to the kitchen; and that in all this blood there was not a footprint, fingerprint, or other sign of an intruder (one microscopic feather aside, no evidence of a killer owl, the defense team's latest Hail Mary assertion). Furthermore, the autopsy findings were replete with complex, time-dependent trauma you don't hear about in the film, including defensive wounds; facial lesions indicating a struggle; the lack of congruence between the scalp lacerations, the steps, and the stairlift; and the presence of `red neurons' in the brain, indicating that significant blood loss occurred by 12-12:30am at the latest, over two hours before Peterson's highly suspicious 911 calls starting at 2:41am. There was also a curious lack of significant bruising on the hips or legs - an absence highly unlikely in the multiple-falls-down-stairs scenario proposed by the defense but consistent with the two theorized rounds of head and upper body assault (which seem to have included some punches and throttling as well).

Basically, it appears Peterson failed to understand that the timeline of his staged scenario - he claimed at first that the fall had just happened, a short time before the 911 call - wouldn't hold up. Nor had he imagined that a forensic meteorologist would easily disprove his second story - that he sat alone by the pool between 1-2am, wearing little more than a tee shirt and shorts in 50 degree December weather, and only discovered Kathleen when he came inside. Like most calculating murderers, especially narcissistic ones, he underestimated the investigators' skill and insight. To their trained eyes there was a world of difference between Kathleen Peterson falling down the stairs and being beaten to death over a period of an hour or two.

Artful and compelling though `The Staircase' is, I have to think that Lestrade, director of the righteously superb `Murder On A Sunday Morning', used this case to advance a point of view familiar to those who know his work: that Peterson was a victim of bias, a grieving husband prosecuted by narrow-minded people who loathed his politics, were intimidated by his intelligence, resented his success, and aimed to exploit his bisexuality in court. The fact is that Lestrade has said as much in interviews since the film's release. There can be no denying that the prosecution did play the sex card for all it was worth, but perhaps it would have been malpractice to do otherwise: the defense's opening statement was that Michael & Kathleen had an almost storybook, `soulmate' kind of marriage, which his compulsive gay tomcatting at the Y (uncovered by the defense team's investigator) seemed to belie. And the lethal confrontation could well have been triggered by Kathleen stumbling across some of Michael's explicit emails to gay escort `Brad' when she surprised her husband by asking to use his computer late that evening and proceeded to use his email account to receive a work-related document from a colleague. So, the defendant's sexual behavior was highly relevant to both prosecution and defense, and the jury was spared some of the more incriminating parts.

Politically, Lestrade and I probably have alot in common, and his other films have argued powerfully for justice, but unfortunately `The Staircase' dons the blinders again and again. If the director had truly aspired to fairness, he would surely have given the prosecution a chance to show how powerful the financial motive was - they did this quite effectively at trial, right in front of Lestrade's cameras. The film also sidesteps the way the prosecution demonstrated that a serious marital rift had started to unfold the Friday evening before Kathleen's death, with Michael's Saturday email reference to an argument they had while out for dinner, followed by Peterson hastily deleting thousands of gay porno pics from his computer that afternoon, just hours before the fatal events. He didn't delete them all, though, and the forensic data expert's testimony left no doubt that Kathleen had been using Michael's computer - a rarity, according to other testimony - just minutes before the neurological evidence shows she started to lose massive amounts of blood.

Lestrade stated some time later in an interview that Michael wouldn't have been prosecuted if he hadn't been gay. There is indeed a great deal of cruel prejudice in this world, and not just in Durham. As regards the Peterson case, however, the director's assertion is unsupported by the facts, which strongly suggest otherwise. No experienced investigator coming upon that scene at Forest Hills could possibly have failed to realize in short order that this was a brutal, cold-blooded murder, staged to look like an accident. And then to learn that Michael Peterson had also been the last person to see Liz Ratliff alive before she ended up at the bottom of stairs drenched in blood, years earlier...of course he would be a strong suspect. Lestrade should know that every single juror who was interviewed later insisted that there was never any disagreement or doubt on the panel that a murder had been committed, and that physical evidence like the 'red neurons' and blood spatter were incontrovertible. And Lestrade to the contrary, the juror interviews I've read suggest that jury members were far from narrow-minded about Peterson's sexual orientation - what seems to have mattered most to them about the defendant was his duplicitous behavior. One comes away with the impression that the panel was relatively thoughtful and conscientious.

Frankly, from a forensic standpoint, the Peterson case turns out to have been alot more straightforward than most people, including many of the film's reviewers, seem to think. That suggests to me that this riveting but deceptively selective film has misled many of us. I'm reminded a little of Oliver Stone's shamelessly truthy `JFK', a fictional film masquerading as fact. 'JFK' purported to answer the riddle of Dallas but actually led viewers about as far from the truth as it was possible to go, meandering off into the byzantine, self-aggrandizing paranoia-realm of the thoroughly discredited Jim Garrison.

As with that film, `The Staircase''s tragic flaw stems from a brilliant but self-righteous director's blindness to his own prejudices. The result: an unforgettable film whose dishonesty makes for an irony I can't quite get out of my mind.

I watched the Peterson trial on Court TV in 2003, heard all the witnesses, and was convinced of Peterson's guilt. I rented this DVD the other day and watched all 6 hours compulsively. The inside look at Peterson, his defense team, and their strategy sessions was fascinating. But one huge problem: the filmmaker was so entranced by the defense case that he left out majorly important evidentiary facts. As another reviewer on this site indicated, the filmmaker left out the very evidence that the jury used to convict Peterson. Broken wineglass, his bloody footprint on her back, red neurons in her brain (indicating she'd been bleeding to death and unconscious for over 2 hours), ruptured hyaline cartilage in her throat (characteristic of attempted strangulation; not possible from a fall), blood spatter on the inner, wrong-side-out leg of his shorts, evidence that he tried to clean up the scene, and much more. Too bad for Peterson that there were 3 nurses and one clinical researcher on the jury. They weren't fooled by Henry Lee's assertion that 'there was too much blood for a beating'! Such an absurd statement.
Interestingly, in one of the DVD's 'extra' features, the filmmaker complains about how unfair the American justice system is! Well, I'm complaining about how unfair this film is! I give it 4 stars because it was well done and I couldn't stop watching. But don't be taken in by this piece of propaganda. The real evidence against Peterson was overwhelming.

The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2004)

When I can sit staring into space for a half an hour after watching a documentary stunned at the outcome, it's a good documentary. When I can do it when I already knew the outcome, we go from good to exceptional pretty fast.

Now, before I go anywhere with this: since it seems to be a bone of contention among those who debate the merits of this documentary, whether Michael Peterson is guilty or not is not the thrust of this documentary. Nor was it the thrust of the trial. Trials are not about guilt or innocence-- they are about the creation and destruction of reasonable doubt. A number of the combatants (and there really is no other word to describe them) who have flung words back and forth about this film have either forgotten this, or never knew it in the first place.

Lestrade, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care one way or the other. This is an outrageous larger-than-life cast of characters, none of whom seems in the least concerned with the fact that they're all involved in a murder trial. It's not quite as off-the-wall, character-wise, as Gates of Heaven, but it's up there. If you were going to write a satire of a courtroom thriller, you might well come up with characters like these-- the oblivious protagonist, accused of killing his wife in what may be the most improbable manner the prosecution could have chosen; the victim, whose death was improbable no matter what option you considered; the kids/stepkids, who practice a weirdly vacant form of denial; the prosecution, who resemble the shrieking-harridan Greek chorus in a badly-filmed musical; the defense, who come off as competent, but not much more so than the prosecution (the main difference between the two, Lestrade seems to be telling us, is that the defense has a sense of humor); etc. From the point of view of simply following this cast around like Errol Morris and letting them dig their own holes, The Staircase is an unqualified triumph. Who needs editing to make people look dumb? Just turn the camera on them long enough, they'll do it themselves.

For the first half of this, you will likely be as convinced as I was that Lestrade isn't even interested in the trial itself; he was having so much fun with these people that I wondered if the trial would have even opened by the time he'd finished filming. It does (and, in fact, it ends), and at that point, even if Lestrade was just chronicling, we, as viewers, have to concern ourselves with the trial. We have no choice; we're about to spend three hours engrossed in it. A number of us spent a whole lot more time engrossed in it as well, as it was carried, minute by minute, on CourtTV.

As far as the trial is concerned, Lestrade's thesis seems to be that no matter how strong the circumstantial evidence, the method of death advanced by the prosecution was so ludicrous as to create reasonable doubt by itself. This seems to be accurate, though Lestrade was certainly not above slanting the footage he ended up showing us to support his point of view. (Interestingly, in the exhaustive lists of forensic evidence not shown to the viewers are a number of things that would have strengthened, not lessened, Lestrade's case that there was reasonable doubt; if he was as biased as people claim when making this film, why were those things not left in?) Still, as with the trial, all the circumstantial and anecdotal evidence is just that. Michael Peterson may be guilty as sin, but unless you can conceive of this crime happening in the way it was presented by the prosecution, how can you not have reasonable doubt? And if you can conceive of the crime in that way, you have a far more vivid imagination than I do.

One way or the other, though, Lestrade has created an extremely entertaining, if somewhat jaundiced, look at the American legal system. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll puke. ****

This film offers an insight into the narcisistic personality of an accused murderer but does little to forward the cause of justice or present a true picture of his trial. I learned this the hard way. I had never heard of the case until I saw the two hour tv special. I was intrigued because of the overwhelming appearance of murder and yet it was a largely circumstantial case. I decided to view the 8 episode documentary. I guess I should have been suspicious after viewing episode titles like "a prosecution trickery" and "a weak case." I was floored when Peterson said, "If she (Caitlin, Kathleen's daughter) had kept her mouth shut, we wouldn't be here. She and Candace (Kathleen's sister)." Does that sound like an innocent person? Then there is the startling moment when the defense attorney waves a blowpoke around without a witness to explain where it was found, when it was found, and by whom. (There was actually no EVIDENCE that it was found in the house--defense cross-examination of a witness with no knowledge of where it was found does not constitute evidence.) Still, those things may support a suspicion of guilt, but they don't constitute lack of reasonable doubt. So I started doing research online and looking at actual trial transcripts and exhibits. I was shocked by what I discovered.

As others point out, this documentary omits crucial evidence that was admitted at trial, most notably how Peterson gave a different alibi to the first responders ("I just went out to turn off the lights and came in") and that there was blood splatter INSIDE the leg of is shorts that could only occur if he was standing over her. While some omissions can be explained by the necessity to edit over 600 hours of film, the failure to include such crucial evidence creates a completely false impression and casts a dubious shadow over this documentary. Frankly, it's intellectually dishonest and manipulative. (Hmmm, who does that remind you of?) I expected more integrity from this Oscar-winning director.

In December 2001, novelist Michael Peterson's wife, Kathleen, died. Peterson said that he found her at the bottom of a staircase in their North Carolina home. Eventually, prosecutors charged Peterson with her murder.

The Staircase covers familiar territory in the age of O.J., Robert Blake, and Phil Spector - the celebrity on trial. The murder charge shatters Peterson's life and causes his family to choose sides. The charges expose unflattering and embarrassing facts about Peterson.

The filmmakers have amazing access to Peterson. They film him at home and ask Peterson intimate questions. You feel like a voyeur while watching a man under almost-unbearable pressure. But you cannot stop watching. You watch because Peterson might do or say something that reveals whether he is a murderer.

The Staircase is pro-defense. Peterson's attorneys are intelligent, principled, and logical. The prosecutors and judge are bumbling, myopic, and possibly corrupt. One does wonder whether important aspects of the story are missing here.

I was very surprised at the Amazon reviewers who said that this film is boring. I watched with my wife and it held our attention for the full six hours. (We watched over several nights). By the end, we both were riveted to the screen.

Was justice done? I don't know. Based on what I have read at Amazon, I need to learn some more about the case. I recommend The Staircase to anyone who is interested in justice in the United States.

Since the filmmakers had access to Peterson and his family, this documentary is inevitably a bit one-sided. But in a way, this fact drives home the horror of the crime and the terrible reality of Peterson's evil with greater force.

The film's real triumph is its portrayal of Peterson--outwardly witty, charming, sensitive, and totally unthreatening. Yet with time, we catch disturbing glimpses of his skewed thinking, self-pity, and oddly distorted personality. Like all sociopaths, we sense that something is wrong with him but cannot say precisely what it is. Finally, he seems scarcely to exist at all--he is a living mask concealing a void, a man who engages fully with the world and yet seems as detached from it as a person suffering from autism.

The devil does indeed have the ability to assume a pleasing shape--and lives in a perfectly ordinary, pleasant environment.

A triumph, that teaches a very sobering lesson.

This documentary about the "other" Peterson case keep you riveted but it won't tell you the whole story.
Despite their claims to the contrary, the film makers of The Staircase clearly have a point of view. They set out to make a film about a murder trial from the defendants point of view and their opinion of America and the American justice system is evident in nearly every frame. In short, Southerners are unsophisticated, the police tend to rush to judgment and the prosecution is willing to cut corners.
So why 4 stars? Because while Lestrade presents Peterson's and his attorney's (David Rudolph) version of events as if they were the gospel and leaves out key pieces of evidence, they are damned by their own words and actions. Rudolph's arrogant insistence that "there is not motive" leads him to paint the Peterson marriage as a union of "soul mates" that is belied by Michael Peterson's regular emails to a paid escort. Any claim to compassion for Liz Ratliffe is in stark contrast to Peterson and his brother joking about "lightening striking twice." Peterson comes across as deeply self-absorbed and self-enchanted, Rudolph as having a persecution complex. All of which is highly entertaining and highly revealing.
I highly recommend buying this along with Diane Fanning's more balance telling of the story Written In Blood. You'll be amazed at what Lestrade left out. The huge debts, Peterson's spending spree after Kathleen's death, one son's arrest for attempting to bomb his college dorm, how Peterson benefited financially from Ratliffe's death, etc. Read it first and you may end up tossing things at the screen.

I just finished watching "The Staircase" last night. It is a very impressive, highly addictive document that will instantly have its hooks in you from episode 1. There are a couple of key things I feel are worth mentioning that I picked up from some of the negative reviews. The main compliant is "The Staircase" is presented in a way that makes it look like Michael Peterson is actually innocent and NC wrongly locked him up. I went into this film knowing that Michael Peterson was already found guilty and based on what I have read, do believe he committed the murder. However, watching this film, I can easily see why people can walk away feeling he was wrongly convicted. There were even a couple of times I had a reasonable doubt!

The main thing to keep in mind is 80% of the film is shot from the defense's perspective. Most of the footage is taken from the Peterson house, interviews with the kids, his brothers, ex-wife. You candidly are exposed to the defense team and how they set up their strategy to defend Peterson, even after all the bizarre instances are exposed over the course of the investigation and trial. A majority of what you are watching over 6 hours is a family that really wants to believe their father did not murder their mother, and a defense team that is trying their hardness to get a murderer off even though all fingers seem to point right at him.

In the bonus features, the director points out that after a couple months, the prosecution did not want the film crew to have 'all-access' pass to their case and refused to let them film, unlike the Peterson family/ defense which was an open book. The initial intent was to have a balanced story, but it didn't turn out that way. So in the end "The Staircase" is not really pure documentary of the murder and trial of Kathleen Peterson. It is more a documentary on Michael Peterson and his family after the murder of their wife/ mother, and how a high-end murder defense team defends their client. Absolutely fascinating. But not a balanced criminal/ judicial documentary.

I purchased this DVD about 7 months ago and I must have watched all eight episodes at least ten times.

By the time I had watched it the second time, I was convinced Michael Peterson was guilty; even before I found a great Website on the internet called [...] hosted by a fella named Vance Holmes. Vance has spent a great deal of time researching the entire trial, the victims, and Mr. Peterson himself and clearly points out all the discrepancies in this DVD.

If you visit his Website first, you will be all the more drawn to purchasing this 8-chapter set. Just to KNOW this Peterson guy is GUILTY beyound a resonable doubt, then to watch him snake his way through the trial with his mock tears, and his innapropriate humour at times makes you realize this guy is the most self-centered, narcissistic sociopath that ever walked the streets of Durham, North Carolina.

Not only did he murder his second wife, Kathleen, but it seems pretty obvious he may have murdered his first wife's best friend in Germany when she too was found bloody, and at the bottom of a long staircase. Top this all off with the fact that Michael is Bi-Sexual and had been carrying on multiple affairs with both women and MEN during BOTH his marraiges, and you will walk away thoroughly convinced he belongs in that Prison they interview him in on the last disc's "Special Features" addition vinnette.

Still playing the pitiful role as the persecuted victim, this incredibly insensitve egotist is lucky he didn't meet "Old Sparky" instead of getting off with a life sentence with no parole.

This documentary is a must see for true crime buffs, and a fascinating study in how Peterson's own family and friends can be so blindly decieved by a master Sociopath who cares nothing about anyone but himself. Jean Xavier de Lestrade, "The Staircase" Director should throw his Oscar for "Murder on a Sunday Afternoon" into the Seine River for presenting Peterson as the "innocent victim of a prejudiced court and community" and go back to making commercials in Paris for French Laundries and skinny brown Turkish cigarettes.

Although Lestrade simply closes his featurette interviews on this DVD with comments like "we just don't know what happened," the REST of us are pretty convinced Peterson should have got the "Chair" for murdering not one, but TWO women for who knows what reason but his own. Sociopaths don't always need a reason to kill someone......just a convenient dimly lit Staircase and a trusting soul as his next victim standing before him on those steps.

Like many others who have written their reviews, I found this a compelling and addictive documentary. However, I would urge everyone to please dig deeper and look into the mountain of evidence that was used to convict Peterson - most of which was left on the cutting room floor and was deliberately left out of this documentary.

You have to ask yourself why the film maker, Lestrade, would deliberately try to manipulate the audience into believing that the American justice system put an innocent man in jail for a murder he didn't commit. Instead, the American justice system got it right and poor Kathleen Peterson can rest in peace while her sociopathic husband serves a life sentence for her murder. This documentary failed to show the real reasons why the jury convicted Peterson and that makes this a documentary that is more fiction than fact.