From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. The listing for the property reads: "Historic 3.5 acre, 9,500 sq ft home in Forest Hills, Durham. “And it took 15 years.”. David Rudolf remembers being in a small airport in the southern African country of Zambia the first time he was recognized as the bearded, bespectacled defense lawyer in a documentary — “Soupçons,” a series that first aired on French television back in 2004. And to admit that he thought on a retrial Michael would have been found not guilty. Now, de Lestrade is closing out The Staircase series on Netflix with the addition of three new episodes that document Peterson’s last trial and where he is today. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person. And I think it was the right decision. On the other hand, the fall scenario put forth by the defense didn’t entirely satisfy me either. The second piece of information that investigation uncovered was that a close family friend Elizabeth Ratliff, whose daughters were later raised by the Petersons, had been found dead at the bottom of a staircase years before Kathleen Peterson died. The first eight episodes are characterized by a sense of confidence that the system will prevail. While he claimed that Kathleen knew about and accepted his other relationships, prosecutors said during the trial that she had discovered it recently and confronted him on the night of her death. How it got made, what went into it, how the crew got all that access. I mean, it wasn’t like I was in bumf--- North Carolina. Thomas B. Metzloff, a law professor at Duke University who was one of Michael and Kathleen’s neighbors at the time of her death, told The News & Observer that The Staircase is required viewing for his students—though he disagrees with the documentary’s suggestion that Peterson did not get a fair trial. No, I don’t think so. Unity soon crumbles as the men are faced with a series of obstacles, both natural and man-made. You may be emotionally injured, you may be under major stress, but mostly you’re just feeling this adrenaline. “But at the same time, I kind of formed an intuition that there was something else. “Anybody who believes in the justice system, raise their hand,” Peterson says. But she never let her own feelings affect the course of editing.”. In this book, true crime historian Harold Schechter sorts out the truth and fiction that inspired some of Hollywood’s best-known murder movies—including Psycho (1960), Scream (1996), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). But I don’t think it affected, in any way, the substance of what I was doing, or how I was doing it, or how I was talking to Michael, or how I was talking to the experts. At the time, I didn’t. On Thursday, Oct. 4, he’ll join “The Staircase” producer Allyson Luchak and former Raleigh television journalist Sonya Pfeiffer — who covered the Peterson trial and is now Rudolf’s wife as well as a partner at his law firm — for a panel discussion at Charlotte’s McGlohon Theater titled “Inside the Staircase: Lies, Fake Science, and the Owl Theory.”, We recently had a conversation with Rudolf in his firm’s conference room — adorned with a large illustration of Rudolf defending another high-profile client, Rae Carruth — that should hook any aficionado of “The Staircase.” (The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. We’re hooked on stories about crime and murder, and if you know one of those obsessives who eagerly binges every true crime documentary and podcast that crosses their path, you’re in luck—we’ve compiled a list of gifts that will appeal to any murder mystery lover. You can watch as much as you want, whenever you want without a single commercial – all for one low monthly price. I mean, they had amazing access even inside the jail. It Was in Canada, What We Can Learn About Nazi Rule From the 'Ideal Nazi Wife’. The whole family (Image: Netflix). In April 2018, Netflix’s three new episodes of The Staircase premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. De Lestrade initially thought he’d tell Peterson’s story as a two-hour movie for HBO, as a followup of sorts to his Oscar-winning documentary Murder on a Sunday Morning, which covered the case of a poor black teenager who was wrongfully accused of killing a woman. “Or to look for what happened that night. Not just because his protestations of innocence and grief are pitiable (although they are), or because he summarizes his life with a quote from Romeo and Juliet, “All are punished” (although he does). For example, when Judge Hudson would not force the prosecution to tell me whether they intended to get into the Germany stuff or not, leaving me at sea about what was gonna happen in the trial. But in terms of what was right for my client, it was the right result, and I’m at peace with it. After a careful look—over several days—at Kathleen’s injuries, he told me, ‘These injuries are not consistent with any form of blunt instrument used as a weapon. And what we’re hoping to do is to not just answer questions about the facts in the case, but broaden the discussion a little bit about what it says about the criminal justice system, and about lawyers’ roles in the criminal justice system, how changes can be made in the criminal justice system to address some of the issues that you see in “The Staircase,” and some of these other true-crime documentaries that have come out in recent years. I mean, you’re living in a bubble, basically, when you’re on trial, and this trial went on for five months. Some people use coloring books to relax, while others use them to dive into the grisly murders of American serial killers. As Arthur Fleck, a disenfranchised and marginalized member of society, Phoenix channels his frustrations into sowing the seeds of anarchy in Gotham City. Then of course we’ll get into all the questions that people have about Germany, and about the blow poke, and about the owl. ... Then, of course, Sonya is a great moderator, but she also covered the case. I mean, Demorris Lee was the News & Observer reporter, he and I became friendly. But finding the truth was never Lestrade's goal. “When I finally completed The Staircase in September 2004, I felt as emotionally drained as David Rudolf did at the end of the film,” he wrote. It seems like Lestrade filmed throughout 2015 and 2016, making The Staircase a series that has spanned over a decade in the lives of those involved. It wasn’t as though they interrupted and said, “Oh, wait, can you do that again? So, in every trial, there’s that give and take. “But, at the same time, there was a kind of mystery about this man. I think a lot of people had these stereotypes from “Law & Order,” or whatever. Peterson was convicted in 2003, but while you know him from The Staircase there's more to him. But his several hundred hours of footage, edited into The Staircase, form their own distinct, queasy testimony. And the other thing that’s been great is the comments I’ve gotten about criminal defense lawyers, and that what I did in this case changed people’s views about what criminal defense lawyers do, and how they do it, and why they do it. Q. It’s probably been really interesting this time around to see all of the reaction to the series, now that it’s been exposed to a wider audience — and particularly because of the way social media has changed how conversations are had about television shows since its previous airings. I don’t know the answer to that. Michael Peterson is … Not with that jury. Lestrade would be drawn back to this particular case more than once, and that ongoing curiosity is something viewers of The Staircase might share.