Chapter 168 Section 17

Similarly, the defendants had different explanations for the blood pattern in the stairwell. "Did you see how Reservoir Dogs shake the water off their bodies? The water splashes up, down, left, and right. The spray of blood could have had a similar effect, the kind of blood you see in the pictures of the scene Patterns. For example, after Catherine broke her head, she struggled to stand up again, walked unsteadily, wobbled, and sprayed blood all over the wall. Moreover, blood can also be rubbed onto the wall through hands or clothes, such as When Catherine puts her hands on the wall, or leans against the wall... it can also be coughing blood, or sneezing blood. All these situations may cause you in the stairwell. The blood stains seen in the photo."

At the end of his speech, David Rudolph projected an intimate photo of Mike Peterson and Catherine smiling together on the large monitor. In the first two weeks of the trial, the prosecutors successively summoned the first responders who arrived on the scene, the accountants of Northern Telecom and financial experts from the State Bureau of Investigation, as well as more than a dozen police investigators. The defendant used the opportunity of cross-examination to repeatedly investigate the police's "illegal operations" at the scene, such as failing to stop Mike Peterson, who was covered in blood, from embracing his son in time, allowing unrelated people to enter the scene, and even allowing Mike to throw himself on the ground of his dead wife. Weeping on the body, and so on. "When a scene has been so severely polluted and damaged, can the evidence extracted from this scene still have forensic significance?"

Dan George was one of the investigators most attacked by David Rudolph, so much so that Attorney General Janemond Harding had to retake evidence against him: "Have you ever been to a scene where a suspect has not left A scene where nothing has been altered or polluted, it’s as if it’s frozen.” "Never." The police attitude to Mike Peterson's op-ed is another issue that the defense has wrestled with.Sergeant Frank Burton told the court he was a spokesman for Durham Police from 1998 to 1999. "Indeed, quite a few of us agree with some of Mr. Peterson's op-eds, especially about 'Thirteen Dwarfs,' and that when municipalities give their own workers a raise, they should also give Public servants such as police officers and teachers have their salaries raised."

"Of course," said David Rudolph, "what you disagree with is his articles criticizing the police. Like this one, which says that...the police, in the name of protecting the reputation of the victims, did not report some rapes. To hide the crime rate. Do you agree?" "You are right, sir." Sergeant Bolton looked directly at the defendant's lawyer. "Part of the reason why I was dismissed later was because I wanted to maintain a good relationship with the media. Why? When we can communicate with the newspapers normally When we communicate and communicate, our rate of detection goes up."

Those in the courtroom also heard from witnesses what hadn't been reported by reporters.Eric Compone of the crime scene laboratory was one of two people who followed Dan George to mark the luminol solution as he sprayed it.He told the jurors that the bloodstained cupboard at the end of the string of blue, bare footprints held wine glasses.The wine glasses inside were identical to the two glasses the officers saw by the kitchen sink.One of them was examined, and one had Mike Peterson's fingerprints on it, while the other contained only a few partial prints whose origin could not be identified.Combined with some fragments of wine glasses and two empty wine bottles found later, as well as the blood alcohol content of the Petersons, the police deduced that the owner of the bloody footprints had taken one or two more from the cupboard after Catherine's death. A wine glass and poured a bottle of wine into the sink.The intention, apparently, was to make people think that the Petersons had drank a lot, and to cover up the broken wine glass, which might have been broken by a fight between the two.

What really opened the eyes of the jurors was the appearance of several police computer experts. After the murder of Catherine Peterson, the police were condemned by public opinion for failing to stop Mike Peterson from using the computer in time at the scene and for failing to seize the computer on the same day.Unexpectedly, the computer experts of the police recovered all the files deleted by Mike Peterson. According to the testimonies of the experts, Mike Peterson actually started destroying the computer files while the police were still on the scene and he was in the study with Ted, Benjamin and others.But most of the files were deleted after the police returned 1810 Side Street.

Todd Markley, one of the experts, told the jury that Mike Peterson used a software called "quick removal" to delete 216 files of various kinds on the night of the murder and 352 files after December 10. , and destroyed more than 2,500 pictures at the same time. Some of the letters describing the financial situation of the Peterson family were included in the partial recovery documents that the experts filed with the court.For example, in the late spring of 2001, Mike Peterson emailed Margaret and Martha Ratley's uncle, Thomas Ratley, an oncologist at the University of Tennessee Cancer Research Center, asking him to fund Martha's study at the University of San Francisco. Tuition, $5,000 per semester. "I'm really sorry, but there's nothing else to do—either on your own, or from Martha's share of the Ratley estate," Mike said. If he goes to school locally, he may be able to find a way by himself, but he feels that the child should go outside to see the world.

In November of that year, less than a month before Catherine's death, Mike Peterson emailed his ex-wife asking Padishia to take out a $30,000 mortgage on the property to finance their two sons.Mike said in the email that Clayton's monthly rent and credit card interest are higher than his income as a teaching assistant at North Carolina State University, and Ted's monthly credit card interest is also more than 300 US dollars, and the cost of the credit card The money continued to grow, even though Mike had paid his son's monthly installments on his Mitsubishi Jeep.At the end of the email, Mike wrote: "Please reply as soon as possible and let me know if this arrangement is possible. I really, really need your help, I am driving crazy because there is no way I will go to this kind of thing Talk to Catherine."