You've heard of Occam's razor, haven't you? The theory that, if there's more than one possible explanation for something, the simplest one is usually correct.
You can forget all about that, however, when it comes to Netflix's true crime doc The Staircase, and the new Sky Atlantic drama that it has now spawned . What if, in this case, the correct explanation is actually the most bizarre one? What if everything you know is wrong? What if Michael Peterson didn't kill his wife, but nor did she just accidentally fall down the stairs?
What if Kathleen Peterson died because she was attacked by a massive owl?
In 2003, Michael Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife. He was said to have attacked her with a fireplace tool, causing blunt force trauma to her head and causing her to fall or pushing her down the stairs.
But in 2008 his neighbour Larry Pollard put forward the theory that Kathleen had been the victim of an attack by a barred owl via a series of YouTube videos. They're common around Durham, North Carolina, where the Petersons lived, and there's a lot of examples of them attacking people by dive-bombing the head.
Pollard said that what might have happened is that either the owl got into the Peterson house, got spooked by Kathleen walking into the bedroom, attacked her, and caused her to fall down the stairs, or that she was attacked while in the front garden, out of earshot of Michael, then attempted to walk up the stairs before collapsing down them.
A reexamination of the evidence in 2009 seemed to back the idea up. Kathleen was found to have had a microscopic feather and a sliver of wood from a tree limb caught up in a clump of hair in her hand that had been pulled out by the roots from her head.
Pollard told Raleigh, North Carolina's newspaper, in 2010 that the tiny feather gave them "new hope" of overturning the conviction.
"We know that we got the feather," he said. "We know that it happened late at night. We know that there was a small wooden slither recovered that was determined to be a tree limb. The SBI crime lab did not examine the feathers. They assumed these feathers didn't have anything to do with the crime."
In three new affidavits submitted to the court, three expert witness backed up the owl theory. Dr Patrick T Redig, professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Minnesota, said the proposed attack was "entirely within the behavioural repertoire of large owls".
In another, the neurosurgeon, owl expert and former US Navy surgeon Dr Alan van Norman endorsed the theory on the basis that the wounds on Kathleen's scalp looked like they came from a pair of three-taloned feet rather than a blunt instrument: "The multiple wounds present suggest to me that an owl and Ms Peterson somehow became entangled. Perhaps the owl got tangled in her hair or perhaps she grabbed the owl's foot."
In the last, the director of Raptors of the Rockies, Kate P Davis, wrote that the lacerations "look very much like those made by a raptor's talons, especially if she had forcibly torn the bird from the back of her head". This theory, she said, would explain the feather in her hand and the clumps of hair torn from her head.
Peterson's lead defence attorney David Rudolf told Vulture (no relation to the owl) that he was persuaded by the theory. "When you step back and really start getting familiar with the fact that there have been literally scores if not hundreds of documented instances of owls attacking the heads of people… and you look at the wounds and you compare them with the talons of an owl, it starts having some real credibility."
There are some holes in the theory, obviously. Why didn't Michael Peterson hear or see a massive owl? Why wasn't there any other trace of the owl except a couple of tiny feathers? How is a massive owl meant to have got into the house in the first place? Are we just endorsing a patently absurd theory to absolve a man of the violent death of a woman?
Nevertheless, the owl theory is clearly important. You won't hear about it on The Staircase, though, and that's not because the powerful pro-owl lobby have been funnelling money into the case: Michael Peterson's defence attorney David Rudolf only became aware of the theory just before the summing up of evidence so didn't have time to put it forward, and the documentary sticks to what was said in court.
"Because it was never introduced inside the courtroom, I decided not to talk about that theory," The Staircase director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade told Vulture. "It’s really a mystery, the way she died."
It's no mystery, my friend. It's an absolutely massive owl. Occam's razor is dead. Long live the owl theory.
