DURHAM, N.C. — The vast living room of Michael Peterson's million-dollar home is filled with beautiful Chinese artwork and trinkets the novelist collected during trips to the Far East. A copy of the Dalai Lama's "Advice On Dying and Living a Better Life" rests on a glass coffee table.

Sunshine streams into the room from a huge bay window and is reflected by glass-covered  photographs of Peterson's 1997 marriage to Kathleen Atwater, an executive at one of the many multinational corporations headquartered nearby within Raleigh-Durham's famed Research Triangle.

From fresh homegrown roses on an end table to the low hum of a desktop computer hard drive in Peterson's comfortably furnished study, everything in the three-story, 11,000-square-foot mansion seems to be in proper place and order.

Everything, that is, but the plywood.

Nailed to a door frame just off the kitchen, a sheet of cheap, unpainted wood conceals a blood-stained staircase where Kathleen Peterson, 48, died on Dec. 9, 2001. Eighteen months after her death, the salmon-colored walls and hardwood floor boards have not been cleaned of the blood stains.

Michael and Kathleen Peterson on their wedding day in 1997

The untrained eye only sees the blood stains. Forensic experts hired by Peterson, however, look at the blood patterns on the walls, smears on the door frame and the steep narrow staircase and speculate that Kathleen Peterson fell backward while ascending the stairs and struck her head on the door frame after a night of drinking wine.

Then, they believe, she lay in a pool of her blood, tried to get up, slipped on her blood and hit her head again one or more times before bleeding to death.

Prosecutors who will try Michael Peterson for first-degree murder next month find the   explanation hard to swallow.

When pathologists found seven scalp lacerations and other bruises that suggested a beating, prosecutors began to see the fall as something other than an accident. And any doubts they still had were erased this spring when they exhumed the body of another woman in Michael Peterson's life whose 1985 death in Germany appeared to be from a brain hemorrhage that led to a fall down a staircase.

Peterson's defense team acknowledges that the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson and the death 16 years earlier of family friend Elizabeth Ratliff appear too similar at first blush to be coincidental.

But lawyers for the 59-year-old defendant say they are prepared to show Michael Peterson's jury, if it becomes necessary for his defense, that the deaths were both accidents or medical in nature and that there is no evidence that Peterson had anything to do with either.

In the case of Peterson's wife, they say, there is no evidence of a bad or violent marriage and plenty of evidence that the union was a warm and loving one that others envied.

"Our position is that he had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was an accident and it happened while he was not in the house," said attorney David Rudolf of Charlotte, a well-known North Carolina defense attorney. "They were soul mates."

The Defendant

Michael Iver Peterson, the son of a career military officer, was born in October 1943 and moved from place to place during his father's career while growing up. In the early 1960s, Peterson studied political science and was editor of the student newspaper at Duke University in Durham, graduating in 1965 with a degree in political science.

Peterson dropped out of law school because it did not suit him and took a government think-tank job in 1966 researching arguments in favor of increased U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. The research led to Peterson's four-year enlistment in the Marine Corps, and he saw fighting in the northernmost post in South Vietnam.

After the war, Peterson worked as a government consultant and lived overseas for 11 years. He and his first wife, school teacher Patricia Peterson, were living and working in Graefenhausen, Germany,  in 1985 and were both close to widowed U.S. Department of Defense school teacher Elizabeth Ratliff and her daughters, Margaret and Martha.

When a nanny found Ratliff dead at the bottom of a staircase in her home on Nov. 25, 1985, German and U.S. authorities investigated and concluded she suffered a brain hemorrhage. Michael Peterson had walked Ratliff home from dinner with he and his wife the previous night, but the defense says there is evidence that Ratliff's body was still warm when she was found the following morning — long after Peterson went home and went to bed with his wife.

After Ratliff was buried in Texas, her young daughters went to live with Michael and Patricia Peterson and their two sons, Clayton and Todd. Margaret and Martha Ratliff are currently enrolled in college, still reside with Michael Peterson and have publicly said they do not believe he killed either Kathleen Peterson or their mother.

In the late 1980s, the extended Peterson family moved to North Carolina and Peterson wrote novels inspired by his Vietnam experiences. He published three novels between 1983 and 1998,  "The Immortal Dragon," "A Time of War" and "Charlie Two Shoes and the Marines of Love Company."

Peterson's books received mixed reviews and never brought him national acclaim, but they paid the bills and enabled him to buy a 31-year-old mansion at the corner of Cedar and Sycamore Streets in the woodsy, upper-crust Forest Hills neighborhood in 1991. From his home, Peterson continued researching and writing fiction while penning a column for the local daily newspaper, the Herald-Sun.

In the mid-1990s, Peterson met Nortel executive Kathleen Atwater, who had a teenaged daughter named Caitlin. Some of Peterson's children blamed Atwater for the breakup of Michael and Patricia Peterson's marriage but now say they came to accept Atwater after the couple's wedding in 1997 because they saw a love connection between their father and the younger woman that their parents never had.

Trying to parlay the name recognition he had from his books, community involvement and columns that sometimes held the Durham establishment's feet to the fire, Peterson ran for mayor of Durham in 1999. The effort was derailed, in part, when the candidate was forced to admit that the Purple Heart he received resulted from a car accident in Japan and not combat in Vietnam as he sometimes claimed.
 
After the bid for public office ended badly, Peterson continued to write, travel with his wife and lift weights at the local YMCA. She worked long hours at Nortel, helped Peterson with the five children and donated time on the board of the local arts council.

By all accounts, the Petersons had a loving relationship and many things in common. One of them was drinking. Both liked to imbibe, particularly on the weekends.

Kathleen's Death

A Saturday night of drinking out near the swimming pool in the Petersons' backyard became a Sunday morning for Michael Peterson and his wife of 4 1/2 years, Kathleen. According to the defense, Michael Peterson was outside when Kathleen apparently tried to ascend the rear staircase wearing flip-flops.

Michael Peterson claims he found Kathleen lying in a pool of blood and called 911 shortly before 3 a.m. on Dec. 9, 2001.

Durham police Sgt. Terry Wilkins, now a lieutenant, wrote in a report that Michael Peterson was wearing a blue shirt and light-colored shorts and was covered in blood when Wilkins encountered him in the foyer.

"Mr. Peterson appeared to be confused and was walking in small circles, and back and forth," Wilkins wrote.

At one point, Wilkins' report continued, Peterson questioned why people in the house were being separated.

"What is this? Do I need a lawyer?" the police officer quoted him as saying.

As it turned out, Peterson did need a lawyer but didn't know it. He never gave a formal statement but prosecutors indicate in court papers that they will make his comments to police part of their case.

Although a medical examiner who examined Kathleen Peterson's body at the scene initially decided that the death was probably an accident, prosecutors moved quickly to indict Michael Peterson after a postmortem examination was conducted. The medical examiner's office concluded that Kathleen Peterson died of blunt force trauma to the head and that her injuries were inconsistent with a fall.

Peterson surrendered to Durham police as pre-arranged on Dec. 20, 2001, the day a grand jury called into special session by Durham District Attorney James Hardin Jr. indicted him for murder. Television news crews were waiting for him, the case already attracting much publicity because of who Peterson was and how his wife died.

Prosecutors will not discuss the case now that the trial has begun but have told members of the prospective jury that their case is a circumstantial one. They said early in the jury selection process that jurors might not hear evidence of a motive and noted that motive is not one of the five elements of first-degree murder they need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. More recently, however, Hardin and assistant district attorney Freda Black indicated that motive might play a role in their case, although they provided no details.

Crime scene tape blocks access to the Peterson home on the day Kathleen Peterson's body was found.

Numerous friends and associates who wrote to a judge requesting that reasonable bail be set for Peterson during the 24 days he was locked up in December 2001 and January 2002 said they never saw any evidence of a rocky marriage or a propensity for violence.

"It was very obvious that Michael respected and loved Kathleen very much ... Their affection for each other was freely expressed," Keith Morgan, a political supporter, wrote in a letter to a judge. "I find it extremely difficult to believe that either of them could ever have done any violence to the other."

Randolph Lambe, who did not know the Petersons well, wrote about observations he made at a dinner party he attended with the couple about three weeks before Kathleen Peterson's death.

"What I remember about that evening was that the Petersons seemed such a happy couple who enjoyed talking about their kids and their life together," Lambe wrote. "I saw no indication of any tension between them ... When I read about her death in the newspaper, I never gave a thought that it was anything but a tragic accident."

The Trial

Four of Michael Peterson's children, including Elizabeth Ratliff's daughters, are expected to attend his upcoming trial to show support. Kathleen Peterson's daughter, Caitlin Atwater, may testify as a prosecution witness. She filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Michael Peterson and has cut all ties with him and stepsiblings she was once closed to.

Jury selection is expected to stretch into early June. The evidentiary portion of the trial could take eight weeks or longer, and will include testimony by numerous police officers, pathologists, forensic scientists and people who knew the Petersons.

Durham Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson has yet to rule how deeply, if at all, prosecutors can go into evidence about Ratliff's death. North Carolina pathologists concluded after exhuming Ratliff's body in April that she died not of natural causes but of blunt force trauma and "homicidal assault."

Hudson has given the prosecution and defense wide latitude during voir dire to mention evidence and theories, and Rudolf used that latitude to tell several prospective jurors that Kathleen Peterson's head did not sustain the skull fracture and brain bruising typically found in people who die as a result of beatings.

Rudolf told one prospective juror, the first person to be accepted by both the defense and prosecution, that the biggest problem Peterson's side faces is going to be an emotional reaction to autopsy photos and police photos of all that blood.

"They're very graphic," Rudolf said. "My concern is that when jurors see these photographs they're going to have a gut reaction."

Under North Carolina law, Peterson faces life in prison with no chance of parole if convicted of first-degree murder. Prosecutors decided early on not to seek the death penalty.

The trial will be broadcast by Court TV.