Was an Owl the Real Culprit in the Peterson Murder Mystery?

Here's one for Baxter to get his feathers ruffled over.

https://media.audubon.org/_web_istock_8863921_large.jpg?width=808&auto=webp&quality=90&fit=bounds&disable=upscale

Evidence A: The unique orientation and sharpness of a Barred Owl's 
talons make them a plausible match to the deep wound marks found on 
murder victim Kathleen Peterson's scalp. Photo: genesisgraphics/iStock

Editor's note: This story was originally published in the fall of 2016 
during Michael Peterson's retrial. A request for dismissal was rejected, 
and the case continued into 2017, when he eventually entered an Alford 
guilty plea. The owl theory never made it to court.

The 15-year-old legal proceedings against author Michael Peterson for 
the alleged murder of his wife, Kathleen, constitute one of the more 
notorious and extensively documented criminal cases of our time. It has 
provided fodder for two Dateline segments, a Lifetime movie, an 
expansive documentary film series, and dozens of true-crime television 
episodes and podcasts. It is lurid, tinged with drugs and alcohol, 
replete with an ongoing extramarital affair with a prostitute, and 
soaked in blood—lots of blood. It also spawned a criminal defense theory 
that sounds like a punch line: The owl did it.

But it’s not a joke. And even though the "Owl Theory," which states that 
a Barred Owl is responsible for the chain of events that led to Kathleen 
Peterson's eventual demise, hasn't made it to trial yet, depending what 
happens next in the case, there's a slight chance it could still be 
presented. On Monday in Durham, North Carolina, the Peterson murder case 
is scheduled to enter what may be the last stage in the twisted legal 
proceedings that have dragged on since December 9, 2001. A superior 
court judge will decide whether to dismiss the charge that on that day, 
Peterson, now 73, struck his wife in the head repeatedly with a 
fireplace tool, causing her death by blunt force trauma.

The motive presented at trial in 2003 was an unlikely mélange of 
Peterson’s desire to cash in on his wife’s life-insurance policy and a 
furious fight between the couple—after she discovered he was having a 
long-term affair—that led to her fatal beating. Her husband called the 
paramedics at 2:40 a.m., claiming he found her lifeless body on the 
stairs in the family’s mansion. The alleged murder weapon—found in the 
Petersons’ garage and presented late in the proceedings—was ultimately 
ruled out for lack of forensic evidence, and simply because it had been 
sitting in the same place long before and after Kathleen Peterson's 
death. Regardless, Peterson was convicted and sentenced to life in 
prison without parole. But in December of 2011, a judge ordered a new 
trial after finding that a key witness had misrepresented his forensic 
expertise, and made “materially misleading” and “deliberately false” 
testimony about bloodstained evidence. Peterson has been free since the 
day of that ruling.

If it weren’t for this misstep by the prosecution, the case might have 
gone in a wildly different direction—blame the owl. But how exactly 
could an owl be responsible for the death of Kathleen Peterson? The Owl 
Theory essentially posits that a Barred Owl attacked Peterson, got 
entangled in her hair, and inflicted serious injuries, including the 
removal of part of her scalp, which triggered a series of events that 
led to her death after falling down a flight of stairs. The theory first 
came to light in late 2009, after attorney Larry Pollard, a friend and 
neighbor of Peterson’s, took a fresh look at the evidence. Her autopsy 
revealed seven lacerations, including very deep ones in the back of her 
scalp, and pine needles stuck to one of her hands, which both held 
clumps of her own hair. As Pollard discovered, the strands in the 
victim’s left hand contained three small feathers. Also, as Pollard and 
several ornithological experts noted, the pattern and shape of the cuts 
on Kathleen Peterson’s head suggest a weapon quite unlike a fireplace 
tool. If the culprit was an intruder, the finger points to the Barred 
Owl, a common species in and around Durham.

“When you look at her injuries, they do appear consistent with being 
made by an owl’s talons,” Peterson’s defense attorney Mary Jude Darrow 
tells Audubon. “But I would hate to risk my client’s life or future on 
that argument.”

So when Darrow enters court on Monday, she and co-counsel Mike Klinkosum 
will pursue a different argument, namely that no human forensic evidence 
exists to mount a substantive defense. The reason for this is twofold: 
The state improperly stored and thus contaminated crime scene evidence, 
including the couple’s blood-stained clothes, and also failed to order 
DNA testing of the victim’s clothes to rule out an attack by an outside 
party. Darrow and Klinkosum are seeking dismissal of the case with 
prejudice, which would protect Peterson from further charges.

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Evidence B: Note the small feathers that cover the Barred Owl's 
feet—unique to this family of birds. The species' three-foot wingspan is 
also formidable. Photo: Jennifer Maharry Maharry/Audubon Photography Awards

But if the judge were to let a second trial move forward, Darrow says, 
there’s a slim chance she and Klinkosum “may decide to pursue” the Owl 
Theory as a defense.

If so, they would rely on Pollard’s extensive research of owl attacks on 
humans, as well as the testimony of specialists, including Kate Davis, 
executive director of Raptors of the Rockies, a Montana-based nonprofit. 
Around the same time that Pollard was tackling the Owl Theory, Davis was 
interviewed for a story about a local raptor attack on a boy who had 
been sledding. Davis subsequently received a call from a member of the 
documentary team from The Staircase, the Emmy-winning series about the 
Peterson case. The producers had done some research of their own, but 
they needed the expertise of someone who really knows her owls. Someone 
like Davis.

After delving into the evidence, Davis was convinced that an owl had 
attacked Kathleen Peterson, setting into motion the events that would 
lead to her death at the bottom of the stairs. She based her decision on 
the shape and placement of the victim’s wounds (a match to how the owl's 
talons would strike), the timing of the attack (in December, when owls 
are mating and highly territorial), the presence of the tiny feather 
(owl feet are covered with them), and the force of the impact. A 2014 
study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology notes that an owl 
weighing less than a pound can pounce on a mouse with force equivalent 
to 150 times the weight of the rodent. If a 175-pound human were struck 
with the same intensity, it would feel like being hit by a 13-ton truck.

Mrs. Peterson weighed 120 pounds and the suspect bird in the Owl Theory, 
an adult Barred Owl, weighs between one and two-and-a-half pounds and 
can fly at speeds of up to 40 miles an hour. Of course, the truck 
analogy is outside the limits of a raptor’s power, but the point is 
clear: An owl strike can definitely cause blunt force trauma. What's 
more, the raptors are known to dive-bomb humans when they feel 
threatened, almost always targeting the head. For example, in 2015, 
there were repeated Barred Owl attacks on joggers in a park in Salem, 
Oregon. The victims of those strikes, which earned the bird(s) the name 
“Owlcapone,” suffered from multiple half-inch talon cuts.

Davis also points out that the victim would have been taken by surprise 
because the shape of an owl’s feathers—serrated on one side to cut 
through the air, and fringed along the other edge—make it silent in flight.

In a 25-minute interview with Raleigh news station WRAL in March, 
Pollard laid out the Owl Theory in great detail. “The other wounds that 
are on her body seem to give a compelling case to this having been done 
by an owl,” he said. “The injuries to the eyes, and the injuries to the 
elbows, and the little pock marks on her wrists, here and here, all are 
consistent with her having her hands over her head, holding onto her 
hair, because something is grasping that hair.”

Pollard’s timeline shows that Kathleen Peterson had been drinking wine 
with her husband by the backyard pool at night, and then headed through 
the house and into the front yard for reasons unknown. (Toxicology 
reports also found anti-anxiety and muscle-relaxant medication in her 
blood.) That’s where the raptor attacked. Peterson was out of earshot 
while his wife fought off the bird. The victim then walked into the 
house; blood was found on the front steps and smeared on the inside of 
the door. After all of this, while buzzed on wine and pills, she climbed 
the stairs, presumably en route to the master bedroom. But when she 
reached the last step, she fell backwards and tumbled to the bottom of 
the staircase. A crime scene photo shows her with her neck bent severely 
to the left, her head resting on the bottom stair, and her body splayed 
on the floor in a massive pool of blood.

If Peterson’s team succeeds in having the case dismissed on Monday, the 
sordid tale will end, and the Owl Theory will remain just that—a theory. 
Either way, Davis remains convinced that it is true.

“The owl didn’t kill Kathleen Peterson,” Davis says. “The owl just 
knocked her in the head. She would have been fine if she’d gone up and 
crawled into bed and slept it off.”

https://www.audubon.org/news/was-owl-real-culprit-peterson-murder-mystery