The Staircase - what's your guys verdict?

[FT96]

Hey Everyone!

I've been watching the new series - just wondering what your guys opinion is -- husband guilty or not guilty?

Written in Blood by Diane Fanning

Thanks for the recommendation. I will check it out!

I don't need an explanation that makes 100% sense, but just something that makes some sort of sense rather than he's creepy, he's definitely guilty. Just something I could actually visualise happening.

I had a quick Google and a lot of people are claiming that it is horribly biased and exaggerated as to his guilt. The Netflix documentary also seemed very biased as to his innocence.

It would be nice to hear a report by someone neutral and just looking at the scientific evidence, but I guess the evidence is all too ambiguous and that's why the mystery remains.

This is my theory too.

the real life guy looks as guilty AF in the Netflix documentary, although I think Netflix was trying to be sympathetic. I really liked his defence lawyer though.

Loved that lawyer.

I found MP rather unbelievable but that could just be how he speaks. He never really spoke about Kathleen, just about the incident which I found odd.

Either way, I hope he did do it, otherwise an innocent man got put in prison for 8 years.

He wa a bit more involved than that. Hde, his wife and the widow had all been drinking. His wife went home and he stayed to help put the children to bed, allegedly. She was found next morning at the bottom of the stairs. Without formally adopting them, he took guardianship of her children. So he did directly benefit from her death.

Dh was trying to point out some tedious mathematical issue about probability that means just because he was the last person to see one woman alive before she improbably fell down a staircase doesn;t mean he did it when it happens again. I get that, in terms of probabilities. But in terms of human psychology, I think this makes his guilt far more likely.

Like the awful story of the man who killed his children's author wife and then it was discovered that his previous wife who died in similar circumstances was murdered by him too. It had been passed off as an accident for years.

I think Staircase man is a narcissist and possibly a psychopath and that he killed both women. Not finished watching the series yet and not got to the owl bit, but if an owl crashed into her, there would be more than one microscopic trace of feather and twig, I think.

There are quite a few facts that suggest foul play:

He said she'd been drinking a lot and encouraged his son to tell this to people. Autopsy showed she hadn't been drinking. Police found two champagne glasses - with his prints, not hers, and evidence that alcohol had been poured down the sink, which supports a theory that he wanted people to believe she had been drinking.

She had seven lacerations to the scalp. She had injuries to her neck that suggested strangulation.

The police combed the house for the blowpoke murder weapon and didn't find it. But the defence found it just a couple of days before the trial was up.

The new autopsy on Liz Radcliffe said cause of death was homicide due to blows to the head, not an aneurysm..

The defense said he had no motive. $1.8million in life insurance is a motive for a man with extreme financial difficulties.

The video I posted up thread also suggests that they were never by the pool drinking and that was a total fabrication, when you listen to the language he uses he tells us very clearly they weren't by the pool. It's fascinating.

Autopsy showed she hadn't been drinking

From what I've read, she had a blood alcohol level of 0.07 and had taken valium.

0.08 BAC: You will usually exhibit poor muscle coordination, loss of balance, slower reaction time, slurred speech, loss of acuity in vision and hearing, difficulty in detecting danger, and impaired judgment, self-control, reasoning, and memory. When driving, you have difficulty with speed control and recognizing and reacting to signals and emergency situations. You have an increased risk of injuries in general, and particularly those related to driving a vehicle.

Sorry, I couldn't find it for 0.07 but it would have been enough to impair her walking a bit, I think. Especially in combination with the valium.

Cause of death on autopsy was multiple blunt force trauma to the head- says it all.

That's a fair point. But 0.07 is the cut off point for safe driving, so not that impaired, and unlikely to be a whole bottle - he claimed they had two bottles that night. Why was the second champagne glass not bearing signs of her having touched it?

The video I posted up thread also suggests that they were never by the pool drinking and that was a total fabrication, when you listen to the language he uses he tells us very clearly they weren't by the pool. It's fascinating.

Well it was a very chilly evening. About 10 degrees celsius or so. I don't know about you, but that's not relaxing by the pool weather for me. I think he fabricated it because he needed to situate himself out of the house (explaining how K had been lying at the bottom of the stairs for a long while before the emergency services were called).

Exactly

But then why is the same not true for falling down stairs? How could she have such deep lacerations all over her head without any bone damage? The force of the fall must have been enormous for her head to be cut with such consistently shaped lacerations on both sides and centre of skull and yet no cracked bones.

@roadsweep i agree it could be just the way he speaks. He had clearly lied about a lot during his life, some things like his sexuality which he shouldn’t have had to cover up, and other things which were lies for his own gain. He had the air of someone who would happily bullshit you.

As opposed to the non-biased Netflix one that had his girlfriend as the editor?

I think he was guilty.

The only question for me is that I’m not sure if it was pre-meditated or not.

Their family set up/manner is very odd as well. It’s very odd that only he became guardian to the two girls, rather than he and his wife. And she seems to have just disappeared from the lives of all the children.

It’s kind of horrific and I don’t know if it’s possible or not, but I wondered if she hit her head or neck, the force of it pulled her hair and skin back with such force, the skin sort of ripped like parchment. It would explain the jagged deep lesions but no skull damage.

I don’t know. It’s all very odd really and I’m not sure I buy the owl theory at all.

I thought the lesions were jagged and irregular by the way, not straight lines like you’d expect if she had been cut with a weapon.

Was just coming to say this! I found the Netflix doc to be somewhat biased and I felt that details were missed, but the podcast is excellent.

Interestingly I listened to the podcast first, then watched the Netflix documentary with my family. I think he likely did it (although I’m not convinced I could have found him guilty in court) and my dh and ds think he’s innocent. They think that the podcast must have been more biased (they haven’t listened to it) but the thing that swung it for me was seeing the footage of him still living in the house where his wife died during the trial, with the stairs still covered in her blood. Seeing it in the flesh was eerie.

I was surprised when I heard the Netflix documentary was made by his partner as I think it painted him in a really bad light!

She died recently of a heart attack, Peterson was present apparently and Clayton blames him for not calling an ambulance. Make of that what you will! I read that on a similar thread.

I watched the documentary a while back and I think he’s guilty. I think it tried to portray him as innocent but it just seems very much to me like he did it.
Sad that we can’t know for sure.

It was the owl

I’ve only seen the Netflix documentary (when it first came out) and I thought he was really weird but potentially innocent. I know you’ll laugh at me but if you read the whole ‘owl theory’ in depth, it actually begins to sound plausible. Apparently there were tiny feathers in the head wound, etc.

However, I haven’t done any further - or recent - research. I’ll definitely be listening to the podcasts mentioned on this thread as I’d be interested to hear the stuff missed out by the documentary.