Striking Similarities in Peterson Death
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By CRAIG JARVIS, Staff Writer
DURHAM - The death of a friend of murder suspect Mike Peterson almost 17
years ago in Germany has attracted the interest of police investigating the
death of Peterson's wife in December. But the pathologist who performed the
autopsy in Germany says he wouldn't have been assigned the case if
authorities had considered it a crime.
And probate records show that Elizabeth Ratliff did not have a lot of money
that might have provided a financial incentive for murder.
Those discoveries add to the puzzling questions in the December death of
Kathleen Peterson and the 1985 death of Ratliff.
Durham detectives working on the Kathleen Peterson case are looking at
striking similarities between her death and that of the American teacher in
Germany.
Both women suffered brain hemorrhages and deep cuts in the back of their
heads. Both were found dead on staircases in their homes. And Mike Peterson
might have been the last person to see them alive.
But there is no known motive Mike Peterson would have for murdering either
his wife or his friend. An autopsy long ago determined Ratliff's death was
natural. He became her daughters' guardian and was given control over about
$60,000 for their support.
Neither woman's skull was fractured. Peterson's attorneys say that fact,
combined with the scalp lacerations, shows they weren't beaten but were
injured as they fell down the wooden stairs.
Police have not said they suspect the Durham writer and politician of having
anything to do with the 1985 death. But they have been interviewing people
and gathering records on the matter.
Peterson is charged with premeditated murder in the Dec. 9 death of his
wife. At a hearing Tuesday, his attorneys will press to bring the case to
trial as soon as possible and demand that prosecutors turn over any evidence
police have turned up on the Ratliff case, saying it can only prove he had
nothing to do with her death.
Even if Durham police come to suspect that Peterson could have been
responsible for Ratliff's death, District Attorney Jim Hardin would have a
hard time posing that theory to a jury.
Judge's role
The rules of evidence in North Carolina would require the trial judge to
decide whether the prosecutor has made a strong enough link between the two
deaths. The judge also would have to decide whether it happened too long ago
to be relevant, and whether that information would do more to prejudice a
jury than prove anything.
Those safeguards are in place to prevent guilt by association, said Donald
H. Beskind, a Duke University law school lecturer and former law partner of
Peterson's lead attorney. In this case, he said, Peterson would have to have
been more involved than simply being the last person to see Ratliff alive.
"That surely will not be enough," Beskind said. "Then the question is, is
there more?"
Kenneth S. Broun, a UNC-Chapel Hill law professor and author of the primary
text on North Carolina evidence, said Hardin's best chance to get the 1985
death into the trial would be through a provision in the law that could make
it admissible to show that neither death was an accident.
Despite the legal obstacles, it's natural that police would look into the
1985 death and not accept it as coincidence, said John L. Sullivan, a trial
consultant who is the former chief of detectives of the Las Vegas
Metropolitan Police Department.
"It does make it a little bit suspicious," Sullivan said. "It would be a
very difficult [investigation] to revive, but it has been done."
Teaching career
Reared with two sisters on a farm in Rhode Island, Elizabeth McKee was a
serious, artistic child. She sang and played an acoustic guitar, and spoke
French and German during her 17 years teaching the children of military
families.
In Graefenhausen, Germany, she and Mike Peterson's first wife, Patricia,
became close friends and taught elementary school at Rhein-Main Air Force
Base. The Petersons had moved there in the early 1970s, after Mike Peterson
left the Marine Corps and began writing novels about his experiences in
Vietnam.
Capt. George Ratliff, an Air Force navigator, married McKee in the late
1970s or early 1980s. Their daughter Margaret was born in 1981, and two
years later, their second daughter, Martha, was born.
It was a bittersweet year: Peterson's first novel, "The Immortal Dragon,"
was published; that October, Capt. Ratliff died. On the eve of the U.S.
invasion of Grenada, he reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack in Panama
while on a secret mission, according to Peterson and others.
The Petersons say that both Ratliffs asked them to look after their children
if anything happened to them. Soon after her husband died, Ratliff filed a
will naming the Petersons as her daughters' guardians and appointing Mike
Peterson as executor of her estate.
At 7:45 a.m. on the Monday before Thanksgiving in 1985, Ratliff's
housekeeper found her dead on a staircase in her condominium in
Graefenhausen, a few doors down from the Petersons. She had spent the
previous night dining with them. Mike Peterson had escorted her home.
German police and a German doctor arrived and apparently decided there was
no evidence of a crime. She suffered from a genetic disorder that hindered
her blood's ability to clot.
The doctor who came to the house took a spinal tap that showed bleeding
inside her head, and an autopsy determined that she had suffered a brain
hemorrhage. The autopsy also revealed several deep lacerations on the back
of her head.
The U.S. Army doctor who conducted the autopsy says he doesn't remember much
about the case. But he says if German police had suspected foul play he
wouldn't have been involved: He wasn't trained to recognize homicides.
No suspicions in 1985
"I'm not a forensic pathologist by any means," said Dr. Larry A. Barnes, now
a pathologist in Iowa. "I wouldn't have felt comfortable with a suspected
homicide."
More likely, he said, German authorities would have insisted a German
pathologist perform the autopsy if there had been suspicion of foul play.
Barnes said he probably would have assumed the deep cuts in the back of the
woman's head were caused by falling because police apparently had not
suggested she was attacked. The autopsy's finding of a brain hemorrhage
seemed to confirm the theory that Ratliff died a natural death, he said.
Probate records filed in Texas show that her estate amounted to $72,000 in
personal property -- almost all of it in savings bonds -- minus about
$13,000 in debts. With a little more than $100 in the bank, an 8-year-old
BMW and no more than typical belongings to her name, Ratliff was not
wealthy.
The money was to be used to support and educate the girls, who are now 20
and 19 years old. They were to split any remaining money when they became
adults.
Ratliff did not leave anything -- neither money nor the care of her
daughters -- to her family in Rhode Island.
Mike Peterson reared the girls, even after splitting up with his first wife.
The girls grew up mostly in Durham with Peterson's two sons, and later with
Kathleen Peterson's daughter. They are now attending colleges out of state
and have kept in touch over the years with their aunts from both families.
Staff writer Craig Jarvis can be reached at 829-4576 or
cja...@newsobserver.com.
News researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this report.