Seven Red

One of the big news stories here in Chicago is the tale of Stacey Peterson, the young wife of a former cop named Drew Peterson who has – as the saying goes – come up missing. Needless to say, the weirdly rhyming name reminded everyone of Lacey Peterson, the young wife of Scott Peterson who also came up missing and later turned up dead. In the latest Peterson case, there is also a previous wife who turned up dead in a bathtub, and said wife’s body was recently exhumed to determine whether Drew Peterson had killed her. In a bizarre tipping of hands, some cop honcho noted publicly that his review of the bathtub wife’s crime scene photos suggested murder. Most foul, as it were. So now the talk of the town is “He killed her, right?” Not, “Do you think he killed her?,” but “this guy killed his wife, yeah?”

Well, yeah. That’s the general opinion. When I was younger, I always sided with the defendant. I was like a defense attorney’s dream: a professional and moderately well-educated white guy who would always give the defendant the benefit of the (sometimes even unreasonable) doubt. As she has noted, however, I’ve more recently turned into a prosecutor’s dream. I think it’s because I watch all these damn murder shows on television, in which the suspect is almost always painfully, obviously, guilty. So now, as a joke, whenever somebody is suspected of anything, I turn to she and say

“You know what I think about that.”
“Um, guilty?” she asks.
“Guilty,” I proclaim, like a stern and bewigged English magistrate.

The other day, we were driving in to Lincoln Park, and somebody else’s marital conflict became the subject of discussion. “She better watch out before he pulls a Drew Peterson,” I joked. she corrected me:

“You mean before he pulls a Peterson.”

Huh. Right. I guess with Scott Peterson and Drew Peterson, the act of killing your wife and having her come up missing could be referred to as just a plain old Peterson. Pulling a Peterson. Yup. It’s settled. That will be the term for wife-killing in the Seven Red household. Oh, how we laughed about wife murder.

Then last night I turned on MSNBC, waiting for the second showing of Olbermann. They had a murder show on called “Verdict: You Decide,” or some such name, and it was about the infamous staircase murder in Durham, North Carolina that happened in December 2001. The case is infamous largely because of a 13+ hour documentary that was made about the trial (in coordination with the defense team), and because the defendant was a local journalist, writer, and one-time mayoral candidate. I watched this documentary, called The Staircase, a few years ago, hooked into the DVD’s like I was watching a full season of The Wire in one sitting. It was quite compelling.

The case goes like this. The suspect and his wife are sitting at their lavish Durham home having some drinks on the patio. The wife goes inside, and is found by the husband some time later dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Blood everywhere. Did she fall down the stairs, as his defense claims? Or is it as the prosecutors say: she found out about his secret gay affairs and he beat her to death with a blow poke, and set up the bloody stairs scene as a front? (And really, if you were going to kill your wife because she had discovered your secret gay life, could you pick a more aptly named weapon than a blow poke?) So, a fall down the stairs, or a bloody beating? Scientific evidence on both sides, generally relating to “cast off patterns” and other mild names for gruesome blood spatter phenomena. Oh, and there’s one additional piece of interesting information. When he was in the Army in Germany in the mid-1970′s, a woman he knew there turned up dead…at the bottom of a flight of stairs! He was the last one at her house, and he claims it is all accident and coincidence. Talk about a guy who should have bought a ranch house! His name? You know where this is going:

Michael. Friggin. Peterson.

He was convicted of murder in North Carolina and sentenced to life in prison in 2003.

So, let’s review:

• Scott Peterson: convicted of killing wife Lacey and dumping her in the San Francisco Bay.
• Michael Peterson: convicted of killing wife Kathleen (thank goodness her name wasn’t Casey), and suspected of a previous staircase murder.
• Drew Peterson: suspected of killing wife Stacey, and further suspected of killing a previous wife.

It may be premature here to generalize from cases, but I think it may be time to issue the following public safety announcements:

1. If you are a woman married to a guy named Peterson, slowly – and without drawing attention to yourself – get the fuck out of the house.
2. If 1. holds true, and you happen to be named Tracy, Casey, Macy, J.C., or even friggin’ Nancy, RUN, don’t walk!!

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