Ep. 88: Death by Talons (feat. Tiddy Smith)

In this episode, Ashley speaks with Tiddy Smith, author of Death by Talons, the book covering the theory that an owl (or a raptor) killed Kathleen Peterson. If you want to look at some of the crime scene photos that we mention in this episode, check out the online gallery here. You can follow Tiddy on Twitter (X) @SmithTiddy. 

Related episodes:
Ep. 60: The Owl Theory

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to episode eighty eight of Get Out Alive, a
bi weekly podcast about animal attacks, why they happen, and
how we can avoid them. I'm your host, Ashley, and
before I get into today's episode, as is custom now
on this podcast, i read a review as a thank
you to all of you who take a second to
rate and review this podcast this week. Coming from Apple Podcasts,

(00:45):
Kitten Foster sixty six 's one wrote, loving the show,
Ashley definitely brings in the smarts to the episode, as
I'm cracking up at the often absurdity at how in
the world folks find themselves in these encounters. I've got
a long standing dislike of chimps anywhere on the same continent,
and it's nice to feel their support. And then in parentheses,
don't stop swearing. Thank you so much. I don't intend

(01:06):
to stop swearing anytime soon, as you'll hear in this
episode a little bit. And for those of you who
haven't listened to the last few episodes, we are covering
Chimp Crazy the documentary on HBO, and the first two
episodes are available on the main feed before this one. Otherwise,
the last two will be available on our Patreon. All right, so,
for today's episode. This has been a long one in

(01:28):
the making. I've been talking to our guests for months
and months before this recording. And this is really a
follow up to episode sixty of this podcast, which was
the Owl Theory, and that was all about the death
of Kathleen Peterson. If you like true crime or have
seen the Staircase documentary, then you will know of this
case a little bit. And this theory, the owl theory

(01:48):
that we covered, was created by a neighbor of the Petersons,
and we at the very end of that episode very
briefly touched on the fact that there was a book
about this theory and we, and by we, I mean
mostly I did not speak very kindly of this book
and I had never read it before. So long story short,
the universe somehow worked in a weird way where Titty Smith,

(02:11):
the author of that book, and I got in contact
and I finally read the book, loved it, thought it
was great and super interesting. So this episode is all
about us going over the evidence that points towards a
raptor causing the death of Kathleen Peterson. And there are
a ton of pictures online to go along with the
book and go along with what we're talking about. I'll

(02:32):
link everything in these show notes, but without further ado,
Please enjoy this interview with author of Death by Talents,
Titty Smith.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Okay, so my name is Titty Smith. I live in Jakata, Indonesia.
I've lived here for a few years. I used to
teach at the University of Indonesia. So I've been in
philosophy departments in New Zealand and Indonesia and took a
bit of time off to write this book end of
just getting back into the swing of things again after that.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
So speaking of your book, Death by Talents, how because
you're not from America, the case that it covers is
based in America, So like, what guy you interested in
Kathleen Peterson's death.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
So most people got interested in Kathleen Peterson's death after
the Staircase Right docu series was re released in I
think it was re released on Netflix something like twenty
seventeen sometime around there, So that's when most people sort
of got back into it. So for the first time

(03:48):
got into it. That's when I got back into it
because the first time I had seen it was in
about twenty ten, and that even that was about six
years after it was first released in Europe, so I
had torrented it or something in what a few years
after it had been released, and I sort of I
knew about the main theories of you know, Kathleen's death.

(04:08):
You know, what had actually happened to this woman. And
you know, it's a very if you watch it. It's
one of these TV shows that kept off the sort
of true crime documentary documentaries genre. You know, it was
sort of if you think of the Jinks or making
a murderer, you know, the Staircase was actually quite a
bit before these other shows and very much informed them

(04:30):
in the way that they were made, the sort of
suspense that they build up with the courtroom drama and
all of that. So anyway, you know, skip forward, what
is it about? Almost ten years and then COVID hits
and my wife and I are stuck in a tiny
little apartment in Jakata with absolutely nothing to do for

(04:52):
months and months on the end during lockdown, and I suggested, oh,
have you seen the Staircase. That's quite a good one,
and she said no, what's it about? And I said, oh, wow,
I won't tell you, but you know, you should check
it out. So she started watching it, and just before
it ended, I thought, I'm going to be a bit cheeky,
you know, and I'm going to tell her about the

(05:13):
crazy theory that I know has been floating around, you know,
in the background of all this. I said to her,
you know, some people think and Owl killed Kathleen. And
she sort of looked at me like I was making
a joke, you know, Yeah, didn't believe anything. I was there,
and I said, no, no, seriously, you know, they really do.
And she said, well, that's just stupid. And I thought, well,

(05:34):
it's not just stupid, you know. So I went on.
I remembered that I had seen back in the day,
you know, a photo of Kathleen's autopsy and the wounds
on the back of her head, which are really striking, yeah,
to look very much like the sort of tried and
shaped talon like Mark's on the back of her head.
And I found this and I showed my wife and

(05:56):
I said, well, see it's not just crazy. There's there's
a little bit of ever like it's a bit crazy,
but look at this photo. You know. Yeah, in my
life is like well all right, you know, yeah, still
still crazy though, And I'm still but there's more than they,
you know. So then I sort of this rabbit hole opened,
and I started collecting all of these things to show

(06:16):
my wife, you know, like, it's not just crazy, it's
not just crazy. And then eventually, by accident, I had
a messed this giant library of case evidence, photographs of
the crime scene and you know, photos of the autopsy
and trial testimony and all of this stuff, you know,
And all of a sudden, by accident, I realized, oh God,

(06:37):
I've fallen into this case quite deeply. Yeah, And the
deeper I fell, the more I saw evidence that didn't
make sense on any of the available theories that had
been presented so far, and that included the original owl theory,
as it's called. And that's when I actually began to
get quite worried about what I was discovering, because it

(07:01):
implicated the North Carolina police in quite a major sort
of cover up of the evidence. And that's when I realized, oh, dear,
I'm not American, I'm not from North Carolina, but what
I've discovered here is quite quite terrible and indicts quite
a few people, and the people of North Carolina probably

(07:23):
deserved to know this.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Yeah. So, like I guess would you describe yourself as
like a true crime person, Like, were you into knowing
about like these kind of stories before you stumbled upon
this case?

Speaker 2 (07:35):
I mean, look at as much as anybody, right, I
think I think everybody has a little bit of a
dark streak and they think, oh, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer,
how interesting? Or Jack the Ripper, who really was it?
You know, there are mysteries and there, and you know
though that particular genre of true crime TV is quite addictive,
you know, Making a Murderer was that. I got very
excited when that came out. And the Jinx is just

(07:58):
an incredible one and it's crazy, yeah, you know, and
the whole story of that that one again, that's one
of those stories that where you wonder, you think you
need to ask some pretty serious questions of the American
place for so long? Yeah, sorry, yes, and I've forgotten

(08:19):
what the question is. No.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
IM just curious, like if you were into true crime,
like I know, someone into like the true crime podcast
and like binge those like Crime Junkie and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
But I mean just just I think, really just as
much as the average person bored person during lockdown.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, no, absolutely, so for those because this podcast like
isn't exactly true crime, this is like this case specifically
is like a really good intersection of true crime and
also the content that we cover. So for those unfamiliar,
could you give us a brief rundown of what happened
that night?

Speaker 2 (08:53):
So this went down in Durham, North Carolina, in two
thousand and one, December the ninth, two thousand and one,
So this was just after nine to eleven. So a
nine to one one call was made by Mike Peterson
at two forty am and he tells the operator, quick come,

(09:13):
my wife's had an accident. She's still breathing, please come,
And the operator says what kind of accident? And Mike says,
she fell down the stairs quickly and six minutes later
he calls again and this time he says, she stopped breathing.
Where are they? And just a couple of minutes after that,
the first responders arrive. Now, when the first responders arrive,

(09:35):
they are shocked at what they find. They have been
told somebody fell down the stairs, but when they arrived
they find blood all over the scene. There's blood spatter
and spray all through the stairwell, at the bottom of
the stairs is where Kathleen is lying. She has pulled
out more than sixty of her own head heres by

(09:58):
the roots and clutching them in her hands. So it's
a really really pretty grotesque scene really. But one thing
that they noticed as they wandered into the house, or
ran into the house rather, is that the back of
the front door had these great big wipes of blood
on it. So not only was the area where Kathleen

(10:18):
was found was covened blood, but there was blood on
the front door, And as they went along the front
path they also saw that there were spots of blood
along the front path. Now this was very strange because,
of course, if you fall down the stairs, you can't
smear blood all over your front door, and if you
fall down stairs and die at the bottom of the stairs,
you certainly can't get blood down your front path. So

(10:39):
they're immediately suspicious of the story that they're being told.
When the police arrive on the scene a few minutes later,
they just find everyone acting quite suspiciously. Really. They find
Mike seems to be kind of incoherent. He's which you
would probably expect, right, but it seems though in the

(11:01):
interim of calling nine to one one and finding his wife.
He's called his son to the scene, and his son,
Todd Peterson, is now at the house with friends from
a Christmas party, we're told, right, which is bizarre. Now,
one of these friends is a doctor and is checking Mike.
We're told that she has been called to check Mike

(11:23):
for shock. But her husband is there as well, the
doctor's husband, and he's drunk as a skunk apparently, and
he's wandering around the crime scene, you know, disturbing things
and you know, bumping into walls and all the rest
of it. So already things are a little bit strange
in this house. Now the police decide, look, we can't
have any of this, and they lock all of the

(11:45):
witnesses away. They lock everyone in a small study and
they say you can't leave, and they stay in there
for about the next the next five or six hours
or so wow, before being allowed to leave those five
or six hours. It's not really clear what the police
are doing. This is how this case begins to be

(12:05):
set out in these two narratives. Right, you have the
narrative from Mike saying, right, she fell down the stairs
and has died in this terribly bloody way, or as
the police imagine, this guy's beaten his wife to death
and he's making up a ridiculous story to try and
explain it. So those are the two that's sort of
how things got kicked off. And eventually, you know, Mike

(12:28):
has put to trial for the murder of Kathleen, Kathleen Peterson,
his wife. Now it bears to state it of this
was a very very wealthy family, incredibly wealthy family. Mike
was an author of war novels and was a millionaire. Really,
I mean his first book got a million dollar advance
from Simon and Schuster.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, pretty great. His first book million dollar advanced, and
his other books, you know, were in the pipeline, was
selling well. And he had just had news from Hollywood
that one of his books was in the sights of
a producer and might be made into a film. And
Kathleen Peterson worked for Nortel. She was an executive at Nortel,
the Canadian telecommunications company. And you know, this was a

(13:13):
very wealthy family, a lot of money and in fact,
the house was the largest domestic property in all of Durham. Wow,
with one of the largest grounds right used to be
owned by relatives of the Duke family of Durham, so
that where you get Duke University and that sorting.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Oh wow, okay, so clearly very well known in the community.
So immediately I can imagine the police were like, this
is going to be a high profile thing. So to
come on the scene you already have that going in
the back of your mind, and then to see there's
a bunch of people who are contaminating the crime scene.
The husband's acting weird. So when Michael first went to trial,

(13:55):
how did that end?

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Not well for Mike? So he was found guilty of
first degree murder, went away for life without prole and
that was in two thousand and three, so that was
two years after Kathleen was found dead at the bottom
of the stairs. Now, the idea was that he had
beaten her to death with some sort of weapon, and

(14:19):
what the prosecution alleged was that he had used a
fireplace blowpoke and had beat nurse to death over the head.
The interesting thing is that they also alleged that he
had cleaned up the scene of the crime. And this
gets very confusing because it changes the timeline in a

(14:40):
very unusual way to how Mike is supposed to have
done this, so the idea goes on the prosecutions account.
Mike beats his wife severely in the stairwell over the
head with this brass blowpoke. She falls and sort of
passes out but is bleed in the stairwell, and then

(15:02):
Mike realizes, oh, no, I've got to start cleaning the
scene because I don't want to go to jail forever, right,
so I've got to cover my tracks. So he goes
to the laundry room and he gets all of these
cleaning products and he starts wiping away blood from different
areas in the stairwell. And then Kathleen, who hadn't actually
been dead, the idea goes sort of sits up and goes, ah,

(15:24):
I'm not dead, you've bastard, and he Mike is forced
to then pick up the blowpoke again and finish her off.
And then he decides, oh, well, never mind about the cleanup,
and he puts the cleaning products away because well, we
don't know what, because because because he's mad or upsets
or whatever, his plans have been disturbed. But it sets

(15:47):
up a very strange you know, the actual scenario if
you break it down and what the prosecution alleged to
had happened is very very bizarre. So the last thing
that we're supposed to imagineas is that Mike then takes
this murder weapon, the brass blowpoke runs out the front door,

(16:08):
smudging blood on it as he goes, and dripping the
blood on the path as he runs to dispose of this.
So that's how you explain the blood going outside the house,
which is Mike hiding the murder weapon. We later find
out that this is probably not what happened, or in fact,
it certainly not what happened anyway, So yes, Mike went
to jail for eight years. In twenty eleven, he was

(16:32):
released pending a new trial when it was found that
the blood spatter analysis that had been carried out was
probably substandard in his first trial. So Dwayne Deaver was
the name of the blood spatter analyst. He had been
found guilty of fudging evidence in previous cases.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Oh boy, So the.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Blood spatter analysis, it was argued, is probably substandard in
this case. And so Mike was released pending a new trial.
And at this new trial, which never you know, before
the new trial happened, Mike pled guilty to what is
called an Alfred play. Now, this is where you plead
evidence to a crime, even when you insist that you

(17:13):
are sorry. You played guilty to a crime, even when
you insist that you're innocent. So it's a way of
sort of saying, look, any reasonable Jerry is going to
find me guilty, So I'm pleaded guilty to sort of
expedite things because there's no point in me pleading innocent,
even though I am an ascent. Yeah, also strange. I
think that you can do this in the States, which
is pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Think, Yeah, it is wild. I do want to note though,
like you know, you said that the blood spatter analyst
fudge things, but this case was so different from other
even murder cases, because there were over ten thousand like
blood spatters to analyze and they were all in weird
spots and different types of blood spatter things like transfer

(17:54):
stains versus like smugchstains things like that. So this took
a whole team of people. So the fact that one
person and fudged it messes up the whole thing. I mean,
there's so many other things that were also messed up
that we'll get into.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
But I feel sorry for Diva in a way, because
it was never proven that he did anything wrong. Really,
the argument is, well, what I mean is in the
other cases, Yes, the argument as well, because he had
been misbehaved in these other cases, he must have. You know,
it's probable that he hasn't behaved well in this case.
Fair well, you know, I guess. But when you look

(18:29):
at how other police officers behaved. True, in this case,
we have very clear evidence of really bad behavior, really
legal stuff going on, and nobody was found guilty or
liable for any of that. So, I mean, I just
sort of feel a bit like Diva ended up being
the full guy for what was really the whole department

(18:50):
SA something a lot of them should have been found
guilty of here.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, so that's a really good point. So let's now
touch on. So you have a gallery on your website
where people can go look at the evidence as they're
reading along or like in my case, as in the audiobook,
so I could go look at the pictures that you
were referring to in the book. Let's talk about the
pictures from the case and what the heck is up

(19:13):
with them and why are they're not the way that
they should be.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Of the crime scene photographs and the crime scene video. Yeah, yeah,
it's I don't even know where to start. I really don't.
It's difficult, like you say, to without a gallery or
without actually looking at them. It's difficult to express in
words how substandard the quality is of these images. It

(19:38):
would I'm not exaggerating when I say it would be
difficult for me with any sort of digital camera that
you give me to emulate the quality of these photographs.
So I would need a certain degree of expertise to
make a photo that s bad. Yeah, they're overexposed, so overexposed,

(20:00):
but you can't clearly make out objects, even the central
objects that are under the subject of the photograph. The
main thing depicted you can often not make out because
it's so overexposed. The color of almost all of the
photographs is distorted. They're very often washed over with this
very strong sepia or red tone. Now, sepia and red

(20:23):
are very good filters to use if your intention was
to hide colors, so red filters. If you look through
a red filter, in a sense, the world just becomes
more black and white. The difference between relative colors becomes
much harder to makeout. So if you were trying to
hide a whole range of different colors in a picture.
One of the best things you could do is put

(20:45):
a red or a brown filter over it. So that's
suspicious already, because you know they shouldn't look like that,
and if you think about why they might look like that,
there's an explanation that presents itself. The other thing about
the photographs that was brought up at trial but was
never given a good explanation, was they're inconsistent. So photographs

(21:07):
of the same areas of the house taken on the
same day represent different things. The example that was present
at a trial was supposed a blood spatter on cabinets
and on walls. So you have these photographs that are
taken of the same area on the same day, and
yet in one area of wall you'll see five little

(21:30):
specks of blood and in the next photo they're not there.
Or on a cabinet, same picture us, same area taken
on the same day, spots of blood, three of them,
next photo not there. Now on the stand, the lead
forensic investigator was asked, well, why are the photographs like this?
Why do they present objects that disappear or appear randomly,

(21:54):
And his answer was I was told this was a
photo glitch. Well, who told you it was a glitch?
I can't remember how many glitches are there in the photos,
don't know. So the photographic record is really dodgy for
all sorts of reasons. And when you look at I
think overall, if you just look at the quality of
the photos, you have enough information straight away to suspect

(22:17):
that something is being hidden. Yea, that the photos are
being deliberately obfuscatory.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, I just had a thought. I'm like, also looking
at the pictures as you're talking, especially the one of
Kathleen's eye, were like, you show the enhanced one next
to it. It is crazy how much detail is missing
from the picture with the filter over it. You miss
so much information, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Well that's from the crime scene video. So that's a
still from the video, oh man. And the video as
well is corrupted in terms of color. The other thing
that you can do, if you did end up doing
what I did, which is waste two years of your
life looking through every piece of evidence in this is

(23:01):
you can compare the video with the photos of those
areas that seem unusual. For example, to give just one example,
in the gallery, you might see there. There's a picture
of Dan George standing in front of the front door,
and at the base of the front door are bright
red objects scattered about that I allege our feathers at

(23:22):
the base of the front door. We'll get to why
I allege their feathers shortly. I suppose if you look
at that same area when it is filmed in the
chrome scene video, you can't see anything. There's no red
material there, there's no and yet a photograph has taken
of those objects, and they're yellow in the photograph, like
yellow and over exposed. So it's again it's all the

(23:47):
photos in the video. It's all inconsistent, none of it degrees.
Objects are present in some images not in others. It's
very very suspicious.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
And you know, like I watched the Staircase documentary before
we cover the episode like on the Owl theory episode
that we've done before, and when you watch that documentary,
like none of this is really covered well. And also
you go into that documentary like with the two theories
either she fell or Michael killed her, and your book

(24:17):
pointed out I had no idea that Michael became romantically
involved with the director of that documentary, right.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Well, the editor, Yeah, the editor of the documentary. Yeah.
I mean for people who are in this world of
true crime more deeply, that's quite a well known point
by now. But in any case, it tells you a
little bit about the connections between the family and the
production team. Things were going on there that I think,

(24:46):
I guess what I want to say about that is
all of the media that people are consuming on this
case is motivated one way or another. The theory that
is the most interesting part of this whole case, right,
the l theory that people actually get fascinated, that people
actually want to learn more about. Where have you in
the mainstream media and any of that, Where have you
actually seen it presented? It's hardly ever present. Even the

(25:09):
Netflix special that presented in the last of five minutes
gave Larry Pollard as two minutes to talk about it.
There was basically because there arms were tied by that point.
They knew that everybody knew about it and they had
to present something on it. But from the very beginning
they've wanted to present this as a binary decision. Either
she fell or she was murdered. Either she fell or
she was murdered. Yeah, why has it always been presented

(25:31):
like that.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
So let's get into that something else that may have
slash probably did happen. Your book was very convincing, and
I'm totally on team OWL for this case. So let's
get into how this theory started and what this theory is.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
I think the best way to start actually is to
say what's wrong with the first two theories, because that
way we can kind of see the need to approach
this in a different way. So the first two theories.
For first of all, we Mike beats Kathleen over thehead
with this brass blowpoke. The trouble is, she didn't have
any injuries to her brain, and she didn't have any

(26:10):
sort of broken skull or even sort of like bruising
on her face or anything like that that you'd expect
from the sill of an attack. In fact, Kathleen had
bled to death from deep lacerations on her scalp, and
that's very unusual if the method of death was a
homicide by beating, almost unheard of, really.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
So just to confirm was her cause of death, like
she bled to death from those wounds.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Apparently the medical examiner originally wrote exagination as the cause
of death, but was dissuaded from making this the ultimate
cause of death by the police, who encouraged her to
point to something brain injury like and so she said, oh,
plus a serious concussion or a major concussive event or

(26:56):
something like that, which sounds made up right, But really
the evidence is that she bled to death. I mean,
if you look in the staircase, she must have bled
to death. Really it would be you know, so the
cause of death I think in the autopsy reporters called
death from blood loss combined with major concussive event. So
she bleed to death. Now that's again, so that's very

(27:20):
unusual if this is a homicide by beating with a
metal rod. So that's just strange. Okay. Now you think, oh, well,
maybe that's better explained by this fall theory, because you know,
shallow falls on hard oak steps. She could slice her head,
bleed out, but not damage the brain or crack the
skull or anything like that. Okay, it's a bit implausible,

(27:42):
but you know, perhaps you could explain it that way.
The trouble is with the full theory, there's just way
too much blood. There's way too much blood everywhere. It's
sprayed all over the walls, it's gone at bizarre angles,
it's under some of the what are they like the
noses of the steps, you know, coming up strange angles.
And there's also the blood outside the house and on

(28:04):
the front door that we talked about, so that needs
to be explained as well. She obviously didn't fall and
then fall all the way out the front door and
down the path and then come back to her resting
position at the bottom of the stairs. So those are
the problems with the two main theories. And Larry Pollard
comes along. Now, Larry was a neighbor of the He
was in fact the next door neighbor of the Peterson's,

(28:25):
and he was an attorney, and he was following the
case closely as a neighbor would and as an attorney would,
right doubly interested, and he was just a bit confused
really because the evidence didn't make any sense to him.
He knew that the arguments were fall on the one hand,
or murder on the other, and he knew what the
available evidence was and he just thought, the woman, this

(28:46):
doesn't sound very convincing at all, how strange. So he
was chatting over the back fence with one of Michael's
team one of Michael's legal team and asked if he
could be shown the autopsy photos because one of them
had mentioned that they were pretty bizarre. The injuries were
pretty bizarre. So the lawyer brings the copy of the
autopsy photos and presents them to Larry, and Larry, who

(29:09):
was a hunter, took one look at the wounds on
the back of Kathleen's head and said, these look exactly
like turkey tracks. And they do.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
Right.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
If you take a look at the injuries on the
back of Kathleen's head, they're like two perfect symmetrical trident
marks right beside other. Yeah, they look like bird feet.
I mean, you know, you might not be able to
pick exactly what species they are it is, but that
looks pretty damn close to bird feet of some sort.

(29:39):
So Larry was just a bit confused, as you would be,
because he didn't believe a turkey had killed Kathleen. But
he found it very strange because he knew from his
hunting days what the tracks of a turkey looked like,
and he realized, well, that looks just like a turkey.
So it actually took so a couple of months after

(30:01):
viewing the photos for Larry to realize that the best
explanation would be an owl, and it would probably be
one of the territorial bar owls that were so common
around the property. Now, remember I said that they live
in the largest domestic property in Durham, so they had
these huge grounds. I don't know exactly how many acres,
but you know, this was a very very big wooded property,

(30:22):
and there was an old barn between Larry and Mike's
house that the barn owls and the barred owls would
nest them. So Larry sort of had the Eureka moment
when he was thinking about the blood outside the house
and he realized, oh my god, if the attack began
outside and Kathleen ran inside and then fainted at the

(30:43):
bottom of the stairs, right having some kind of seizure,
maybe to explain all the spray, that would explain the
blood inside and outside house, and it would explain the
head injuries that don't come alongside any brain injury or
skull injury. The other thing to notice, Kathleen had sort
of scratched around her eyes, which would be a very
commonplace for birds of prey to focus their attacks, and

(31:06):
on her elbows with these sort of puncture like injuries
that again look like the punctures of talents. So Larry thought,
this is incredible. You know, I've got to go to
Mike's lawyers before the trial ends because they might want
to do something about this, because the trial was just
about to close up. And of course he went to
Mike's lawyer, David Rudolph, and was laughed at, essentially, you know,

(31:28):
as you probably would be right if you went into
anyone's work and said, I think your client is the
victim of an owl attack. Sounds laughable. So he was
sort of not taken seriously for a long time.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, as you're saying this, I'm looking at the picture
on your website of the wounds on Kathleen's head. And
even if you were to like argue it was a
fire poker, one, yeah, you would expect there to be
damaged to her skull if it was that severe. And two,
just looking at the marks, they're not the same. It's
clear if this was a bird of prey, it's like

(32:02):
its toes are spread differently on each foot. A fire poker,
the pokers can't move if you were to measure the
space between like what we are assuming our owl feet
it's not consistent between both feet. It would have to
be like two different fire pokers, or the fire poker
would have had to like get bent. You know what
I mean.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
You're saying that there's a certain randomness to the symmetry exactly,
like it's the same object, but it's a moving object,
like a clause a dynamic claw.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Right, yeah, yes, And you know, I think it's a
good example of why, like wildlife forensics is important because
if you're just like a normal cop, you're not going
into this scene expecting, like the most obvious answer would
be one stairs or two Michael killed her. You're not like, well,
what if an owl came in and did this? Like

(32:51):
that probably wasn't in anyone's front of mind, but especially
back then because it's such like a new field. I'm
sure no one had the expertise who even like know
what they were looking at if it was an owl.
But that's just acknowledging like the head wounds. That's not
even acknowledging all of the feathers and the mutant from

(33:11):
like the bird poop that was present on the scene.
So let's get into those things that were not acknowledged
the first time. This was investigated.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yeah, so this is where I enter the scene. So
so far we've had Larry Pollard, and his argument is, look,
we can explain the major problems that the two other
theories had away if we say a bird of prey. Now. Actually, well,
just before we go further as well, talk about how
Larry got his tiny bit of confirmation, which is he

(33:43):
wrote to the district Attorney and said, look, I think
a bird of prey might have been involved. Can you
just tell me that if in the trace evidence report
there's any mention of feathers or something like that. He
writes to the DA and asked where any feathers in
the trace evidents port. He eventually gets a letter back
that says, right, we appreciate your interest in this case. No,

(34:05):
there were no feathers found at the same thanks very much. Now, Larry,
who's by now pretty convinced the bird of prey had
something to do with it, thinks I think something's fishy
here because that I'm almost certain this is a bird
of prey. And so if there were no feathers found,
that makes no sense. Right. If this was a tussle
between a large owl and a human, there are going

(34:25):
to be some feathers somewhere. So he, as I said,
he was an attorney. He used to work at the
Special Prosecutor's Office in Durham, and so he went to
his old place of work and sort of, you know,
behind everyone's back, said hey, mate, do you think I
can get you know, the trace evidence report in the
Peterson case on the sly and this. Mats were like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(34:47):
for sure, but just don't tell anyone. He's like, no, no, totally,
I won't tell anyone. So he gets the traces Evidence
report and on the first page it says, father, a
feather was found in Cathleen's here. So of course he's like, well,
that was exactly what I asked for, confirment, So now
I know you're lying, right, So he's obviously furious. He
asks to review the slide with the feather in the

(35:08):
company of the new District attorney. So they get the
special microscope they can an expert. They all get the
slide and have a look and they find that on
the slide there's a there's a strand of Kathleen's here
attached in blood is a broken feather fragment and another
broken feather. So there were, in fact, two broken feather

(35:30):
fragments in Kathleen's here that hadn't been admitted to right
when Larry asked about them, so he called that the
smoking feather. That was Larry's smoking feather. The trouble is
that that's not all the evidence there is now you
because you would think, right, if there was that feather,
there were loads of feathers. Yep, it still doesn't make
any sense. If Larry is right and Kathleen was attacked

(35:52):
by a bird and ran inside, you know, she should
have feathers all through a here. They should have been
all over her hands if she was pulling right, And
yet we're being told there were a couple of microscopic
feather fragments, and it still doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
Right.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
That's when I started to get a bit curious about
what could be going on here, and that's when I
started looking more closely at the crime scene photos and
the crime scene video, and that's when I discovered really
evidence that I felt really needed to be shared with
the people of Durham and the people of North Carolina
more widely, and that's evidence of feathers in the crime

(36:26):
scene video and crime scene photos That's why the photos
are of such terrible quality. That's why the crime scene
video has been redacted. There are ways to enhance some
of these images, but it's very, very difficult. I've struggled
to do the best job that i can, but I'm
not an expert in the field. I've been using sort
of online tools, you know, forensic image analysis tools. But

(36:47):
you know, there's even more. Even if you doubt that
evidence that I've presented, there, there is evidence of bird
droppings directly under Kathleen's head in the stairwell. This substance
is a white substance. It's in splats that are consistent
with the way in which an owl or any other
sort of raptor would deposit droppings, especially if it were

(37:10):
a frightened bird or a nervous bird. These are mutes,
So these have been ejected, and not because the birds
just had a big feed. They've been They're rejected in
a sort of fit of stress. And these images have
now been viewed by multiple ornithologists and raptor experts that
I've sent these images to multiple ornithologists and raptor experts.
Almost all of them agree that these are consistent with

(37:32):
bird droppings, and by now, in a way, I'm sort
of fed up of talking about it, because this should
be all through the newspapers and Durham. You know, there
should be the news and observers should be taking that.
The Herald Sun should be picking this up, you know,
the Charlotte Observer should be talking about this. And I've
reached out to all of these newspapers. I've reached out
to hundreds of journalists, and nobody seems to realize how

(37:54):
important this is to this case and proving quite serious
police mailpractice because the white marks, the white substance, the
splat marks that are over the blood in the stairwell were,
we are told, never tested by police, and the police
even when they were on the stand, pretended they had
never noticed them when they were investigating the same. It's

(38:16):
just it's so appalling. It's so appalling. It angers me,
it genuinely, you know now I have to laugh for
or cry. Yeah, but it really does anger me because
it shouldn't have come to me some rando guy in
Indonesia trying to convince my wife no there's something to it,
to later find these marks and this, you know, why

(38:36):
weren't the friends convestigators doing this. Why didn't Larry, who
probably knew they were there all along, mentioned this, Right,
it's because people were trying to present the strongest case
they could for what they wanted the world to know
about it. Right, it's not nobody was actually presenting the
evidence as it really sat. Oh, it's just so aggravating.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Yeah. Well, also, I think that explains why the photos
might be edited, because if they couldn't explain the feathers
or the mute, just change the filter and then people
won't see it and you won't have to acknowledge it.
So I totally like, if they're trying to do that,
see why they would do that.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Well, and the other thing that I discussed in the
book is the piece of evidence that goes missing. So
you know, you don't just have to fudge the photos.
You don't just have to change a filter. You can
just throw evidence away if it doesn't fit your narrowive.
So there was a piece of evidence. It was labeled
States Exhibit twelve. It was plucked out from one of
the steps. It was under a clot of blood, and

(39:32):
it had been stamped in there with immense force. Right,
it was described as gun metal gray on the outside.
Why sh in its interior about a sixteenth of an
inch long, curved and I quote the forensic detective here,
like a mini talon. State's Exhibit twelve was wrapped up
in all this evidence tape and a little container. It

(39:55):
was presented to the jury, right the forensic investigator who
discovered it, Eric ca. He opened the container to show
the jury, poked about for a while in there and
said to the DA, hey, it's not in there. And
the da came over and started poking about, and they
take out the cotton wool and they realized, oh my god,

(40:15):
it's been removed. It's not here. Now. The reason they
were showing the jury this to begin with is that
they were alleging it was a piece of the murder weapon.
They were saying that this was a wood metal chip,
so it was either wood or metal, and it had
become lodged in the steel. Well, I think, you know,
it's pretty clear what we're looking at here, even just
in terms of the color. We're talking about what is

(40:37):
probably the chip of the tip of the talon. Now
what's frightening as well is that one of the chrime
scene photographers who I interviewed. I asked her, did you
see any evidence that you thought was compatible with a
bird when you were doing the investigation? And she brings
attention to an object that was found embedded in the

(40:58):
back of Kathleen's head in a skull that was, she said,
very similar in appearance to State's Exhibit twelve. This is
a piece of evidence that Larry Pollard had originally said
might represent a chip talent, and now we have separate
corroboration from Angie Powell is her name, that this is

(41:18):
probably another talent chip. That it was very similar in
appearance to State's Exhibit twelve, which, by the sounds of
things is the chip of a talent and which was
discarded by investigators.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Also, like when you described that moment in the book,
how humiliating as you're, you know, conjuring up this story
to the jury and you're like here it is and
then there's nothing, and you're like, well, moving on, Like
how even that should.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Be learned to what? Yeah, well you can see the
da is really you know, his nerves get frayed after that,
you know, something fishy. But they both taken completely by surprise.
So whoever had it or threw it away. It wasn't
one of those who I think they wouldn't have brought
it out and presented it to the jury if but

(42:02):
they they certainly to do other things that they were
aware of that they shouldn't have been doing.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
Oh great. So, as you can probably imagine, one of
my favorite chapters of the book was chapter five, which
was kind of like a historical look at owl attacks.
So could you, like as a point of being, like,
it is not out of the realm of possibility that
owls attack humans. So could you give us some of
the most compelling attacks that you found that really felt that,

(42:27):
like it confirmed that owls were capable of this amount
of damage.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah, I think that's the point, right, that ols are
capable of this amount of it, because I don't think
people really doubted ol swoop at humans. Olves might scratch you,
you might get an infection, but nobody is thinking you
might get swooped out and lose an eye, or you
might get swooped at and it hits your jugular, or
you might get swooped at and you lose use that

(42:53):
lose the use of your arm for a week or
a month or whatever it is. You know, like these
are very serious injuries that happened to people. Actually, one
of the more interesting stories happened quite recently. There's a
young boy. There's a photograph of his injuries in the
book there, twelve year old Beckett Shanahan was his name.
Now what's interesting actually is Beckett Shanahan. His father is

(43:15):
a book reviewer for the Boston Globe. And I approached
him asking for permission, you know, to use the photo
and to talk about his son's owl attack, and he,
you know, just wanted to know exactly what I was
going to write. And once he saw what, he said, okay,
well that's pretty accurate. You can write that, you know.
And I said, we would you like to take a
look at the book since your son was attacked by

(43:36):
an owl, and maybe you'd like to read about you
know this, And his response was essentially, oh, it's ridiculous though,
like an owl attacking so even for people, yeah, even
for people who Yeah, So this boy suffered quite a
serious hid injury as well. I'm not sure how he
is today years after the event, but in short, a

(43:58):
great horned owl attack to's face as he was bob
sledding in winter, and his injuries are pretty awful. He
was sent to hospital. His face was terribly ripped and
he was on morphine and you know, really looked a mess.
And apparently, yes, a serious head injury in the aftermath.
Because often what you get is whiplash as well from
these l attacks when they hit you. Most of the

(44:21):
attack victims described as being akin to being struck from
behind by a baseball bat. So they've never been struck
as hard in their life, and so injuries like whiplash
or in Kathleen's case, I think actually possibly a broken
cartilage was part of a whiplash injury. Possibly is quite common, yeah,
I mean in terms of the worst attacks. There was

(44:43):
another fatal attack that happened in nineteen eighty five to
a six foot six trucker called Robert Schmidt. There's not
a lot about this case online. You have to go
through the newspaper archives to find out more about it.
I had to write to the Merced County Coroner's office
to get more details on the case. But essentially it
seems as though a trucker was mauled to death on

(45:04):
a roadside in nineteen eighty five. He was found dead
by a fellow trucker at about six in the morning.
He had scratches all the down the length of his body.
The investigators even felt that they could probably determine the
species of owl, which was a common barn owl. Why

(45:25):
they believed they could do this, I assume it's because
they might have found feathers on the scene or something
like that that aren't discussed in the autopsy or whatever.
It's you know, the damage that these animals can do
is very, very serious. I mean, maybe you had a
case that you want to bring up from the book
that stuck with you.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yeah, I mean, just listening to that chapter, I was like,
from you know, I've never been like, quote unquote attacked
by an owl, but I've worked with barn owls, great horns,
and then you know, smaller owls. But even I would
say one of the more intense interactions of how with
a bird of prey was a broadwing hawk, which are
smaller than bar owls, and it grabbed my finger so

(46:03):
hard and would not let go. So if like a
small bird like that can do that amount of like
grip strength, barred owls and especially great horns are so
much bigger, so it is no surprise to me that
they could cause someone serious damage, and especially great horns
are so.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Scary, Yeah, terrifying. And I mean I think an average
great horned owl has a grip force of about two
and a half times that of a pit bull on
in the talons. So the grip force of great horned
owl's talents is about two and a half times that
of a pit bull. And of course that's not a

(46:42):
grip per se. That's the resting position because of the
digital tendon locking device, right, so when it's not like
it's holding on for dear life and if it gets tired,
it will just it's never going to get tired. That's
that's clamped shut like that. If you, for example, kill
the bird, that's how it's days. Yeah. So you know,

(47:04):
if it were a barred l as Larry Pollard contends,
the grip force of that is around about the same
as a pit bulls bite. You combine that with needle
sharp talons. That's pretty clear how these injuries on Kathleen's
head would have occurred and why they would be so serious.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Oh yeah, and I mean I've had barn owls like
fly at my face. Luckily they've never like clawed me
or anything. Yeah, it's fine. Uh. And you know, I
can assume if you're from North Carolina and you're familiar
with these owl species, barn owls are not that big.
And maybe I'm just saying that because like I've worked
with eagles and stuff too, so I'm like, to me,
that's a big, scary bird. But barn owls aren't that big.

(47:45):
But also, Kathleen was drinking a lot that night, so
her blood was probably thinned also from alcohol.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
So when you have a thing attacking your head, which
already bleeds more than like many of the other parts
of your body, and then you've been drink so your
blood's already thin like it, it just doesn't seem out
of the realm of possibility that an owl did this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Just to be clear, though, she wasn't wasted, yeah, oh yeah,
because that's something that is sometimes presented to support this
full theory that you know, she was so out of
her mind drunk that she fell down the stairs and
that's how you can explain it. Actually, she was just
under the level for driving legally in North Carolina. I think,

(48:29):
oh wow. Blood alcohol was found, so yeah, there was
also a small dose of valum still in a blood stream.
But we don't know when she took that or what
dosage was originally administered or anything. But it wasn't enough
to really zonk you out, like sheah, she would have
felt nice. She would have by the sounds of things,
she was just having a nice night until everything, yeah, terrible.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Which is wrong that being said, like if she wants
to get hammered at her house, she can. And also like,
plenty of people fall down the stairs sober. Plenty of
people got up the stairs drunk and don't fall down
like it's not like her her fault.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
Don't get really pissed and go running up and down
the stairs.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
No, no, no, absolutely not. Yeah, I would say like one
of the other there were so many attacks that you
covered that I thought were really great. But there was
one where a guy his brother got attacked or no,
his brother survived an encounter with a grizzly bear and
then like what was it like the next year the

(49:28):
brother like got attacked by an owl and he was like,
damn it, I'm not the coolest story anymore.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
I completely forgot about that. So that was in Montana,
that's right, and it's how Kate Davis, an ornithologist, became
involved in this case through her connection with that. But yeah, essentially,
I don't think his injuries were particularly but he really
just sort of got a scrape and the great hornell
flew off. But yes, because they lived in Montana, I
suppose they were a bit outdoorsy. The yes, the brother,

(49:58):
the older brother had been not attacked by a grizzly,
but he came face to face with a grizzly and
cub and luckily they weren't in the mood to fight
and just sort of stood in front of him for
a while. He was completely alone at their mercy, and
they just decided, you don't look delicious, and they skulked on,
very very lucky, and of course that was He thought

(50:21):
that was really cool, and he got to tell all
his friends, I'm grizzly beer's a scared of me, you know,
like the bravest guy in the world. And then yeah,
the next year, his brother was attacked by a great
horned owl, and then he got to claim the bragging
rights as the bravest, coolest guy in the world.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Yep, as he should. I don't know if you've interacted
like closely with a great horned for any reason, but
like they are, you respectfully give them space and fear
them like they're they're really really intense.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
So I've come into close range with the I think
they're called a Java fish owl. Is that right? Java fish?

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Sure, that's right.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
Sure, Yeah, yeah, totally. They've all got funny names. I'm
just giving it a new one. And they are physically,
at least, it's quite similar in appearance to the great
horn els. And yeah, just being near them, having them
watch you and trap you there, Yes, you certainly feel stalked.
You suddenly feel stalked.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
Yeah. I volunteered at a facility that had a great
horned and they were like, don't go in there. We
only go in there when it's summertime. And you can
have a hose to keep her away from you, because
even if you went in with a construction helmet on,
if you turned your back from her, or really even
if you just like weren't looking at her, she'd hit
you in the head. But even wearing a construction helmet,

(51:43):
her hitting you in the head could still knock you out.
And that's just you know, hitting you.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
Yeah, you've just reminded me of a case that I
didn't get to put in the book because when I
went to try and find the archival material again, I
couldn't find it, so I wouldn't be able to back
up or justify what I'm saying, and in fact, obviously
I can't now either. But take my word for it.
This happened. I think it was in the It was
either the thirties or the sixties, so you've got some choice.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
There.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
A zoo keeper went into the Great Houned owl enclosure
and was attacked by I think it was six seven
eight of these owls all decided to have a go,
and I think I was so surprised that this hadn't
ended fatally. Somehow he was rescued from this absolutely terrible

(52:35):
situation and he spent a long time in hospital. God,
let me see if I can track that down, and
when this goos up on, I'll get you the details
for your socials, because I regretted not being able to
put that one in the book. That was quite a
quite a horror story.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Really, yeah, OK, even one of them is enough, let
alone like six Yeah, all right, So when we first
were talking about doing this episode, you were saying that
there was new evidence like supporting this theory. So what
is like the newer evidence, or like the new testing

(53:09):
that had been done to support that an owl may
have been involved in this.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Oh, that is the bird droppings most importantly, I mean
that has been now independently corroborated, independently corroboration. Right, I'm
not getting all of the bird experts together in a
room and forcing them to agree, right. They don't know
that they're all saying this, and they're all coming back
to me saying, look, you know, these look consistent with mutes,

(53:34):
with raptor mutes. Right, So we can't determine exactly what
bird this is from those marks, but we can probably
determine that this is a larger bird, probably some sort
of raptor. But you know, I don't want to go
much further than that. I'm not really on team owl
as such. I try and distance myself now from Larry
and from the whole owl theory sort of description. I

(53:58):
tend to prefer to think if this as a bird
of prey theory. For all I know, they were mucking
around with the captive bird that they shouldn't have had,
and things went badly. For all I know it was
a wild animal attack. I really just don't know. There's
just as much evidence to say that this was a
red tailed hawk as there is to say this was
a barred ol And if I were, in fact to
put money on it, I'd probably put money on red

(54:20):
tailed hawk over bard Al for a few reasons, among
which are the fact that you know, the wounds are
tried and shaped, and if it were an owl, you
would probably expect the square of death as it's normally called,
where you know, you get the four How would you
describe it?

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Sort of, yeah, because they can move their toe like
a toe to the back, so it's like two talents
in the front, two talents in the back versus three
in the front and one toe in the back.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
Yeah. Yeah, So I think for hunting that is the
more typical configuration. Is that, right, it's the square of death.
So given that we're not looking at a square of
death on the back of Kathleen's head, we're looking at
sort of trident shaped scratches. And given that the feathers
that are visible at the crime scene, and some of
the better photographs seem to be read and are described
by witnesses as red material or red matter in different

(55:08):
places around the house. My suspicions of it we're dealing
probably with some sort of hawk or falconer over an
hourl as a matter of fact, and that this was
some sort of accident, something went wrong, I think, with
a captive animal, which is how you can explain the
unusual behavior of Mike Peterson and the family at the scene.
Why there are so many secrets and lies on both sides.

(55:28):
I've never really been able to resolve why both the
defense and the prosecution seemed to be covering something up.
And I think that's the only explanation I found that
really makes sense. If this were a wild animal attack,
then it's sort of blameless, you know. Yeah, So I
don't see why the defense would be so cagy about
packing it up, about following the evidence where it leads.
I'm more inclined now to think this was some sort

(55:48):
of accident with a captive animal, perhaps still an owl,
but whatever.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Yeah, which would still be so silly because it's like, yeah,
it might be a like a felony to have a
bird of prey like captive because they're protected, but like
that's better than killing your wife. Like I think if
I was under the scrutiny of like I might have
done this, like, Okay, well we actually have this bird
that we're not supposed to have, so sorry, but like,

(56:13):
I see, I totally see what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
For sure, if it's if it's something like negligent homicide, right,
and and you are protecting somebody, you might take the fall.
That's all I'm probably gonna say about that. If it
were Todd, If Todd had a bird of prey and
was mucking around with it with his friends, who are
right who arrived at the scene that night, you know,

(56:38):
an accident with a bird of prey, Todd might have
gone down for negligent homicide, could have been put away
for a few the father decides, luck, I'll take the
fall for the son, and things just became much hairer
for everyone involved than it should have become.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Mm. Yeah, so okay, So maybe rather than us calling
it the owl theory, we could just call it the
raptor theory and you're not play a species specificness on it.
That sounds better.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Well, that's a problem with this case in every respect.
It's always it's too many people putting too many theories
out there, when every theory is really seriously underdetermined by
the evidence, Like, we really need to be a bit
more simplistic about what we know and what we can establish.
And I think we can know and establish that somehow

(57:24):
this woman was killed by a bird. That's really weird,
and we need to start figuring out exactly what happened
and why it was covered up the way it was.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Yeah, all right, So, given all this evidence that a
bird of prey could have been responsible for the death
of Kathleen, how as of today, in twenty twenty four,
is this case? Is there any movement? Where is Michael
at How is it going?

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Well, Michael had been living with his first wife, Patty again,
they'd moved back and together. He's still live. Patty died
of a hearts attack last year or the year before,
now was it us year? And yes, she wasn't at
the bottom of the stairs. Important to note and yeah,
good time. And you know, he has no inclination, it

(58:12):
seems to get any sort of you know, No, he's
not pursuing the innocence project or anything like that. I
don't think he's looking to defend his innocence legally, and
in fact, I think he can't now because he's pled
guilty to manslaughter. On selford play. So that's where the
case ends. It was twenty eleven when a new trial

(58:33):
was called for. It was twenty seventeen when he made
the Alfred play and since then he's been out. He's
living in Durham. People see him walking around the town
doing his daily business. You know he's read the book.
I know he's read my book and he called me
a very fine writer, which coming from somebody who's got
a million dollar advance for one of his books, is

(58:53):
nice praise. But I probably would have preferred the million
dollar advance to be fair. But you know, I don't
think he wants to go back there. I don't think
anybody involved in the case wants to go back there.
And the police officers, who I think should be brought
to account for what happened because there's clear evidence of
them conspiring tide evidence. They're very hard to track down

(59:16):
and many of them have moved out of state and
many of them don't belong to the police anymore, and
many of them have died as well.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Wow, well, there's so much that we couldn't get into
in this episode because obviously there's a ton of evidence.
Blood spatter alone, there's ten thousand droplets. So like, there's
so much more in this book that you go into specifically.
So where can people find your book?

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Well, unfortunately, they might have to go to the Devil
and buy it on Amazon yep, but they can also
go to the Wild Blue Press website that's the publisher's
website and they can order it through there. The other
thing they could do is get on Twitter, where I'm
quite it seems to just follow the Devil around, don't I? Actually, yeah, yeah,

(01:00:04):
so you could phone me on Twitter, you know, under
the watchful eye of Elon. And yes I post staircase
related things pretty frequently, but mostly it's just shit posting.
And yeah, I would really appreciate anyone who did get
the book. As you said, that's available on audiobook, So

(01:00:25):
if you're not much of a reader, but you want
to become a bit more familiar with the evidence in
a deep way in this case, I'd really recommend doing that.
The audiobook is read by oh Tom Lennon, and he
just does a fantastic job. He's got a really beautiful
pace that he reads long as and it's very clear

(01:00:45):
he doesn't do any silly voices or anything. He doesn't
do any character voices, but he you know, it's very
easy to listen to and straightforward, and I'm very glad
that he was the person who got to read it.
So it's very easy to listen to. As I'm sure
can attest to that. You can, yes, thank you, Yes, awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
And then so people like me who listen to the
audio book, there's also like we've kind of hinted at
the online gallery to look at some pictures we've been
talking about, and that's out wild blue press dot com.
And I can link all of this in the episode
of description to make it easy for people to find.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Yeah, that would be that would be excellent. Yep, I'd
really appreciate that. As I said, I probably would have
preferred the million dollar advance. I'm never going to make
any money off this book, but keeping I mean, that's
just a fact of life.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
I'm never gonna Yeah, passion project.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Yeah, it was absolutely pasture, you know, and it disturbed
my life quite seriously. But you know, if buying what
buying the book does is it spreads the word. And
that's the important thing to me right now is you know,
I want to change public perception about this case. I
want people to be aware of how badly the police
were behaving in North Carolina at that time. And just
for some context if your listeners are familiar, this happened

(01:01:57):
around about the same time as the Duke Lacrosse scandal, which,
if you look into it, the DA at that time
actually did end up going to prism for one day
for his crimes against the young men who he accused
of gang raping a stripper. So wow, this was Things
were pretty bad legally and judicially there at the turn

(01:02:22):
of the twenty fifth century. I have no idea why
they were so terribly corrupt at this time. I don't
know if there's still this corrupt, but it's just appalling,
really really appalling.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
Yeah, I think, you know, if anything take away from
this case is like, be more critical when you're presented
with narratives, which I think applies to so many things,
but be critical and don't just follow along with whatever
is presented to you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Ashley, I'm absolutely amazed that you've taken that away from
the book, because that's what I was hoping that the
takeaway that this is really when you look at the
way the media in this case is presented, you'll see
if you have a very critical eye about it. That is,
so what's the word? It's so motivated by special concerns

(01:03:04):
that are really not an interest in the An interest
in the truth is not one of the concerns that's
going on in this case. And so although there might
be the odd mistake here and there in my book,
I at least want it to be known that I've
been doing this just because I've discovered some very very
strange things that need to be known.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Yeah, well, now more than ever, it's important that if
we want the truth, we have to dig deeperth and
just face value of what we're looking at. So thank
you for writing this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
We really can't rely on legacy media anymore. We have
to rely on people like yourself and podcasters and what
you can only call the new media, I suppose. Like,
as I said, I've reached out to probably one hundred
and twenty journalists in North Carolina and the wider United States,
and I've had about three replies, all of which have

(01:03:52):
ultimately been negative. So wild, it's bizarre, right, Like, this
evidence is just incredible, and it's about an internationally you know,
high profile case, and it's a difficult pursy really.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
Yeah, yeah, you know, not to spoil it because I
was going to cover it later, but I guess just
to point out, like, so, there was a case a
few months ago in Massachusetts, so stayed over for me
in New Hampshire and a it was reported that a
woman was attacked by a coyote in a state park.
So there are all these articles come out that a
coyote attacked this woman, right, So then at the end

(01:04:31):
of each article, it's like, oh, here's what to do
if you know you live around coyotes, come to find
out it was actually a dog, But no one went
back and corrected their articles. Yeah, And I'm like, if
you literally get new evidence that it wasn't what you
thought it was, why would you leave the article up
and not do more journalism? So it just lately seems

(01:04:52):
like lazy internet journalism. And that's why I really was
excited to talk to you more because I was like,
what are we doing? What are they doing?

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yeah. Even so, one of the news articles that I
quote in the book was discussing the l theory. I
think it was the Rocky Mount Telegram, and it said
it was discussing the l theory when the old theory
was first presented and they said no evidence of a
bird was found inside the house. So I of course
wrote them directly and I said, look, you printed this

(01:05:23):
in whatever you know, twenty eleven or whatever it was,
but now there's there's new evidence, and I thought you
might want to correct this, you know, But of course
no reply at all, just nothing else.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Gross. You mentioned Twitter. Where what's your handle? And where
can people find you if they want to reach out
to you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
I'm just Titty Smith. Well I'm Titty psychokiller Smith at
the moment because it's Halloween. But they can find me
at Smith Titty and that's really the only social media
I use. Unfortunately, I don't really like to venture out
into that world of human connection too often.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Ye rightfully, so, yeah, I don't scury place.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
I prefer the birds me too.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
And that was my interview with Titty Smith. As I
mentioned up top, you can find all the links to
his book, the online gallery and whatnot in our show
notes or the episode description. I also completely forgot uptop
to acknowledge the fact that we have new intro music
in New Transition Music. So thank you so much to
second grade husband Josh Walsh for making our new music.

(01:06:32):
I really wanted to revamp the podcast when I came
back from our kind of two month hiatus, so thank
you so much Josh for doing that. Thank you Jesse,
his brother, for editing this. If you want to find
us on socials, check out the episode description as well
for links to all of that, and check out our
website get out a Live podcast dot com where you
can buy merch We were having an issue with the
shipping that has been fixed. Thank you so much Ren

(01:06:54):
for pointing that out to us. And when I come
back in two weeks, it will be an episode of
me interviewing someone that literally had me starstruck. I cannot
wait for you all to hear it. Stay tuned for that,
Stay safe out there, and I'll see you in two weeks.