Hold onto your butts, my fellow true-crime loving deviants: Netflix is launching your new favourite real life whodunit in less than two weeks, and mates: it’s a doozy.
The Staircase is a documentary centred on the trial of crime novelist Michael Peterson, who was accused in 2001 of murdering his wife Kathleen. To this day, he maintains that Kathleen died after falling down a set of stairs in their home (hence the title). Authorities, however, believed he bludgeoned her to death with a fireplace poker. Oscar-winning documentary maker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade followed the whole thing, from Peterson’s indictment to the conclusion of the trial.
The original series was screened in 2004, and the version that will stream on Netflix includes the original eight episodes, the two-hour follow-up from 2012 after Peterson was released from jail, and three brand-new episodes focusing on new evidence.
The case itself is a wild one: during the trial, it emerged that Peterson was bisexual, and prosecutors argued that he had murdered Kathleen when she found out about his affairs with men (Peterson says that she had always known about his sexuality, and that they had an open marriage). Prosecutors also discovered that another woman in Peterson’s life had also died in unusual circumstances. 18 years before the death of his wife, his family friend died from an intra-cerebral haemorrhage caused by… a fall down the stairs.
THEN there’s the absolutely wild and disconcertingly plausible Owl Theory, which suggests that Kathleen Peterson fell down the stairs after she was attacked by (you guessed it) an owl.
Critics have already praised the shit out of the original series, and those who’ve seen the new eps are raving about them. Plump up that couch butt-groove and stock up on microwave pop-corn, crime nerds. It’s bingeing time.
All 13 episodes of The Staircase air on Netflix on June 8.
