TLDR: Michael Peterson entered an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter in February 2017, was released from prison having already served more than the required time, and returned to Durham, North Carolina. He lived for a period with his first wife Patricia “Patty” Peterson until her death from a heart attack in 2021.
His relationship with French documentary editor Sophie Brunet, which had sustained him through 16 years of imprisonment, ended shortly after his release.
As of 2026, Peterson is 82 years old, still lives in the Durham area, continues to write, and remains one of the most searched figures in true crime.
On February 24, 2017, Michael Peterson walked out of the Durham County Jail a free man. He had been inside for nearly 16 years.
During that time, a documentary about his case had become one of the most watched true crime series in the world, a French film editor had fallen in love with him through prison letters, and the question of what really happened at the bottom of that staircase had become a genuine global obsession.
He entered an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter, meaning he maintained his innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him. He was released having already served more time than the plea required.
He went back to Durham. That is where he still is.
He Went Home and Moved In With His First Wife
The plan had been Paris. For 13 years, Peterson and Sophie Brunet, the French documentary editor who had fallen in love with him through prison correspondence, had talked about living together in her Paris apartment once he was free. She had visited him in prison dozens of times. She had sustained him through the worst years of his incarceration.
When freedom arrived, Peterson didn’t go to Paris. He cited his age, the language barrier, financial concerns, and his desire to remain near his children and grandchildren. The relationship ended in May 2017, a few months after his release.
He moved in instead with Patricia “Patty” Peterson, his first wife, from whom he had been divorced since 1971. Patty had remained close to the family throughout the trial and the years of appeals. The arrangement was described as a companionship, two people with deep shared history navigating the strange aftermath of everything that had happened.
Patty Peterson died of a heart attack in 2021. Peterson was with her.
He Still Writes and Still Maintains His Innocence
Peterson published a memoir called Behind the Staircase in 2019, covering his experience of the trial, the years in prison, his relationship with Brunet, and his reflections on the case.
The book confirmed several details about the relationship with Brunet that had previously only been reported through other sources, including his account of why the Paris plan fell apart.
He has never changed his position on what happened to Kathleen.
He maintains he found her at the bottom of the staircase and that her death was an accident. He has expressed varying degrees of openness about the Owl Theory, the alternative hypothesis that a barred owl attack initiated the sequence of events, though he has noted that neither he nor the first responders saw any evidence of a bird in the house that night.
The Alford plea means the case has no judicial resolution. Peterson was never acquitted and never convicted through a final verdict. He exists in a legal limbo that the true crime community has been debating ever since.
His Children and the Family That Stayed
Peterson has five children. His biological sons Clayton and Todd stood by him throughout the trial and the years of appeals. His adopted daughters Margaret and Martha Ratliff, whom he and Kathleen had adopted after the death of their mother Elizabeth Ratliff in Germany in 1985, also supported him publicly during the legal proceedings.
The Ratliff daughters’ continued support was significant given that the prosecution had used Elizabeth Ratliff’s death as evidence of a pattern, arguing that Peterson had been present at two eerily similar staircase deaths. Margaret and Martha rejected that framing entirely and maintained their defense of Peterson through every phase of the case.
Kathleen’s daughter Caitlin Atwater, from Kathleen’s first marriage, took a different position. She filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Peterson, which was settled for an undisclosed amount.
The $25 million judgment that had been sought was never fully collected, but the legal action represented Caitlin’s public break from Peterson’s narrative about the night her mother died.
The Documentary World Followed Him Out of Prison
Peterson was released into a true crime landscape that had been shaped significantly by his own case. The Staircase documentary, which had originally aired in 2004 and been updated multiple times, had reached a massive new global audience through Netflix.
His name was more widely known in 2017 than it had been at the time of his original conviction in 2003.
In 2022, HBO released a dramatic adaptation of the case starring Colin Firth as Peterson and Toni Collette as Kathleen. The series introduced the story to an entirely new generation of viewers and reignited public debate about every aspect of the evidence, the documentary, and Sophie Brunet’s role in shaping how the story was told.
Peterson has maintained a low profile relative to the level of attention the case continues to generate. He does not appear to seek out the spotlight, though the spotlight continues to find him regardless.
Where He Is in 2026
Michael Peterson is 82 years old in 2026. He lives in the Durham, North Carolina area, the same city where Kathleen died, where he was tried, where he was convicted, and from which he was eventually released. He continues to write. He has grandchildren nearby.
The Cedar Street house where Kathleen died is still standing. It is privately owned and not open to visitors, though it draws steady attention from people who followed the case. The documentary that chronicled his trial is still on Netflix. The questions it raised are still unresolved.
Peterson took the Alford plea in part to avoid the risk and expense of a full retrial. It ended the legal proceedings. It did not end the case, at least not for the millions of people who watched it unfold on screen and formed their own verdicts.
For the full story of the evidence the documentary left out, and why prosecutors believed what they believed, that’s covered in detail here.
