Making A Murderer was one of the most gripping true crime docu-series ever released. Netflix, looking to introduce another captivating and gritty tale, recently updated another docu-series that is filled with an equal amount of twists and turns. The Staircase was a series that focused on Michael Peterson and the killing of his wife. It was completed when Peterson was sentenced to murder and thrown behind bars for life. Since then, new evidence in the case allowed for Peterson to be freed.
The original case surrounding Peterson was highly publicized for many reasons. Peterson called police in 2001 to claim that he found his wife at the bottom of the stairs dead. Authorities and experts decided that the death was not an accident, and Peterson was arrested for murdering his wife. As the trial took place, several interesting facts were brought to the light. Prosecutors found out that Peterson was a bisexual man, and argued that his secret sexual life was discovered by his wife who found out he was having an affair with a man. Prosecutors claim that was the motive behind the murder. They also introduced evidence that displayed a similar death that took place in Germany. Peterson was in the presence of a family friend who suffered an intra-cerebral hemorrhage and fell down a staircase and died fifteen years earlier. Prosecutors did not claim that Peterson committed that murder in Germany, but that it gave him an idea of how to "fake" his wife's murder.
The Staircase was originally an eight-episode series that was released in 2004, but director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade picks up the story after Peterson's release in 2014.