Michael Peterson's Friend Elizabeth Ratliff Was Found Dead at the Bottom of Her Staircase. 16 Years Later, His Wife Died Under Similar Circumstances

Elizabeth Ratliff was found dead at the bottom of her staircase in 1985

NEED TO KNOW

• Michael Peterson’s friend Elizabeth Ratliff was found dead at the bottom of her staircase in 1985
• Years later, his wife, Kathleen Peterson, died under similar circumstances at the bottom of the stairs
• Authorities later re-examined Ratliff’s death during his 2003 murder trial

Elizabeth Ratliff was a close friend of Michael Peterson.

At the time they were friends, Peterson was living with his first wife, Patricia "Patty," in Germany in the 1980s. In 1983, her friendship with the Petersons deepened after the death of her husband, George Ratliff, with whom she had two daughters, per CNN.

Shortly afterwards, Peterson started to keep Ratliff company and spent nearly every night with her as friends, Peterson and other friends said in the 2004 docuseries The Staircase, which is available to stream on Netflix.

On the morning of Nov. 25, 1985, Ratliff was found dead at the bottom of the stairs. Her cause of death was determined to be a cerebral hemorrhage, per CNN.

Peterson took in her daughters, Margaret and Martha, and raised them as their own. He eventually adopted them and welcomed them into his Maryland home when he married Kathleen Peterson in 1997.

Nearly two decades after Ratliff died, Peterson found his wife, Kathleen, unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. Peterson was accused of killing his wife, which led prosecutors to re-examine Ratliff's death. He was ultimately convicted of Kathleen's murder but was freed in 2017 after submitting an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter.

Here's everything to know about Elizabeth Ratliff's death.

Who was Elizabeth Ratliff?

Ratliff was living in Germany with her husband, George, and their two young daughters when they met Peterson and his then-wife, Patty.

She was a teacher at a U.S. Department of Defense School, while George was serving in the military at the same time as Peterson, according to Oxygen. George suddenly died in 1983 during a secret military overseas operation and left her devastated.

After her husband's death, she leaned on the Petersons. Over the next two years, Peterson would allegedly visit her every night and spend time with her and her young daughters — Margaret and Martha — per The Staircase. He has maintained that their relationship was platonic.

What happened to Elizabeth Ratliff?

On Nov. 25, 1985, Ratliff was found dead at the bottom of her staircase in her home. She was 43 years old. Peterson was reportedly the last person to see her the evening prior, according to Oxygen.

Ratliff's cause of death was determined to be a cerebral hemorrhage that caused her to fall down the stairs and hit her head. Her friend, Cheryl Appel-Schumacher, later testified that Ratliff had been suffering from headaches prior to her death, per CNN.

Appel-Schumacher explained that investigators ruled that her death was natural, so there weren't photos or evidence gathered. However, she recalled cleaning up a large amount of blood alongside her husband after Ratliff's body was moved.

"There was blood splatter all over those walls. How much, I can't say," Appel-Schumacher testified. "The blood was all the way up the staircase."

What happened to Elizabeth Ratliff's kids?

At the time of her death, Ratliff's daughters, Margaret and Martha, were 2 and 1 years old, Peterson recalled in The Staircase. He adopted the girls and eventually brought them to North Carolina with him after his divorce from Patty.

They consider Peterson to be their father and call him "dad," per CNN. After Peterson started to date Kathleen in the late 1980s, they also thought of her as their mother.

Throughout Peterson's legal troubles and accusations, the girls believed in his innocence and stood by his side. Following The Staircase docuseries and show, Margaret produced a documentary, Subject, which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Festival and shed light on the impact that documentary filmmaking can have on its subjects.

Was Elizabeth Ratliff killed?

More than 15 years after Ratliff died, her manner of death was re-examined as part of Peterson's 2003 trial. At the time, Peterson was accused of murdering Kathleen and pushing her down the stairs to make it look like she had fallen down.

Prosecutors analyzed the deaths and argued that the two similar deaths couldn't be coincidental. After Ratliff's body was exhumed from its burial site in Texas, a North Carolina medical examiner performed a second autopsy, concluding that her death was actually a homicide and that she died from blunt force trauma to the head — similar to Kathleen, per Oxygen.

The pathologist, Dr. Deborah L. Radisch, wrote that Ratliff's death was "inconsistent with a fall down a set of stairs," according to Newsweek.

"Rather, they are indicative of multiple blunt force impacts, either from blows to the head caused by a blunt object or by the head being forcibly struck against a hard surface," she continued. "It is further my opinion that these injuries were incurred while Mrs. Ratliff was alive and are of sufficient severity to have caused her death."

One of Ratliff's sisters, Rosemary Kelloway, alleged that she became suspicious of how her sister died after finding out about the similar way Kathleen died.

"I feel like I'm on a mission for justice — for Kathleen as well as my sister," she said during his 2003 trial, per WRAL News. "I believe if it wasn't for Mike Peterson, my sister would be here today. He lied to us. He kept the truth from us. He manipulated, he controlled and he lied."

Ratliff's other sister, Margaret Blair, took the stand at Peterson's trial and testified that Peterson told her that Ratliff had accidentally fallen down the stairs and that there was only a little blood.

"I want the truth to come to light," she said, per WRAL News. "There's too much darkness that has been clouding over this whole situation and it's time. It's time for the truth. As painful as it is, it's time for the truth to come forward."

Was Michael Peterson ever charged in connection with her death?

Despite the second autopsy, there were never formal charges made in connection with Ratliff's death. Instead, the prosecution argued that Peterson got the idea to "fake" Kathleen's death from Ratliff, per Metro UK.

The argument helped to sway the jury, who convicted Peterson of first-degree murder in connection with Kathleen's death in 2003. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

However, he was later granted a new trial after a judge ruled that star witness Duane Deaver, a State Bureau of Investigation crime lab agent, provided misleading and false testimony, per WRAL.

In February 2017, Michael submitted an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter, which meant he acknowledged the evidence against him without confessing to the murder. He was released from custody after being sentenced to time served.

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