Netflix's 'The Staircase': What happened to Michael and Kathleen Peterson's children? (2024)

"La familia," Michael Peterson says with a smile, as he toasts a glass of champagne. He's surrounded by his four children and his brother Bill as they enjoy a birthday dinner together, but this isn't any normal family gathering. It is, in fact, the midst of a murder trial, and Michael Peterson is the accused.

For Michael, his children were his rock throughout the trial that saw him accused of beating his wife Kathleen Peterson to death after she was found, bloody, at the bottom of the stairs one night in December 2001.

Viewers of Netflix's latest true crime offering, The Staircase, will have seen how his two sons - Todd and Clayton Peterson - along with his two daughters - Martha and Margaret Ratliff, adopted by Michael following the death of their parents - remained steadfast in the opinion that their father was innocent.

But the same couldn't be said for Kathleen's biological daughter, Caitlin Atwater. Initially, she set out protesting her step-father's innocence, but quickly switched sides and ultimately gave evidence on the side of the prosecution.

The documentary spans 16 years, where we see the children in Michael and Kathleen's family grow from young students to proper adults with husbands and wives and children. But where are they all now, in the aftermath of everything that happened?

⚠️Warning: contains spoilers ⚠️

Caitlin Atwater Clark

In the years since she first appeared in the documentary, Caitlin Atwater has picked up another name: Clark. After living in London for a few years together, Caitlin married her husband Christopher Clark in March 2012, and the pair settled into a private life outside of Durham where she grew up. "I have a strong connection to [Durham], but I think it’s been helpful for me to remove myself," she said. Caitlin has gone on to become a mother of twins, according to the News & Observer.

In The Staircase, Caitlin famously switched allegiance, initially supporting her step-father Michael Peterson in his protests of innocence, but quickly shifting her opinion to become a witness for the prosecution. In the initial days after her mother's death, Caitlin served as the main spokesperson for her siblings, telling reporters: "My mother and Mike had an absolutely loving relationship and there is no way that either of them would ever wish any sort of harm on the other one".

But all that changed before the trial began. "After the closing arguments, when all was said and done, I felt confident that I knew what happened. I knew what happened to my mom," Caitlin told journalist Ken Fine in an interview 16 years after her mother's death.

After he was found guilty in October 2003 of the murder of Caitlin's mother Kathleen, Caitlin went on to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against her former step-father Michael Peterson. In January 2008 she was awarded $25 million in damages by the judge. Michael Peterson was later released on house arrest in 2011, after a key witness was found to have misreported results in his trial, and he was eventually freed completely when he pleaded guilty to manslaughter using an Alford Plea in February 2017. This plea allowed him to avoid a second trial by acknowledging that the prosecution had enough evidence for a voluntary manslaughter conviction, but still maintaining his innocence.

Michael Peterson insisted he didn't have enough money to pay Caitlin what he owed her in damages, but in October 2017 Caitlin's lawyer filed another complaint against him to keep the wrongful-death lawsuit alive. "I don’t think he has any money," lawyer Jay Trehy said, explaining that the reason for the complaint is to "disincentivise any effort [Michael may have] to profit off this case." If he sells his story or writes a book, he'll technically have to pay any money he earns to Caitlin until his debt is settled.

In her private life, Caitlin appears to emulate her mother in her own parenting to her two young twins. Telling interviewer and long-time friend, Ken Fine, that she had made Halloween costumes for her children and took a picture of them surrounded by pumpkins, she retrieved a similar photograph of herself as a child, also posing at home with pumpkins. "That’s clearly like, I’m trying to be my mother," Caitlin said. "This is how I grew up, and I’m trying to give that to my kids. It’s crazy sometimes, but there is so much of me channelling her."

Clayton Peterson

Michael's eldest son with his first wife Patricia Sue Peterson, Clayton 'Clay' Peterson appears quite a lot in The Staircase. His growing family is documented in some of the later episodes of the documentary. His first son, Dorian, visits grandfather Michael in a Durham prison as a baby, shortly before his release to house arrest back in 2011. Clay's wife Becky is later seen pregnant with a second child; another boy named Lucien.

As the documentary builds up to its conclusion, with Michael making an Alford Plea over 15 years after the case began, the grandfather is filmed playing happily with his two grandsons, now both young boys. Now 43, Clay reportedly lives with his family in Maryland, United States.

Todd Peterson

Todd, the younger of Michael's two biological children, features heavily in the beginning of The Staircase and is particularly vocal about his father's innocence. "I knew for a fact that no way in this world my father would have ever hurt Kathleen," he said. Little is known about him and his life now, but the News & Observer reports he lives in Tennessee.

Margaret Ratliff

The eldest of Michael and Kathleen Peterson's two adopted daughters, Margaret, now 36, got married in her late twenties and is now known as Margaret Blakemore. Both Margaret and her husband Neil Blakemore attended Colombia College Chicago between the years of 2006 and 2010, and the pair are thought to live in California nowadays.

Martha Ratliff

Both Margaret and Martha keep their private lives fairly under wraps after the intense press invasion they endured for the 15 years Michael Peterson's legal battle was ongoing. However, the News & Observer reports that Martha, now aged 35, lives in Colorado after several years attending University in San Francisco.

Speaking in the penultimate episode of The Staircase in 2016, Martha revealed that she's suffered greatly with anxiety as a result of everything that's happened. "I used to suffer a lot from really bad nightmares; I used to have really bad panic attacks in public spaces because of being in the trial," she said.

"My body and my whole nervous system will think that something like the trial is happening. For me it's like [my] heart beats faster, I can't breathe and I worry that I'm going to pass out."

For Martha, with everything that happened to her adoptive mother Kathleen, and all the subsequent accusations against her adoptive father Michael, she is only now finding time to grieve. Describing a backpacking trip she'd recently taken in the Rocky Mountains, she found herself in the "most beautiful place I have ever been in my life." There, staring out at the entire mountain range, she recalled: "I just started crying, and for some reason all I could think about was Mom. And it was just beautiful that I could have that moment of pure grief for her without all the other stuff mixed up... Without all the trial mess mixed into it and the newspapers and stuff like that. It was just pure memory. It was so beautiful, I couldn't stop crying for an hour."

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