An army brat-turned-marine, he saw combat in Vietnam, and returned a decorated soldier. An avid reader, his dreams of being an acclaimed novelist came true. His desire to find love was fulfilled when he married brilliant executive Kathleen Atwater, the first female student accepted at Duke University's School of Engineering. The Petersons seemed the ideal academic couple- well-respected, prosperous, and happy.

All that came crashing down in December of 2001, when Kathleen apparently fell to her death in their secluded home in an exclusive area of Durham, North Carolina. But blood spattered evidence and a missing fireplace poker suggested calculated, cold-blooded murder. Her trusted husband stood accused. Prosecutors introduced evidence at trial that sixteen years earlier, Peterson was one of the last people to see his neighbor alive before she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her home in Germany.

:: Through the Window: The Terrifying True Story of Cross-Country Killer Tommy Lynn Sells
:: The Pastor's Wife: The True Story of a Minister and the Shocking Death that Divided a Family (St. Martin's True Crime Library)
:: Mommy's Little Girl: Casey Anthony and her Daughter Caylee's Tragic Fate
:: Gone Forever: A True Story of Marriage, Betrayal, and Murder (True Crime (St. Martin's Paperbacks))
:: Under the Knife: A Beautiful Woman, a Phony Doctor, and a Shocking Homicide

- Murder & Mayhem - Criminology