Vietnam hero turned novelist convicted of beating his wife to death with a poker

They were two women, who died in different decades and different continents, but in uncannily similar and suspicious circumstances and in the close proximity of the same man.

They were two women, who died in different decades and different continents, but in uncannily similar and suspicious circumstances and in the close proximity of the same man.

Yesterday, after a trial which has transfixed America, a jury decided that the coincidences were too much and convicted the novelist Michael Peterson of murder.

In Durham, North Carolina, where he lived, the 59-year-old Peterson was a celebrity. He was a former newspaper columnist and candidate for mayor of Durham, a Vietnam war hero who had been awarded Silver and Bronze Stars for bravery, and subsequently written three successful novels. His wife Kathleen, 10 years younger, was a senior telecommunications executive and a popular hostess.

But the seemingly perfect marriage ended in tragedy and, it transpires, murder.

On 9 December, 2001 the couple spent the evening at home, watching a romantic comedy and sharing a bottle of wine. The defence maintained she accidentally fell to her death, after drinking.

After four days of deliberation a jury concluded otherwise. Peterson was found guilty of beating his wife to death, leaving her body at the foot of the staircase in a pool of blood. When he made an emergency call for medical help, his clothes were covered in blood.

The jury believed expert prosecution witnesses who testified that some of this blood must have splashed onto him during a fight, and not merely have been smeared on from the clothes of his wife as he went to her assistance.

Thus ended a three-month trial - the longest of its kind in Durham's history - which generated sensational evidence and lurid speculation, and blanket coverage on Court TV. Peterson will now be automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole.

However suspicious the circumstances of his wife's death, the outcome may have hinged on a previous event in Germany - the 1985 death of Elizabeth Ratliff, a school teacher at a US military base. Like Mrs Peterson 16 years later, her lifeless body was found at the foot of a staircase, after she was last seen in the company of the writer.

At the time, Ms Ratliff was judged to have suffered a stroke and fallen down the steps. But last year her remains were exhumed from her grave in Texas at the prosecutors' request, and forensic experts concluded she had been murdered.

Though the novelist was never charged with the earlier death in Germany, and no motive was advanced for the killing of Ms Ratliff, the prosecution was allowed to present evidence about it in this trial.

Repeatedly the state stressed the uncanny resemblances of the two cases. "Do you really think that lightning strikes in the same place twice?" asked Freda Black, the assistant district attorney, in closing arguments last week. "Do you really believe this is just a huge coincidence?"

If the first death was also a murder by Peterson, it had strange consequences. So close was he to Ms Ratliff and her family that he later adopted her two daughters Margaret and Martha. Far from being among their adoptive father's accusers, the girls, distraught and sobbing, clutched each other as the verdict was handed down.

Peterson himself greeted the decision impassively, turning only to say "I love you" to his daughters and other family members in court before being led away. His lawyers immediately announced they would appeal, saying they were sure a higher court would overturn the verdict.

Despite the strange similarities of the events in Germany and North Carolina, the verdict was a surprise to many observers, who believed that without a murder weapon, the case would not be provable.

Though the prosecution produced dozens of witnesses to back up its claim that Mrs Peterson had been killed with a poker, it was never found.

Nor were there any eyewitnesses to the crime. In reality, the strongest evidence was one of motive - but even that relied on two separate and unprovable theses.

The first was that Peterson had been worried about the couple's large credit card debt and had killed Kathleen to collect on a life insurance policy of more than $1.4m (£800,000). Adding to his concern was the possibility that his wife's highly paid job was in jeopardy.

But as the trial unfolded, another possible motive emerged. Among the prosecution witnesses was a male escort who testified to exchanging homosexual e-mails with Peterson. The implication was that the writer might have killed his wife in a drunken quarrel after she discovered his double life. In fact, Kathleen Peterson's blood alcohol level was 0.07 per cent, just below the legal limit in North Carolina.

But the defence insisted there was an innocent explanation for the alleged homosexual connection: Peterson was researching a book about gays in the military.

Peterson's first literary success was The Immortal Dragon set in 19th century Vietnam. Two other novels, A Time of War and Bitter Peace drew on his own combat experience in the country.

That military service itself was a paradox. Though Peterson said he had serious doubts about the war, he none the less enlisted as a Marine. He later explained his motivation as similar to that of Ernest Hemingway: an effort to gain first-hand knowledge of battle in order to give credibility and authenticity to his novels.