Page 4 - Amybeth Berner News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> reporter: dead at the bottom of the stairs. >> bottom of the stairs. >> reporter: another good friend in their circle, amybeth berner and her husband, were summoned to elizabeth's townhouse, too. she asked michael what happened. >> he said, "well, she probably had an aneurysm like her father." when i thought about someone falling down the stairs i thought, well, that's possible. those stairs are, you know, pretty steep and, you know, they're slippery and wooden. >> reporter: but amybeth says as she looked around she noticed something. blood not just where elizabeth lay, but high up along th...

Potentially disposed of somewhere outside the dwelling. >> reporter: but the state thought some of its most powerful evidence was what the medical examiner found on the top of kathleen's head, seven tears to the scalp. >> do you recall any case where someone died falling down steps and there were multiple lacerations? >> no. >> were you able to determine in your opinion what the manner of her death was? >> the manner of death in this case is homicide. >> reporter: injuries that were eerily similar to those suffered by the peterson family friend from germany all those years before, elizabeth ra...

Suspect, you were the only suspect. >> the only one. >> there was massive amounts of blood. how do you explain it? was this a fall, or was this murder? >> reporter: exactly what did happen on that staircase? and what is the truth about michael peterson? a man once sentenced to die in prison for the commission of a homicide he has always maintained was nothing but an accident. innocent, he asserts, but the novelist in him knows full well the irresistible appeal of the storyline he says he got swept up in. >> sex, money, murder, my god! what more could you have? >> reporter: tonight, one of the ...

Assignations, that there were hookups, what did -- how do you think she would've taken it? >> i wish i had told her. i mean, that's one my regrets -- i wish i -- we had discussed it. we didn't. i was afraid not that she would leave me, she wouldn't -- that she just wasn't -- she was the most open-minded, liberal, intelligent woman. >> reporter: as for the other piece of the prosecution's motive, that the petersons were on the edge of financial ruin -- >> oh, that was bull. >> a lot of money out on cards. >> total -- >> expensive schools that were bleeding them. the wonderful house was somethin...

>> reporter: on november 24th, 1985, elizabeth went to the petersons for dinner. later, michael peterson says he drove her home. >> she got out and went upstairs. i said, "night, liz, you know, see you tomorrow." >> reporter: the next morning, michael says he was fast asleep when elizabeth's nanny came running with urgent news. >> i'm upstairs in bed. and she's saying something that, in fact, you know, liz is dead or hurt or i don't know. she's screaming. and so i put some clothes on. and i go over to the house. and, in fact, liz is dead. >> reporter: dead at the bottom of the stairs. >> botto...