This Morning viewers were quickly engrossed as Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield sat down with Michael Peterson. The 78-year-old joined the pair in the studio on the ITV daytime show on Wednesday (May 25) as a drama series about his own very real situation is released.
The novelist was convicted in 2003 of murdering his second wife, Kathleen Peterson, in December 2001. After eight years, Michael was granted a new trial after the judge ruled a critical prosecution witness gave misleading testimony. Then, in 2017, he submitted an Alford plea - a guilty plea in criminal courts in the United States - to the reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to time already served and released.
Now, nearly two decades after his first conviction, Michael's real life story is being dramatised in HBO Max series The Staircase, starring Colin Firth as Michael.
