Elizabeth Ratliff

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Elizabeth McKee was born in 1942 and reared with two sisters on a farm in Rhode Island, was a serious, artistic child. She sang and played an acoustic guitar, and spoke French and German during her 17 years teaching the children of military families.

In Graefenhausen, Germany, Elizabeth, known as "Liz," taught elementary school at Rhein-Main Air Base. There, she met Captain George Ratliff, an Air Force navigator. They married in 1981. Their daughter Margaret was born that same year, and two years later, their second daughter, Martha, was born.

George Ratliff died under mysterious and unknown circumstances in 1983.

Liz Ratliff also died under mysterious circumstances on November 25, 1985 when she was found at the bottom of her staircase surrounded by pools of blood. Margaret and Martha were then raised by an associate of the family named Michael Peterson, but were never adopted by him.

Peterson, a writer, was eventually tried and convicted for the murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson, who was found dead at the bottom of a staircase.

In connection with that trial, the North Carolina medical examiner's office had Elizabeth Ratliff's body exhumed from a Texas grave in 2003. The autopsy report stated that Liz Ratliff had been murdered, and gave the cause of her death as blunt force trauma to the head. This report, by the same examiner who had conducted Kathleen Peterson's autopsy, played a significant part in the trial, and the admission of it formed the basis of Peterson's subsequent appeal.

[edit] See also

Michael Peterson - for details of the trial.