Thomas Lawrence Pollard, better known as Larry Pollard, was born in Durham, North Carolina in 1948. He was the son of Julia Davis Pollard and Forrest Pollard sr. Studying law at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, he would go on to work in some of the most prestigious legal counsel positions in the State. From birth, he was raised at a large stately home in Forest Hills. The address was 1902 Cedar Street, in the very same house where he continues to live today.
He gained notoriety in 2003, when he went to the media with the incredible claim that Kathleen Peterson had been killed by an owl. Kathleen had been his neighbour up until December the 9th, 2001, when her dead body was discovered at the foot of a staircase, drenched in blood.
Kathleen's husband had already been found guilty of her murder when Larry went to the papers with his bizarre new theory. When Durham heard the news, Larry was taken to be doing nothing more than attempting to save his neighbour's reputation. Everyone thought that Larry’s imagination had simply got the better of him. And some felt that Larry may have had a unique bias.
Larry's own tragic family history was uncannily similar to the situation the Peterson children found themselves in after Kathleen's death. You see, Larry's own father had been imprisoned for manslaughter in 1960, narrowly avoiding a death sentence. And in an unrelated turn of events, Larry’s mother had died in a small aircraft crash in 1968 just outside Raleigh-Durham airport. Larry had had a father imprisoned and a mother deceased, just as the Peterson children now had. Had these events caused Larry to think with his heart rather than his head?
Larry was emphatic, however, that his own family history had nothing to do with his thinking about the Peterson case. Instead, it was Larry's experience as an attorney and special prosecutor that enabled him to understand the serious shortcomings of the evidence in the Peterson case and what it was supposed to prove.
Larry was bothered just because the evidence didn't stack up. The defense argument that Kathleen had fallen on the stairs could not account for the fact that Kathleen's blood was found outside the house. And the prosecution argument that Kathleen had been bludgeoned to death with a weapon could not account for the fact that her skull was not broken, nor was her brain bruised. And strangest of all, Kathleen's dead hands were found to be clutching fistfuls of her own hair that she had pulled out by the roots.
However Kathleen died, there just had to be more to the story. It was in early 2003 when Larry first saw a photograph of Kathleen's head wounds. What he saw was uncanny. The slices on Kathleen's scalp perfectly resembled turkey tracks.
Larry was an avid hunter and had been on his fair share of turkey shoots before. In fact, his trophy room could boast all sorts of game animals, including bears, alligators, numerous deer, ducks, geese, and even a gigantic marlin, which was mounted on the wall. The wounds that Larry saw on Kathleen's head were exactly like all the turkey tracks he had ever stalked.
But turkeys do not kill, thought Larry. And they certainly do not kill women inside their own homes.
A few weeks passed before Larry realised that the wounds on Kathleen's head might be explained by an owl attack. The time of the discovery of Kathleen's body, 2.40am made sense. And since Larry had lived next door to the Peterson house his entire life, he knew that the grounds were home to barred owls and barn owls in abundance.
But owls do not kill, thought Larry. And they don't kill women inside their own homes either.
It was three days before the closing arguments in Michael Peterson's murder trial that Larry had a eureka moment.
What if Kathleen had first been attacked outside her home? This would explain why spots of blood were found outside the house along the front path. And what if she had then run inside, seeking help, before collapsing in the stairwell, knocking her head and ultimately bleeding to death?
This would explain the "turkey track" injuries.
This would explain the lack of skull and brain damage.
This would explain the blood outside the house.
And this would explain why Kathleen had fistfuls of her own hair clutched in her hands. She had been trying to pull something away from her head.
The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to come together. But there was one major problem: where were all the feathers?
Larry wrote to the District Attorney to inquire as to whether any feathers had been found on Kathleen during the police investigation. But the District Attorney was adamant. None had been found.
In disbelief, Larry sought out a copy of the forensic trace evidence report. Upon reading the report, he found that a sample of Kathleen's hair had been collected. Stuck to the hair, caked in blood, a fragment of feather was noted. The District Attorney had apparently lied.
Larry was furious. He arrived at the office of the District Attorney and requested that the hair be brought to the office. Soon enough, the slide holding the hair was delivered. With the assistance of a microscope, Larry was able to see that there was not just one fragment of feather, but two pieces of feather on the hairshaft.
It was an incredible coup for Larry. By the power of sheer deduction, Larry had predicted feathers where no one had believed they would be found.
Despite the fact that his theory continues to receive ridicule, the owl theory remains one of the most compelling explanations for the mysterious death of Kathleen Peterson. Even if you doubt that an owl caused Kathleen's death, Larry deserves credit, not mockery, for having the bravery to publicly defend such a radical and intriguing theory. To learn more about Larry, get a copy of Death by Talons, and hear the untold story behind The Staircase.
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