Prosecutor featured in ‘The Staircase’ on Netflix has died

Listen to this article

DURHAM (AP) One of the prosecutors who tried the 2001 North Carolina killing featured in “The Staircase” documentary series has died.

Police say Freda Black, a former Durham assistant district attorney, was found dead in her home on July 29.

Durham police spokesman Wil Glenn said the 57-year-old’s death doesn’t appear suspicious. The body was sent to the medical examiner.

Black gave closing arguments at the 2003 trial that ended with novelist Michael Peterson convicted of murdering his wife. A judge later ordered a new trial, and Peterson entered a special plea in 2017 acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him of manslaughter.

The case has received recent attention after Netflix distributed new episodes of the documentary originally aired more than a decade ago.