The Staircase Murders is a 2007 Lifetime television film directed by Tom McLoughlin and starring Treat Williams, Samaire Armstrong, and Kevin Pollak.^[1]

It tells the story of Michael Peterson,^[2] who was convicted in 2003 of killing his wife by beating her over the head. During the trial it was revealed that many years previously a friend of Peterson's, whose children he would later adopt, died under seemingly similar circumstances.