Did Husband Set Fire to Cover Up Wife’s Murder?

My name is Julia Peterson. I'm a pediatrician in Monterey. An accomplished, respected, and beloved pediatrician found dead in her home after a 911 call about a fire. Advisors, fire from a space heater in a bedroom. It's ringing on ******. Not sure what's going to be the best address. The advisor's wife is still inside the bedroom where the fire started. But police say it wasn't the flames that took her life. They say she died at the hands of her own husband. He is now charged with murder and we just got the affidavit in the case and I will lay out for you the story that this man allegedly told police and you can decide whether we are talking about an innocent man, a cute. The best holiday finds aren't always the ones you went looking for. At Ross, discover unexpected gifts, fashion, decor, and plenty of reasons to keep looking. Ross, expect the unexpected. Or a killer who tried to cover his tracks. We're on the case presented by Law & Crime. I'm Chris Stewart. These stories are so hard to comprehend and I've already seen in the comments a lot of people drawing comparisons to Caleb Flynn. This case is out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and we're talking about a woman named Julia Peterson. She was a pediatrician and you talk about an incredible, resume. Undergrad Harvard, Stanford Medical School. But not only was she someone who was beloved by her patients and their families, but she was a mom. And now her young daughter, just seven years old, will grow up without her mom, allegedly because of what her dad did early Saturday morning. Peterson's obituary says that she was a loving wife. And we now know her husband's name, Jonathan Gatto. They were both 41 years old. Dr. Peterson worked as a pediatrician in the Harrisburg area. And again, she was incredibly accomplished. Harvard, Stanford. She used to live in California, and it appears she used to be very active in the community. Here she is in 2023, speaking about a nonprofit that she worked for that helps children. It was posted on Facebook. I'm a pediatrician in Monterey, and I am one of the first five commissioners. We are celebrating the week of the young child this week. Dr. Peterson, her husband, and their daughter lived in this four-bedroom home in Harrisburg. On Saturday, October 10th, firefighters were called there just after seven o'clock in the morning. When firefighters got to the home, they say they found light smoke coming from the front. Gatto, the husband, was the one who called 911. And here is what he potentially told dispatchers about what happened. So you hear the mention of a space heater. And this is just dispatch audio, the dispatcher relaying information to first responders. When firefighters got to the house, they found Julia in a bedroom. She was rushed to the hospital, and she was pronounced dead. Jonathan and their seven-year-old daughter were able to escape the house. When firefighters first released information about this fire, it did seem somewhat suspicious to us because they said a woman had been found dead inside of a home, but they hadn't released her cause of death. They said an autopsy would determine that. And there was good reason, apparently, why they were not releasing a lot of information initially. Police hours after this fire interviewed Jonathan Gatto at a police station and right out of the gate. It seems that police zeroed in on an alleged motive. According to the affidavit, Jonathan said that his marriage to Julia was not good. They were going to separate. They were just trying to figure out how they would break the news to their seven-year-old daughter. Then Jonathan explained what he says the hours were like leading up to the fire. Police say that Jonathan told them that the day before Friday, Dr. Peterson was supposed to take their daughter to ballet class at night. But when she got home from work, she just wasn't feeling well. He said that his wife had just started taking some medication for migraines and it just wasn't making her feel good. She was feeling bad. He also said that Julia slept in a different bedroom. He said around 11 o'clock on Friday night, maybe midnight, he allegedly heard a loud noise, like someone falling down the steps. So he claims that he called out to Julia Peterson and asked if she was okay. And police write, quote, Gatto said Peterson mumbled something. And then he heard Peterson's bedroom door close. Gatto then claims that he set his alarm for two o'clock in the morning so he could bring his wife some ibuprofen. That's what a good husband would do, right? He said that he then went to her room at 2 a.m. and Peterson told him that she didn't want anything. The next thing Jonathan says, he allegedly wakes up hours later to the sound of smoke detectors. He said he immediately went to his daughter's room and got her out of the house. He then calls 911 and he claims as he's on the phone with the dispatcher, he's not in the house. He's in the dispatcher. He runs back into the house to try and save his wife, but it was just too hot in the room where the fire, he says, began. He actually says he burned his hand trying to get to Peterson and he ran out of the house until firefighters arrived. Now, the affidavit doesn't say anything about a space heater or how Jonathan might have known that it was a space heater, he claims, that started the fire. But again, that's just the audio we have. We have not heard the 911 call as of yet. But here's why police say they're just not buying the story. They say that Julia Peterson died before the fire. They did a blood test that determined his story just did not add up. And we'll get more into that blood test here in just a moment. An autopsy determined that Peterson died by homicide from multiple traumatic injuries. To be more specific, police believe that Jonathan Gatto strangled his wife. This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. If you're looking for a better way to save on electricity, both night and day, look no further than TXU Energy Free Nights and Cool Summer. It gives you free energy all night, every night, all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use every summer. It's the only plan that lets you use free energy to get more savings. So while nights are always free, summer days are now always discounted. With savings like that, you'll never look at a free night's plan the same way again. Learn more at TXU.com, rep number 10004. And then set her body on fire. All of this happening while the couple's young daughter was in the home in an upstairs bedroom. Police say on top of that, the fire was small. So just on the surface doesn't seem to add up with the story that he told of going inside and it being too hot for him to be able to save his wife. Investigators also determined that it was not a space heater that started that fire, that it was Jonathan Gatto that set the fire himself. Gatto is in the county jail in Harrisburg, and he is facing several charges, murder, abuse of corpse, tampering with physical evidence, endangering the welfare of a child, arson, and aggravated arson. He has been denied bond. Now this is a woman in Dr. Peterson, and the attention on this story should not lose sight of how important a person her community lost. A mom who was lost. There's a GoFundMe that's raised tens of thousands of dollars already to help with funeral expenses and to also help Peterson's daughter who now has to grow up without her mom, all because of what her husband allegedly did. Now he is presumed innocent. He is slated to have a preliminary hearing on October 28th. Let's bring in pathologist assistant and podcast host, Nicole Angemi. Great to have you once again here. You know, tough, tough case. You have this story that Jonathan Gatto apparently laid out to law enforcement. What stands out to you about at least what he was saying, but then also what the evidence is telling us so far? Well, that was my first question was, what did the first responders, the fire department, and the police think right away when they showed up to the scene? Was it super suspicious when they walked in? And I would say it probably was. I don't know if you know that I'm married to a firefighter. Did you know that? No, no. So you are a good person to, I know you're in Pennsylvania and then, you know, obviously that, but yeah, that, I mean, that helps because like there is part of this, he's accused of arson and like the fire is a big part of the story. Yeah. And you know, my husband's been a professional firefighter for 26 years in a busy city, Camden, New Jersey. So he's seen a lot of fire fatalities and it's the same with Harrisburg. They're a really busy fire company and they see a lot of fire fatalities just because they're in a huge city. And when, when you're used to seeing fire fatalities like that, when you walk in, you know, something's up usually right away, just because you see the typical scenario. So some of the things I actually spoke with my husband a little bit about this before we're recording. And some of the things that I've seen, I've seen a lot of fire fatalities, but I don't know if you've heard of them. I don't know if you've heard of them. I don't know. But I think one of the things that kind of stood out were that they said there was light smoke coming out of the house. So that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be able to fire a lot of mean there's not a huge fire because it could be coming out of the back of the house but that to me didn't it didn't seem like it was that huge of a fire and then second when they actually got in the house the fire was it was in the the police report said that it was very small bedroom fire and that to me you know he says when you come across a person that's down in a fire in something that small in this huge house I mean their house was 5400 square feet I found the listing for it it's a huge house it's just something that if you find a younger person 40 years old that's down in a small fire like that you're expecting that you would grab them out of the fire and they would be able to be resuscitated and in that situation just because it was such a small fire it was contained and another thing too is we don't know at this point what caused the fire. We do know that he's been charged with arson so he had to have set the fire we just don't know exactly like did he use an accelerant like what did he do to start the fire and but once that information comes out that might have been obvious to firefighters as well walking in that they would have known something was up and and plus because of the fact that she was why would she be in a bedroom not trying to get out of a fire I mean that doesn't make any sense well especially like when I read very small. Like in the police report like that just seemed like a very intentional line because his story is like he calls 911 they're able to get the daughter out of the house he is and then he said he went back into the house and it was like too hot you know so it's like he burns his and I don't know you know who knows like if he has like a burn on his hand but it was like too hot so we just like left his wife in there but like this was not a fully engulfed structure you know I've never been in a fire myself but like just the way that they're describing it is like this was not like a massive. Taking the house down kind of fire so like that part of the story didn't add up then you have this story he's telling of like the hours leading up to everything and it's like he wakes up at two o'clock in the morning to go get her like ibuprofen and like he hears this like fall down the stairs and like if that story was true and knowing that police have put in there that they believe that he strangled her to death like how like what would the body have to show if that story was true. If it was if it was truly like the story that he's telling so there's just so many things against him that it couldn't be but when you manually strangle someone to death so you're putting your hands around someone's neck and you're squeezing around their neck tight for up to five minutes it's it you know when you see it in movies and someone dies right away that's not what happens people will go unconscious pretty quickly but to act. The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. 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Upfront payment of forty five dollars for three months ninety dollars for six months or one hundred eighty dollars or twelve month plan required fifteen dollars per month equivalent taxes and fees extra new customer offer for initial plan term only greater than fifty gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms. Actually kill a person and do that you have to have your hands around. Your neck for multiple minutes and that kind of pressure on the neck is going to cause a lot of trauma so it's going to cause bruising on the external skin and then when they do the internal dissection of the strap muscles of the neck they're going to be they could see a lot of hemorrhage or bleeding which would indicate that she was alive when she received those wounds and then underneath of that layer you're also going to see the. The thyroid cartilage could be broken so that's the atoms. Apple women don't have as they have thyroid cartilage to which is not as prominent but that a piece of that cartilage could break the highway bone in the neck can break depending on how hard he put his hands around her neck so if you fall down the steps it's very hard to injure that area of your body it's a weird area and if you fall down the steps you you definitely could hit your neck on something but it just wouldn't give that same appearance it's a very specific appearance and sometimes on the skin you could actually. You could actually. You could actually. See like thumb marks or finger marks from the person fingernail marks from the victim trying to get the hand off from around her neck so it has a specific appearance that and the highway bone especially in a young person because when you get older your bones become more porous and it's a little bit easier to break them but even in an old person it's very hard to break your highway bone you you can in like a really bad car accident or something like that but it's a it's a. It's a it's so talked up underneath of your neck and your chin that it's just it just would be impossible to break in a fall like that and I wouldn't say impossible but improbable and then you so the question that you have to say is when she's found in the fire by firefighters why was she incapacitated because I actually looked up their house their addresses in the police report so I found the listing the Zillow listing with all of them. I found the listing the Zillow listing with all of the pictures of the house so I could see the exact room that she died in and there's a couple things about it so it's it's they have a mid-century split level house so it's not a traditional house in the sense that there's like an upstairs downstairs in a basement it's it's the staircase is a lot shorter and in that bedroom it's a it's a small bedroom it looks like it has a double bed and a piece of furniture but it's pretty small it has one of those. It has one of those basement type windows that you would see at the more of the top of the room but it's big like she definitely could have fit through it if she tried and the bed is right next to the window so she would have easily been able to either climb on the bed and get out or push it against the wall and get out easily or she could have went out the door either way it put you out into an entrance that went out to the backyard so she could have gotten out of the house very easily so you would say and furthermore in the listing. In the listing you won't believe this there is a fire alarm in there in the in the listing in the actual room so it the only way that she could have been incapacitated is if number one she was dead or near dead or if she was highly intoxicated and there's no evidence that she was even though I feel like he kind of tried to set up the story a little bit like oh she had this migraine like indicating maybe she took some kind of pill for it. But I'll tell you as a person my personal migraine medication that I take actually has caffeine in it so it does the opposite and I can't sleep on it so I don't know of a drug that would put you out like that for a migraine and so that to me is just like clear cut why wouldn't she leave and and that's a question that I had because I didn't wasn't able to get that from the reports when the firefighters went in there where did they find her. Did it because my husband says you know when you go in you find people in specific areas because they're trying to get out of the house so they'll be like behind a bedroom door right near a window or they just made it almost there there's not going to be someone laying in their bed so I don't know if she was laying in the bed I mean the room is pretty small so and then getting back to the the the burns that he had this is really interesting so he had said. In the report that he went downstairs to get her out of the fire and the door was shut and he tried to open the door and he burned his hand so I don't know if he's trying to say that the door handle was too hot and that was why he was you know because the door handles metal so he's trying to say he couldn't open it and it burned his hand or if he was trying to say he opened the door and and like flames flew out of the door and burned his hand but either way based on the description. Of the fire from the firefighters that doesn't seem it doesn't seem the room would be hot enough to heat up the handle and it doesn't seem it was big enough to cause that many flames to be coming out of the door now I have a suspect so if you think about this like I'm going to reference to Christmas movies right now. First is home alone do you remember when you are with the door with the door handle right touching the door the white bandits yeah the door it's too hot yeah so or not. Marv. I forgot what the other guy's name is so he touches it and the door handle is hot but what you're going to have a contact burn similar to something you would get from a curling iron it's like right where you touch the item is where the burn is going to be at so if he I want to see like what kind of burn he had to match up with it I suspect and this is just my theory that he set the room on fire with some kind of an. Traditional home security. Only alert to after a break in and that's too late simply safe is changing that stop this is simply safe police are on. We don't just alert. We help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at SimpliSafe.com slash Spotify. SimpliSafe. Ahead of crime in real time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit SimpliSafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. We're all here. It's family. Celerant. And so now I'm going to reference another Christmas movie, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, when Uncle Lewis is next to the tree and he's holding his stogie, he says, or his cigar and he lights it up. And then all of a sudden you see like, like there's like a huge flame that happens because when you, when you're lighting anything that could catch on fire, then it causes a flash, right? Well, that would get, so if he used, I don't even know if it would have to be gasoline, but anything like alcohol, anything that's flammable, right? If he used something like that and set something on fire, he could have not been expecting that it was going to flash back at him like that. And that would have given him more of a wider spread burn on his arm, more superficial probably, but, but like a wider area that definitely wouldn't happen from, from touching a handle. So, and, and the same with an actual, if an actual flame touched him, it would be a pretty severe burn you would think. So I think that that alone depends. And, you know, he did get treated at the hospital for that and they'll document all of that exactly what it looked like. And was it on his dominant hand? I feel like, cause like, just as like, we're going through this and like, you think of this guy and to me, like when you reference like movies, like, and I feel like, like we covered Caleb Flynn pretty closely, like a lot of times, like suspects tell these stories because the only thing they know about, like whether it's strangling someone is like watching a movie or like, you've seen the movie of the person who runs into the house and then like on home alone, the door is too hot, you know, you can't do it. And it's like, it just doesn't seem at least from like what they're alleging that like, this was not a fully engulfed like house. And on top of that, um, it seems like he undercut, I like the idea of like, he heard a thud that she maybe fell down the stairs, but then she was okay. But then it's like, he goes and checks on her at two o'clock in the morning. So like, she was fine at two o'clock in the morning. So if like, there was an argument of like the fall down the stairs and it's like a split level. I used to live in one of those. It's like six stairs, you know? So it's like, it just doesn't like the story is like, it seems like it was a lot all over the place. And you just have to imagine just based on what police are alleging, like the thought and the detail of like the house, like are not things that suspects, um, are typically, um, thinking about. And of course he's innocent until proven guilty. Um, they do allege that he set her body on fire, which is incredibly morbid. Um, and I know that's the, the world that you live in, but like, um, and I don't know, like the proper way to ask this, but like how flammable is someone like, if, if that is what he did to try and cover this up and set the fire, um, how would that impact the type of flame you would see in that room? Well, it's interesting because, uh, another great point that my husband had was that he said, wait a second, the bedroom door was shut. And I said, yeah. And he said, well, then he cut off the fuel to the fire. So if you set a fire, right? Like let's say he strangled her and then he put, uh, I don't know, hairspray, whatever he put on there to set her on fire, gasoline, and she's wearing pajamas or clothes or something. It'll initially look like there's a fire going, but then you shut the door. And once it uses up all the oxygen in the room, it's going to put itself out. So it might not have been that bad of a fire because, so then I said to him, well, so if you were trying to kill a person, you would actually leave the door open then. And he's like, yeah, you want more oxygen to go in it. It makes the fire bigger. So, and, and you know, this, like they, they teach you to keep your kid's bedroom doors closed because it's safer if your house catches on fire, you know, like it contains it in the room. So as far as her body goes, we don't exactly know what the condition of her body was, but I would say, I typically, if you see a person that's, that, that was in a really, really bad fire, they're charred and it's very obvious that they were, that they were burned to death in the fire and their body, it, I mean, not to be gross, but it looks like when you, if you overcook a steak or something and it gets that burn char look on it and it's, it's not cooked as much on the inside, but the outside is very burned. I think that she definitely had burns, but I don't think when firefighters pulled her, brought her to EMS that they would work on her if she was obviously dead. And it, you know, prior to that, and they're not going to pull a person that's charred like that out. That's clearly dead and start doing CPR on them when it's obvious that they're dead. They, I mean, yes, she didn't, she, she likely didn't have a pulse and stuff. They, that's why they were giving her CPR and they're giving her oxygen. But, but like they might've assumed right away, just because this is all happening. Within seconds, you know, that just, she was having CO poisoning and that's what they were trying to, they were trying to treat her for at the time. But human bodies can burn, especially, I mean, we've seen a couple of cases this year of people lighting themselves on fire. Yeah. Um, and it's, it's, it's nasty because your fat is, is fuel essentially. So it, it, it burns. But, um, so I don't, but I, I'm not really sure how bad the fire was just because they're, they described it as, not even small, like very small, very small. Like that was like the point, like when they wrote that in the document where it's like, that's like an intentional line that you're putting in there to kind of like cut a hole in like the narrative that apparently Jonathan Gatto was given. Um, one other thing it was, this is the line from, I just had the document here and I'm going to butcher, um, this science term. So forgive me. It was determined through a blood test of Julia Peterson's carbo zyhemoglobin. Is that right? Uh, that she was deceived prior to the intentionally set fire. Um, what is that test? And like, how does that kind of lay out the timeline of when she would have died? So when, when she got brought to the EMS as people who also have a lot of experience working in Harrisburg, they've seen lots of fires and fire fatalities. They might've noticed right away. Something was off because they might've saw that she didn't have any, the best holiday finds. Aren't always the ones you went looking for at Ross discover unexpected gifts, fashion, decor, and plenty of reasons to keep looking Ross expect the unexpected. If you're looking for a better way to save on electricity, both night and day, look no further than TXU energy, free nights and cool summer. It gives you free energy all night, every night, all year long. Plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use every summer. So all nights are always free. Summer days are now always free. It's always discounted with savings like that. You'll never look at a free night's plan the same way again. Learn more at TXU.com rep number one, zero zero zero four. You know, if you're in a, if you're in a fire, especially a room with the door shut, that's that small and a fire's going, when you breathe it in, you're going to have sweat all over, like around your nose and your mouth. And she didn't have any of that because she wasn't breathing. So when they brought her to the hospital, they might have already put the word out like, Hey, something's up here, you know? But regardless, if a person goes to the hospital, they're going to take the blood, get taken at the hospital would be best in this situation because the closest to death that you can get it. So the term that you're talking about is carboxyhemoglobin. So you normally have a protein in your blood called hemoglobin and that protein carries oxygen that you breathe in. So the oxygen gets breathed in, it gets transferred to the blood, and then that carries the oxygen to all of your organs. And that's what keeps us alive. Well, when you breathe, carbon monoxide, instead of the, instead of oxygen that binds onto the hemoglobin instead of the oxygen, and that binds on the hemoglobin 200 times stronger than oxygen can. So instead, so your blood's still traveling around your body, but instead of bringing oxygen to your organs, it has, it's stuck with this carbon monoxide on it, and it can't bring, oxygen to your organs. And then you slowly start to essentially asphyxiate. So you, you become dizzy, nauseous, and then unconscious. And then, and finally you could go into a coma and finally die. So if you, if a firefighter finds someone in that condition, that's unconscious in theory with treatment on the scene, and then at the hospital, they could get them back. And, and my, my husband said, if he walked into a scene like that, he would be surprised. And shocked that a young person like that would die in such a small fire. Yeah. And it's, yeah, it just seems like, you know, he also apparently just laid out their marital issues, you know, right front and center, at least from what we can see in that report. Just an awful, you know, it's an awful story. I mean, apparently they both met at Harvard. The district attorney told the CBS station in Harrisburg that Jonathan Gatto was a stay-at-home dad, wasn't working at the time. Julia Peterson, though, this pediatrician, a lot of people, seemed, you know, a lot of her patients, just from the comments we're seeing, like really, really loved her. And she was, you know, a devoted wife, according to her, according to her obituary. sanctuary. Um, Nicole and Jemmy, always great to have you on law and crime. A lot of people can find you, uh, on social media, as well as some of the podcast work you do work and people check it out. Go to Mrs. MRS underscore and Jemmy A N G E M I. That's my Instagram account where you can really find all of my information. And my podcast is mother knows death. Yeah. And a great follow on Instagram. Um, super insightful. Like every time you post something it's a, it's, it's must be for sure. Nicole and Jemmy pathologist assistant. Always great to have you on law and crime. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. That will do it for on the case presented by law and crime. I'm Chris Stewart. See you next time.