William Samuels

William Samuels is the thirty-five-year-old Flint County district attorney whose confidence in the case against Terry Maitland helps turn an incomplete investigation into a public prosecution. He begins as a forceful advocate for pressing ahead despite an alibi that has not yet been checked; when evidence later exposes the contradiction, he struggles to accept what it means. Ultimately, he publicly clears Maitland and reopens the investigation into Frank Peterson’s murder, though the correction comes after Maitland’s death.

Position and Early Confidence

Samuels is a young district attorney, politically well placed and certain of his ability. He has successfully prosecuted half a dozen capital-murder cases, and two men convicted under his watch are on death row at McAlester. That record lends authority to his confidence, but it also frames his first response to Maitland’s arrest: he sees the evidence as strong enough to proceed before the defense’s account has been tested.

Ralph Anderson is uneasy about the pace. He wants time to smooth out unresolved questions and expects Maitland to claim an alibi. Samuels answers that they can knock it down. Ralph agrees that they have the right man, but privately prefers a different sequence: investigate the alibi, find its weaknesses, and only then make the arrest. The distinction matters. Samuels’s confidence does not arise from a completed examination of the contradictory facts; the team has not yet established where Maitland was when Peterson was abducted and killed.

The decision is made under pressure as well as conviction. Ralph fears that Maitland might harm another child, and believes that waiting could carry a terrible risk. He also recognizes that this fear is already entangled with his own sense of responsibility for not having suspected Maitland earlier. The investigation’s urgency is therefore not just a procedural calculation: the possibility of another victim makes hesitation feel morally dangerous, while the rush to act makes careful verification seem deferrable.

Building the Case—and Meeting Its Contradictions

At the interview, Samuels uses the physical evidence to press Maitland to confess. Ralph lists fingerprints found on the van associated with Peterson’s abduction, the boy’s bicycle, a toolbox, a Subaru, and the branch recovered in the case. Samuels emphasizes that the prints are in Peterson’s blood. He frames confession as a way to avoid the death penalty and invokes the grief of Fred and Arlene Peterson. The approach shows both his command of the prosecution’s case and his determination to move Maitland toward an admission, even as Maitland maintains his innocence.

The encounter with Howie Gold briefly exposes Samuels’s impatience. Gold asks for time alone with his client; Samuels limits it, saying that the alternative is a confession or a jail cell until arraignment. When Maitland embraces Gold, Samuels makes a dismissive remark about the display of affection. The moment contrasts the prosecutor’s adversarial posture with the familiarity and trust between attorney and client, but it does not soften his position: Samuels continues to treat a confession as the practical route forward.

That certainty is tested by Maitland’s account of being in Cap City at the relevant time. The conference schedule places a Harlan Coben talk across from the banquet room, and the timing conflicts with a witness’s account of seeing Maitland with Peterson in Flint City. Ralph realizes that they failed to check Maitland’s movements before arresting him. He had agreed with Samuels and State Police Detective Yunel Sablo that preliminary inquiries might alert a dangerous suspect; given what they thought was overwhelming evidence, they had judged advance checks unnecessary. Now the same choice looks like a serious investigative failure.

The evidence that follows deepens the contradiction rather than resolving it. A conference videotape and statements from Maitland’s colleagues place him in Cap City, while a fingerprint on the local-history book at the hotel appears to support that account. Ralph later examines the book, sealed in a clear plastic bag, and finds a distinct thumbprint near the spine, with four more prints on the back. Yet the prints initially seem to reinforce the prosecution’s assumptions: Ralph considers how perfectly they fit the timing, and even after he knows about the conference evidence he remains unsure whether Maitland committed the murder. He also recalls details that make the apparent perpetrator seem not quite like a lifelong Flint City resident. His uncertainty marks a shift from confidence in the case to recognition that the evidence may have been arranged to point at Maitland.

Retreat from the Investigation

When investigators gather to revisit the case, Samuels attends an informal meeting at Howard Gold’s office. Yunel indicates that he has one more piece of the puzzle, to be presented after Ralph recaps both the evidence for and against Maitland. The meeting brings the case into a shared, less formal inquiry, but Samuels draws a boundary around his own participation. After hearing the discussion, he says the case is closed as far as he is concerned, agrees only to make calls to police in Ohio, and announces that his involvement ends there.

His refusal is not a declaration that the supernatural explanation is true. He tells Holly Gibney that her case for the fantastic is surprisingly persuasive, yet says he intends to go home, have a beer, and begin forgetting the matter. His response holds open a gap between recognizing that an argument has force and accepting its implications. At this point, he prefers withdrawal to continued engagement with a case that has unsettled the explanation on which his prosecution depended.

Public Correction and Reopening

By August 10, Samuels has returned to the case in his official capacity. At a courthouse press conference, he stands before microphones and explains that a videotape shows Maitland at a Cap City conference during the abduction and murder, while colleagues attest to his presence. He also reports that investigators found Maitland’s fingerprints at the hotel and obtained testimony indicating they were made too close to the time of Peterson’s murder for Maitland to be considered a suspect. He describes the evidence as pointing instead to a crafty and dangerous murderer, who may have had a grudge against Maitland.

Samuels addresses why the prosecution proceeded. His first explanation is that the office did not possess all the relevant facts on the day Maitland was arrested or when he was to be arraigned. Ralph, watching from the front row, recognizes the weakness in that account: by then, the office had learned much of what the press conference now presents as decisive. Samuels’s public explanation is therefore a formal admission of error, but it is also selective about when the exculpatory facts became available and how the case continued after they did.

He also explains that the DNA evidence appeared to match Maitland but was not reliable enough to sustain a conviction. The samples from Figgis Park were mixed, containing material from both perpetrator and victim, and had been exposed to ultraviolet light during another testing procedure. Samuels says they were degraded and, in his department’s view, inadmissible; in plain terms, the samples were worthless. The evidence that had appeared to anchor the case is thus publicly withdrawn as a sound basis for prosecution.

Samuels then reports that the office believes Detective John Hoskins had entered a criminal partnership with Peterson’s killer and helped the individual hide. He links the Marysville events to the danger that another child might suffer the same fate, and recognizes that Howard Gold and Alec Pelley died there. The announcement gives their deaths a public place in the account of the case, while crediting Ralph and the others with preventing the suspected plan from being carried out. Samuels declines to answer questions about Marysville, explaining that a joint investigation involving the Texas Highway Patrol and the Flint City Police Department remains active, with Yunel serving as chief liaison officer.

The decisive correction follows when Samuels says his office would almost certainly have dropped the charges if it had had more time to evaluate the evidence, and that Maitland would have been found innocent at trial. He states that Maitland was innocent under the law at the time of his death, declares that he had nothing to do with Peterson’s murder, and announces that the investigation has been reopened. Its focus is in Texas, but the inquiries in Flint City, Flint County, and Canning Township continue as well. Samuels’s statement is an effort to dissipate the suspicion still hanging over Maitland and his family, even though it cannot restore the day in court Maitland never received.

Character and Narrative Significance

Samuels’s arc is not a simple movement from certainty to knowledge. He first supports arrest before Ralph’s preferred checks are complete, relies on a case whose apparent strengths conceal an impossible conflict, then withdraws when a broader investigation unsettles its assumptions. His later press conference corrects the public record, but Ralph’s private observation makes clear that Samuels’s explanation of the prosecution’s timing is incomplete. The gap between official account and investigative experience prevents the exoneration from becoming a clean absolution of the institution.

His role brings together the moral urgency of protecting children, the persuasive force of physical evidence, and the danger of deciding too early that the evidence has settled a case. Samuels’s final action matters: as district attorney, he uses the office to clear Maitland and reopen the murder investigation. Yet the timing defines the limits of that act. The public correction comes only after Maitland has died, and after suspicion has already spread to his family. Later, when he and Ralph drink together in his office, Samuels raises a glass to the hurly-burly of a battle mostly lost in his case. The private toast acknowledges defeat without undoing its consequences.