Loretto’s “The Staircase” Isn’t the Netflix One: Two Films, One Title
If you searched for “The Staircase” and ended up reading about a murder trial, you took a wrong turn that thousands take. Two screen productions share the title. One is a 1998 CBS movie about the spiral stair in this chapel. The other is a true-crime story about a writer, his dead wife, and a completely different staircase. They have nothing in common but the name.
The Loretto one: The Staircase (1998)
The film tied to this chapel is a 1998 CBS television movie called The Staircase. It stars Barbara Hershey as Mother Madalyn, the nun heading the chapel, and William Petersen as Joad, a travelling carpenter with a gift for both woodwork and the spiritual. It dramatises the legend — the chapel with no way to the loft, the prayer, the stranger who builds the impossible stair and leaves. Its credits list a source novel, The Staircase by Ann Rinaldi — though Rinaldi’s young-adult book is usually dated 2000, two years after the film, so the exact relationship is murky. Either way it is fiction built on the tradition, not a documentary account; Variety called the film “a heavily fictionalized recounting of a real-life event.”
The other one: a different death entirely
The “Staircase” most people have streamed lately is about Michael Peterson, a North Carolina writer whose wife Kathleen was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their home. It exists in two forms: a 2004 French documentary series by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, widely watched after Netflix carried it and added later episodes, and a 2022 dramatised miniseries with Colin Firth and Toni Collette. Both are true-crime, set in a private house, with no chapel, no nun, and no spiral. The only overlap with Loretto is the word on the poster.
Which is which, at a glance
| The Loretto film | The true-crime Staircase | |
|---|---|---|
| Subject | The Loretto Chapel’s “miraculous” spiral stair | The death of Kathleen Peterson; Michael Peterson’s trial |
| Form & year | CBS TV movie, 1998 | 2004 docuseries (de Lestrade); 2022 drama series |
| Faces | Barbara Hershey, William Petersen | Colin Firth, Toni Collette (2022) |
| Based on | Ann Rinaldi’s novel The Staircase | The real Peterson case |
| Setting | A chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico | A private home in Durham, North Carolina |
What the 1998 film gets right — and dramatises
As a retelling of the legend, the film keeps the beats most people know: the missing staircase, the novena, the unnamed carpenter, the disappearance. As history, it’s a dramatisation, not a record — the characters and dialogue are invented, and the “stranger” framing leans into the miracle reading rather than the documentary one. The named, mortal candidate for the builder, and the evidence behind him, sit on our who built it page; the faith version it draws from is on the St. Joseph legend page.
Keep exploring
- The real Loretto Chapel staircase: story, mystery & facts
- The St. Joseph legend the film dramatises
- Who actually built it?
- Debunked or miracle? Every claim vs the evidence
Related: the full TV, film & books roundup.
Researched & fact-checked by the Loretto Volunteers Editorial Team
Loretto Volunteers is an independent research project documenting the history, architecture, and enduring mystery of the Loretto Chapel staircase. We work from primary and archival sources and show our evidence. Last reviewed: June 2026.