Scott Lee Peterson

Case record: Scott Lee Peterson

Background

Scott Lee Peterson (born 24 October 1972 in San Diego, California) was a former agriculture chemical salesman. His father worked for a trucking company and later owned a packaging business. His mother owned a tiny boutique in Modesto, California, called "The Put On."

While a student at University of San Diego High School, Peterson worked as a caddy at a local golf course and participated on his high school’s golf team. He was working in a San Luis Obispo cafe as a waiter while attending Cal Poly when he met his future wife, Laci Rocha. The couple married in 1997.

The offence

Peterson murdered his wife, Laci Peterson, while she was eight months pregnant with their unborn child, who was due on February 10, 2003. The child was to be named Conner.

The exact date and cause of death for Laci and Conner were never determined. In California, the killing of the unborn child was treated as murder if the other requisite elements of murder were met.

Investigation

Peterson initially reported Laci missing on Christmas Eve. The story attracted nationwide media interest. Peterson held press conferences and received support from the Peterson family and his home community of Modesto, California.

Peterson claimed that he had been fishing at the Berkeley Marina at the time of the disappearance. His claim turned out to be near the area where the bodies of his wife and unborn son washed up.

Peterson was not a prime suspect immediately, largely because Laci’s family and friends maintained their faith in his innocence until much later.

Later, it became known that he had numerous affairs, with the latest with a massage therapist named Amber Frey. Peterson lied to Frey multiple times, including telling her that his wife had died the Christmas before Laci went missing. Media and law enforcement attention increased substantially.

Amber Frey was a key witness. She agreed to tape their phone conversations secretly in hopes of getting him to confess. Peterson did not confess to Frey or any other person. He claimed innocence in the tapes and questioned Frey about her possible involvement. It was reported that Peterson knew of the taping, but this was never proven.

Recovery of bodies

On April 14, the body of an infant boy with an umbilical washed ashore at the San Francisco Bay. On the next day, a partial female torso missing its hands, feet, and head washed ashore and was later identified as Laci’s.

Autopsies were performed, but due to decomposition the specific method of death was never determined.

Some prosecutors and people from the media speculated that Laci may have been suffocated or strangled. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and Modesto Police Department forensic searches of the couple’s home, Peterson’s truck, the tool box in the back of his truck, his warehouse, and his boat turned up only one piece of forensic evidence, a single hair.

Arrest

Peterson was arrested on April 18, 2003, in La Jolla, California, in the parking lot of the Torrey Pines Golf Course, where he said he was meeting his father, brother, and Zak O’Regan for a game of golf.

At the time of his arrest, Peterson was in possession of the following non-golf specific items:

• approximately $15,000 in cash
• four cell phones
• multiple credit cards belonging to various members of his family
• an array of camping equipment, including knives, implements for warming food, tents and tarpaulins, and also a water purifier
• a dozen pairs of shoes
• several changes of clothing
• a t-handled double-edged dagger
• a MapQuest map to Frey’s workplace (printed the previous day)
• a shovel
• rope
• 24 blister packs of sleeping pills
• Viagra
• his brother’s driver’s license

His hair and goatee had been dyed blond, although he claimed the lighter hair color was the result of chlorine from swimming in a friend’s pool. The pool’s owner later testified that, to his knowledge, Peterson had never swum in the owner’s pool or made use of the owner’s hot tub.

Trial

Before arraignment, Peterson was represented by Kirk McAllister, a veteran criminal defense attorney from Modesto, California. McAllister met with Peterson prior to Peterson’s arraignment.

At arraignment, Peterson told Judge Nancy Ashley that he could not afford the services of a private attorney. Chief Deputy Public Defender Kent Faulkner was also one of the attorneys assigned to the case.

Subsequently, Peterson indicated that he had sufficient funds to hire private counsel and attorney Mark Geragos, who had done other high-profile criminal defense work.

On January 20, 2004, due to increasing hostility to Peterson in the Modesto area, a judge moved Peterson’s trial from Modesto to Redwood City, California.

The trial, the People of the State of California vs. Scott Peterson, began in June 2004 and was followed closely by the media.

Rick Distaso was the lead prosecutor. Geragos led Peterson’s defense.

Amber Frey engaged her own attorney, Gloria Allred, to protect her from the news media. Allred was not bound by a gag order imposed on everyone else involved in the trial. Although Allred maintained that her client had no opinion as to whether Peterson was guilty, Allred was openly sympathetic to the prosecution and appeared frequently on television news programs during the trial.

Allred played a key role in keeping many facts about Frey’s client’s past from the public eye.

Peterson’s defense based the case on the lack of direct evidence and downplaying the significance of circumstantial evidence. The defense suggested that the remains of the fetus were that of a full-term infant and theorized that someone else had kidnapped Laci, held her until she gave birth, and then dumped both bodies in the bay.

The prosecution’s medical experts were able to prove that the baby had never grown to full term and died at the same time as his mother.

Geragos suggested that a Satanic cult kidnapped the pregnant woman. He also claimed that Peterson was "a cad" for cheating on his pregnant wife but not a murderer.

Early in the trial, one juror was removed due to juror misconduct and replaced by an alternate. This happened on a complaint by CourtTV. A videotape showed the juror and Brent Rocha, Laci Peterson’s older brother, speaking as they passed one another in the courthouse.

During jury deliberations, the jury foreman, attorney Gregory Jackson, requested his own removal, most likely because his fellow jurors wanted to replace him as foreman. Geragos told reporters that Jackson had mentioned threats he had received when he requested to be removed from the jury. Jackson was replaced by an alternate.

On November 12, the reconstituted jury convicted Peterson of:

• first-degree murder with special circumstances for killing Laci
• second-degree murder for killing the unborn baby she carried

The penalty phase began on November 30 and concluded December 13.

At 1:50 P.M. PST, the twelve-person jury recommended a death sentence for Peterson.

In later press appearances, members of the jury stated that Peterson’s demeanor, specifically his lack of emotion and the phone calls to Amber Frey in the days following Laci’s disappearance, indicated that he was guilty. The jurors stated that they based their verdict on “hundreds of small 'puzzle pieces' of circumstantial evidence that came out during the trial, from the location of Laci Peterson's body to the myriad of lies her husband told after her disappearance.” They also stated that they decided on the death penalty because they felt Peterson betrayed his responsibility to protect his wife and son.

Sentencing

On March 16, 2005, Judge Alfred A. Delucchi formally sentenced Scott Peterson to death. Delucchi called the murder of Peterson’s wife "cruel, uncaring, heartless and callous". The prescribed method of execution was lethal injection.

The court denied the defense’s request for a new trial, which was based on evidence of juror misconduct and media influence. The court ordered Peterson to pay $10,000 towards his wife’s funeral.

Appeals

Peterson’s case was on automatic appeal.

Outcome

Peterson was sentenced to death on March 16, 2005.

In the early morning hours of March 17, 2005, Peterson arrived at San Quentin State Prison. San Quentin overlooked the bay where Laci’s body was discarded and housed the men’s death row. Peterson joined 643 other inmates there awaiting death by lethal injection in California.

Peterson received large amounts of fan mail and wedding proposals in prison. Richelle Nice, a member of the jury in Peterson’s case, initially wrote to Peterson at the advice of her therapist. May 25, 2006 CNN story connected Nice with the label “Strawberry Shortcake” by trial observers.

Evidence and trial issues

The evidence against Peterson was largely circumstantial. Peterson changed his appearance and purchased a vehicle using his mother’s name. He sold Laci’s Land Rover, but the automobile dealer, after finding out who it belonged to, gave it back to her family free of charge.

A hydrologist with the United States Geological Survey, Ralph Cheng, testified as an expert witness on tides, particularly in the San Francisco Bay. During cross-examination, Cheng admitted that his findings were "probable, not precise" because tidal systems were sufficiently chaotic that he was unable to develop an exact model of the bodies’ disposal and travel.

The affair with Amber Frey provided support for the case against Peterson. It was alleged that he told Frey that he had lost his wife before the December 24 disappearance. In tapes, he was shown to have lied about his location, including claiming to be in Paris when he was not.

In January 2005, during the trial, Amber Frey released a book about her experiences with Scott Peterson. This launched widespread criticism that Frey was using her involvement in the case for her own personal gain and fueled speculation that Frey was working on the book during the trial, which would have violated the gag order placed on all witnesses in the trial by the judge. Frey’s publisher allegedly told her that a not guilty verdict would result in no book deal for her.

Laci’s family criticized Frey for placing her photograph between Scott’s and Laci’s on the cover of her book.

Dr. Charles March was expected to be a crucial witness for the defense in Peterson’s double-murder trial. Legal analysts and jurors closed their notebooks and rolled their eyes when they thought no one was looking. By the end of his testimony, March slumped in his chair, made an exasperated noise with his lips, and begged prosecutor Dave Harris to "cut me some slack" about a "typo" in his report.

March had to admit that a date in his report was incorrect, but said it was a typographical error. However, the prosecutor pointed out that the date appeared in two different places in the document. When the prosecutor pressed March on the discrepancies, March became flustered.

Former San Francisco prosecutor Jim Hammer, who observed the case, stated: "When an expert says, 'Cut me some slack,' it's all over,".

Motive

Peterson’s affair with Amber Frey was never presented to the jury as a probable motive for the crime. However, the prosecution presented the affair as indicative of Peterson’s bad character.

Another scenario considered but ruled out was Scott’s fear of having an unattractive, unhealthy child.

Some claimed Peterson murdered Laci out of a desire to return to the “bachelor” lifestyle, where he would be free from the obligations of his impending family life.

Books about the case

• A Deadly Game: The Untold Story of the Scott Peterson Investigation by Catherine Crier, Cole Thompson (2005) ISBN 0060766123
• Blood Brother: 33 Reasons My Brother Scott Peterson Is Guilty by Anne Bird (2005 Regan Books)
• Dr. Henry Lee's Forensic Files: Five Famous Cases Scott Peterson, Elizabeth Smart, and more... by Henry C. Lee, Jerry Labriola (2006) ISBN 1591024099
• Presumed Guilty: What the Jury Never Knew About Laci Peterson's Murder and Why Scott Peterson Should Not Be on Death Row by Matt Dalton with Bonnie Hearn Hill (Atria, 2005) ISBN-10: 0743286952 ISBN-13: 978-0743286954
• Stone Cold Guilty The People v. Scott Lee Peterson by Loretta Dillon (self-published?) ISBN 1411634535
• We, the Jury: Deciding the Scott Peterson Case, compilation (2007) ISBN 1597775363

Other details

Peterson purchased a vehicle using his mother’s name and his hair and goatee had been dyed blond at the time of arrest. The case record described that after conviction and sentencing, Peterson joined 643 other inmates awaiting death by lethal injection in California.