Scott Peterson

For the staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor, see Scott Peterson (writer).

Scott Peterson
Born	(1972-10-24) 24 October 1972
Spouse	Laci Peterson (d. 2003)
Parent(s)	Jacqueline Helen Latham and Lee Arthur Peterson

Scott Lee Peterson (born 24 October, 1972) is a former fertilizer salesman convicted of the murder of his wife Laci and unborn son Conner Peterson. Laci was eight months pregnant at the time of the murder. Peterson's case dominated the American media for many months. On March 16, 2005, Peterson was sentenced to death and currently resides on death row in San Quentin State Prison. Scott Peterson has not admitted any guilt.

Early life

Peterson was born in San Diego, California to Lee Arthur Peterson and Jacqueline Helen Latham. Peterson's father worked for a trucking company, and later owned a packaging business. His mother owned a tiny boutique in La Jolla, Ca, called "The Put On." While a student at University of San Diego High School, he worked as a caddy at a local golf course, and participated on his high school's golf team. Scott's father, Lee Peterson, said that Mickelson and his son were friends and that Scott gave up his hopes of becoming a professional golfer because he knew he did not have Mickelson's ability. Scott attended Arizona State for a few months before transferring to California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo. Peterson was on a list of individuals whom investigators felt warranted closer investigation in the disappearance of Kristin Smart, a student at CalPoly. However, after some investigation, nothing suggested that Kristin and Scott ever came into contact, and he was ruled out as a suspect.

He was working in a San Luis Obispo cafe as a waiter while attending Cal Poly, when he met his future wife, then Laci Rocha. The couple married in August 1997.

Disappearance of Laci

Laci Peterson

On December 24, 2002, Laci Peterson was reported missing. She was eight months pregnant with a due date of February 10, 2003, the couple had planned to name the baby Conner. The exact date and cause of death of Laci and Conner were never determined. Peterson initially reported his wife missing on Christmas Eve, and the story quickly attracted nationwide media interest.

Scott held press conferences, with the support of his family, Laci's family and his home community of Modesto, California. He stated that he had been fishing at the Berkeley Marina on the date of Laci's disappearance. The bodies of his wife and unborn child were eventually found separately on different days (Laci April 14, 2003, Conner April 13, 2003) about 3 miles (5 km) from the spot where he had said he was fishing.

Peterson was not a prime suspect immediately, largely because Laci's family and friends maintained their faith in his innocence for a month after Laci's disappearance. On January 17, it became known that Peterson had had numerous extramarital affairs, most recently with a massage therapist named Amber Frey, who had requested police assistance when she became suspicious that the single man she thought she'd been dating was not being honest with her and who had learned that he was actually married to a missing woman. At this point, Laci's family announced that they were withdrawing their support for Scott. Frey was a key witness in the case against Peterson, because she agreed to let the police tape their phone conversations in hopes of getting him to confess. Peterson did not confess to Frey (or to any other person). He not only proclaimed his innocence to Frey but also questioned her about her possible involvement. Later, there was some media speculation that Peterson suspected the calls were being taped, but this has never been proven.

Frey told the police that two weeks before Laci's disappearance, Peterson had implied to her that he was a widower by saying that he had "lost his wife." During the trial, the audio recordings of Peterson and Frey's telephone conversations were played, and the transcripts were publicized. The contents were damning to Peterson's character. They revealed that the days after Laci went missing, Peterson claimed to be celebrating the holidays in Paris. One of the phone calls had been made while he was at a New Year's Eve candlelight vigil for Laci.

Recovery of bodies

On April 13, the body of a baby boy, with umbilical cord still attached, washed ashore from San Francisco Bay in Richmond's Point Isabel Regional Shoreline, north of the Berkeley Marina, where Scott had been boating the day of Laci's disappearance. The next day, a partial female torso missing its hands, feet, and head washed ashore in the same area. The bodies were later identified as Laci and Conner Peterson. Autopsies were performed, but due to decomposition the specific cause of death was never determined. The medical examiner did note that Laci had suffered three broken ribs (the 5th, 6th, and 9th ribs) prior to her death; i.e. not caused by the body dragging along the rocks in the bay. Prosecutors theorized that Laci may have been suffocated or strangled in the couple's home. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and Modesto Police Department performed forensic searches of the couple's home, Scott's truck, the tool box in the back of his truck, his warehouse, and his boat. They found only one piece of forensic evidence, a single hair.

Arrest and trial

Peterson was arrested on April 18, 2003 in La Jolla, California in the parking lot of a golf course, where he claimed to be meeting his father and brother for a game of golf. At the time of his arrest, Peterson was carrying $15,000 in cash, had four cell phones, multiple credit cards belonging to various family members, a vast array of camping equipment, including knives, implements for warming food, tents, tarps, a dozen pairs of shoes, several changes of clothes, a gun, a map to Frey's workplace that had been printed that same day, a shovel, rope, 24 blister packs of sleeping pills, Viagra, and 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 police took all of this as an indication that Peterson had planned to flee, possibly to nearby Mexico.

Police also briefly investigated any possible connection between Peterson and the 1996 disappearance of 19-year-old Kristin Smart, who attended Cal Poly at the same time as Scott and Laci. His name had come up on a short list of people investigators at the time had felt warranted closer investigation. Scott publicly denied this, and investigators found nothing to tie Peterson to the disappearance.

Initially, Peterson requested court-appointed counsel and the Stanislaus County Public Defender's office was appointed to represent him. Chief Deputy Public Defender Kent Faulkner and Deputy Public Defender Maureen Keller were the attorneys assigned to the case. Subsequently, Peterson indicated that he had sufficient funds to hire private counsel and attorney Mark Geragos took over his representation.

On January 20, 2004, due to intense media attention and 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. The lead prosecutor was Rick Distaso, and Mark Geragos led Peterson's defense.

Prosecution witness Amber Frey engaged her own attorney, Gloria Allred, to protect her from the news media. Allred was not bound by the gag order imposed on everyone else involved in the trial. Although she maintained that her client had no opinion as to whether Peterson was guilty, Allred was openly sympathetic to the prosecution. She appeared frequently on television news programs during the trial, and seemed to criticize the defense at every opportunity. Allred was key in keeping many facts about her client's past from the public eye. Some claim that she was instrumental in turning public opinion against Peterson. Amber Frey's father, Ron, also engaged a lawyer, in an attempt to be released from the gag order.

Peterson's defense lawyers based his case on the lack of direct evidence, and downplaying the significance of circumstantial evidence. They suggested that the remains of Conner Peterson were that of a full-term infant, and theorized that someone had kidnapped Laci, held her until she gave birth, and then dumped both bodies in the bay. However, 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 was replaced by an alternate, this on a complaint by CourtTV, supported by a videotape of the juror and Peterson exchanging smiles while passing. Later, during jury deliberations, the jury foreman, medical student Gregory Jackson, also requested to be removed, most likely because his fellow jurors wanted to replace him as foreperson. Geragos told reporters that Jackson had mentioned threats he had received when he requested to be removed from the jury. Jackson was also replaced by an alternate. On November 12 the reconstituted jury convicted Peterson of first-degree murder with special circumstances for killing Laci and second-degree murder for killing his unborn son. The penalty phase of the trial began on [[November 30 and concluded December 13, when 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 they felt that Peterson's demeanor--specifically, his lack of emotion, and the phone calls to Amber Frey in the days after Laci's disappearance--indicated that he was guilty. 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".

Conviction and aftermath

On March 16, 2005, Judge Alfred A. Delucchi formally sentenced Scott Peterson to death, calling the murder of his wife "cruel, uncaring, heartless, and callous". The prescribed method of execution was lethal injection. He also denied the defense's request for a new trial (which was based on evidence of juror misconduct and media influence) and ordered Peterson to pay $10,000 towards his wife's funeral.

In the early morning hours of March 17, 2005, Scott Peterson arrived at the infamous San Quentin State Prison. San Quentin, which overlooks the bay where Laci's body was discarded and houses the men's death row, is about 20 miles (30 km) north of San Francisco. He joined 643 other inmates there awaiting death by lethal injection in California. His case is currently on automatic appeal.

In January 2005, days after the initial guilty verdict was handed down, Amber Frey released a book about her experiences with Scott Peterson. She was criticized for using her involvement in the case for her own personal gain. The fact that the book was published so soon after the trial ended, fueled speculation that Frey was working on the book during the trial--which would have violated the gag order placed on all witnesses in this trial by the judge. Her publisher allegedly told Frey that a "not guilty" verdict would result in no book deal for her. Laci's family also criticized her for placing her photograph between Scott's and Laci's on the cover of her book.

Among his correspondents is Richelle Nice, a member of the jury in his case dubbed "Strawberry Shortcake" by trial observers for her red hair, who initially wrote to Peterson at the advice of her therapist May 26, 2006 CBS story.

New and confirmed findings show that a letter writing relationship between Richard Ramirez "The Night Stalker" and Scott Peterson has recently developed, Richard recently wrote to Scott and offered him his condolences, as well as his thoughts and ideas about his future in prison and his basic lifestyle. As first revealed in the Sacramento Bee, the two have a weekly letter relationship, although not much is disclosed, and Scott himself deems their writings "confidential". The correspondence began when Ramirez wrote a series of letters to a very unresponsive Peterson before he finally decided to respond. Although sharing time in the same prison almost in the same block, California state law prohibits high profile inmates from physical interaction with each other. However, intra-prison correspondence with one another is allowed.

On January 10, 2007, Donna Thomas, a legal researcher and legal advocate, appeared on CourtTV radio Sirus network, with host Vinnie Politan. The program included several jury members, Amber Frey, and Gloria Allred. On the program, Thomas stated, "I truly believed Scott was innocent; I was doing everything within my power to prove that. I spent thousands of hours on research on the evidence. However, during one of my visits with Scott at San Quentin, he slipped. At that point I knew he was guilty. I didn't know what he did exactly. On another visit with him at San Quentin he made a full confession." Thomas alluded to the fact that there is a book in the works regarding his slip and confession.

Evidence

The evidence against Peterson was largely circumstantial. Hounded by the press, Peterson changed his appearance and purchased a vehicle using his mother's name. He added two hardcore pornography channels to his cable service days after his wife's disappearance; the prosecution suggested that this meant Peterson knew his wife would not be returning home. He expressed interest in selling the house he had shared with his wife, and sold Laci's Land Rover. The automobile dealer, after finding out to whom it belonged, sold it to Sharon Rocha, Laci's mother, for the token sum of $1.00; the fee was strictly for tax purposes.

More evidence supporting the case for Peterson's guilt was the testimony provided by Ralph Cheng, a hydrologist with the United States Geological Survey, and an expert witness on tides, particularly of the San Francisco Bay. However, Cheng admitted during his cross-examination that his findings were "probable, not precise"; tidal systems are sufficiently chaotic, and he was unable to develop an exact model of the bodies' disposal and travel. The affair with Amber Frey also provided much support for the case against Peterson.

Dr. Charles March was expected to be a crucial witness for the defense. Geragos seemed sure that March could single-handedly exonerate Peterson, by showing that the defendant's unborn baby died a week after prosecutors claimed the child died. "Prosecutors pointed out that no medical records relied on the June 9 date and March became flustered and confusing on the stand -- and even asked a prosecutor to cut him 'some slack' -- undermining his credibility". Journalists at the trial describe prosecutor Birgit Fladager literally "convulsing with laughter" while watching Dr. March testify. Summing up this key defense witness, Stan Goldman, a criminal law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles said, "There were moments today that reminded me of Chernobyl."

March admitted 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 him on the discrepancies, March became flustered. "When an expert says, 'Cut me some slack,' it's all over," said former San Francisco prosecutor Jim Hammer, who observed the case.

Motives

Peterson's affair with Amber Frey was never presented to the jury as a probable motive for the crime (even though he appeared to be on his way to Frey's house to kill her as a loaded gun and a map with directions to her workplace was found in his possession). However, the prosecution did present the affair as an indication of Peterson's character. Prosecutors surmised that Peterson killed his wife and unborn child due to increasing debt and a desire for freedom (i.e. a desire to return to the "bachelor" lifestyle), where he would be free from the obligations of his impending family life.

Links

• Peterson Trial - Scott Peterson Trial Info and News
• Scott Peterson at NNDB
• BBC News US beach bodies killer convicted
• CourtTV.com- Evidence from the Scott Peterson Trial with updates
• IMDB - The Perfect Husband: The Laci Peterson Story