Well, here we are, back in the Documentary list. This dropped today and I felt the need to get my response out on this one, seeing as I just wrote about the Shanann Watts case too, by the same production team.
Episode 1:
The events of this case happened about twenty years ago, and we are taken back to Modesto, CA 2002.
The timeline starts.
Scott is the first to raise the red flag that Laci is officially missing on Christmas Eve, but wasn't the first one to call the police. All of her friends are confused. All of her family is confused. And Scott is confused. Finally, Laci's stepdad actually reports it to the police that the 8-month pregnant Laci has been missing since going on a walk that morning.
Lots of activity ensues, and a search kicks off right away.
An eight month pregnant woman doesn't just suddenly run away. Something must have happened to her.
Detective Brocchini meets Scott for the first time. Brocchini's first impression is that Scott was very calm and almost too personable.
Scott's general claim is that Laci was not home when she was expected to be there, and he gave the detectives permission to search everything - the house, the shop, and the warehouse.
Scott explains what the original plans were the day of her disappearance and what happened before they split ways that morning prior to this interrogation. Scott explains that he drives out to Berkeley Marina on the bay, went out on the boat and fished, then called Laci and left a message. He drove home to find the door unlocked, and the dog running around inside the yard with a leash still on her. No Laci to be found.
Scott chooses to run some laundry. Eat some food. Then finally calls Laci's mom and claims she's missing.
So that's his story.
Something doesn't add up to me. Why would he lie about golfing instead of fishing to the neighbors? He did that. Why would he come home to an unlocked house and not immediately call for Laci and look for her? He didn't do that. Why would he wait until after doing laundry and eating to report her missing? Because he did that too.
Bizarre to me.
Brocchini convinces Scott to take a polygraph the next morning. Scott seemed way way way too relaxed about his wife and unborn child missing
Then we get some history on Scott and Laci. He was the baby of the family. She was the social butterfly. When they first met, they were super in love super fast. He love-bombed the shit out of Laci very hardcore. Took her to Mexico. Showered her in gifts and experiences and dinners, etc. Scott introduces Laci to his massive complicated family. Laci was overwhelmed with that, but his family loved her nonetheless. They suddenly got engaged, weirdly fast, and she said yes, and boom - married. While STILL in college. Wild.
Then we talk to the reporters.
They kind of get the story on the day after Christmas 2002. They talked about how crime was prolific in Modesto at the time - and the mystery of Laci's disappearance gets very big very fast due to the local and national news.
In 1975, Laci was born; she's a Sweet Angel in those pictures. We are lucky to see some home video of her hanging out with friends and learn how lovely Laci was as a kid and teen and young-adult. She was so fun, and clearly a girl's girl. She was genuine and definitely an extrovert, lol. Instant-friend type.
Cut back to the search for the mother-to-be in 2002. The news continues to spread and friends start to come into town to search for her. A $125K reward comes up, and Scott seems to be laying low. The reward would jump to $250,000 before this case would close.
Day three without Laci - there is a Press Conference, and the family is determined to find her. The Press Conference reveals that there is no information beyond Scott's fishing on the morning of Laci's disappearance...alone. Without any corroborating witnesses story. The press really grills the police chief on this multiple times and he deflects. Scott leaves the Press Conference during the critical questions about his alibi. He wasn't engaging the media, he wasn't engaging the family or friends. And people were starting to get suspicious.
Media starts coming to the family directly, and Scott pushes them away, when they may be able to help and provide coverage for the case and endear Laci to the public, putting her on more peoples' minds in the hopes to find her. He was avoiding the cameras purposefully. And the detectives noticed too that Scott begins to pull-back in terms of cooperating with the investigation, and chose to ghost on the polygraph he was supposed to do.
Laci's mom zeroes in on Scott avoiding the polygraph - and he claims that he was too upset to take it.
Back in 1997, Laci and Scott got married and rented a home. They moved back to Modesto, and the friends claimed that everything seemed fine with the couple, and Laci seemed to idealize Scott. But she was happy, and so the family and friends were just happy that she was happy. No complaints, right? Wrong.
Laci wants a baby - yay!
Scott doesn't - aww...
She's pregnant! In 2002 July - they have their first sonogram and we hear Laci's journal entry about it -yaaaay!
2002 October - Scott feels the baby move. He wasn't excited. - awwwwwww....
2002 December - Laci goes missing.
....fuck
Sharon, Laci's Mom; "Something didn't feel quite right."
Brocchini and Buehler, the two lead detectives on the case, come to the house a second time and want to do a more thorough search. Scott agrees. He was "Charming and Cordial and Nice." But he was also "Guarded" and had limited Cooperation. He decides to read the consent papers to the search and denies entry for this second search.
Interesting.
Little did he know, they already had a warrant. They execute the search and bring in a Profiler - Sharon Hagan. The team surveys the home and finds it almost too spotless- little indication that anything questionable had happened.
Then they visit the warehouse - and the team starts to realize some things about this fishing trip he supposedly made on a whim the morning of the 24th.
He got his fishing license on the 20th. He bought other supplies, including the entire new boat, in the months before and then we find out something truly interesting. Instead of looking up information about fishing at the Berkeley Marina, like a good fishing spot, he searches online for the tide paths inside the bay. Hm. A 90 mile drive for just putting the boat in the water? You don't catch anything, or even take your new lures out of the case, and your wife happens to go missing during that same time?
I don't think so.
They find evidence that Scott made a cement anchor....just for his boat. Okay, not super weird.
But it looks like he made more than just one, there was cement everywhere on the floor.
But only one was found at the warehouse. And no rope in the boat to attach it to the anchor?
This is looking worse and worse.
Then they find the pliers. They have some hair in them. Some of Laci's hair. These would come back with a DNA match to Laci.
Then the fuckin' burglary story comes out.
The house behind the Peterson's house, the Medina Residence, was broken into and burglarized the same day that Laci goes missing. Too close to be a coincidence.
Turns out it looks like it was, in fact, just a coincidence. It seems to go nowhere.
Everyone still has questions about Scott. He's too perfect. Too calm, even. I would say that this entire time of him trying to lay low and seem not-suspicious, he was incredibly suspicious. Like, extra-suspicious.
Almost a week later and she's still missing. Now were hitting new years.
A shitload of tips come in from all over the country, and the team keeps following up on those leads as well as they can.
And then one magical call comes in.
There's a secret girlfriend.
Her name is Amber.
Scott wants to be with her for the rest of his life.
Episode 2:
Starting this episode, we look back on Laci's relationship with her girls. She wanted to host parties, have a good time, and we learn that Scott was gone a lot. And now we know why.
Leading up to her disappearance, Laci was very pregnant, very sad, and missing Scott.
By December 31st, the detectives had gotten into contact with Amber Frey, and learned everything. The detectives have stop by Fresno, where Amber lives, and she has proof. Calls. Pictures. And Letters.
Ugh.
Cut back to November 2002, just a month ago. Amber meets Scott. That's how recent this was. Less than a month before Laci's disappearance. You know who else met their secret girlfriend only a month before murdering his family? Chris Watts.
Profiler Hagan noted that people accepted Scott for the charming romantic he appeared to be. That being said - deep down this was his way of bringing people into his circle because there was no other substance to him. At least in my opinion. He lived a boring life and he wanted it to be more exciting, and he decided, heartlessly, that Laci wasn't good enough.
THEN we learn about Scott's coworker who met Amber's friend, and accidentally-on-purpose revealed Laci's existence to her - so this woman calls Scott out and puts the pressure on him. That was a very complicated way of saying that Scott got exposed by his coworker and needed to tell Amber about Laci, or someone else would. Dec. 9th, Scott drops the bombshell on Amber. Scott shows up in person and is probably just super upset that his cover as been blown. He lies to Amber's face - saying that he WAS married, but that he had "lost" his wife, whatever that means, and that these would be the first holidays without her. So um. Laci doesn't disappear until the 24th. Is the picture a bit clearer now?
He cries all over Amber and Amber is duped into feeling sorry for him, and she accepts him and forgives him for the lie that he "admitted" to.
THEN THE NEWS ARTICLE. OH BOY.
Amber learns the truth about Scott and Laci, and how she went missing on the 24th. Amber was in shock at the lie and was so incredibly scared of Scott. And rightly so. Before doing anything else, she called Modesto PD and drops the tip about Scott and they get to work.
Amber was disgusted with Scott. And the Detectives were hoping that Amber would do a wired convo with Scott, and she agrees. Several times.
They catch him talking to Amber over the phone, after Laci's disappearance, and lying to Amber about being in Paris on new years, while he was actually at the Candle-Light Vigil for Laci.
HE WAS TALKING TO HIS SECRET-GIRLFRIEND AT HIS MISSING WIFE AND CHILD'S VIGIL.
Amber teams up with the cops and helps the PD try to get some evidence that Scott was, indeed, responsible for Laci's disappearance.
They wanted to catch him confessing over the phone.
At the same time, back to the annoying bullshit inside of this case, they work on figuring out who burgled the Medina home on the same day Laci disappears - seeing if that leads anywhere.
They think it might be connected to Laci.
But the investigators realize that this burglary story does not connect at all to Laci's absence. They find the two jerks who burgled the Medina home, but these two basically come forward and confess to the burglary, and then prove their innocence regarding Laci's disappearance by doing polygraphs, clearing themselves of the crime. So yes, it happened, but they weren't involved with Laci. Some of the Peterson family still believes that Scott is innocent and that the investigators are incompetent, and that these burglars are responsible for Laci's disappearance instead. It's pretty clear to me already what has happened, but whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.
Scott becomes the sole focus of the media and the investigators at this point. Not only does he look bad, but he's being very uncooperative.
Nobody could make sense of his story.
Of course his family protected him.
Laci's family, however, began to doubt Scott's innocence around the end of that Christmas week into New Years 2003. It didn't take long to see that he was avoiding police contact, and that he was not committing to finding Laci.
They bring him into another interrogation and confront him about Amber.
He instantly denies it, very calmly, and was very very nonchalant about it.
So of course Scott calls Amber right after.
And he confesses to her that he lied to her about travelling durng New Years and that Laci went missing just before Christmas. He tells this to Amber on Jan. 6th.
But he still avoids telling the whole truth.
"I can't, now," he says.
"I am not...evil like that."
Half a month later, the cops are on the Berkeley Marina and are scouring the water. They have no other leads.
Something about bodies in water? They come back to the surface.
Scott visits the marina about five times while the cops are on the water - the cops are tracking his phone and vehicle.
Her friends have her baby shower without her that day, very sadly.
They don't find her body in the water at the time of that first search.
Someone leaks photos of Scott and Amber to the press, and the police went ahead and let the family know about Amber coming forward, finally, because the tabloids were going to drop the information sooner rather than later.
Laci's mom, at this point, is completely convinced that Scott killed her daughter.
Finally, Laci's family turns against Scott, and rightfully so. They push for Scott's cooperation with police, and Laci's family and friends are devastated by the news about the affair. The volunteer search parties break up and fall away from the investigation because they feel that Scott, who organized a lot of those things, betrayed them. All credibility that Scott may have had was gone.
Amber does a VERY famous statement. A brief moment of truth in the face of Scott's lies. Only a few sentences. She left the podium, and Laci's friends came to her and thanked her for her bravery in the face of Scott, the media, and the fear of what was to come next.
"It wasn't her choice to be thrown into that position." says one of Laci's friends.
Scott continued to call Amber behind everyone's back. And Amber continues to record the calls. The calls stopped on Amber's end. She agreed with police to end the calls. And no more information came from their communications. He wasn't telling Amber anything of value either way.
Over a month from Laci's going missing, Scott finally speaks out on Laci directly to the media only.
"I had absolutely nothing to do with her disappearance."
With Diane Sawyer, he claims that he told Laci about Amber before Laci went missing. And that she wasn't upset about the affair at all. Right. He was trying to make outward appearances work when his world is actually factually crumbling.
He avoids answering directly about the polygraph.
He claims complete cooperation with the police.
He was calm, cool, collected.
He thought that he would look good, I guess.
But more than anything I think he looked exactly how the reporter saw him; disconnected.
It all seemed fake to Laci's friends.
Scott can barely talk about Laci's personality, or the dead unborn child.
So, I guess it's time to build a case against him, right? Without a body, the team can't prosecute for murder at all.
Two months go by.
A second search warrant is dropped on the Peterson home.
Scott sold Laci's car. Called his realtor. Sound Familiar?
The nursery became a storage room.
April 13th & 14th - 2003 - people on the beach and in the marsh find them.
The blue body bag finally comes out of the water and the game is on.
Cash. Equipment. And a car.
"He's getting ready to run."
Episode 3:
Laci's wedding was fabulous, but she had some cold feet. Was she too young to get married?
Maybe.
Sharon recalls all of these things that Laci had told her parents about Scott.
"I hope he's not filling her with a lot of crap about himself..."
Turns out Scott was a pathological liar from the beginning. He was well-traveled! A romantic! Right.
So the torso washes up, and so does the baby boy. All on the coast of San Francisco Bay. Both badly decomposed. This is the worst-case scenario, but it devolves to even worse than that. The community had been rooting her to be alive. But her friends knew right away.
"Laci made that happen. She came back. She wanted us to know that things were going to be okay, as well as they could be. And that the person responsible was going to face his Justice. Yeah."
Preach.
Once the family was informed, it was basically over for Scott. The murder investigation officially begins.
They start to crack down on Scott's alibi.
His alibi claims that he was in Berkeley Marina by Brooks Island at the time Laci and Conner (in-utero) went missing.
Connor and Laci were found near Brooks Island. See the map below:
Sometimes they make it too easy, but the investigators still need more to prosecute.
Profiler Hagan calls this a "soft kill." He chose a quiet way of killing her, but also a way that doesn't make a mess. Likely strangling or smothering, only to make disposal easier. Yeah.
Allegedly, he dropped her body in the bay with the anchors of cement he made, and really tried to make it look like a disappearance. No witness, no video, no confession, but a BODY has finally been found and we can knock out this case right? Not yet.
They had to confirm the identity of the bodies by DNA, and had to find Scott.
On April 18 -He was already in San Diego. For those of you who don't know, take a look where San Diego is:
See that yellow and black dashed line at the bottom? Right on Tijuana and Tecate? Yeah, that's the Mexico border. San Diego is less than an hour away from Mexico. To like....leave the United States.
Interesting that he decided to go there right when the police found the bodies, huh?
According to Scott's family, he was just going to play golf with his relatives.
But when the cops pull him over, remember they were tracking his vehicle, they see something they can't ignore.
Scott gets out of the car - blonde hair, blonde beard. In the car they find a shitload of cash, weapons, four or five cellphones, and his passport. And his brother's id. Who had blonde hair. Huh. Take a look:
The forensic team confirms the DNA. Those bodies belong to Laci and Connor.
Scott is more concerned about eating dinner, it seems.
A crowd cheers for his arrest at the Modesto PD when the car pulls in.
Good.
His family still believes he is innocent at this point.
Mark Geragos is the attorney that the Peterson family hires for Scott.
He is a television-famous attorney that is known for taking high-profile cases.
He claims he's going to prove that Scott had nothing to do with this; "we look forward to proving his innocence," his family claims. Scott's defense team was just looking for a high-profile case, in my opinion, and Amber gets Gloria Allred, another high-profile attorney.
Amber's issue was that the tabloids just could not stop slandering her publicly. Because she had helped the police, of course the defense wanted her to appear as poorly as possible. She became the scapegoat, and Gloria Allred fought against this. Especially because now the media was going so hard in California, that it was highly unlikely Scott would get a fair trial, or the jury would be biased about the witnesses and the case as a whole. So Amber needed that level of protection and help from a legal team, understandably.
The trial begins work in March 2004. They move his trial from Stanislaus County, where Modesto is, to San Mateo County, on the other side of the bay.
June 1st - the case officially goes to Trial.
Over 100 witnesses are on the docket, and the Opening Statements begin. Laci's mother went nearly every day.
"I could not NOT be there."
Scott's sister?
"I felt helpless. I wanted to be in the courtroom."
This is hard for everyone.
The problem with this case is that almost everything is circumstantial evidence. For those of you who don't know, there are a few types of evidence out there - but circumstantial is one of the most questionable.
"For instance, circumstantial evidence of intentional discrimination can include suspicious timing, ambiguous statements, different treatment, personal animus, and other evidence can allow a jury to reasonably infer intentional discrimination." - Cornell Law School
The hard evidence in this case was limited. That means that "evidence that leaves no doubt as to a particular conclusion," was hard to come by.
Scott's legal team was buying in to their client's "Not Guilty" Plea, and ready to fight during trial.
Geragos aggressively interrogates the witnesses and is ruthless, which is a good thing for Scott. Which is difficult for the prosecution. Geragos is a menace, frankly. He attempts to attack the credibility of the detectives, and long story short, this trial is going to be a huge pain in the ass for everyone. Scott is going to fight and fight hard.
The jurors started off believing that Scott was innocent, mostly due to Geragos' passionate splitting of hairs.
Then the Medical Examiner Expert looked at the bodies, and we learn that there was a discrepancy with calculating the time of death; it was unidentifiable. Difficult for the prosecution also. Without an accurate time of death, it would be hard to pinpoint when exactly Laci and Conner were killed, and whether Connor was born prior to the murders.
Then Amber Frey takes the stand.
According to Gloria, she earned the respect of the Jury, and this seemed to turn the tide in the prosecution's favor.
The Wire Tapes were the key.
Scott had chosen not to testify, but those tapes incriminated the shit out of him.
Profiler Hagan claims he had "short-sighted" lies. He's so emotionally disconnected that he truly believed that everyone would "lose interest in her disappearance in a few short weeks."
The prosecution goes for First Degree; Pre-Meditated Murder.
Let's go, girls.
He lied about when Laci disappeared. He got the boat. He didn't rush to call about Laci missing. He sold Laci's car. Looked to sell the house almost immediately. And used the nursery as storage. He wasn't hoping she would come home, and it showed. He knew they were dead already.
According to one Juror, after you put all the information together, it "paints a picture."
Fast forward to Nov 2004 - a Verdict is reached. Whew! Time flies.
The Media is, of course, up everyone's ass to film it.
Scott's family, at this point, still think he's innocent.
The Jury finds him guilty on "first-degree murder with special circumstances for killing Laci, and second-degree murder for killing the fetus she carried (Conner)." - Wiki
And my god I couldn't be more proud of this Jury.
Scott's family is embarrassed for obvious reasons by the crowd screaming at them outside the courthouse, but I kind of expected that.
Late November 2004- the Penalty Phase Begins.
The Jury and Judge decide on Death. The jurors that were interviewed were not happy to say that they decided on death, but it was what they chose as a group.
"On March 16, Judge Delucchi followed the jury verdict, sentencing Scott to death by lethal injection and ordering him to pay $10,000 toward the cost of Laci's funeral, calling the murder of Laci 'cruel, uncaring, heartless, and callous.' ... On October 21, 2005, a judge ruled that proceeds from a $250,000 life insurance policy Scott took out on Laci would go to Laci's mother, which was reaffirmed by the Fifth District Court of Appeal on October 31, 2007....Scott arrived at San Quentin State Prison in the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 17, 2005. He was reported not to have slept the night before, being too 'jazzed' to sleep." - Wiki
Scott's family still fights for Scott's freedom.
Literally.
Throughout the complicated and very very slow appeals process, the Peterson family found a win for Scott. "On September 22, 2021, California Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo ruled that Scott would be re-sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole." - Wiki
This is because Scott's attorneys were able to prove that the original Jury that tried his case were overly biased toward death-penalty.
He was removed from Death Row, and is now serving life in Ione, CA.
And as recently as 2024 these delusional family members are still fighting for Scott's innocence;
"On March 12, 2024, Scott attended a status hearing in Redwood City that had been granted by a San Mateo County judge in response to a request by LA Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that accepted Peterson's case two months prior, for new evidence from the trial, which the Project said supported Peterson's claims of innocence. ... On April 23, 2024, the prosecution fired back at the new push for DNA testing, describing it as "unnecessary," noting that Scott Peterson lied about the circumstances surrounding his wife's murder and that such DNA testing was already done in 2013 and again in 2019." - Wiki
Let's talk about Laci and Conner's Legacy
They were buried in 2003, and since their passing their peers have relied on the Peterson case as the precedent for the "passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which is also known as Laci and Conner's Law. ... The Act provides that, under federal law, any person who causes death or injury to an unborn child while in the commission of a crime upon a pregnant woman will be charged with a separate offense. ... In 2006, Sharon wrote For Laci: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Justice, a biography and memoir about Laci's life and death. All proceeds are used to fund the Laci and Conner Search and Rescue Fund, which she had founded." - Wiki
"She may be physically gone, but she's not gone out of our hearts. She still lives with all of us. ... She's been gone almost as long as she was here. ... She was alive. She's still alive to all of us."
- Laci's Mom, Sharon
In my mind, this documentary did a fantastic job letting the case speak for itself.
Scott dug his own grave and now he's laying in it, and let's hope he never gets out.
-B
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