Scott Peterson Keeps Using Discredited Theories To Proclaim His Innocence
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Last week Scott Peterson — convicted in 2004 of killing his wife Laci Peterson and their unborn son — made headlines again when the Los Angeles Innocence Project (LAIP) announced it was taking on his case, claiming that “newly discovered” evidence could support his claims of innocence.
New court filings by the organization, which is not affiliated with the national Innocence Project, claim that previously unreleased evidence in the case, including several unnamed witnesses, could prove Scott’s innocence. HuffPost has reviewed a portion of the filings.
Even securing a new trial would be an uphill battle. And no new evidence is likely to change the fact that led to his conviction in the first place: When his wife disappeared on Dec. 24, 2002, Scott said he drove 90 miles from their home in Modesto, California, to go fishing in the San Francisco Bay — not far from where the badly decomposed remains of Laci and her fetus washed up four months later. Prosecutors argued that Scott dumped his wife’s body overboard on a fishing boat during that time.
Scott’s supporters — led by his determined sister-in-law Janey Peterson, who created a comprehensive website about the case — have received a lot of media attention in recent years. They have repeatedly produced new arguments for his release, which have been amplified by true crime docuseries and podcasts. But much of what they’ve claimed to be new evidence that exonerates Scott has already been discredited and rejected by authorities and the courts.
Here’s how the case unfolded — and why Scott Peterson isn’t likely to be freed anytime soon.
The program for the memorial service for Laci Peterson and her unborn son Conner shows a smiling image of Laci on May 4, 2003, in Modesto, California. About 3,000 people gathered at a church to remember her on what would have been her 28th birthday.
Laci Peterson’s Disappearance
On the afternoon of Dec. 23, 2002, Scott took his wife, a 27-year-old substitute teacher, to a prenatal doctor’s appointment. Next, the couple went to a salon where Laci’s sister, Amy Rocha, cut Scott’s hair. He told Rocha he would pick up a gift basket for her grandfather the following afternoon, saying he planned to go golfing nearby. (When he didn’t deliver the basket or respond to her calls the next day, Rocha picked it up herself.)
Scott told investigators that he spent the morning of Christmas Eve with his wife at the couple’s Modesto home. When he left, he claimed that Laci — who was nearly 8 months pregnant with their first child — was mopping the floor, even though their housekeeper had just done so the previous day. Phone records show that Scott left at 10:08 a.m. Ten minutes later, a neighbor testified that she found the couple’s golden retriever in the street, alone but with her leash attached, and locked the dog in the Petersons’ backyard.
Scott claimed he returned home around 5:15 p.m., ate some pizza and did laundry — just the clothes he had worn that day, even though the laundry bin was overflowing — and then called Laci’s mother, Sharon Rocha, about an hour later to say that Laci was “missing.” Her family launched a frantic search of the area, including a park where Laci usually walked her dog, and notified police.
Several of Laci’s friends testified that she told them her pregnancy left her too fatigued and uncomfortable to walk the dog. Prosecutors said that testimony bolstered their argument that Scott killed Laci the night of Dec. 23 (her remains were found in pants matching those her sister saw her wearing that day) or early on Christmas Eve — letting the dog loose himself before he left. His defenders countered with witnesses who said they saw Laci, or a woman resembling her, in the neighborhood after Scott left. Investigators and even a local reporter who covered the case did not find their accounts credible, however, and authorities pointed out many had likely confused Laci with a similar-looking pregnant woman who also walked her dog in the area.
In court documents, Scott cited witnesses who said they saw Laci in the park with the dog at a later time, but again investigators and journalists who interviewed them found their accounts uncredible.
An aerial view of the San Francisco Bay shows significant locations in Scott Peterson's double murder trial.
Scott Peterson’s Fishy Alibis
Despite what he told some relatives, friends and neighbors, Scott didn’t go golfing on Christmas Eve. It was too cold, he said, so instead he left Laci home alone while he tested out his new 14-foot fishing boat. He told investigators that he launched from the Berkeley Marina and motored across to Brooks Island. Four months later, after a heavy storm, the badly decomposed remains of Laci and her fetus were found separately on the shoreline near where he’d been boating. Scott purchased the boat for $1,400 in cash on Dec. 9 — the same day he told a woman he was having a secret affair with, Amber Frey, that his wife had died. He did not register the boat, nor did he mention the purchase to friends or family, including his father, an avid fisherman. Cellphone records show that after leaving the marina on Dec. 24, Scott called his father — who testified that Scott never mentioned he’d just gone fishing.
When detectives searched Scott’s truck on Dec. 24, they said they found a loaded handgun and a blue tarp wrapped around some patio umbrellas. He’d forgotten to drop the umbrellas off at his warehouse as planned, he told investigators, but that didn’t jibe with their finding of the umbrellas in his backyard when they executed a search warrant there several days later.
Investigators also found his boat cover drenched in gasoline in his backyard shed, as well as a tarp covered with fertilizer, and believed Scott meant to destroy evidence after using the tarps to hide Laci’s body. (His supporters said the gasoline came from leaking equipment.)
Scott said his last-minute fishing trip ended after only two hours because the bay was cold and rainy. But prosecutors argued that his previous purchase of a two-day fishing license valid for Dec. 23 and 24 indicated the trip was planned.
A picture of the homemade anchor found in Scott Peterson's boat was shown to the jury in his double murder trial.
Investigators found a homemade anchor — a block of concrete with a rebar loop — in Scott’s boat, and spilled cement mix in the warehouse near a plastic gallon pitcher, which they believe he used as a mold for the anchor. There were also clean patches amid the spilled concrete, which prosecutors argued had been the spots where Scott had several other homemade anchors — that similar anchors had previously occupied the bare spots but were never found — which he used to weigh down his wife’s 153-pound body before he slipped it into the icy water.
Scott’s defense insisted that he could not have dropped Laci’s body overboard without capsizing — which happened when they staged a reenactment using a weighted 150-pound dummy on a similar boat. Prosecutors called it a “stunt” and video of the reenactment was deemed inadmissible at trial, a ruling that Scott’s supporters continue to protest.
What is rarely mentioned, however, is the fact that the judge offered to let Scott’s defense team try another experiment, using his actual boat and with prosecutors watching, but they declined.
Amber Frey exits the courthouse with her attorney Gloria Allred after a day of testifying during the Scott Peterson double murder trial, Aug. 10, 2004, at the San Mateo County Superior Courthouse in Redwood City.
The Secret Girlfriend Goes Public
Days after Laci’s disappearance, Amber Frey, a 27-year-old massage therapist from Fresno, came forward to say that she was dating Scott. Frey learned from a newspaper article that Scott had been lying to her: He’d told her on Dec. 9 that his wife was dead — 15 days before Laci went missing. But the news of Laci’s disappearance revealed that Scott was living a double life.
She approached authorities on Dec. 30 and appeared at a news conference with the Modesto Police Department on Jan. 24. She had agreed to record their phone calls, and although he never confessed to killing his wife, their conversations — which continued for two months — were damning to his defense.
A week after Laci disappeared, the community gathered for a New Year’s Eve candlelight vigil for her at a Modesto park, where she used to walk her dog. Just before it started, Scott called Frey, saying that he was watching the fireworks in Paris while on a European business trip.
“I’m near the Eiffel Tower and the New Year’s celebration is unreal,” he said in the call, which Frey recorded. “The crowd is huge!”
In reality, he was watching hundreds gathered in the park, their eyes welling in tears as they held up candles for his wife. As Laci’s family sobbed, Scott was seen smiling, laughing and joking with his friends and talking on his cellphone. His supporters say these were isolated moments singled out to vilify him.
The next day, in another recorded call that was played during his double murder trial, Scott told Frey, “I think that we would be wonderful together” and wanted to be with her “for the rest of our lives.”
Within weeks of Laci’s disappearance, Scott sold her Land Rover, tried to sell their “fully furnished” home, and converted the baby’s nautical-themed nursery into a storage room — a month after he told Diane Sawyer in a television interview that he was preserving the room until his child was found.
“That door is closed until there is someone to put in there,” he said.
Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant when she disappeared in December 2002.
The Burglary Across The Street
Early on, police suggested that a break-in at a house across the street from the Petersons’ at Christmastime might have been related to Laci’s disappearance, speculating that she might have been killed or kidnapped by the burglars. At the time, they were unable to pinpoint when the crime took place, only that it had happened between Dec. 24 and Dec. 26 while its owners, the Medina family, were away.
However, the two burglars, Steven Wayne Todd and Donald Glen Pearce, were apprehended on Jan. 2, and investigators ruled out any connection to Laci’s disappearance. According to Todd, the men broke into the house at around 4 a.m. on Dec. 26, and hid from the TV news trucks parked on the street.
No reporters spotted the men, including KTVU newscaster Ted Rowlands, who was doing predawn stand-ups by the house. Rowlands said in “The Murder of Laci Peterson,” a 2017 docuseries, that he would have noticed any suspicious activity. And it would seem like a particularly bold move to carry the Medinas’ safe — which contained $50,000 worth of jewelry — out the front door and put it on the front lawn, as the police said they did.
Because none of the media crews saw or heard anything suspicious, Scott’s supporters argue that the burglary actually happened on Dec. 24, before Laci allegedly went missing.
LAIP’s reexamination is likely to focus on another theory by Scott’s supporters, centering on a burned-out van — although several different van-related sightings had been investigated and discounted by the police. One Modesto couple said that they saw a frightened-looking woman urinating outside a van before being pulled back inside it. Another tip, that a woman was the victim of sexual assault involving a satanic ritual inside a van, was later discredited. Janey Peterson claimed that a neighbor spotted three men sitting in a van in front of the Petersons’ home on Dec. 24. Now lawyers for Scott are requesting DNA testing of alleged bloodstains in the burned van, which a former fire investigator told ABC News was found on Christmas Day about a mile from the Petersons’ house.
Left: Scott Peterson is shown after his arrest in a handout image released by the Stanislaus County Sheriff's office, April 19, 2003. Right: Scott Peterson sits in the Stanislaus County courthouse, Jan. 23, 2004, in Modesto, California.
Scott Peterson’s Arrest, And The Long Road To A New Trial
On April 14, Laci’s badly decomposed remains were found on the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay. Her head, forearms and lower legs were missing, as jurors saw when photographs were shown during the double murder trial. Her relatively intact fetus, which authorities determined had separated from her body in the water, was found the previous day, washed up about a mile away.
Scott’s defenders contend that he was framed, by a killer or killers who took advantage of the massive publicity generated by the case. In their account, Conner — the name the couple had chosen for their son — was born alive after Laci was abducted, and the two were murdered later. A gynecologist’s theory that the fetus died on Dec. 29 didn’t hold up in court; one expert called his testimony “devastating” for Scott.
Hours before DNA tests confirmed the identities of the remains as belonging to Laci and her unborn baby, police arrested Scott in San Diego on murder charges.
He had grown a goatee and mustache and bleached his hair, which he insisted wasn’t an attempt at a disguise. Rather, he claimed, it was a result of swimming in his friend’s chlorinated pool.
In his car, investigators found nearly $15,000 in cash, four cellphones, 12 Viagra tablets and camping equipment, and what investigators described as “survival gear.”
Authorities believed Scott intended to flee to Mexico, although his defense pointed out that his family lived in San Diego. (He did, however, tell Frey that he planned to go to Guadalajara at the end of January.) He explained that he had his brother’s driver’s license to use at a golf club, which gave discounts to local residents.
Scott pleaded not guilty on April 21, 2003, to two felony counts of murder with premeditation and special circumstances. He was convicted on Nov. 12, 2004, after a 19-week trial. After the jury recommended on Dec. 6 that he be sentenced to death, crowds outside cheered and newspapers printed special editions. (The trial was not televised.)
The California Supreme Court overturned Scott’s death sentence after finding that jurors were improperly screened for bias against the death penalty, but upheld his conviction and resentenced him to life in prison. In 2022, a judge rejected Scott’s request for a new trial based on his allegations that a juror was biased against him.
In his latest petition, filed in April 2023, Scott claims that unidentified witnesses overheard a man confess to killing Laci after she interrupted the burglary, which his team insists happened on Dec. 24, not Dec. 26. In a July response, the California Attorney General’s Office in July characterized Scott’s claims — which also included allegations of evidence suppression and “false evidence” — as a “baseless fishing expedition.” The attorney general countered that Scott’s team is attempting to cast a “different gloss” on previous claims that had already been rejected by the state Supreme Court.
Before his request was rejected in 2022, Laci’s mother told ABC News that the thought of sitting through another trial was “excruciating.”
“But if that’s what it takes, I’ll be there,” Sharon Rocha said. “And I’m sure they’ll find him guilty again.”
People read an extra edition put out by the Redwood City Daily News after the verdict was announced in the Scott Peterson murder trial on Nov. 12, 2004, in Redwood City, California. Peterson was found guilty of one count of first-degree and one count of second-degree murder of his wife Laci Peterson and the couple's unborn son.
