Twenty years ago, a case that gripped the world came to an end when Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn son.
Scott Peterson, who has always maintained his innocence, was convicted of murder in 2004 and sentenced to death the next year. He was resentenced to life without the possibility of parole after his death sentence was overturned in 2020.
Prosecutors portrayed him as an adulterer who dumped his wife’s body in the Berkeley Marina in California on Christmas Eve 2002 and tried to cover up the crime by making it appear as if she were missing. Her body later washed ashore.
The case has been chronicled over the years in numerous films, documentaries and books. Netflix’s “American Murder: Laci Peterson” and Peacock’s “Face to Face with Scott Peterson” are docuseries that will once again delve into what has become one of the most notable true crime cases in American history.
Who was Laci Peterson?
Laci, 27, disappeared from her and Scott Peterson’s Modesto, California, home on Christmas Eve 2002, five years after they married. She was eight months pregnant with their son, Conner, at the time.
One of the last people to speak with her was her mother, Sharon Rocha, according to a 2003 article by United Press International. The pair had casually spoken around 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 23, 2002.
Scott had said that everything seemed fine when he left the house on the morning she vanished and had told neighbors he was going to play golf, according to NBC Bay Area. But prosecutors said he did not go to the golf course and instead drove about 90 miles away to the Berkeley Marina. Scott told police that he went to the marina to go fishing in a little aluminum boat he had recently purchased.
In the trailer for the coming Netflix series, Rocha said her daughter would gush over Scott.
“I remember, before I met Scott, Laci telling me all these things about him,” Rocha said in her first interview for a documentary. “And I remember saying, as her mother, ‘I hope he’s not filling her with crap.’”
A woman in the trailer said Laci was “giddy” when she met Scott, while another said Laci believed her husband “was who he presented himself to be.”
In April 2003, four months after Laci vanished, the bodies of her and her unborn son washed ashore in San Francisco Bay. A pathologist testified in 2003 that her body was badly decomposed and that her head and forearms and one of her feet were missing. Her abdomen had worn away, according to the pathologist, and there was no evidence that she had given birth. The body of the baby had most likely broken free shortly before their remains were recovered, the pathologist said.
When was Scott Peterson arrested?
Scott Peterson was arrested in April 2003 near San Diego, more than a seven-hour drive from his home in Modesto. NBC Bay Area reported that he had bleached his hair and was carrying a huge pile of cash when police took him into custody.
At an arraignment, he pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder.
He was arrested after Amber Frey, a massage therapist living in Fresno, told police that they started dating a month before Laci died but that he had told her his wife was already dead.
At the trial, Laci’s relatives testified that Scott did not seem upset about her disappearance. Harvey Kemple, her cousin, recalled a time when, he said, Scott got angry over burning chicken at a barbecue.
“I saw more reaction out of him when he burnt the god-darned chicken than when his wife went missing,” Kemple is quoted as saying in a 2004 San Francisco Chronicle article.
Scott has spoken out about the case over the years, and he has always maintained his innocence. His attorneys have argued that Laci was killed after she stumbled upon a burglar. In the coming Peacock series, he expresses regret over his affair and once again declares: “I didn’t kill my family.”
“It’s horrible,” he said in an article published Tuesday by People magazine, ahead of the release of the Peacock series. “I was a total a--hole to be having sex outside our marriage.”
He also says he regrets not testifying at his trial and wants to be able to “show people what the truth is.”
Who is Amber Frey?
In January 2003, Frey came forward as the woman Scott was having an affair with. She told reporters at the time that the pair met in November 2002 and that Scott had told her he was not married, according to the United Press International article.
Frey, who wrote the 2005 book “Witness: For the Prosecution of Scott Peterson,” will also speak out in Netflix’s documentary series.
In a recording played in the trailer, she asks Scott: “So what do you want, to be together with me?”
“For the rest of our lives. I think we could care for each other,” he says.
What is the status of the murder case?
The California Supreme Court overturned Scott’s death penalty sentence in 2020, ruling that the trial judge “made a series of clear and significant errors in jury selection" that "undermined Peterson’s right to an impartial jury at the penalty phase.”
The trial judge had dismissed potential jurors who said they disagreed with the death penalty but would be willing to follow the law and impose it. The justices said in a unanimous decision that jurors cannot be dismissed simply because they oppose the death penalty.
Scott’s conviction was upheld, and he was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In 2022, he was denied a new trial after his legal team argued that Juror 7, a woman named Richelle Nice, had been untruthful and hid details of her personal life, including that she was a victim of domestic violence and had sought a restraining order in 2000 over concerns that her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend would harm her unborn baby.
Lawyers for Scott accused Nice of “prejudicial misconduct” and said her untruthfulness presented a conflict. But the court did not rule in their favor.
Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo wrote in a decision that while several of Nice’s answers on the juror questionnaire were “false in certain respects,” she was not “motivated by pre-existing or improper bias” against Scott. Massullo said Nice’s answers were a combination of “good faith misunderstanding of the questions and sloppiness in answering.”
Nice, who co-wrote a book about the trial with fellow jurors, has denied having been influenced by her personal experiences.
The last movement in the case was earlier this year, when the Los Angeles Innocence Project took on Scott as a client. The nonprofit organization, which represents people convicted of crimes who want to prove they are innocent, said in January that it was seeking new evidence in his original trial.
The Los Angeles Innocence Project did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
“American Murder: Laci Peterson” premieres Wednesday on Netflix. “Face to Face with Scott Peterson" premieres Aug. 20 on Peacock. Peacock is owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.