Murder of Laci Peterson

• 1. Introduction

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  Laci Peterson was 27 years old when she disappeared from her home in Modesto, California, on the 24th of December 2002. She was far along in her first pregnancy. A large search began within hours, and the story soon reached a national audience. Four months later, a discovery on the shore of San Francisco Bay changed everything. This documentary follows the murder of Laci Peterson through three questions. Why did detectives distrust her husband, Scott Peterson, from the day they met him? How did prosecutors win a murder conviction with no direct evidence tying him to the crime? And why, more than two decades later, are lawyers still arguing over what happened?

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• 2. Two Young Lives

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  Laci Denise Rocha was born on the 4th of May 1975, the younger of two children of Sharon and Dennis Rocha. Her parents had met in high school and owned a dairy farm west of Escalon, California. Laci worked there from a young age and liked gardening with her mother. Her brother, Brent, had been born in 1971. After her parents divorced in 1977, Sharon moved the children to Modesto, and Laci spent weekends with her father at the farm. Ron Grantski, who became Sharon's long-term partner without ever marrying her, helped raise the children from the time Laci was two. Laci was a cheerleader in junior high and high school. After Thomas Downey High School, she studied ornamental horticulture at California Polytechnic State University.

  Scott Lee Peterson was born on the 24th of October 1972 in San Diego. His father, Lee Arthur Peterson, owned a crate-packaging company, and his mother, Jacqueline Latham, ran a boutique in La Jolla called The Put On. Between them the couple had six children from earlier relationships, and Scott was the only child they had together. Golf defined his youth. By the age of 14 he could beat his father, and at the University of San Diego High School he played alongside Phil Mickelson, a future professional. By the end of high school he ranked among the top junior golfers in San Diego.

  In 1990, Scott enrolled at Arizona State University on a partial golf scholarship. Mickelson had enrolled there too. His father later testified that the strength of the competition discouraged him. Chip Couch, the father of another young golfer named Chris Couch, told a different story. Chip said Scott took Chris out drinking during a recruiting visit, and the golf coach then removed Scott from the team. Scott moved on to Cuesta College and then to Cal Poly, graduating in 1998 with a degree in agricultural business. His professor Jim Ahern said, "I wouldn't mind having a class full of Scott Petersons."

  In mid-1994, Scott was working at Pacific Café in Morro Bay when Laci, who sometimes visited a friend there, sent him her phone number. She told her mother she had met the man she would marry. Scott called, and they began dating. As the relationship grew serious, he set aside his hopes of professional golf and turned to a business career. They dated for two years and moved in together. In 1997, after Laci graduated, they married at Sycamore Mineral Springs Resort. Prosecutors later said Scott had his first extramarital affair around this time, though they gave no details.

  After Scott graduated in June 1998, the couple opened a sports bar in San Luis Obispo called The Shack. In October 2000, they bought a three-bedroom bungalow on Covena Avenue in Modesto for $177,000, near East La Loma Park. They sold The Shack in April 2001 so they could start a family in Laci's hometown. Laci took a job as a substitute teacher. Scott joined Tradecorp U.S.A., a newly founded subsidiary of a European fertilizer company, at $5,000 a month before taxes. Her family described Laci as devoted to being a perfect housewife who loved cooking, entertaining and watching Martha Stewart. In 2002 she learned she was pregnant, with a due date of the 10th of February 2003. The couple planned to name their son Conner.

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• 3. Christmas Eve

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  At 5:45 p.m. on the 23rd of December 2002, Laci and Scott visited Salon Salon, where Laci's sister Amy Rocha worked. Amy cut Scott's hair, as she did every month. Scott offered to collect a fruit basket Amy had ordered, because he planned to play golf the next day at a course near the shop. Prosecutors say he told other people about the Christmas Eve golf game too. Around 8:30 that evening, Laci spoke with her mother, Sharon, by telephone. The last people known to have talked with her were Amy, Sharon and Scott.

  Scott later told police he last saw Laci at about 9:30 a.m. on the 24th of December, when he left to go fishing at the Berkeley Marina. He said she was watching a Martha Stewart show about meringue. In his telling, she planned to mop the floor, bake cookies and walk the family dog to a nearby park. At 2:15 p.m. he left her a message: "Hey, Beautiful. It's 2:15. I'm leaving Berkeley."

  The family dog, a golden retriever named McKenzie, complicates the timeline. A neighbor named Karen Servas said she found him alone outside and returned him to the Petersons' back yard at about 10:30 a.m. She later testified that she had actually found him at 10:18. Another neighbor, Mike Chiavetta, saw McKenzie at about 10:45 a.m. while playing catch with his own dog. The Modesto Bee reported that an unnamed neighbor found the dog wandering with a muddy leash. None of these neighbors noticed anything out of place.

  Scott said that when he got home that afternoon, Laci's car sat in the driveway and the house was empty. He said he found McKenzie in the back yard and told Sharon so. Sharon later denied his account in her book. Scott showered and washed his clothes. A neighbor and his wife testified that they overheard Scott say he had been golfing that day and had tried to call Laci. A relative of Laci's testified that Scott told people gathering at the house that night that he had gone golfing earlier. Scott's own statement to police named fishing, not golf.

  Scott then phoned his mother-in-law to ask whether Laci was with her. He and Laci's stepfather together reported her missing, and police received the report shortly before 6 p.m. Sharon later said that phone call was the moment she learned her daughter was missing.

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• 4. Search and Suspicion

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  Modesto Police detectives Allen Brocchini and Jon Buehler took the missing-person call and became the lead investigators. They interviewed Scott at the house and made a quick search of the rooms. Scott told them he had been fishing for sturgeon at the Berkeley Marina, about 90 miles from Modesto. In a closet the detectives found Laci's keys, wallet, sunglasses and purse.

  The next day, more than 900 relatives, friends and neighbors searched the neighborhood and put up missing-person flyers. At a press conference, Brocchini said of Laci, "That is completely out of character for her." More than thirty police officers and firefighters searched Dry Creek and the surrounding area on foot, on horseback, on bicycles and in boats. They used canine units and helicopters with searchlights. A $25,000 reward grew to $250,000 and finally to $500,000. Blue and yellow ribbons appeared alongside the posters.

  Volunteers built their own machinery of hope. The husband of one of Laci's friends launched a basic version of the LaciPeterson.com website. Family and friends set up a command center at the Red Lion Hotel to field calls and record developments. More than 1500 volunteers handed out information, searched, staffed the center and attended candlelight vigils, some of them alongside Scott.

  The detectives, meanwhile, were privately uneasy. They did not at first treat the case as suspicious, yet they suspected foul play almost at once. Buehler told ABC News in 2017, "I suspected Scott when I first met him." He said he was thrown by Scott's calm manner and by how few questions Scott asked about the search. He described a man who seemed polite and arrogant, distant and irritable all at once. The Rocha family defended Scott and called him and Laci the ideal couple.

  On the 30th of December 2002, a woman named Amber Frey, a massage therapist from Fresno, told detectives she was Scott's girlfriend. She had met him on the 20th of November, and he had told her he was single. On the 9th of December he told her he was a widower and that this Christmas would be his first without his wife. Detectives took those dates to mean he began planning to kill Laci two weeks before she vanished. They gave Frey a device to record her conversations with him, hoping he would confess or reveal something.

  On the 15th of January 2003, detectives told Laci's immediate family about the affair. Sharon Rocha then told detectives she believed Scott had killed her daughter. On the 24th of January, Sharon, Ron and Brent held a press conference. Brent said Scott had admitted in a phone call on the 16th of January that he was having an affair with a woman in Fresno. Brent added that the family had withdrawn its support because of Scott's lack of communication and cooperation. Later that day Frey held her own press conference to explain her role. The recordings she made would later reach a jury, including one call in which Scott falsely claimed to be in Paris.

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• 5. The Bay

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  On the 13th of April 2003, two people walking a dog found the body of a male fetus on a tidal flat at Point Isabel Regional Shoreline in Richmond. The next day a jogger spotted a human torso in the riprap along the same shoreline, about a mile away. On the 18th of April, DNA tests confirmed that the remains were Laci and her unborn son, Conner. The case became a homicide investigation, and detectives could now treat Scott Peterson as the prime suspect.

  Forensic pathologist Dr. Brian Peterson, who is no relation to Scott, performed both autopsies. A judge sealed the results, but an anonymous source told the Associated Press that a length of nylon cord was wrapped around Conner's body. The cause of that and of injuries to the infant could not be conclusively determined. Laci's remains were severely decomposed and missing the head, arms, most of the legs and the internal organs. Her head, arms and legs were never recovered. Neither the date of her death nor the timing of two cracked ribs and some cracked neck bones could be established.

  Rumors spread that Scott had dismembered his wife. Dr. Peterson found no human-made incisions. He and state forensic pathologists testified that the missing parts fit a body weighted at the wrists and ankles and submerged in seawater for several months. Dr. Peterson concluded that Conner had died in the womb. In his view the skin over the abdomen ruptured through natural decomposition, and seawater washed Conner out along with most of Laci's organs.

  The FBI and the Modesto Police Department searched the Peterson home. Using mitochondrial DNA testing, the FBI linked a hair wrapped around a pair of pliers in Scott's fishing boat to hairs from Laci's hairbrush. Police also searched Scott's truck, toolbox and warehouse. In the boat, which Scott had bought two weeks before he reported Laci missing, they found a homemade concrete anchor.

  Scott told detectives he had used a 90-pound bag of concrete to make one anchor and the rest to repair his driveway. On the 27th of December, Detective Henry "Dodge" Hendee searched his warehouse. He found cement powder on the boat trailer and five circular marks matching the bucket used for the anchor. He also found a sledgehammer and a dustpan coated in cement powder. Prosecutors alleged that Scott made five anchors and used four of them, one tied to each of Laci's wrists and ankles. Detectives Brocchini and Buehler had meanwhile placed a GPS locator on Scott's car, and it led them toward San Diego.

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• 6. Flight and Arrest

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  By the time the signal reached San Diego, Scott had switched vehicles, and the GPS locator was useless. Detectives stepped up their surveillance, following his car and listening to his cell phone calls. He was less than thirty miles from the Mexican border, and they were certain he meant to flee. Brocchini later said in a 2017 interview, "San Diego was pretty darn close to the Mexican border." He added that Scott knew the area well because his parents lived there.

  On the 18th of April 2003, detectives arrested Scott at Torrey Pines Golf Course in La Jolla as he arrived to play a round with his father and brother. He had dyed his hair and beard blonde. His vehicle held nearly $15,000 in cash, Viagra tablets, camping and survival gear, several changes of clothes and four cell phones. It also held two driver licenses, his own and his brother's. Lee Peterson explained that Scott used his brother's license to get the San Diego resident discount at the course. He said Scott was living in his car to avoid media attention and harassment. Police and prosecutors saw a disguise and an escape plan.

  Brocchini and Buehler drove Scott back to Modesto, where he was booked into the Stanislaus County Jail. On the 21st of April 2003, he was arraigned in Stanislaus County Superior Court on two felony counts of murder with premeditation and special circumstances. He pleaded not guilty. Judge Al Girolami moved the trial to San Mateo County because of the intense publicity, the community's involvement and the small pool of local jurors. The move was meant to head off any defense claim of juror bias. The case would be tried in a county that had not searched for Laci.

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• 7. The Trial

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  Scott's first lawyer was Kirk McAllister, a veteran defense attorney from Modesto, and Chief Deputy Public Defender Kent Faulkner was also assigned. Scott later said he could afford a private attorney, and he chose Mark Geragos, who had handled other high-profile cases. The trial began on the 1st of June 2004. Rick Distaso was the lead prosecutor, and Geragos led the defense. Amber Frey, a prosecution witness, hired Gloria Allred to represent her.

  On the 23rd of June 2004, Judge Alfred Delucchi dismissed a juror after questioning each of the jurors for two hours. The juror had been recorded on video speaking with Laci's brother Brent. Delucchi had first said the exchange did not warrant removal. Transcripts showed the juror admitted that his girlfriend and others had talked with him about news reports of the encounter. Delucchi warned the remaining jurors to avoid all media coverage.

  In opening statements, the prosecution said Scott killed Laci because of his affair with Frey. Prosecutors stressed his conduct before and after the disappearance, including telling people he had been golfing. They also pointed to a question he put to police about whether cadaver dogs had searched the park where Laci supposedly walked the dog. The defense conceded Scott was "a cad" for cheating. Geragos mocked the idea that Scott would "chuck this entire life he had" for a masseuse he had known for only four dates. He noted that police had dismissed Scott's meringue story because they said the program that morning never mentioned meringue. Geragos then played the tape, which showed a segment about baking meringues.

  Without direct evidence, prosecutors relied on circumstantial evidence about Scott's behavior. They suggested several motives: he was tired of the marriage, felt pressured by the pregnancy, wanted to continue the affair and faced growing financial strain. Sharon Rocha testified that she saw Scott at East La Loma Park during the search. She said he ignored her calls, angled away from her attempts to hug him and skipped a candlelight vigil. Two other relatives said he showed little emotion, and three witnesses said he had told them he was golfing. Other witnesses said he changed his appearance and bought a vehicle using his mother's name. A realtor testified that in January 2003 Scott asked about selling the house, saying he did not want Laci to live there if she were found alive. A car salesman said Scott traded Laci's Land Rover for a Dodge pick-up truck. An auditor said the couple had run up $23,000 in credit-card debt, though he admitted under cross-examination that Scott paid his bills on time and had $50,000 of credit left.

  The forensic fight centered on hair, concrete and water. FBI trace evidence expert Karen Korsberg matched a hair from the boat to one in Laci's hairbrush using mitochondrial DNA tests. Prosecutors argued the hair must have come from her dead body because she had never seen the boat alive. The defense replied that mitochondrial testing was unreliable, since only half of U.S. states allowed it. A witness said she saw Laci at the warehouse with the boat the day before she was reported missing. Brocchini admitted on the stand that he had "excised" that statement from his police report. Prosecution expert Robert O'Neill said the anchor material did not match a driveway sample, while defense concrete expert Steven Gabler said the samples were consistent. Geragos noted that a sonar search of the bay floor after the arrest found no anchors. Diver Geoffrey Baehr, who helped lead more than 15 dives off the Berkeley Marina, replied that mud, currents and dark water can make such searches "virtually impossible" even for a known target. His crew once dropped the sonar device and needed four dives to find it. Hydrologist Ralph Cheng testified that Laci's body could have been dumped near where Scott said he was fishing, but admitted his findings were "probable, not precise".

  The defense questioned how thorough the police had been. Modesto detective Mike Hermos admitted he never checked the alibi of a woman accused of stealing checks from Scott's mailbox. Prosecutor Dave Harris noted that the checks were taken after Laci vanished. A police community-service officer testified that a recorded interview with Scott had no sound because the recorder held no batteries. The defense also suggested that the fetus was full-term and that a kidnapper had held Laci until she gave birth. Prosecution experts said the fetus was not full-term and died with his mother. Defense fertility specialist Dr. Charles March said the fetus could not have died before the 29th of December 2002. Under cross-examination he admitted his finding rested on a friend's report of a positive home pregnancy test on the 9th of June 2002. After prosecutors criticized a typo in his report, he said, "Cut me some slack."

  During deliberations, one juror was removed and replaced for misconduct after doing her own research on the case. The foreman, an attorney, asked to be removed, probably because the other jurors wanted a new foreman. Geragos said the foreman had mentioned threats. An alternate took his place. On the 12th of November 2004, the jury convicted Scott of first-degree murder with special circumstances for killing Laci and second-degree murder for killing Conner. After a penalty phase that began on the 30th of November, the jury recommended death on the 13th of December. The following March, Judge Delucchi sentenced Scott to death by lethal injection and ordered him to pay $10,000 toward Laci's funeral. He called the murder "cruel, uncaring, heartless, and callous".

  Jurors later said Scott's lack of emotion and his phone calls to Frey in the days after Laci vanished pointed to his guilt. Juror no. 1, Greg Beratlis, and two others said the verdict rested on "hundreds of small 'puzzle pieces' of circumstantial evidence", from where Laci's body was found to the many lies her husband told. Scott arrived at San Quentin State Prison in the early morning hours of Thursday, the 17th of March 2005. He joined more than 700 other inmates on California's only death row.

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• 8. Appeals and Legacy

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  On the 5th of July 2012, Scott's automatic appeal of his death sentence reached the Supreme Court of California. The next day his attorney, Cliff Gardner, filed a 423-page brief arguing that publicity, wrong evidence rulings and other errors denied him a fair trial. The state attorney general replied on the 26th of January 2015. In July 2015, the defense countered that a certified scent dog used at the Berkeley Marina had failed two-thirds of similar tests. At the June 2020 hearing, the defense also argued that prospective jurors were improperly excused. It said the trial should have moved again because almost half of the prospective jurors had already decided Scott was guilty.

  On the 24th of August 2020, the California Supreme Court ruled 7-0 to uphold the conviction and overturn the death sentence. The trial judge had dismissed jurors who opposed capital punishment without asking whether they could set those views aside. Justice Leondra Kruger wrote that jurors may be excused only for views that leave them unable to fairly consider the penalty in line with their oath. Prosecutors first said they would retry the penalty phase, then reversed that decision in June 2021. On the 8th of December 2021, Judge Anne-Christine Massullo re-sentenced Scott to life in prison without parole for Laci's murder. She added a concurrent sentence of 15 years to life for Conner's. In October 2022, he moved from San Quentin to Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California.

  A separate track began in November 2015, when Scott filed a habeas corpus petition. Unlike the direct appeal, it could include new evidence. He claimed a juror lied on her jury application and that neighbors saw Laci alive after he left home. The attorney general's 150-page response in August 2017 cited "overwhelming evidence" of his guilt. It noted 74 reported sightings of Laci in 26 states and overseas, most of them neither viable nor corroborated. In August 2018, Scott's team stressed six claims of deficient performance by Geragos. On the 20th of December 2022, Judge Massullo denied the petition. She found the juror's answers came from good-faith misunderstanding and sloppiness, not from bias against Scott.

  In January 2024, the LA Innocence Project accepted Scott's case. A status hearing followed on the 12th of March 2024 in Redwood City. Prosecutors called further DNA testing unnecessary because it had been done in 2013 and 2019. In May 2024, a judge allowed testing on one item, a piece of duct tape found on Laci's pants at autopsy, and rejected the other requests. On the 7th of October 2024, a judge granted post-conviction discovery to look for evidence the defense said was withheld. On the 2nd of June 2025, an appeals court denied the project's 140-page habeas petition.

  Laci and Conner were buried at Burwood Cemetery on the 30th of August 2003. At the request of Laci's mother and stepfather, the headstone omits the surname Peterson. Laci appears under her maiden name, Rocha, and Conner has no surname at all. The deaths led to the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, known as Laci and Conner's Law. Sharon Rocha and Ron Grantski stood in the White House on the 1st of April 2004 when President George W. Bush signed it. Under federal law, anyone who kills or injures an unborn child while committing a crime against a pregnant woman is charged with a separate offense.

  On the 21st of October 2005, Judge Roger Beauchesne ruled that Scott could not collect Laci's $250,000 life insurance policy. California law bars criminals from profiting from such policies, and the money went to Sharon. A $25 million wrongful death suit by Laci's mother and stepfather was dropped in April 2009. Sharon's 2006 memoir, For Laci: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Justice, reached No. 1 on The New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller list on the 29th of January 2006. Its proceeds fund the Laci and Conner Search and Rescue Fund. In September 2006, former congressman William E. Dannemeyer wrote to state officials claiming a Satanic cult killed Laci. Ron Grantski died on the 8th of April 2018 at age 71, and Dennis Rocha died on the 9th of December 2018 at age 72.

  In August 2024, two documentary series revived the case. Netflix released American Murder: Laci Peterson, featuring interviews with Sharon Rocha and Amber Frey. Peacock released Face to Face with Scott Peterson, his first interview in decades. Many earlier programs had covered the case, including a 2004 USA Network film, The Perfect Husband: The Laci Peterson Story. Readers often compared it to Gillian Flynn's 2012 novel Gone Girl, but Flynn denied that the Petersons inspired her book. She said her characters as out-of-work writers came from her own layoff from Entertainment Weekly.

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