Notorious: Scott Peterson - Part 1

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Speaker 3 It is an incredible story.

Speaker 4 My daughter's convincing friends this morning. What is it that I mean? Place these data.

Speaker 5 And I've watched it unfold.

Speaker 7 The FBI has now joined dozens of local police in this missing person's investigation.

Speaker 8 This was an all-American family. I knew that story was big.
The national media was there. All the locals were there.
It became a show. It became a spectacle, really.

Speaker 10 I had nothing to do with Lacey's disappearance.

Speaker 11 She was a pregnant mother in a relationship with a man that she adored.

Speaker 12 Two bodies found in the bay are those of Lacey Peterson and her baby.

Speaker 5 The prosecution told us: Scott kills Lacey, Scott dumps Lacey into bay.

Speaker 6 Became convinced that he's innocent.

Speaker 5 He's not a guy that would kill a woman.

Speaker 14 There was critical evidence that was never presented to Scott's jury.

Speaker 6 Could have been the key to everything.

Speaker 6 Could have led us to the murder.

Speaker 6 After serving 14 years on death row, Scott Peterson has filed an appeal. Could he get out?

Speaker 15 It's clearly not over for Scott Peterson.

Speaker 16 That's correct, Johnny.

Speaker 2 I'm innocent.

Speaker 17 Scott killed Lacey.

Speaker 2 There was no doubt about that.

Speaker 5 Did Scott maybe do it, probably do it, could have done it, must have done it?

Speaker 3 Maybe.

Speaker 3 But not beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 5 Scott Peterson did not get a fair trial.

Speaker 8 It was December 24th, 2002.

Speaker 8 Everybody's getting ready for Christmas. Families are gathering,

Speaker 8 getting ready to open gifts. And then suddenly, the Modesta Police Department gets a call saying Lacey Peterson, a woman who's eight months pregnant, is missing.

Speaker 8 Run to the bottom.

Speaker 8 Can they help you? Yes.

Speaker 8 My daughter's been missing since this morning. She's eight months pregnant.
She took her dog for a walk in the park.

Speaker 17 The dog came home with just the leaf shot.

Speaker 17 Jesus, this is new dungeon. And the dog came back without your daughter? Right.

Speaker 17 What is your name? My name is Ron. I'm except

Speaker 17 her husband, Scott Peterson, is on his way over to the park.

Speaker 17 What's your daughter's name? Lacey Peterson.

Speaker 19 I'm Tim Helton. I'm a retired sergeant in the Modesto Police Department and worked for the department during the Lacey Peterson search.

Speaker 17 The initial call was that she had been out walking her dog in East Loma Park and hadn't returned.

Speaker 8 All of Lacey Peterson's valuables, her purse,

Speaker 1 keys, were all left in the house.

Speaker 11 Her husband, Scott, told us that she was missing and he gave us some information that she may have gone walking down to the park.

Speaker 5 Scott tells the Modesto police that he last saw Lacey around 9.30 that morning when he left their home to go fishing. He believes she was planning to walk their dog, Mackenzie.

Speaker 8 The Peterson dog was found wandering with its leash. No one knew if Lacey had taken it out for a walk, and that's how she disappeared.

Speaker 11 I'm John Bueller, one of the detectives that worked the Peterson case.

Speaker 11 Isoloma Park was only about a block and a half away from Scott and Lacey's house. So that was naturally one of the first places that we were going to look.

Speaker 8 The park was very important. So immediately that became ground zero for the search for Lacey Peterson.

Speaker 8 My name is Gloria Gomez. I covered the Scott Peterson case.

Speaker 19 Volunteers and officers could actually walk the park on foot that entire night looking for Lacey.

Speaker 5 While the search is underway, Modesto police asked Scott down to the station to give a detailed picture of Lacey's day.

Speaker 4 So today,

Speaker 7 She told me what she was going to do for the day.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And what was going to happen?

Speaker 4 Take the dog for a walk, and then she is going to the store to buy for a Christmas morning breakfast tomorrow.

Speaker 4 She's going to make gingerbread cookies for tonight.

Speaker 8 I can only imagine how Scott was feeling.

Speaker 8 His wife was carrying his child. Lacey was excited about.
Being a first-time mom, had the baby's name picked out. Little Connor had the nursery ready.

Speaker 5 The nightmare continues for friends and family as Christmas morning arrives and Lacey is still missing.

Speaker 19 On Christmas Day, we returned to the park to do an expanded search.

Speaker 11 The park's huge.

Speaker 19 It actually runs for several miles along the creek bottom and we didn't want to overlook anything.

Speaker 7 So it was a very thorough search.

Speaker 20 There was empathy for this unborn child. Is she out there? Did she walk the dog and fall? And is she incapacitated?

Speaker 20 My name is Ted Rowlands. I was a reporter for KTVU.
Started covering the Peterson case from the moment Lacey was missing.

Speaker 20 And it was something that people were instantly attracted to, and they wanted to help, especially people in Modesto. They wanted to find Lacey Peterson.

Speaker 8 This is Christmas Day, and there was already a volunteer setup.

Speaker 8 This was a situation where she could be in severe danger, so could her unborn child. So there was an urgency to find her.

Speaker 11 Modesto, California was a town of a little over 200,000 people in the central valley of California. It was a commuter town, a short drive from San Francisco itself.

Speaker 8 Lacey and Scott lived in a really nice middle-class neighborhood in Modesto, and they looked like the perfect American couple.

Speaker 11 I then went over to the neighbor's house to start my first interview. One of the things that I was looking for was information information about Scott and Lacey.
What kind of marriage did they have?

Speaker 11 Did they have financial problems? Were they good neighbors? This is an extremely important time to get all the information possible.

Speaker 8 I am Debbie Volski.

Speaker 22 My first impression of Lacey was sweet and outgoing, and

Speaker 22 she's beautiful. She was kind of like a Disney princess.

Speaker 23 Everybody that we talked to all painted Scott as the ideal guy.

Speaker 11 Nobody bad-mouthed him behind his back. He just seemed like the all-American boy.

Speaker 8 I mean, this guy had the looks, had the wealth, had a golfing scholarship. He had the American dream.
Everything just seemed perfect.

Speaker 19 When we didn't find her in the park and we didn't find any evidence, it was very concerning.

Speaker 5 With no leads in sight, on December 26th, Lacey's family makes an emotional public appeal for her safe return.

Speaker 8 Whoever has her, please, please, please let her go.

Speaker 24 Bring her back.

Speaker 11 We love her so much.

Speaker 3 We want her back.

Speaker 2 Please,

Speaker 3 let us have her back.

Speaker 8 You see

Speaker 8 anguish in the face of Sharon Rocha. Where is my daughter? That's when the panic started.

Speaker 5 On December 27th, the FBI joins the investigation as they expand the search drastically, desperate to locate the missing pregnant woman.

Speaker 20 Search teams on horseback, in helicopters, in boats, and on foot.

Speaker 19 Given the huge, enormous geographical area that we were concerned with, it was absolutely a needle in a haystack.

Speaker 8 They were constantly showing Lacey Peterson's picture, hoping to get tips.

Speaker 19 We had a tip line that was exclusively for tips regarding to the Lacey Peterson search.

Speaker 22 If you have any information, please call the Lacey hotline.

Speaker 11 Lacey didn't do anything that we could see that contributed to her disappearance, such as getting liquored up, going to the bars, getting involved in drugs, running with a rough crowd or anything like that.

Speaker 11 Her car was still there. There was no evidence of forced break-in in the house, no destruction of property indicating that she'd had a fight in the house with somebody.

Speaker 11 It was almost like she just vanished.

Speaker 11 The leading cause of of death for pregnant women is homicide, and generally at the hands of the father of the child.

Speaker 11 So, when we have a pregnant lady missing at the tail end of her pregnancy, of course, the first thing we're going to look at is her husband.

Speaker 8 Me and my crew, we were all camped out at the home of Lacey Peterson to talk to family members, to try to figure out what exactly was going on.

Speaker 8 And there's other press there, The national media was there. All the locals were there.
It became a show.

Speaker 20 When we arrived, we gave the viewers what we knew at the time, and that was who she was, her name, where she was last seen.

Speaker 5 Multiple networks gather outside the Peterson home, all competing for the attention of family members.

Speaker 8 And then we see Scott.

Speaker 8 This is my first encounter with Scott Peterson. So the first thing I did, I walked right up to him and I said, listen, Scott, I want to know as much as I can about Lacey, your wife.

Speaker 8 And he looked at me and he started saying, all I want is Lacey to come home. That's all I want.
And I go, I understand that.

Speaker 8 But the only way the public will feel that is if you go on TV and you tell people how much you love her, how much you miss her.

Speaker 8 And he goes, you know what? I will do that someday.

Speaker 8 Then after that, he walked away and that was it. As a reporter, you're always hoping to make a connection.

Speaker 8 There was no connection. There was like a wall in front of Scott Peterson.

Speaker 4 Scott! Hey, why don't you come and talk to us?

Speaker 20 He wanted nothing to do with us, especially the camera. In fact, he asked us not to take his picture.

Speaker 11 People want to hear from the husband.

Speaker 13 The problem Scott has is that he wasn't emotive enough. Grew up in a very stoic family.
His dad's like that. You don't emote all over the place.

Speaker 8 Lacey's husband was avoiding the media. So right away, I've had a feeling like, why is he avoiding us? That was my gut telling me something's odd here.

Speaker 13 From everything that I saw, he acted the way any normal husband would do.

Speaker 21 Does this sound like a killer? Not to me.

Speaker 5 Coming up, a shocking twist that turns the public and Lacey's family against Scott Peterson.

Speaker 26 Here Here we go, here we go, here we go.

Speaker 8 Everyone knew this was gonna rattle the entire case.

Speaker 5 And later, is it possible that by focusing on Scott Peterson, the police missed key evidence that would come to light years later?

Speaker 14 There was critical evidence that was never presented to Scott's jury.

Speaker 20 Could have led us to the murder.

Speaker 8 Scott Peterson had been planning to kill Lacey.

Speaker 13 There's no way that Scott Peterson could have killed her because he was gone by this time.

Speaker 20 I'm thinking he didn't do it.

Speaker 5 Eight-month pregnant Lacey Peterson disappears on Christmas Eve, kicking off an intensive search and media whirlwind.

Speaker 8 Lacey's husband, Scott Peterson, was avoiding the media. So right away, I've had a feeling like, why is he avoiding us?

Speaker 5 After 72 hours, police are no closer to finding the missing woman.

Speaker 11 She was a pregnant mother looking forward to giving birth to her child in a relationship with a man that she adored. It was almost like she just vanished.

Speaker 5 Three days earlier, on the same day Lacey was reported missing, it appeared police began forming suspicions about Lacey's husband, Scott Peterson.

Speaker 20 When the first patrol officers came out to the house to investigate the report of a missing woman, They called back to the Modesto Police Department and said, send a detective.

Speaker 20 We have a strange feeling about the husband.

Speaker 15 You have a strange feeling. What is that? What is a strange feeling?

Speaker 15 It's an emotional gut reaction because it's a feeling. It's not evidence.
I'm Ann Bremner. I'm a criminal defense attorney.
And I cover the Scott-Peterson trial for most of the major networks.

Speaker 11 There was very limited information that was available to us from the start.

Speaker 11 But one of the things that we learned from Sharon, Lacey's mother, was that the first thing that Scott did when he called her is he said, Lacey's missing.

Speaker 8 He didn't ask, oh, is she there? Did you talk to Lacey? Is she coming over? Did she go over?

Speaker 11 He immediately went to the fact that she was missing, even though her purse was there at the house.

Speaker 8 He was very cautious.

Speaker 8 Everything was very

Speaker 8 methodical.

Speaker 25 There's no evidence.

Speaker 15 And yet they're thinking she's gone, she's kidnapped, she's murdered, and he's the one that did it. He remained the only suspect at that time from the beginning to the middle to the end of this case.

Speaker 11 The lead detective played me a phone message that had been left by Scott when Scott was driving back from the Berkeley Marina.

Speaker 8 He said he had gone fishing the day Lacey disappeared.

Speaker 5 On Christmas Eve, the day Lacey was reported missing, Scott had called his wife.

Speaker 3 The call went to voicemail.

Speaker 4 I just left a message at home. 2:15.
I lived in Berkeley.

Speaker 4 I won't be able to get to Villa Farms to get that basket for papa i was hoping you would get this message and uh go on out there i'll see you in a bit sweet love you bye

Speaker 11 scott leaving this message for lacey i guess you could look at it that oh this is something that what a great husband would do but for us when you take a look at the wording on that call and you compare it with scott's demeanor

Speaker 11 the flowery i love yous and the

Speaker 11 affection that was present in the wording on that call didn't match up with his lack of panic when we were dealing with him.

Speaker 5 But not everyone saw Scott Peterson's behavior as unusual.

Speaker 13 From everything that I saw, he acted the way any normal husband would do.

Speaker 13 I'm Richard Cole. I'm a journalist.

Speaker 13 I covered the Scott and Lacey Peterson case.

Speaker 13 He had treated his wife like a queen. No one had ever seen them argue.
No one had ever seen them fight. He spent the weekend before Lacey disappeared out in their backyard planting flowers for her.

Speaker 13 She would say, you know, because she was eight months pregnant, couldn't bend over and do it herself anymore. So Scott's on his hands and knees planting flowers for his wife.

Speaker 27 Scott got a designer purse for her for Christmas.

Speaker 13 That was what was under the tree. Is this the present that a husband was about to kill his wife is going to put under the tree?

Speaker 5 Along with Scott's allegedly flowery voicemail, police find Scott's lack of emotion rather odd.

Speaker 6 When did you realize you were going to go fishing?

Speaker 4 Oh, that was a morning decision. It's

Speaker 4 a morning. Let's go play golf at the club or go fishing.

Speaker 4 It seemed too cold to go play golf at the club. So,

Speaker 4 yeah, I just decided to, you know, find dirty or.

Speaker 11 Scott's demeanor just wasn't one of urgency. He was pretty cool, pretty reserved.

Speaker 15 The police are keeping copious notes of all his lack of response, you know, his lack of concern, but he was fully cooperative. He went to the police station and answered questions.

Speaker 15 How much more cooperative can he be?

Speaker 4 What concerns me the most is the fact that your dog came home with a leech shot. What concerns me the most is doing anything I can to further progress.
I appreciate that.

Speaker 15 To rush to judgment, are we suspecting him based on evidence, or are we suspecting him based on our feelings?

Speaker 5 Although the police believe Scott is acting suspiciously, Lacey's family family maintains Scott had nothing to do with Lacey's disappearance.

Speaker 20 Lacey Peterson's family absolutely loved Scott and they wanted nothing to do with any speculation that he might have something to do with it.

Speaker 24 We believe that Scott has nothing to do with Lacey's disappearance.

Speaker 24 They're a happy couple and they love each other very much.

Speaker 20 He had a reputation of being the person that went the extra mile to help a neighbor.

Speaker 11 He had no criminal record.

Speaker 23 Pretty much everybody that we talked to all painted Scott as the ideal guy.

Speaker 11 All the right moves, all the right stories, world traveler.

Speaker 7 Gosh, what's not to like? I liked him.

Speaker 22 As more time went by, it got less and less likely that she would be found safe. The candlelight vigil was held at La Loma Park.

Speaker 22 It was heart-wrenching.

Speaker 29 This community has wrapped their arms around the Peterson family and have been very moved by Lacey's disappearance.

Speaker 8 Scott told police that he had a warehouse

Speaker 8 and the boat was in the warehouse. But the roaches didn't know that he had bought a boat.
That was news to them. Police went to this warehouse and they went in.

Speaker 5 Although Scott had told them about the warehouse from the beginning, in the weeks following Lacey's disappearance, police would search Scott's warehouse multiple times.

Speaker 8 There were these cement blocks that were outlined. It's almost like when

Speaker 8 you're trying to have something dry and it dries, but you still have the ring of cement. There were four of those.
And they thought, okay, so it's clear that

Speaker 8 he made anchors. cement anchors.

Speaker 3 Where are the anchors?

Speaker 8 They weren't in the warehouse, so where were they?

Speaker 8 All these things were starting to add up, and it was starting to paint a picture to police.

Speaker 8 Maybe Scott Peterson had been planning this for a while. This won't make headlines.
It'll be a missing woman, and it'll go away. And he'll pretend to be the

Speaker 8 grieving husband.

Speaker 5 But some believe there to be a very innocent explanation. for Scott's supposed secrecy regarding the boat.

Speaker 15 There was a big deal made about whether Lacey and her in-laws knew about the boat.

Speaker 25 I mean, do your in-laws know everything that you have or everything that you do?

Speaker 15 He showed the police the boat right away. There's no evidence that she did or didn't know, but what's the relevance of that?

Speaker 5 The whole story about the boat was from the police side that he had secretly bought the boat as part of his plot to kill Lacey.

Speaker 13 There was no secret boat. It was a surprise for his father-in-law, so he could say on Christmas, guess what?

Speaker 18 We have a fishing boat.

Speaker 5 Police continued to expand the search, increasingly concentrating on the Berkeley Marina, where Scott had told them he was fishing on Christmas Eve.

Speaker 11 Scott driving from Modesto to the saltwater there in Berkeley at the marina probably would have taken a little over an hour.

Speaker 8 Why would you go fishing? in the San Francisco Bay on Christmas Eve and leave your wife, who's eight months pregnant, home alone? That immediately didn't make sense.

Speaker 19 It was unusual that somebody would fish san francisco bay in such a small boat the bay can become quite rough

Speaker 13 damned if you do damned if you don't so someone's convinced you know that you're guilty everything that you do makes you look even more suspicious

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Speaker 11 There was some criticism that came from a variety of different people that we only focused on Scott from the beginning, but that's simply not true.

Speaker 13 One of the detectives told a neighbor of Scott's within one hour of when police were called out that they knew what had happened to Lacey Peterson.

Speaker 13 It was very clear to the neighbor that he was saying that Scott didn't.

Speaker 2 Classic tunnel vision.

Speaker 11 It wasn't just a couple of us us working on this case. We had a whole team of detectives and officers that were looking at all sorts of other things that were going on.

Speaker 11 We were checking sex registrants that were living in the area, anybody that had a history of crimes and violence that was paroled out of state prison.

Speaker 11 These were all happening simultaneously when we were looking at Scott.

Speaker 13 There were a lot of very good witnesses who saw Lacey Peterson walking, McKenzie. The police interviewed all these people and they just dismissed them out of hand.
They said they were all wrong.

Speaker 15 The police turned in on Scott Peterson within hours. He was always their only suspect, truly.

Speaker 5 On January 24th, 2003, one month after Lacey's disappearance, the Modesto Police Department alerts the media that it will hold a press conference.

Speaker 5 This will prove to be one of the most shocking twists in the entire case.

Speaker 8 Modesto police said at 7 o'clock, they were having a press conference. We're like,

Speaker 8 This is good. They don't hold press conferences unless there's something big.
So we're like, they found her, there's a huge tip, maybe they have a suspect.

Speaker 8 Maybe they're going to announce Scott's the suspect.

Speaker 8 We're in the Modesta Police Department's main headquarters. It is packed.

Speaker 8 We're shoulder to shoulder, reporter to reporter, waiting to hear what Modesta Police have to say. Everyone knew this was going to rattle the entire case.

Speaker 26 Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go.

Speaker 8 Finally, they come out. I had never expected this in a million years.

Speaker 8 But a petite blonde comes out with all the lead detectives in the case.

Speaker 25 Ms. Ember Fry will make a brief statement.

Speaker 8 Who's Amber Fry?

Speaker 5 One month after the disappearance of Lacey Peterson, Modesto police call a press conference to announce a stunning development in the case.

Speaker 25 Miss Ember Fry will make a brief statement.

Speaker 8 A petite blonde comes out and she's shaking and she looks up and then she told her story.

Speaker 28 I met Scott Peterson November 20th, 2002.

Speaker 28 Scott told me he was not married.

Speaker 28 We did have a romantic relationship.

Speaker 8 This girl is announcing to the world she was having an affair with Scott Peterson. We're taking this live.

Speaker 3 This is like breaking news.

Speaker 28 I am very sorry for Lacey's family.

Speaker 8 That

Speaker 8 was shocking to us.

Speaker 20 Amber Fry took this story and made it absolutely explode.

Speaker 12 Secret that has torn two families apart. Scott's affair with Amber Fry.
The Fresno woman says Scott tricked her into believing he was single.

Speaker 20 When she came on scene, we thought it was a big story beforehand. It went absolutely crazy.
People couldn't get enough of it.

Speaker 3 Hi, I'm Amber Fry.

Speaker 28 I didn't ask for this to happen. You know, I was

Speaker 28 a young single mother, thought I met a great guy and was excited. I first met him in November.
We hit it off really well and he was funny and charming and

Speaker 28 good looking. And I asked if he had any children and he said no.
And he told me he had lost his wife.

Speaker 11 Amber didn't pay much attention to the television. So she really didn't know any of the media hoopla that was going around with the missing case involving Lacey.

Speaker 28 My daughter was very young and kept me busy. So the TV just wasn't on.
So I never came across it or heard anything.

Speaker 28 We were dating. And

Speaker 28 little things were starting to like not feel right, like something was up.

Speaker 28 Like him talking to me when there's water running, like he's in the shower

Speaker 28 or bathroom of some sort, which just kind of was a little red flaggish. Like, why are you always talking to me with water running?

Speaker 28 I went to a friend to ask if he could look him up and see if he found anything about whether he was possibly married or still married or just whatever he could find.

Speaker 11 So a friend of hers told her that the guy that she'd been seeing, Scott Peterson, could possibly be the husband of a missing girl from Modesto.

Speaker 17 And that's when she called our tip line.

Speaker 5 Although the public became aware of her in January 2003, Amber Fry had actually called the Modesto Police tip line almost a month earlier, one week after Lacey had gone missing.

Speaker 11 Amber gets a hold of one of my partners and then she said that she understood that our agency was investigating a guy named Scott Peterson and she was wondering, Amber, if this was the same guy that she was dating.

Speaker 11 And I'm sitting across from the lead detective with one desk between us. And so I can see his expression, and I know that something big is up.

Speaker 28 The detectives asked if we could meet, and I said, yes.

Speaker 28 I was on pins and needles feeling scared. Scott told me he's in Europe.
He's, you know, away on like on a trip. I just learned that he has a missing wife and he's not, in fact, in Europe.

Speaker 28 He's actually a Modesto.

Speaker 27 She wanted to cooperate.

Speaker 11 She wanted the truth. And she actually showed us that Scott wasn't this perfect guy that everybody had been painting for all this time.

Speaker 28 I don't know how long I sat there and cried. I was in shock.

Speaker 28 Couldn't tell you how much time passed. At that point, they had asked

Speaker 28 if I I would be willing to record our conversations and I said yes.

Speaker 11 We stopped at Radio Shack to pick up a recording device to attach to Amber's cell phone. And in the midst of putting all this stuff together, Amber gets a call from Scott.

Speaker 11 Hello.

Speaker 11 Amber. Yes.

Speaker 28 I was fumbly. I was shaking.
I was just so nervous. There was just so much to remember because my truth was he was in Europe.

Speaker 28 That's pretty easy to do.

Speaker 11 And she was perhaps one of the greatest little actresses I've ever seen in my life. She was able to engage in a conversation with him like we weren't even on the planet.

Speaker 4 I always call you when I tell you you're special.

Speaker 4 I need a better, bigger

Speaker 4 word than special.

Speaker 4 All right, well, you

Speaker 28 It was challenging because I would get off the phone with him and then just, you know, and then I'd immediately call John and say, oh my gosh, this is what he's telling me.

Speaker 11 Over a period of weeks before we finally had her cease the phone contact, Amber recorded over 29 hours of phone conversation with Scott.

Speaker 5 Before introducing Amber to the world at the press conference, the Modesto police had arranged a meeting with Scott's supporters, Lacey's family, to deliver the shocking news.

Speaker 20 And they brought with them a photograph of Scott and Amber together. And when they showed that photograph to Lacey's mom, she looked at it and turned to them and said, why did he have to kill her?

Speaker 20 And at that moment, Lacey's family absolutely turned on Scott Peterson.

Speaker 8 It pretty much unraveled after that. The moment Amper Fride came out, immediately, Lacey Peterson's family had their own press conference.

Speaker 24 Our one and only focus is to find Lacey and to bring her home to us. I love my daughter so much.
I miss her every minute of every day.

Speaker 8 Sharon Rocha got right up there

Speaker 8 and said, we no longer support Scott Peterson. We want him to tell us.

Speaker 8 what happened to Lacey.

Speaker 24 We were shocked to find out that he'd been having an affair. And we felt that if he had not been truthful about that, that possibly there's other things he needs to talk to us about.

Speaker 8 There was anger, there was frustration, there was betrayal. Everything you could think of that family was feeling at that moment.

Speaker 27 And we were all airing it live.

Speaker 26 Now we had a huge story.

Speaker 8 Huge.

Speaker 20 They were convinced that Scott was responsible for Lacey's death. They shut down their volunteer center.

Speaker 6 They stopped doing searches.

Speaker 15 He was having an affair. He didn't want to be public because his wife was missing, but it doesn't make him a killer.

Speaker 20 Did you murder your wife?

Speaker 8 I get word that Scott's getting ready. to talk to the media.

Speaker 12 He realized that he had to come forward and talk to the media and explain what was going on because of the cloud of suspicion that has been circling him since this all began.

Speaker 8 I really felt like he was thinking, hey,

Speaker 8 I am charming. I can talk my way out of anything.
And I'll get the public back on my side. And I thought, I have to get this interview.

Speaker 28 I have to.

Speaker 20 I was calling him every day, multiple times a day, asking for an interview. And he always said, oh, yeah, I'll talk to you at some point, but just not today.

Speaker 8 I get a call and I see my phone says Scott Peterson on it. So I pick it up.
I said, hey, Scott.

Speaker 8 He said, hey, Gloria, I want to give you a little interview.

Speaker 8 And I said, great.

Speaker 8 And I cannot even tell you how excited I was.

Speaker 5 Gloria Gomez was one of only four journalists Scott selected for interviews. So was Ted Rowlands.

Speaker 20 I was happy and relieved, to be honest, that he allowed me to do one of the interviews.

Speaker 8 Peterson wanted to do the interview at his house, which I thought, this is cool. I get to go inside the house.

Speaker 20 He was in total control of the interview. He restricted it to one camera and he made us take our shoes off,

Speaker 20 which was very strange.

Speaker 8 I'm like, okay, I've never done it an interview with no shoes on, but okay.

Speaker 8 My photographer knew like like time was of the essence. So he's he's moving quick.
He's setting up his gear. You're just glancing around, looking around, and then it's going through your mind.

Speaker 8 It's like, was she killed here?

Speaker 8 The kitchen area,

Speaker 8 there was like a chalkboard where they, I guess, they wrote messages back and forth or maybe notes of maybe groceries or whatever. But on the chalkboard was Merry Christmas.

Speaker 8 And I thought, wow, I wonder if Lacey wrote that.

Speaker 8 And I wonder if that's like her last message.

Speaker 5 A month after Lacey's disappearance and just a few days after Amber Fry has come forward, Scott Peterson gives four highly coveted television interviews.

Speaker 5 Is he doing it to save face or to keep the search for Lacey alive?

Speaker 8 This is the time to really kind of catch him off guard. I knew that sitting down with him, making him answer questions, was going to be the key to solving this case.

Speaker 8 There are a lot of suspicions out there that you had a girlfriend.

Speaker 8 Your response to me is that you had no common either way.

Speaker 8 Why didn't you just come clean then?

Speaker 9 Well, I'm glad you asked the question.

Speaker 9 It simply, you know, wasn't

Speaker 2 appropriate to comment on it.

Speaker 9 It's just not important to comment about

Speaker 3 that.

Speaker 9 I'm glad that Amber came forward.

Speaker 8 Let me turn that off. Yeah, what is that?

Speaker 9 That's my phone, unfortunately. I thought it was

Speaker 9 off. And I'll just answer that question again.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 8 The phone rings during our interview, which I thought was interesting because it's been over a month. Your wife's been missing.
Any phone call could be the phone call to say, we found Lacey.

Speaker 8 She's safe.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it's kind of going crazy, isn't it?

Speaker 9 Ah.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 8 And I thought, wow, if your wife is missing, you think you'd want to take every phone call.

Speaker 8 What does he do? He turns off the wringer and keeps interviewing.

Speaker 8 How do you feel though that, you know, the Rocha family says they can't just say that?

Speaker 16 They're wonderful people, the Rocha family, who you know, okay,

Speaker 16 question my

Speaker 16 morals and my poor decision making. That's fine, but don't stop looking for Lacey.
She's out there somewhere.

Speaker 20 It was really a no-win situation for him because no matter what he said or how he said it, people were going to dissect it and say, oh, obviously he's guilty.

Speaker 2 Look at the way he says that.

Speaker 10 And you can be the key to finding them by putting out that, you know, mixed.

Speaker 8 You're looking at the camera.

Speaker 23 Well, it's a plea to the the audience that's why we're doing this

Speaker 10 that's really all i think i have to say the more he did it the more people picked away at it um obviously the relationship i had with amber was inappropriate and i told lacey about it in early december it did definitely not put the marriage in jeopardy um obviously not a positive thing

Speaker 12 while peterson may have tried to control the interviews themselves he could not control the media coverage on them afterwards to suggest to ordinary people like myself that his wife was, and I'm quoting, okay with it, that he was having an affair.

Speaker 12 And I think that's a glaring lie.

Speaker 13 The problem Scott has is that he wasn't emotive enough.

Speaker 13 Doesn't work real well on television.

Speaker 28 I saw what everybody else saw in that interview.

Speaker 8 After you told Lacey you continued. to see Amber, was that also the right thing to do?

Speaker 4 Yeah. No.

Speaker 8 And then even after Lacey went missing, you continued to romance this girl? No.

Speaker 28 After he did the interview, he immediately called me and was like, I didn't say that. I'm sure you watched it, but they cut me off.
I didn't say that. So, I mean, he was dishonest about that too.

Speaker 5 But not everyone in the media is so quick to write off Scott Peterson.

Speaker 20 As soon as Amber Fry stepped onto the scene, it explained everything to me why Scott Peterson was acting the way he was.

Speaker 11 Why didn't he want his image on television?

Speaker 20 Well, because he had a girlfriend.

Speaker 13 If I were in the same position and I had a mistress, I would certainly be tempted not to tell the police and have it all come out.

Speaker 13 And then your wife comes up and you say, Oh, I've just destroyed my family.

Speaker 20 Amber Fry

Speaker 20 was the explanation for all of this. And for me, unlike everybody else, I'm thinking he didn't do it.

Speaker 5 Two months after Scott's interviews and well past his wife's due date, Lacey and Connor's fate remains a mystery. Hope for their discovery is dim.

Speaker 20 The case basically slowed down because the search for Lacey was turning up nothing.

Speaker 20 There was nothing that tied Lacey's disappearance to Scott. They had no physical evidence.

Speaker 20 They couldn't arrest him. So this case really wasn't going anywhere until what happened next.
And that changed everything.

Speaker 20 The night of April 12th, there was a very intense storm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Speaker 20 The next morning, April 13th, a couple was walking their dog and they saw something strange along the shoreline, something along the rocks.

Speaker 6 They called police.

Speaker 11 Four months into the investigation, Body of a child, almost full term, is discovered on the shore outside the area where Scott had been fishing.

Speaker 8 There's a huge tip. Me and my crew head out there and sure enough, they're confirming it's the body of a fetus,

Speaker 27 a baby.

Speaker 8 And so

Speaker 8 as I'm getting ready to go live, I am literally on the phone with sources, getting getting as much information as I can about this.

Speaker 17 The next day, April 14th, the body of an adult female is discovered in the same general area.

Speaker 27 No head,

Speaker 8 no arms, no legs, just a female torso.

Speaker 20 Intense

Speaker 20 interest just ignited again and people believed that this was likely Lacey and this unborn child which they'd named Connor.

Speaker 7 Investigators are trying to determine if the bodies found in the San Francisco Bay belonged to missing Modesta woman Lacey Peterson and the baby she was pregnant with when she disappeared.

Speaker 20 This case was now back on the front pages.

Speaker 19 You had that sick feeling in your stomach that this was going to be Lacey and Connor.

Speaker 17 Here we have the bodies recovered near the Berkeley Marina in the area where Scott had

Speaker 2 been.

Speaker 19 It was pretty evident at that point that, at least to me, that he was probably going to be responsible for their murder.

Speaker 12 No word yet on whether the two bodies found in the bay are those of Lacey Peterson and her baby. The lab results could come any time now.
The big question now is, where is Scott Peterson?

Speaker 11 Constant surveillance on Scott was being done at that time. Scott's hovering around San Diego.
There always was the concern that Scott would try to take off, possibly across the border into Mexico.

Speaker 11 And then it was going to be a whole new set of problems to bring him back.

Speaker 11 So as they're processing the DNA evidence to try and link these two bodies together and to Scott, we're preparing our arrest warrant.

Speaker 8 An arrest was coming and was coming soon.

Speaker 11 On the 18th of April, 2003, we finally received verification that the DNA on the two bodies that were found confirmed it was Lacey Peterson and her unborn son, Connor.

Speaker 11 And that's when we arrested Scott.

Speaker 11 And that's when we discovered all the things that he had in that car.

Speaker 20 When Scott was arrested, he had nearly $15,000 in cash with him.

Speaker 20 He had a backpack with knives and

Speaker 20 water purifier. He had an axe.

Speaker 20 dyed his hair kind of an orangeish blonde, and he had a goatee. He looked a lot different.

Speaker 13 Every place he went, people say, ah, it's Scott Peterson. So he was hoping to disguise himself.
He was trying to get away from the media.

Speaker 7 He was being followed by private detectives.

Speaker 11 He had snorkeling equipment. He had backpacking equipment.
He had neckties, dress shoes. He had dress shirts.
He had shorts.

Speaker 11 all packed into that car, which suggested to me that he was planning on leaving and he could have certainly gone across the border.

Speaker 5 Was Scott planning to escape across the border? Or was there a more innocent explanation as to why he was headed south?

Speaker 13 There was never any indication he was going to Mexico. His life in Modesto had been destroyed.

Speaker 13 And so he went down to spend time with his parents in San Diego.

Speaker 20 His family had an explanation for everything that Scott was found with. But in totality, he's in San Diego, near the Mexican border, and he has all of this with him.

Speaker 20 It sure did make it look like he was ready to run.

Speaker 8 I had sources with the Modesto Police Department. I got word he was going to be arrested.
We had graphics with Scott's picture, boom, with the word arrest on it.

Speaker 1 That's how prepared we were.

Speaker 13 The Modesto Police whipped up a media frenzy through lies and leaks, and they kept the reporters on their side. They created this atmosphere of hatred focused focused on Scott Peterson.

Speaker 8 Finally, that phone call comes. So I go on the air and I break the news.
Scott Peterson's been arrested.

Speaker 8 This is just the beginning. We haven't even got to the trial yet.

Speaker 5 Scott Peterson is charged with the murder of his wife and unborn son. I am convinced that he's innocent, but will he get a fair trial?

Speaker 15 There was more media at this case than there was at OJ Simpson.

Speaker 5 It was a mob. It was a lynching.

Speaker 12 Amber Fry knows she's a reluctant celebrity.

Speaker 8 Back jury hated him.

Speaker 20 Scott was going down.

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