Investigation and Trial
From the start, Scott Peterson was reluctant to talk to the press; at one point, he stormed out of a family press conference when reporters asked if the police considered him a suspect. Laci's brother, Brent Rocha, defended Scott, claiming that Scott was too distraught to make public statements about Laci, and added that did not mean he was involved in her disappearance. "No way," Rocha said. "Absolutely not." Although later he would recall Scott's use of the word "missing" seemed very frequent. He says, looking back, he felt uneasy that he started using that word so soon. Laci's family maintained Scott's innocence, and volunteers said that he joined their efforts at the command center every day. Police delivered a major blow to the family when they uncovered pictures showing Scott with another woman. They also found that he was with the woman during a time that Laci thought he was on a business trip. (The dates on the pictures revealed this.) After this information came out, Laci's family called for Scott to be more forthright with them.
It was later revealed that Scott Peterson had had numerous extramarital affairs, one of which Laci knew about, and the most recent was with a massage therapist named Amber Frey, a single mother from nearby Fresno. The affair began after Scott met a woman, Shawn Sibley, at a trade convention where he represented his company, TradeCorp, and told her he was single and "looking". He joked that he should put "Horny Bastard" on his name tag to help him meet women. Though Sibley was attached, she thought Peterson would be a good match for Frey, a friend of hers. She set them up on a blind date in mid-November 2002. Frey informed police of her relationship with Peterson shortly after seeing news of Laci's disappearance on TV, and agreed to record their phone calls. She informed them that, a few weeks before Laci's disappearance, on December 9, Peterson had told her that he was a widower and that these would be his first holidays without his wife.
Scott Peterson was arrested on April 18, 2003, in La Jolla, California, in the parking lot of a golf course, where he claimed to be meeting his father and brother for a game of golf. At the time of his arrest, Peterson was carrying $15,000 in cash, had four cell phones, camping equipment, a gun, a map to Frey's workplace that had been printed the day before, Viagra, and his brother's driver's license. His hair and goatee had been bleached blonde. The police took this as an indication that Peterson had planned to flee, possibly to Mexico.
After a trial that ran from June 2004 through March 2005, Judge Alfred A. Delucchi sentenced Peterson to death, calling the murder of his wife "cruel, uncaring, heartless, and callous".
Read more about this topic: Murder Of Laci Peterson
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