As Scott Peterson fights to clear his name 21 years after the death of his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson, new details of the former death row inmate are revealed in two dueling documentaries, both featuring Court TV anchor Ted Rowlands.
Rowlands, who has been reporting for Court TV since the network’s relaunch in 2019, was one of the first reporters on the Petersons’ front lawn in Modesto, Calif., on Christmas Eve of 2002 when Laci went missing. Rowlands was working for KTVU in San Francisco at the time, and he was one of only four reporters who interviewed Scott in his home before he was charged with his family’s murders.
Scott Peterson stands in a command center where volunteers pick up leaflets as the search for his wife, Laci Peterson, continues Sunday, Jan. 19, 2003, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ann Johansson)
“He’s an odd dude,” Rowlands told Court TV anchor Julie Grant. “He made us take our shoes off. He was very orchestrated. His answers were totally rehearsed…very scripted.”
The polarizing documentaries each focus on a different side of the notorious case.
Netflix’s American Murder: Laci Peterson centers on the case from a more prosecution-heavy vantage. The story is told through reporters like Rowlands, many of the initial investigators and Laci’s family and friends. In the three-part docuseries, fresh interviews are conducted with Laci’s mother, Sharon Rocha, and a few of Laci’s closest friends, Lori Heintz, Rene Tomlinson and Stacey Boyers, who share beautiful memories shrouded with grief. They describe the degradation of a once seemingly perfect couple and the family nightmare that descended upon them after Laci went missing.
On the other hand, Peacock’s three-part docuseries, Face to Face with Scott Peterson, tackles the case through the lens of the defense as Scott breaks his decades-long silence, giving an exclusive interview from his prison cell block. Scott has an answer for everything related to what he describes as a biased “so-called investigation” that zeroed in on him as a suspect from the get-go. He firmly believes confirmation bias hindered the investigation and accounts for investigators not digging into other clues, like a burglary at the Medinas’ home across the street.
MORE | Deadline set in DNA of duct tape in Scott Peterson’s case
“I just remember how insane I was going with no sleep and worried about Conner and Laci. And what seemed like just an apathetic response from the police department,” Scott said in his interview.
To this day, Scott, now 51, insists he went fishing at Berkeley Marina on Dec. 24, 2002, and that Laci had vanished when he returned home.
THE OTHER WOMAN
A pivotal moment in the investigation was when investigators received a call from Amber Frey, a woman Scott had been secretly dating when his wife went missing. Frey, who was a single mom when she met Scott, broke her silence in the Netflix docuseries as she described meeting Scott in Nov. 2002, weeks after her friend ran into him at a work convention in Anaheim, Calif.
“He was interested in my life and my daughter and he was very sweet with her. Our time together — it just flowed,” she said. “I asked if he had ever been married. He said no. I asked if he had children and he said no, never wanted to,” Frey said.
In the Peacock docuseries, Jon Buehler, a retired detective of the Modesto Police Dept., described the convention where Scott met Frey’s friend, saying Scott had been wearing a name tag in which he had written ‘Horny Bastard,’ allegedly parading around as single “looking for a new conquest.”
FILE – In this April 21, 2003 photo, Sarah Kellison stands in front of a memorial in honor of Laci Peterson outside the house Laci shared with her husband Scott Peterson in Modesto, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
After avoiding Laci’s family and media questions about his affair with Frey, Scott finally admitted to it in a 2003 interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC News—an interview that Rowlands says was the “nail in the coffin” for Scott. Not only did Scott say Laci knew about the affair, but she was okay with it, according to him.
Diane Sawyer: “You really expect people to believe that an eight-and-a-half-month pregnant woman learns her husband is having an affair and makes peace with it?”
Scott Peterson: “Well, if…yeah. You don’t know. No one knows our relationship but us.”
Scott also says in that interview that he disclosed this information to police immediately on Christmas Eve.
Former Modesto Police Detective Al Brocchini retold the story of driving to Fresno, Calif., to meet with Frey. He said Frey agreed to record her conversations with Scott without his knowledge after Brocchini set up a cassette tape recorder. “It was not even 15 seconds later Scott called her.”
Brocchini said he collected over 29 hours and 15 minutes of wiretap conversations between Scott and Frey. Among them, some of the most damning evidence used against Scott at trial, including a recorded confrontation with Frey about lying to her about losing his wife before Laci had disappeared.
Amber Frey: “You came and told me this elaborate lie about her missing and this tragedy and that this will be the first holiday without her?”
Scott Peterson: “I did, yes…”
Amber Frey: “How did you lose her then, before she was lost? Explain that.”
Scott Peterson: “There are different kinds of lost, Amber.”
Amber Frey: “Of course you couldn’t tell me how you lost your wife because it hadn’t happened yet.”
Scott Peterson: “So, you think I had something to do with her disappearance? I am not evil like that.”
Amber Frey: “I hope not.”
Decades later, in his Peacock docuseries interview, Scott owned up to his infidelity again, calling himself “a total a-hole” to be having sex outside his marriage. Scott further explained that it was just sex, calling their romance a “massive misconception” that Frey had “turned it into a relationship after the fact.”
“I certainly regret cheating on Laci,” Scott said. “Absolutely. It was a childish lack of self-esteem… selfish. Me traveling somewhere, being lonely that night because I wasn’t home, and you know, someone makes you feel good because they want to have sex with you. That’s what that was to me,” Scott said.
Documentarian Shareen Anderson then asks why he kept talking to Frey after Laci disappeared.
“I was searching for my family,” Scott responded. “I wanted the search to continue. Stay in contact with Amber, I thought, and she wouldn’t get into the picture, complicate it, and ruin the search for Laci…The knowledge of her was a time bomb.”
TICK, TICK…BOOM!
Once Frey and Scott’s relationship went public at a Jan. 24, 2004 press conference, things quickly unraveled for Scott. Hours earlier, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Laci’s family had turned on him during an emotional press conference after the National Enquirer had leaked a photo of Scott and Frey. “This is why Amber Frey had to be kept out of the woodwork. Once she’s out, the focus is on Scott,” Rowlands said in the Peacock docuseries.
That’s when investigators determined that Laci and Conner had to be in the bay. Four months after Laci’s disappearance, with the help of divers, sonar, water cadaver dogs, helicopters and grid searches, investigators found what they had been searching for. Tim Williams, a former officer for the East Bay Regional Park District, confirmed in the Netflix docuseries that a female in very poor decomposition condition washed ashore at Point Isabel on April 14, and that an infant’s body had been recovered in another location the day before.
MORE | Scott Peterson Case Revisited Twenty Years Later
Scott Peterson, left, gives a Modesto police officer papers from his vehicle outside his home in Modesto, Calif., Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2003. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Brocchini said five days later, they arrested Scott after tailing him from Modesto to San Diego, not far from the Mexico border. Brocchini said when they arrested Scott, his hair had been dyed blonde, and he had grown a goatee. Inside his vehicle, they found cell phones, Viagra, dress clothes, camping gear, a shovel, $10K cash, and his brother’s driver’s license. All of which were explained in Scott’s prison interview.
Shareen Anderson: “Were you fleeing to Mexico?”
Scott Peterson: “I don’t understand that at all because I was never running from the police. I was always in contact with them. I’d answer most of their calls,” he said.
According to Scott, his new look was done intentionally to disguise himself due to the harassment and death threats he was getting. The ID was used to get his brother’s discount for playing golf. Scott’s sister-in-law, Janey Peterson, who has advocated for Scott since day one, confirmed that his brother John was buying his truck from Scott, which explains the cash.
Scott said he kept thinking the police would realize they had made a mistake, but that never happened.
OPTICS IS EVERYTHING
A common theme in both documentaries is Scott’s behavior after Laci’s disappearance. In fact, following his arrest, detectives Brocchini and Buhler both commented on his reaction after learning that Laci and Conner’s bodies had been confirmed by the medical examiner.
Scott said he “had a physical reaction” after hearing the news of his wife and unborn son. However, investigators said Scott “pushed out a single tear” before ordering a Double-Double with cheese, fries and a small vanilla shake.
“That was an enormous red flag on the fact that the notification didn’t surprise him, that he already knew the results of this from four months earlier and that he really didn’t care. He was ready to eat,” Buehler said.
MORE | Why Scott Peterson’s In-N-Out Burger Order was a Red Flag to Police
Rowlands believes Scott was personally responsible for his own demise, his behavior and a mountain of circumstantial evidence. “That was part of his whole demeanor, and that’s why he’s sitting in prison…The way he conducted himself before, during and after Laci’s disappearance,” Rowlands said.
ROAD TO REDEMPTION
In 2005, Scott was sentenced to death, but that punishment was overturned by the California Supreme Court in 2020 when it was revealed that potential jurors at trial were improperly dismissed.
In 2021, Scott was resentenced to life without parole. In 2022, he was moved off death row. That same year, Scott suffered a significant blow when a judge denied his bid for a new trial over allegations of juror misconduct.
Everything changed in Jan. 2024 when the L.A. Innocence Project took on Scott’s case, fighting for further investigation into what they say are critical pieces of evidence allegedly overlooked by investigators in 2002. Among those denied testing was a bloody mattress discovered in a burned-out orange van found near the Petersons’ home and a tarp found along the San Francisco Bay. However, the judge did allow testing on about a dozen items, most significantly, a 15.5-inch piece of duct tape found on Laci’s pants.
The Los Angeles Innocence Project made a motion on behalf of Scott Peterson to investigate multiple items, including a 15-inch piece of duct found on Laci Peterson’s remains, a black tarp that washed ashore, and a burnt-out van believed to be connected to a burglary across the street from the Peterson’s home in 2002. (Motion for DNA Testing via Court TV)
Authorities said they investigated a burglary at the neighbor’s home and determined it wasn’t related to Laci’s disappearance. Investigators like Brocchini and Buhler and all of Laci’s supporters firmly believe that justice was served 21 years ago when Scott was convicted. However, looking at it through the lens of those who support Scott, there may still be more to the story.
“The piece of tape has been sent off to a lab outside of Los Angeles,” Rowlands said. “If it comes back with someone else’s DNA profile and that person has ANY significance to the case, well then they’ll open up the prison doors and he walks.” DNA had been detected on the duct tape years ago, but science was not advanced enough to identify whose DNA it was.
In other words, any hope of Scott’s release is being held together by a piece of duct tape.
