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Scott Peterson, who was found guilty of murdering his wife, Laci, and their unborn child, Conner, 20 years ago, has offered up his own theory about what he thinks happened to the mom-to-be.
In a jailhouse interview from the Mule Creek State Prison in California, Peterson spoke out for the first time for Peacock’s new three-part series Face to Face With Scott Peterson.
“There was a burglary across the street from our home,” Peterson said in the series. “And I believe that Laci went over there to see what was going on, and that’s when she was taken.”
Laci was eight months pregnant when she vanished on Christmas Eve 2002. Peterson reported her missing after he claimed he returned from a solo fishing trip to find their Modesto home empty and their dog in the backyard with its leash still attached. Four months later, the bodies of Laci and Conner washed up on a shore.
The burglary that Peterson theorized actually happened, but authorities have said, citing one of the convicted burglar’s statements, that it occurred on December 26, 2002, and not December 24, 2002, as the defense claimed.
According to journalists and legal experts who gave interviews for the docuseries, witnesses had told police at the time that they saw a suspicious van in the area of the house that was burglarized on December 24, with one witness even claiming that they saw a pregnant woman being forced into a van.
The burglary was not mentioned at Peterson’s high-profile trial back in 2004. Peterson, who has maintained his innocence since the beginning, cites the burglary as supporting his claim that the cops did not turn over evidence to the defense that could have potentially exonerated him during the discovery process as they were supposed to.
“There are so many instances where there was evidence that didn’t fit the detectives’ theory that they ignored,” he insisted in the jailhouse call.
However, two former detectives for the department, Jon Buehler and Al Brocchini, who are also featured in the doc, say they never hid evidence or failed to investigate leads during the probe.
Peterson, who was involved in multiple extramarital affairs, quickly became a suspect following Laci’s disappearance, and, after Laci and Conner’s bodies were discovered in April 2003, he was arrested near San Diego and charged with murder.
He had dyed his dark hair blonde and was carrying survival gear, Viagra tablets and $15,000 in cash, according to authorities.
Amber Frey, the 27-year-old woman Peterson had been having an affair with prior to Laci’s death, went to police when she learned about Laci’s disappearance on the news — and realized that the missing woman’s husband was the man she thought was her boyfriend.
She told police Peterson claimed he was never married when they began dating, then changed his story to being a widower. Sometime after Laci went missing, he then told her his wife was alive and pregnant but had gone missing.
Frey has also spoken out for the first time in new Netflix documentary American Murder: Laci Peterson that was released last week.
In 2004, Peterson was convicted of Laci and Conner’s murders and was initially sentenced to death but later resentenced to life in prison without parole.
In January 2024, the Los Angeles Innocence Project took on his case, filing a motion to have pieces of evidence from the original investigation tested for DNA. A judge ruled in May that only a piece of duct tape found on Laci’s body could be retested.
Lara Yeretsian, one of Scott’s original trial lawyers, remains hopeful of a different outcome.
”This is not the end of it,” Yeretsian said in the series. “It’s just the beginning, and at least we’ve got one win.”
