Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Scott Peterson to walk free after habeas corpus battle?

Episode Date: December 12, 2018

Convicted wife killer Scott Peterson is asking an appeals court to set him free because of mistakes he argues were made by his trial lawyer Mark Geragos. Nancy Grace updates the Laci Peterson murder case with experts including Cold Case Research Institute director Sheryl McCollum, Atlanta juvenile judge & lawyer Ashley Willcott, New York psychologist Caryn Stark, RadarOnline.com reporter Alexis Tereszcuk, and Crime Stories reporter Robyn Walensky. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. No, it's not Santa. It's Nancy Grace. Are you trying to find the perfect gift for a parent or an expecting parent? Please do not give them another onesie. Don't do it.

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And what I learned is so critical and the information so powerful and important. I want you to have it. I want them as parents to have it. Go to crimestopshere.com for a five-part series with action information that you can use to change your life and protect your child because I have done it myself based on what they have told me. Give that as a gift, not another onesie, please. Find out how to protect your child. Out and about, at the mall, at the store, at the grocery store,

in parking lots, in parking decks, at your home, in your neighborhood. Find out about protection regarding babysitters, nannies, daycare, even protection online. It's the very best gift you can give any parent. Go to crimestopshere.com and join the Justice Nation. Crimestopshere.com. God willing. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. We find the defendant, Scott Lee Peterson, guilty of the crime of murder of Lacey Denise Peterson. The case of State v. Scott Peterson, to me,

feels like it just happened yesterday. She just vanished. And it turned into a media storm within days. Please, please, please let her go. Bring her back. Guess what, Scotty? San Quentin's your new home. There was no biological evidence,

no forensic evidence whatsoever, that pointed to the guilt of Scott Peterson. There's at least 11 witnesses that saw Lacey that day. This is all while Scott's at the office on his computer. So he's innocent. I wasn't the last one to see Lacey that day. There were so many witnesses. We saw her walking in the neighborhood after I left.

The cops just never followed up on me, but we were across the street. Believe it or not, at this hour, a case is being mounted, a habeas corpus case, to free Scott Peterson. Scott Peterson convicted in the murder of his pregnant wife, Lacey, and their unborn child, baby Connor. But believe it or not, nothing is set in stone when it comes to the law. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Could it be? Will Scott Peterson walk free? I go to bed at night with dreams, sweet dreams of

him behind bars, reading all of his love letters and having a fine glass of Pruno, jail hooch. Is that going to end? Straight out to Alexis Tereschuk, RadarOnline.com, who covered the trial with me. I was in the courtroom every single day, and this is a stunner, Alexis Tereschuk, that a potentially successful habeas corpus case is being mounted as we speak. I mean, there is no justice for poor Lacey and that little baby Hunter. This is despicable, But Scott Pearson is trying to say, you know, almost 20 years later that he didn't do this. And the reason that people don't believe him, this is a guy who had a mistress the entire time his wife was missing.

He was sexting her. He was talking about going to Paris with her. He plotted his wife's murder for a long time. This wasn't something that, you know, he could even have said was a crime of passion. Well, you're talking about Amber Frye, the mistress, and I certainly hope she didn't feel special because he started having affairs very soon after they were married while she was working to help him get through the rest of school. Yeah. Also with me, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter Robin Walensky, author of Beautiful Life CSI Behind the Casey Anthony Trial. You can find that on Amazon. Robin Walensky, what is the force behind the current habeas corpus to free Scott Peterson? You know, the thing is, is that his attorneys are saying that one of the jurors lied and that Mark Geragos, his lawyer, did this, did that. I mean, they're throwing darts at the wall trying to get him out.

In addition to this, Nancy, that he's got a sister-in-law who keeps the Scott Peterson room kind of like, you know, the police when they're looking at a mafia family, you know, John Gotti at the top or the fictitious character on HBO, Tony Soprano, and who the other mafia characters are. And she's got all these things taped on the wall. And the sister-in-law has been speaking with the Modesto Bee and saying that, you know, he's innocent. And she is really a huge force behind this as well. You know what, Robin Walensky? You and Alexis Tereschuk are exactly correct. Cheryl McCollum, I want to take you back in the time machine.

Take a listen to this interrogation of, you know, a lot of people thought he was good looking. I never thought he was good looking. He walked into the courtroom like the star quarterback with his back all thrown out, puffing out his chest, swaggering. I'm like, mm-hmm. I don't know what all those women saw in him. But Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute, please, before you and Ashley Wolcott and Karen Stark say a word, listen to this, please.

Tell me about the warning. I don't know. Okay. I don't know what time we got up. Probably, Lacey got up and went and assumed that she had some cereal for breakfast. Here's Scott Peterson being questioned by the first detective on the case, 1 a.m., Christmas Day, 2002. When did you realize you were going to go fishing? Oh, that was a morning decision.

That was a morning decision? So play golf at the club or go fishing. Okay. So what you're telling me, Scott, is there's no, you have no idea where this is. Never once did he say, oh my God, where is Lacey? Where could she be? I hope she's okay. I hope, you know, she's not harmed. Never, ever, ever. You were feeling that panic. Even as you talk about it, you can see a little bit of it left. Yes. He did not seem to have that sense?

He did not have it. You were hearing Sharon Rocha, that's Lacey's mom, along with NBC Dateline's Keith Morrison, and you were also hearing Scott Peterson being interrogated 1 a.m. on Christmas Day. And they're like, you have any idea what she is? No. I mean, Cheryl McCollum. On Christmas Eve morning while your wife is getting the home ready for a dinner, a Christmas

Eve dinner at her house that night, mopping the floors, getting everything ready and he decides that morning he's either going to go golfing at the club or go fishing but decides not to go golfing because it would be too cold so then he takes a 180 mile round trip to fish for 45 minutes on Christmas Eve if David Lynch was not running back and forth to the grocery store and doing my insane bidding before a Christmas Eve dinner, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I would totally burn all his clothes in the front yard. No doubt about that. But he's going 180-mile round trip to go fishing out on San Francisco Bay because it's too cold to golf? Right. What?

Anybody that votes will tell you it is too cold to golf? Right. What? Anybody that votes will tell you it is so much colder on the water. The wind, you're wet. I mean, it's going to be miserable out there. If it's too cold to golf, it is absolutely too cold to go fishing. But Nancy, back it

up even before that. The first lot is where you stay. You and I both know that. He originally tells his father-in-law he went golfing. Then he tells the police he went fishing. But that lie about golfing helps because with the fishing, there's a receipt that shows he was in fact there at the boat ramp. But that also puts him at the crime scene. It sure does. I mean, reality check.

Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute and CSI expert. Cheryl, the body's washed up not too far from the very spot where he said he was fishing. Absolutely. And that makes that receipt a money tree for the prosecution. You put yourself there. While these two people are missing, Lacey and the baby, that's where they wash up. That's a real easy A to B for anybody.

Well, not only that, the dog tracker, which they've tried to catch down on the dog followed lacy's trail all the way from her home however many miles away to berkeley marina but to ashley wilcott joining me a juvenile judge lawyer you can find her at ashleywilcott.com ashley the defense in their habeas corpus is claiming that the dog evidence is bad because the dog handler also picked up an item belonging to Scott Peterson, I think maybe his sunglasses or slippers, and then handed over Lacey's slippers. And they're saying the dog couldn't figure it out.

I find that hard to believe. So one of the things to note about this appeal, this is the sixth appeal document prepared on behalf of Scott Peterson. Number one, six, he's been unsuccessful so far. Number two, that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to say deficient performance by his attorney because he failed to call different experts to refute the evidence like the dog evidence. Too little, too late. You know, I want to get down to the nitty gritty and what they are claiming. But take a listen to Keith Morrison playing Amber Fry audio, the mistress.

Either he killed Lacey or he's clairvoyant because he told Amber Fry that he had been married and his wife had just recently died. I met Scott Peterson November 20th 2002. Scott told me he was not married. We did have a romantic relationship. She was Amber Frye. Amber secretly helped the police by recording her calls with Scott. As soon as I plug in her little recorder the phone rings he called oh boy hey there i can barely hear you they were just like wow i can't believe he's calling you right now hey i'll be in there tomorrow. I'm outside on the north of you right now. And hopefully tomorrow is better. Amber Frye. Her recordings, her testimony were the key. And with the whole country watching, Scott Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife Lacey and their unborn son, Connor.

You were hearing Dateline's Keith Morrison playing that Amber Frye audio, which really turned the tide. I want to follow up on something that Cheryl McCollum brought up to Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter and author of Beautiful Life. Robin, Cheryl is reminding us that Scott Peterson told people after the fact that he had been golfing that morning. Is that correct, Robin? It is. You know, he's a pathological liar, Nancy. There are liars. You know, people are lying constantly, but he's in the pathological liar category where he makes stuff up. I mean, what comes to mind is his interview with Diane Sawyer, where he sits down and he's wearing the suit and he's speaking in the soft little voice and getting into all this elaborate detail about stuff that actually never happened. And he's speaking in the soft little voice and getting into all this elaborate detail about stuff that actually never happened.

And he reminds me he's in the pathological lying category of Casey Anthony, as you recall, who made up Zenaida Gonzalez, Zanny the Nanny and all these fictitious characters and all these lies and all this detail that adds up to a big zero donut hole that doesn't amount to anything, and it's all in his mind. And so, yes, golf and all this other nonsense, but it's all a lie. It's a pathological lie. Take a listen to what Lacey's own mother, Sharon Rocha, says. It has definitely been a roller coaster since December 24, 2002. There's many times that I get up in the morning and I just go back to bed.

Lacey Peterson's mother, Sharon Rocha, told us her days of hiding under covers are fewer now, but there is still no escaping the pain that began on Christmas Eve 2002 with a phone call from her son-in-law, Scott. It was close to 6.15 he called. He said she was missing. And that's how it began, the search for Lacey Peterson, the one the whole country heard about. We're still actively this morning. It was 9.30. My daughter's been missing since this morning.

She came home pregnant. She took her dog for a walk from the park. The dog came home with just a leaf shot. And the dog came back without your daughter? Right. Okay, what is your address, sir? Well, I'm at... Is that where she... It's over at Maloma Park is where she went for the walk.

What's your cell phone number, sir? I think you disconnected. It's, um, um... There you're hearing the 911 call from Lacey's stepdad, Ron Gransky. And he is telling that day, the day Lacey Peterson goes missing, that Scott Peterson had said he was golfing. Cheryl McCollum is exactly correct. To Ashley Wilcott, juvenile judge and lawyer, what specifically are the claims made in this

habeas corpus that is trying to set Scott Peterson free? Okay, so deficient performance by the attorney, specifically, number one, that they did not have the dog expert that you already mentioned number two that they don't have an expert to talk about the unborn fetus number three another expert to controvert any of the physical evidence they are just saying we're going to use expert after expert after expert and we didn't and it's deficient. I don't buy it. I don't agree with it. He had a good attorney. And I just have to say one more thing. One of his sisters is quoted as saying, listen, the whole system failed him. The prosecution didn't do a good job. The defense attorney didn't do a good job. Nobody did a good job. Well, the reality is she just

wants him to be free and out of jail as his sister, and she's just throwing their own casting stones with no merit. Well, you know, interesting to Alexis Tereska, RadarOnline.com, how many appeals has he already had? He's had six appeals, but can I follow up on what she was saying about this is his sister-in-law. Do you know when Peterson was found at the border of the United States trying to escape into Mexico, he had that sister-in-law's husband's identification on him. He was pretending to be his brother. He had dyed his hair, bleached his hair blonde, and he was trying to assume his identity. And he got, I believe, $10,000 cash on his body. He was pretending to be his brother to flee the country. You know who does that?

Guilty people, not innocent people. As a matter of fact, I want to follow up on what you just said. He had a lot more. He had $14,000 cash. He had dyed his hair blonde, like you said, and changed his appearance, multiple IDs, camping gear, and enough Viagra to choke a horse. To Karen Stark joining me me i needed to get some facts first karen stark karen uh renowned psychologist joining us from new york karen

um i just want to warn you you're about to hear what i consider to be one of the most important pieces of evidence so sit down i hope you down. Actually, you may need to lay down for this one. I can hear you. Hey. Yes. Okay, there you are. I'm talking. Okay, I'm like, stay still or something.

I know. I'm going to make it work. How was your New Year's? What's that? How was your New Year's? It's good. I just, I went to the bar now, so I came out of the alley. Quiet alley. Is that nice? Yeah, it is. I can hear you. Very good. I just, I want to go to the bar now, so I came out of the alley. Quiet alley. Is that nice? Yeah, it is. I can hear you. Very good.

It's pretty awesome. Fireworks there, the Eiffel Tower. There's some people playing their rock songs. Uh-huh. It's pretty funny. Well, that's good. I'm glad you guys decided to go out. Oh, definitely. I can never remember your friend's name. I know Jeff, but you always say it all, Fon Swan's name. And then we have Pasquale, a friend of ours. Thank you.

Uh-huh. Oh, he's there too? Pasquale, yeah. Good. Did you make a New Year's resolution? I don't really know. What was that? Should be. Should be? What should my new year's resolution be? Oh, I don't know.

That was my question. Oh, I didn't think of that. I'll tell if I'm good. Yeah, you'll have to tell us if you're good. So. So where are you headed? Well, I don't, did you get my message? No.

You didn't get it? Did you leave him? Yeah, I left him. I left you a message because I didn't get it. Oh, okay. So, I'm going to go to the office. Okay. So, I'm going to go to the office.

Okay. So, I'm going to go to the office. Okay. So, I'm going to go to the office. Okay. So, I'm going to go to the office. Okay. So, I'm going to go to the office. So where are you headed? Well, did you get my message? No. You didn't get Ivan? Yeah, I left you a message because I was like, well, I hope you at least get that. But I was going to, or the San Francisco thing didn't work out.

So I'm probably most likely going to go later to Sean's. Are you there? Hello? You are hearing Scott Peterson calling his calling his mistress amber fry from paris i'm saying that in quotas on new year's eve now karen stark let's see i remember this covering this with you so clearly it's like it was yesterday it really it, didn't it? The whole case was so fascinating and awful. wife is he's like no no idea instead of I would be jumping out of my skin if I thought David or the twins were missing and he was had a completely flat affect so it wasn't just the demeanor at trial it was during interrogation and on these phone calls as a matter of fact Cheryl McCollum, isn't it correct that he wasn't on the phone with his mistress at the vigil,

but he was late to the vigil because he had been on the phone with Amber. Is that the way it went? The vigil for his missing wife who he knew to be dead. So, Nancy, look at pre and post behavior. So like with you, you have your show, you have the twins, you have interviews that you do. When your dad got sick and died, all of that stopped. Let's look at Scott Peterson. He has affairs, he plays golf, he goes fishing, he jogs. Lacey and Connor go missing. He has affairs. He goes golfing. He goes fishing. He jogs. It's like his life didn't change. So the pre and post behavior as well as his, you know, flat demeanor tells you no empathy. He's a sociopath. Americans admit to keeping an eye on their own online reputation. 46 admit to using the internet

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forward slash Nancy. Find the truth. Stories with Nancy Grace. In 2002, I just put myself through massage school. My daughter was almost 18 months old. I felt really content and good where my life was going in Fresno. My friend Sean told me about this guy that she had met at a work convention. His name was Scott Peterson. She was like, he's perfect for you. At this point in my life, I didn't need to randomly date different people. And I was looking for the one. And that's what Scott said. He was also looking for the one. I had no idea that I was being introduced to a married man. You are hearing from our friends at A&E that Amber Fry explained how she met Scott Peterson and why she dated him and that she had

no idea he was married. But luckily, Alexis Terezchuk, RadarOnline.com she found out. She found out Lacey was missing and she contacted police and volunteered to cooperate. Many people believe that was the turning point of the

trial when that evidence came forward. You know, I'm interested about something. The physical evidence. It's been said many, many times there's no direct evidence such as DNA or biological evidence, fingerprints, that Peterson killed his wife, Lacey. Of course, that's not required. There's circumstantial evidence that's, you know, overpowering in this case. Alexis Tereschuk, the judge, Alfred DeLucchi, would not allow the defense video or evidence regarding the boat. They had made, they had done an experiment with a boat. Now, the judge said, if you want to use the actual boat, you can do that. And the defense did not do it.

Why wouldn't the judge let the defense bring on their boat evidence? Did he, the judge, believe the defense had rigged it in some way? Well, it wasn't the same boat. So you can't do that. You can't say, well, here's what would have happened if Scott had not or if somebody had done something with the boat because it's not the same. And so the judge was being very careful saying you can't use something that isn't the way the evidence should be. You couldn't use a boat that's 33 feet when Scott's boat was only 22 feet. That's not going to work. And the jury would know that. So he was actually

really protecting them in a way, but he was just following the letter of the law. They came up with this, they made a crazy video of what they thought their version was and what had happened. And the video wasn't reality. So he said, well, you know what, go ahead go ahead use the real boat but defense knew if they used the real boat this wouldn't happen because the real boat is the one that Scott used to dump his pregnant wife and their baby's body in San Francisco Bay and the thing was no there wasn't evidence in the house of a fight or blood or anything like that but you know what there was evidence of her body turning up in the San Francisco Bay where he had been fishing on Christmas Eve. And you talked about your husband. If my husband doesn't hear from me when I go to the store for five minutes because I'm sitting in the

driveway texting with my friends, he called me repeatedly. Scott Peterson had no care in the world about Lacey. He was off pretending he was in Paris and enticing his mistress into talking dirty with him. What should my New Year's resolution be? Ew. He was guilty, and the evidence does show that. This defense trying to say that he didn't get a good defense. Mark Geragos was his lawyer. Mark Geragos is one of the most famous lawyers in the country.

He is a bulldog. He gets his clients off. And even if he didn't get Scott off because Scott was 100% guilty, he gave him 145% in this case. To Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, author of Beautiful Life on Amazon, about Tot Mom's trial. Robin, regarding that boat video, several weeks before his wife disappeared, Peterson was online searching info about places to launch a boat in Northern California, including Berkeley Marina. But he chose that morning, Christmas Eve, to do a 180 mile round trip, three hours, to fish for 45 minutes. Why wouldn't the judge allow that boat video? is it is beyond belief to me and i'll tell you what else another

detail of this is that there was a hair in a pair of pliers that were found on that boat and that hair belonged to lacey peterson i also want to go back to something that um alexa was talking about and that is that in the home you know okay so there there wasn't blood that was found on the floor, but there was mops, and there was Clorox, and there were bleach agents, and the neighbors said that every single morning, Lacey Peterson would open up the curtains. She would wake up, and her routine was she would open up the curtains on the front of her small bungalow home, right? And then the neighbors say, oh, mysteriously on that morning when she goes missing, the curtains aren't open. So I think that there was a lot of evidence, especially with this

boat. As a juror, you wanted to see the exact boat in question and who in the world is going to drive all that way on Christmas morning if you don't have a motive. Additionally, Nancy, I just want to make this point, that he told Amber Fry two weeks, two weeks before Lacey goes missing, my wife is dead. So this was all premeditated. He had the chemicals. He was a fertilizer salesman. He had the bleach.

He had all this stuff to clean up the horrendous act. And he had all these tools and possibly the weights to weight down her body. And I don't think he ever thought that she was going to wash up with the baby. Ashley Wilcott. I just wanted to say, as a judge, here's a reason that I might say no defense, you cannot recreate. Because in order to have evidence recreated, to use a model of something or the model of the boat versus actual boat, I as a judge would want to hear why can't you show the jurors the real vote, the actual vote, the actual thing that we're talking about.

I would want some compelling reason. Oh, it was inadvertently lost by the prosecution in the crime lab, whatever it was. Otherwise, I think there's a very valid reason not to allow it because it's a recreation. You don't use a recreation if you have the real thing available you're right there was a big brouhaha about the video about how her body could or could not have fit into the boat but the reality is the state brought on photos demonstrating the boat had plenty of room and more for a woman

to be placed in as a matter fact, they got a Stanislaus County employee, as I recall, the same height and weight, who was also pregnant, to lay in the boat and took pictures of it and showed photos of the boat and how wide it was to let them know Lacey could fit in there. This woman, Kim Fulbright, was 5'2", she weighed 157 pounds, and was 38 weeks pregnant. When the photos of her in Peterson's boat were taken, Lacey was 33 weeks pregnant and smaller than Kim Fulbright, as I recall. And in these photos, you can see Fulbright lying on her side in various sections of the boat so that's not really an issue another point that Jackie here in the studio has brought up is the weather conditions in the video very different from the weather conditions and the

tide conditions the day Lacey went missing I mean mean, you know, can we just get real for a moment, Cheryl McCollum? Just, you know, forget about, oh, you should have brought on a fetal expert. Well, the defense did bring on a baby expert, a fertility expert, Dr. Charles Marsh. His testimony was a train wreck. They said they failed to put on a dog scent expert. Well, probably because no expert would have disagreed with what they had said but the reality is christmas eve morning he makes a quote spur of the moment decision to go fishing in a boat he hasn't even told his own father about that he has kept secret and kept at his warehouse her hair turns up intertwined in his pliers, not just stuck on his pliers, but intertwined in his pliers. He takes a three-hour trip to go fishing for 45 minutes out on a cold bay,

and where he fishes is where her body turns up. And in the few weeks, in about four weeks following her disappearance, he revisits that spot. He's tracked by police five times in five different rental cars because criminals can't help it. They go back and they look at the crime over and over. They return to the scene of the crime. I mean, really. Scott needs a new trial. And we need justice for Lacey and Connor. You know, it's not

it's not justice for them when Scott's sitting on death row. We watched them grow up when they first were dating and and just watch that progression of life of of them starting to, you know, plan a family. And, you know, that's why they moved to Modesto was to start a family. Everything we've learned the last 15 years has either confirmed Scott's innocence or taken us one step closer to finding out what happened to Lacey and Connor. And whoever did this to them is still out there. You are hearing Scott Peterson convicted in the murder of his wife Lacey and their unborn child Connor. The sister-in-law, Janie Peterson, who says that Scott Peterson needs a new child. The killer is still out there.

You know, I know this isn't part of evidence, but Cheryl McCollum, director of Cold Case Research Institute, if he didn't do it, who did? Not just that, Nancy. How many other eight-month pregnant women have gone missing and later found murdered in that bay? That would be zero. You know, I want to go back to Alexis Tereshka, RadarOnline.com. Alexis, he's had, as you pointed out, six appeals.

Tell me about the hair in his pliers that were in the boat. What the police found was a pair of pliers. And, you know, he says he was a handy guy around the house. He was fixing things. It had Lacey's hair in it, intertwined, wrapped around his pliers that were in his boat. It's maybe, it's the one piece of evidence we had that connected her to his boat. This is the direct link. And it was really the only one. And it's not just placed on there. It's wrapped around it. So who knows what he used those pliers for and why her hair was tangled up in it.

But it was her hair. There's no repeating that evidence. Robin Walensky, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. What can you tell me about homemade cement blocks? Did they exist or no? They did exist. And he had a lot of these materials, Nancy, in his storage locker where he kept the boat. And there are some photographs of materials, again, in his storage locker where he kept the boat. And there are some

photographs of materials, again, because he was a fertilizer salesman and he was in this business with all these materials. The ultimate terrible point for me of this whole case in thinking about it is that her first date with Scott Peterson was he took her out on a boat. And so her life ended as it began with this liar killer. And it's such a shame. But yes, photographs do exist of the cement. The materials use the cement blocks. And he kept a lot of stuff hidden. All his lies were in that storage locker. To Cheryl McCollum, Cheryl, what can you tell me about the way the hair was found on the pliers? Was the hair lying on the pliers? Was it wrapped around the pliers? Was it intertwined in the pliers? It was stuck to the pliers. And the other

significant thing is these pliers were also in a toolbox. So it's not like a hair that got, you know, loose and floated and landed in this toolbox. It was actually stuck to it as though at one time it was either wet or bloody or whatever it might have been, but it was actually stuckuct to it as though at one time it was either wet or bloody or whatever it might have been but it was actually stuck you know to karen stark new york psychologist joining us to this day scott peterson insists he is innocent well dancy scott peterson insisted he was in paris scott peterson insisted a lot of things because I think it was Robin who said he's a pathological liar. I've never seen a more textbook case of someone who fits that profile. He is able to lie very easily and believably for somebody like Amber Fry, women who he pursued as a mistress. He lied to the public. He lied on

television. He answered phone calls during his interview. Do you remember that? His face was completely devoid of any kind of affect. He could care less about what was happening. He couldn't even fake it in the courtroom. So here's a man who so clearly showed that he was capable of doing a crime that most of us would not even be able to consider. And it's just amazing that he still believes that he can somehow convince the world that this did not happen. When all of this proof shows that it did. You know, he made a key decision, Ashley Wolcott, not to testify. Do you think it hurt him or helped him? You know, I think it would not have helped him to testify. I think regardless of what he said, I think he would have lied because that's

his MO. He's capable only of lying. I think that the jury would have seen right through it and it only would have supported the conviction that he already received. You know, I'm thinking back on the hair and the pliers because the big argument on appeals, there's no direct evidence such as DNA. This hair, according to an expert, Rodney Oswald, a hair analyst, both hairs were mashed, splayed, and frayed by a mechanical object, suggesting they may have been torn from someone's head. Did you know that part, Cheryl McCollum? Nancy, here's what I remember. Her head was missing.

So when she was recovered, it was basically just her torso. So we don't know if he removed her teeth, thinking they couldn't identify her. We don't know what he did to her. So what it looked like to me when I first heard that was whatever he used as the makeshift anchors, these, you know, buckets that he had semen in or whatever. He tied her limbs down. Well, as she decomposed in the water, the torso was the only thing that came up. You know, I still remember, Alexis Derez, you and I covered it together, the day that she went missing. Christmas Eve, I cannot even imagine spending the entire day of Christmas Eve covering up my wife's murder.

And this was so shocking because she is beautiful. She was about to have our baby in 2.5 seconds. And to hear the news break that this woman was missing, and then you see her husband, and you immediately knew that he had something to do with it. And one of the things that he's saying in his appeal, he is saying that there were many things going on in the neighborhood that proved that somebody else committed this crime. The house across the street was broken into. There were neighbors that said that they saw Lacey. The police investigated all of this and none of these match, even though Scott's family is saying now but it points to somebody else the police investigated this at the time and that is why his lawyer did not bring

these things up according to a jailhouse statement that was recorded one of the burglars said Lacey he thinks Lacey saw them burglarizing the house they swear they burglarized the house on the 26th after Lacey went missing. The defense is bringing up a lot of evidence. After six appeals, will this be the one to free Scott Peterson? Listen to our friends at Fox News, Laura Engel. We know why he did it, to get out of the life he had and start a new one with a woman he was having an affair with, Amber Frye. We all remember this. The discovery of his affair with Frye was really the turning point in the case

after Lacey Peterson was reported missing. As a group of experts discusses in the one hour special Sunday where we look at an interview he gave before his arrest, Scott Peterson never really seemed overly concerned about finding his wife. That was something that stuck out to all of us. But after the bodies of Lacey and their unborn son Connor Connor, washed ashore where he said he was fishing the day she was missing, he was quickly arrested in San Diego under suspicious circumstances. He had way

too much stuff to be just casually going out of town. That was being prepared to be on the run for a while. They catch him. They got him. They're taking him in. He says, I've heard that there were bodies. Tell me it wasn't them. He knows that it's them. We wait for justice to unfold. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.