Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Wife/baby killer Scott Peterson to face new jury?

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

The California Supreme Court has overturned Scott Peterson's death sentence. Prosecutors say they will ask for the death penalty when the sentencing phase is tried again. The court says significant errors were made in jury selection that undermined Peterson's right to an impartial jury.Joining Nancy Grace today: Lara Yeretsian - Los Angeles, Ca. Criminal defense attorney Caryn Stark - NYC Psychologist, www.carynstark.com  Bobby Chacon - Former Special Agent FBI, Screenwriter on "Criminal Minds"  Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics Jacksonville State University, Author of "Blood Beneath My Feet" & featured on "Poisonous Liaisons" on True Crime Network Alexis Tereszcuk- CrimeOnline Investigative Reporter Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Imagine on Christmas Eve, eight months pregnant, suddenly a mom-to-be expecting her first child goes missing. Somehow, in all the hullabaloo, the facts surrounding the murder of Lacey Peterson and her unborn child, Connor, have gotten somehow lost in the sauce. But in a stunning development in the last hours, the case is back on the hot seat. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Pat Harris was involved in Peterson's initial trial and will represent him in Stanislaus County.

We are satisfied that we're going to get our day in court. If they want to retry it, we'll be there. And boy, we will be there bigger and better than they've ever seen. Harris says the process will require a whole new jury. Then, because they haven't heard the evidence, you basically have to do the entire trial again. Also, there's the hearing later this month in San Mateo County Superior Court, where it will be decided Peterson's conviction should be tossed out. In August, the California Supreme Court overturned his 2005 death sentence, and then in October,

the same court ordered a new hearing because of prejudicial misconduct by a juror. That juror failed to reveal that while pregnant, she'd sought a restraining order against her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend. You're hearing our friends at Fox 40 News. If you couldn't make sense out of that mouthful of sentences, here's the bombshell. The state through Stanislaus County has announced it is seeking the death penalty yet again on convicted wife killer Scott Peterson. This after a series of legal reversals for the state. With me, an all star panel to break it down and put it back together again. First of all, Laura Uretzian, joining us from L.A., member of Scott Peterson's original defense team. New York psychologist joining us from Manhattan,

Karen Stark at KarenStark.com. Bobby Chacon, former special agent FBI, now screenwriter on Criminal Minds. Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet, and star of a brand new series, Poisonous Liaisons on the True Crime Network, Joseph Scott Morgan. But first, to CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, Alexis Tereschuk. Alexis, you and I were there every single day of the trial.

I was not surprised, I will have to say I was relieved when Scott Peterson was convicted the first time. But now it's all gone to hell in a handbag. What happened? So Scott has been given a... Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, right there. Alexis, what? Are y'all friends now?

Are you expecting him over for dinner one night? You're going to introduce him to your baby boy? Why are you calling him by his first name? I didn't know you were on a first name basis with Scott Peterson. We are not on a first name basis. Good to know. Good to know. He is not coming to my house because he is still in prison.

He is still in the San Quentin prison. The news is that he is on death row still. He has been convicted. He has been found guilty by a jury of killing his wife, Lacey Peterson, and their unborn son, Connor. Here's the thing. The Supreme Court in California has ruled that he can get a new death penalty trial. That means that the sentence of the death penalty has been overturned. And this was a unanimous decision. So what they're saying is right now, you are still convicted, you are still guilty, but your sentencing is going to be discussed again. We're going to have a new trial and this has got up for argument again. So bottom line, the Scott Peterson case was what we call a bifurcated trial. It's part one,

it's a guilt innocence phase where it was determined Scott Peterson did in fact murder his wife Lacey and throw her body and Connor, the unborn baby's body, into the cold, choppy waters of the San Francisco Bay, where he fished that day that she went missing. The second part of the bifurcated trial is the penalty phase. The California Supreme Court has ruled that the penalty itself, only the penalty, is reversed and has to be retried. Now, the state, did they not, Alexis Tereschuk, have the right to just say, oh, you know what, we're just going to settle for life behind bars. He would then come home from San Quentin, come off death row, and go to a regular CI, Correctional Institute. But that's not what

they decided, is it, Alexis? Nope, that is not at all what they decided. And they did not wait any time. They immediately announced they are going to try the death penalty phase again, and they are again going to seek the death penalty. They're not going to try to get life in prison without the possibility of parole. They are still going to ask a new jury that will be set up just for the penalty phase to give him the death penalty again. Take a listen to our friend Deidre Fitzpatrick, KCRA 3 News. And that breaking news is on a high-profile case out of Modesto. The California Supreme Court has now overturned the 2005 death sentence for Scott Peterson in the slaying of his then-pregnant wife.

The court still upheld the 2004 murder conviction in the killing of Lacey Peterson, who was eight months pregnant with their son at the time. The court said that the trial judge made a series of clear and significant errors in jury selection that under longstanding United States Supreme Court precedent undermined Peterson's right to an impartial jury

in the penalty phase. Investigators said that on Christmas Eve 2002, Peterson dumped the bodies from his fishing boat into the San Francisco Bay, where they surfaced months later. Prosecutors have said that they may try again for the same penalty sentence if they wish in the high-profile case. And the follow-up to that is in the last hours, the state has announced it will seek the death penalty against Scott Peterson. Is it mute? Is it for nothing? The governor in California, although the DP is constitutional in California, has pronounced a moratorium on the DP for now.

But clearly, it takes so long for anyone to be put to death that Governor Newsom will be long gone by the time Peterson is convicted again, if he gets the death penalty sentence again, and ultimately gets the death penalty. Joining me right now, special guest Laura Uretzian. Joining me from L.A., renowned criminal defense attorney. She was on the original defense team for Scott Peterson. Are you surprised that the state is again seeking the death penalty on Peterson? No, not really. I was expecting them to do that. They'd invested a lot of time and energy in getting the conviction and, of course, the death penalty. I was just surprised at the way they did it. They announced it in the courtroom

and the defense had no idea it was coming as far as the decision itself. I mean, it had been maybe a month and a half to two months since the Supreme Court decision. And they announced their decision to go for the death penalty again and retry that in the court. Question to you, Laurie Retskin, why are you not surprised the state is seeking the DP on Scott Peterson again? And why are you surprised they announced that they were having a hearing? Scott Peterson was there via video link. Why not go ahead and let everybody know what's happening? The reason that I'm not surprised about the decision is that not necessarily because I believe one way or the other, as far as Scott Peterson is concerned,

I mean, I clearly my position has always been in the position of the defense team. And I'm sure you could hear it when Pat Harris was speaking about it, his current attorney, that the defense team always believed and was very supportive of Scott. And we believe that he was stone cold innocent. And as far as the decision, I mean, I always knew the prosecution was always out to get. They were going to do everything possible to get Scott. And they're just not going to walk away from it. So does that surprise me? Hold on.

You think the state was, quote, out to get Scott? Your words? I mean, they're prosecutors and their job is if they go after somebody, the idea is that they would put them in prison. If it's a murder, they'd want them to go away for life or get the death penalty. I mean, that's what they do. So it's not. When you say they're out to get him. When you say they're out to get him.

I mean, to you, Bobby, some people call this seeking justice. That's what some people would say, Bobby. But a defendant deserves justice. I think Lacey and Connor deserve justice because the people who really perpetrated this crime should be arrested and tried, not the wrong person. I would very much hope that the prosecutors are out to get Scott Pierce. And I would hope that they're out to get anybody that commits such a heinous murder. I mean, like the Attorney's Counsel said, that's their job. Their job is to go out and get the people responsible for these heinous crimes.

But I don't like the way it's being said they're out to get him. I don't think they're out to get anybody, like some kind of vendetta. I think they're out to seek justice to convict the person that committed a double murder absolutely they are and they conducted a proper investigation i was part of that investigation and they had the evidence and so now you go after the person that your evidence supports having committed the crime and they did that and they went to trial and they presented that evidence to a jury and they got a conviction if they exactly what they were supposed to do they they upheld the people their responsibilities of people in state of california

crime stories with nancy grace guys we are talking about the case of Scott Peterson convicted in the murder of his wife, Lacey, and their unborn child, Connor. She goes missing on Christmas Eve. He is the last person confirmed to have seen her alive. Other people have said they saw her walking in the park that morning. However, those stories have been discredited. He also said that morning that he had been out playing golf. But then after realizing he was spotted at the San Francisco Marina, changed his story to fishing,

clearly placing himself at the scene where her body washes up. He says he was fishing on the San Francisco Bay the morning she goes missing. Her body washes up off the San Francisco Bay. Then within 24 hours, the baby has washed up as well. To Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, and author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, what do you consider to be the most powerful evidence in the case? I think it's probably going to come down to the timeline and placing Scott Peterson, you know, in these questionable locations. I think that that's really the only thing that the defense has to hang.

I mean, the prosecution has to hang their hat on. One of the problems with Lacey and Connor's bodies is that there's nothing definitive, and this has been stated over and over again, that there was any kind of man-made trauma that you could see to their bodies. Now, the bodies are what we refer to in, you know, forensic parlance as being macerated. That means they're decomposed. They've sustained, and particularly in this waterborne environment, they sustained tremendous amount of trauma, probably post-mortem. It's a hostile environment. So that bit of evidence is gone. And I got to tell you, Nancy, one of the things that has always struck me. No, I got to tell you, Nancy, one of the things that has always struck me.

No, no. I got to tell you something, Joe Scott Morgan. If Lacey Peterson, which I believe happened, was manually strangled or suffocated, just for instance, with a pillow or a soft object, then her body thrown into the cold waters of the San Francisco Bay, where it stayed there for weeks on end until she started to become not skeletonized, but skeleton-like, to the point where ultimately her uterus decomposed and opened up, and Connor floats out of her uterus. And that's what happened to her uterus protected by muscle, bone, skin. What do you think happened to strangle marks on her neck? And if there had been an asphyxiation such as with a pillow, there would be no marks except for a possible particular hemorrhage in the eyeball. Come on, get real, man.

I'm trying to keep it as real as possible, Nancy. Doesn't sound like it. Well, I am, Nancy, within a reasonable scientific certainty. And right now, you're absent one of the biggest things, and that is her head. And so her head is missing from her body. And there's been a lot of speculation about that. She's got parts of her limbs that were missing as well. There's been any number of people that have stated things like, well, you know, maybe she was dismembered before she went into the water. Well, there's a high likelihood of that.

But they don't have this. They don't have this this evidence to fall back on. And so, you know, look, you've hit it right on the head. If we're thinking about some kind of harm coming to her that would have brought about her death, you're going to find it in the neck, you're going to find it in the head with a blunt force injury or some such as this, but the body is too compromised and you're absent a big piece of evidence here.

That's what's left people scratching their heads. Her skin had floated off her body. Is that true, Morgan? Yes, yeah. As I stated earlier, maceration. Yeah, well, you said maceration. I said her skin decomposed and floated off her body. To Karen Stark, psychologist joining me out of Manhattan.

Karen, I remember this blow by blow in the courtroom. What do you think it has done to Lacey's mother, Sharon Rocha, over all these years? Not even having her daughter's skull. Not having her daughter's skull, not having her grandson who was due to be born. She wrote a book about it. I mean, it was devastating. And this is something, and you know, you're a mother, Nancy. She will never, ever get over the loss of her child and her grandchild. That's something that will always stay with her.

And there's nothing you can do to really make that be better. It's a permanent hole in her heart. Bobby Chacon, what's the reality? You've been through so many investigations. And I'm going to circle back to Rennell, a criminal defense attorney, who's actually one of the original members of the scott peterson defense team bobby chacon retrying a case is h e double l let me tell you something i had been in the da's office i just really graduated i guess you could say to complicated homicides and the da the elected district, called me down and told me he wanted me to retry a case. I immediately thought, whoa, whoa, wait, one of my cases been reversed? No, it was a case that had been tried 15 or so years before. I was either in

undergrad or first year of law school when it was tried, much less when it happened. Bobby, I got into the evidence room. Guess what was left of the evidence? The evidence room had moved several times. I had one x-ray, and I had a hat that said, kiss my bass. That was my physical evidence. Bobby, it was gone. You know, trials are difficult

enough, right? And capital murder trials are the hardest to have. And when you have to do it years later, in this case, 15 years later, I had a fugitive once that was on the run for eight years and I had to try him after eight years. Luckily, he fled out at the last minute. But you're right. We have to go back into these old dusty evidence boxes and revive everything.

The one good thing about this particular case for the prosecution is that none of the reversible errors, if it is reversed on these errors, has to do with the evidence presented at trial. These are more like process errors. This is a jury selection error or a juror may have been lying or may have been deceitful on their voir dire when they were selected for the jury. So none of the errors cited by the court have to do with the evidence presented to the jury and what the jury considered. So this is, you know, that's at least one consolation to the prosecution, is that these errors do not relate to the evidence presented against Scott Peterson. They are more what a layperson might consider technicalities, but obviously they relate to whether or not he received a fair trial, which is constitutionally

protected and very important. That's a very, very good point, Bobby Chacon, because the California Supreme Court was very clear that the evidence was overwhelming of Peterson's guilt. It was, in fact, a Gerard error. Also, Lori Oretzian, a high-profile criminal defense attorney, it all started when the California court said that there was a handful of GERARs that had said they didn't believe in the death penalty on their questionnaire, a very extensive questionnaire, I might add, which you may have helped create that questionnaire. It's very extensive. And while many jurors were questioned about saying they didn't believe in the death penalty, there were some jurors, I think it was 13 in all, that were not individually voidired, questioned on that issue,

such as you say you don't believe in it, but could you follow the law in the right circumstances? They were never really questioned. So that was the first problem right there. Then it came up about the juror that said she had never been a crime victim when, in fact, she had filed a TRO, restraining order, protective order, against her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend who was harassing her during her, the juror's pregnancy, Laura. In fact, that juror, not just the juror, the ex-girlfriend of her boyfriend had done time, had also been convicted of a crime because of that. She served time. So this was very important.

It was material and it was something that should have been disclosed to the prosecution, to the defense, and in the courtroom for all to hear. But this juror obviously decided not to do that. And the only thing that's pretty obvious to me, at least, on its face and it's evident, is that she wanted to get on that jury at any cost, including lying and withholding evidence, important information from the defense team and the prosecution in the court. And I'm glad we're where we are because Scott Peterson never got a fair trial. He deserved an impartial jury. He deserved a fair trial, just like any other defendant. We have a criminal justice system that's based on these very important rights, constitutional rights, and regardless of who the person is and who the defendant is and what you

believe and what your visceral reaction is, how much you hate this defendant. The one thing that every defendant is entitled to is a fair trial and an impartial jury. One thing that we all know, Scott Peterson did not get an answer. We've got the overturning of the death penalty and potentially and hopefully the overturning of the conviction. I don't believe anyone is suggesting at any point, Laura Uretzian, that any defendant that exists in the U.S. or anywhere does not deserve a fair trial. While I appreciate your sermon you just preached at me, I actually agree with you. I hate that you wasted all that energy. We all agree, even Scott Peterson deserves a fair trial. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

Guys, we are talking about a very surprising twist in the Scott Peterson conviction. Take a listen to our friend Anita Vogel at Fox News. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 2005, and now we're finding out some 15 years later today, the California Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence. Peterson's lawyers had contended all along he was not able to get a fair trial because of all the pre-trial publicity with the case, but the court rejected that argument, yet it did say that the trial judge made a series of clear and significant errors in jury selection

that undermined Peterson's right to impartial jury during the penalty phase and that potential jurors were improperly dismissed from the jury pool after saying they personally disagreed with the death penalty but that they would be willing to follow it and impose it Peterson is now 47 years old he was convicted of first-degree murder from everything we understand it seems that murder conviction will stand, but not the death penalty. Prosecutors will have the right to try again for a death penalty conviction,

although keep in mind there are more than 700 prisoners on California's death row, and the last time anyone was put to death was January of 2006. Alexis Tereshchuk with me, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. In fact, the state has announced that Stanislaus County will seek the death penalty against Scott Peterson, even with the California Supreme Court coming down on them regarding a juror selection issue. Alexis Tereschuk, it may be worse than that for the state because now there is movement afoot for the entire conviction to be overturned, not just the death penalty phase, and that they can reconsider the actual conviction. So there is a chance that the conviction itself could be thrown out too. And back to Lori Ratzian, a high-profile criminal defense lawyer

who was a member of Scott Peterson's original defense team. Why is the court now saying that Stanislaus County should take another look at the conviction, the guilty verdict itself. Because one of the jurors, I believe it was juror number seven, did not disclose that she was a victim of a crime, not just a victim of any crime. She was pregnant, four and a half months pregnant at the time, and was very, very much in fear of the safety of her

unborn child. The ex-girlfriend of her boyfriend had been threatening. There are certain things that she was alleging that she was doing that it was so bad that she ended up getting a restraining order against her for at least three years. And in fact, that same woman was convicted of a crime and ended up serving time. So the idea that she kept that to herself was extremely highly prejudicial, especially in a case where you had a pregnant Lacey who had gone missing,

and an unborn child had gone missing. So it was crucial that... Exactly. So it's the same grounds, the same allegation, the same argument that was made to get the death penalty sentence reversed that's being used for the court to re-examine whether the conviction itself should stand. Let's get back into... Not exactly, though. That's not the way I see stand. Let's get back. Not exactly, though. Not exactly. That's not the way I see it. The death penalty was reversed on different grounds. In that case,

the court, the judge made a huge mistake and he basically disqualified anyone who said they do not believe in a death penalty. He's never bothered to allow the defense or the prosecution to question on voir dire. For 13 jurors. For 13 jurors. Out of hundreds of jurors. Other jurors were questioned on that very issue. Those 13 jurors were not. So we have that issue. Then we have the juror issue of juror number seven, Michelle Risi, who did not disclose she had

a temporary restraining order taken out, and there was a subsequent conviction of her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend who was harassing her, the juror, during her pregnancy. Those are two claims. Is there a third

claim, Laura Uretzian? Not to my knowledge. Okay as the court is concerned. Okay, so those two claims are in fact the same claims that are being argued and presented for the conviction itself to be reversed. Let's get back in touch with the facts at issue. Take a listen to ABC's 2020. pregnant she took her dog for a walk from the park the dog came home with just the leash on so the dog came back without your daughter right what's your daughter's name got peterson no no your stepdaughter lacey peterson basically p-t-e-r-s-o-n right and she's white black islamic asian uh she's portuguese or what how old is she she's 26. What time did she leave the house and then come back?

Dad, we don't know. We just got a call from her son-in-law. He said he left at 9.30 to play golf. He left that home about a half hour ago. Nowhere around. Okay, so she went to walk the dog away? Walked it in and that's the part that... And she's eight months pregnant, you said?

Pardon? You said she's eight months pregnant? Yes, I am. Okay, well, I'll come out as soon as I can. That was Lacey's stepdad, her mom, Sharon Rocha's husband, Ron Gransky, calling 911. Let me understand something. Laura Uretzian, a member of Peterson's original defense team, I believe I heard her father, Ron Gransky, state that Peterson had told him that he went golfing that morning at 930

and that when he returned, Lacey was not home. That's what I heard, too. But the bottom line is it's not clear to me what he's talking about. If Peterson said it before, the day before, a couple of days prior to that, that he was planning on going. The other thing is that what really matters is what Peterson told law enforcement. That's not true, Laura. What matters is that he has an inconsistent statement. He told not only Lacey's stepdad that morning he had gone golfing at 930.

He told somebody else that as well. The dad's not the only one he told. Then later, he told cops a different story when he realized he had been spotted at the marina with his boat where Lacey went missing. You know what? Let's play that again

so we can all be very clear, Jackie, about what Peterson said. He had been doing the morning his wife disappeared. I'm not sure about you, Alexis, but I heard Gransky state very clearly my son-in-law called this morning, said he'd been playing golf this morning. Yep, that's what I heard too, and that's what he said. That's what dad told the police and called the operator. That is what his story was at first. Then there was evidence that he was in the marina, so then he changed his story. Also, can we go back to the juror that everybody keeps saying has lied, the person involved in the case?

Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that too. You know, I named her Strawberry Shortcake during the coverage because of her red hair. And she seemed like such a sweet person. I've often wondered if she considered herself not to be a crime victim. I've wondered if that's why she answered that way, Alexis. You are exactly right. She said when she was filling, she said nothing was the same in these two cases. The girlfriend of her ex never threatened to kill me, never threatened to kill my unborn child, never threatened to beat me up. So she says, when I filled out my questionnaire, none of this came to mind because they weren't the same thing. And in fact, she dropped the restraining order against this woman. They're friends. They have states, they're friends. And the woman actually just spent a week in jail for

vandalism. It's very different than spending years in jail for killing your wife and your unborn child. You know, Alexis, I'm glad you told me that. I did not realize that. But I know, having been a crime victim myself, very often crime victims' families don't realize they're a crime victim too. And I wondered all along if GR-7 didn't really regard herself as a crime victim. She was never touched, punched, attacked. I always wondered when all this came up, if GR-7 did not consider herself a crime victim. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we're talking about a sudden, sudden change in the Scott Peterson conviction. And as you'll recall, Karen Stark, a New York psychologist,

joining us from Manhattan at KarenStark.com. Karen, many times I've been asked over the years, you don't really think that's ever going to get reversed, do you? And I would always say, you know what? You never know what an appellate court is going to do. And there are people that firmly, especially after this, A&E did a special on Peterson Jackie. A&E just came out with a, quote, special on Scott Peterson that suggests he is innocent. That is the furthest thing from the truth.

Karen Stark, what do you make of the sudden decision by the California Supreme Court and what this is doing to the crime victims left behind? That is the family of Lacey. It's devastating, Nancy. Think about it. There was so much circumstantial evidence, which counts. And there's the fact that he was able to lie one time, let alone that he told his mistress. Remember that Amber Frye that his wife was dead.

Not that they were divorced, not that they were separated, but she was dead. And I think those lies. Oh, Karen, Karen. Oh my goodness. I feel like you and I are at the sushi bar having sushi right now. Like we used to do all the time before the twins came. Karen, she, he didn't just say my wife is dead. He said, this will be my first Christmas as a widower. My wife, I lost, I lost my wife, my first Christmas without her. And can you believe it? Either he's a killer or he's clairvoyant, Karen Stark, because it turned out that was his first Christmas without his wife. And she was dead. And he seemed to predict that just a few days

before she went missing. And Nancy, when I was listening, when you had that repeated about her stepfather saying that Scott had called, he even said he went golfing around 930. I think I heard that. Oh, you know what? I hate replaying the same sound, but I want to hear it again too, Jackie, if you don't mind hearing the beginning of Ron Gransky, God rest his. Lacey Peterson. Lacey P-P-E-R-S-O-N, right? P-P-E-R-S-O-N. Okay, right there. What did you hear, Joe Scott Morgan? Yeah, I heard that, you know, that his, he'd been playing golf and that he was absent, that she's absent from the sphere. I think the most striking thing for me is this thought that the dog comes back with the leash on, to me, is quite striking.

What is significant to me is that Scott Peterson tells Ron Gransky that morning he had been playing golf. This wasn't two or three days before when he said, I'm going to play golf Christmas Eve morning. And I just got to tell you something, Alexis Tereshchuk, you're married. You have, I still call him a baby. I know he's not a baby anymore. On Christmas and Christmas Eve, those are big family times. People come over, people have dinner, and that's exactly what Lacey was planning. Alexis, I've seen the inside of her home there on Covina in Modesto. She had it. It was a small home, but she had it decorated. I could tell she did it

herself. It was beautiful. And she had been working on the whole dinner, the holiday, the everything. There is no way in H-E-double-L he was going to go out and go fishing for hours on end when she needed him at home to get ready for all the festivities. Exactly. I mean, you can see in the pictures, the dining room table was set already for the dinner that they were having the next day. She had planned everything meticulously. And she also was out with him the night before on the 23rd. They went to her sister's place and Scott got a haircut. Like everything was so normal and so Christmassy. And then she disappeared.

Guys, I earlier was going to play from ABC 2020 because I want you to hear Lacey's mom, Sharon Rocha. Here's another problem for trial. Ron Gransky, Lacey's surrogate dad, has passed away. So whatever Scott Peterson told him that morning has been preserved through a court reporter and through this 911 call. That is an issue when you have to retry an old case. Witnesses pass away. Witnesses move. You can't find them. You can't find evidence. Itry an old case. Witnesses pass away. Witnesses move. You can't find them.

You can't find evidence. It's an uphill task. Is this guy going to walk free? Now take a listen to 2020. This is Sharon Rocha speaking. The last time I saw Lacey, she and I were sitting side by side and Scott was sitting on the floor and we were watching TV

and she said the baby was kicking. So I put my hand on her stomach because I'd never felt him kick. She leaned over to me, and she said, Mom, Scott doesn't like to do this. She said, I asked him to feel my stomach when the baby kicks, and he never wants to touch my stomach. That really, really bothered me, and that was the last time I saw her. It seems as if Lacey had planned all along to have children and that was understood going into it but if you analyze their marriage it seems that

when she got pregnant with Connor things started going sideways. Boy they really did. Least of all, the sex relationship. He started with an unassuming single woman, Amber Fry. Not his first affair behind Lacey's back by far, but seemingly the one that was the most important because it was during his sex affair with her that his wife goes missing, found dead, washed ashore there at San Francisco Bay. To you, Bobby Chacon, former special agent, FBI screenwriter, Criminal Minds, how significant is that Peterson changed his alibi from golfing, he told more than one person that that day,

he'd been out golfing that morning to fishing at san francisco bay how significant is it that her body washes up from the waters where he's gone fishing bobby hugely significant i mean he had they lived hours away there was no reason for him to be there on that particular day and he just happens to make the excuse or the story that he was there where his wife's body ultimately uh wind up i spent four weeks searching that day for lacy's head her hands and her feet which were missing from her body when she washed up and i was involved with the detectives there and you know it was so puzzling on why he would pick that place of all places you could go to fish in that whole area and you live hours away and you just buy a new boat why that area that's significant hey i want you to tell me that one more time

tell me about your involvement my guide the fbi guide team was called up to richmond bay the area of san francisco bay uh where lacey's body and connor were found there were significant portions of her body missing, namely her head, her hands, and her feet. They had evidence to support a theory that said weights were tied around her neck, her wrists, and her ankles. And over the course of the months that she was in the water, the tied action worked on those loose joints in the wrists, ankles, and neck.

And ultimately, a storm blew through the night before they washed up on the shore, and the storm broke her free from those bindings, in effect, the weak points of the body anatomically. And so we were charged with going down and finding the head, hands, and feet because there was evidence in Scott's storage locker that he had made homemade weights. And the theory was he had tied a weight to each hand, to each foot, and to the neck to keep her submerged, which is something I had found in my work previous cases. And so we were charged with going and finding the remaining pieces of Lacey, and we spent four weeks doing that. Tell me and all the listeners about the San Francisco Bay. Guys, for those of you just joining us, the penalty phase and the Scott Peterson murder convictions has been reversed.

There is a chance the actual conviction itself may be reversed, but I just want it very clear. The reality is, when you have to retry the penalty phase, you might as well put on the entire case because you want your jury to hear it all. And that's what we're talking about right now. The fact that this case may have to be retried in full. To you, Bobby Chacon, could you describe those choppy waters of the San Francisco Bay where Lacey had been thrown?

Yeah, it was fairly shallow. It was only 6 to 10 feet of water. And there's some evidence on the body when it was recovered that at least partially at low tide, parts of her body may have been out of the water subjected to the sun. And there was tidal action, so the tide rose and fell in that area. And so it was a common fishing ground. It was shallow. People did a lot of fishing there, and she was in the water several months. And through that action of rising and falling with the tide,

the theory is that the wrists and ankles ultimately weakened from the waves, and that storm surge broke them free because when Lacey's decommosed body, partially decommosed body, washed up, it was missing the hands, the feet and the head. And, you know, we searched for a month with many, many divers in the water. We would have lunch often with Lacey's mom and members of her family when we broke for lunch. And and, you know, we were unfortunately unsuccessful in locating them. That is certainly something to keep you awake at night, thinking of your child body out in the San Francisco Bay with all the fishing boats and the unborn baby Connor as well. We wait as justice unfolds.

Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, Fred. This is an iHeart Podcast.