RedHanded - Episode 279 - Scott Peterson: Trial by Media? - Part 2

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

In the concluding part of our deep dive into this murky case, Suruthi and Hannah explore the high drama of the trial that everyone was talking about. And examine the evidence for and against Scott Peterson, including a dissection of those infamous tapes… Tour Tickets: redhandedpodcast.com  Merch: Percivalclo.com now for brand new, premium merch! Code: REDHANDED10 for 10% off See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. The finale. It is. This is the last episode of 2022. It's been a hell of a year. It's been a hell of a year. So thank you all for everything you did for us this year. Thank you for being here right up until the end. And hopefully we're going to go

out with a bang today. One would hope. Yeah. So we are going to pick up exactly where we left off last week. Goes without saying, if you are looking at this in your podcast player and it says part two and you haven't listened to part one, I really don't know what to tell you. Go listen to part one first. So yes, we are now on the shores of San Francisco Bay, where over the course of about 18 hours, on the 14th of April 2003, along the Point Isabel regional shoreline, the body of a late-term male fetus and a decomposed female torso were found washed up. The police couldn't wait for the post-mortem to confirm their identities. They just knew it had to be Lacey and Connor, and it was time to arrest Scott. After all, they had found the bodies of who they thought were Lacey and Connor,

90 miles from the Petersons' home, in the exact place Scott had gone fishing the day that Lacey vanished. That's pretty bloody good probable cause. The other reason for the rush was that the police had been keeping close tabs on Scott, and given his movements since the bodies had been found, they were nervous. Scott's mobile phone GPS, which they had tracked, remember, showed him driving farther and farther south. And police were worried that he was heading for Mexico. And once he got there, there wasn't much they could do about it. They had followed him for hours.

But Scott knew that they were following him. And eventually, detectives pulled Scott over and arrested him near the Torre Pines golf course in La Jolla, San Diego. Scott claimed that he was there to play golf with his dad and brother that day, just a casual 420 miles away from Modesto. That's a seven-hour drive, and even for Americans, seven hours to play golf for a day. He's not even staying overnight. That's madness. I mean, he never says he's fucking... Just what? Like, that day he's driving there. That day he's driving there. Whether he's driving there whether he's planning on staying or not who fucking knows but like it's mind-boggling first of all who plays golf who are you i don't believe anyone actually plays golf second of all yeah who drives 420 miles to play golf third of all who does that just a few days after two bodies have been found matching

the description of your missing wife and your unborn son. Scott Peterson. Surely you would be camped outside a police station or at home staring at the phone waiting to hear if all hope was lost and that your family was dead. Again, there will be people, as there always are, that want to say that maybe he just needed to blow off steam. Everyone deals with things differently. He needed to distract himself until they found someone. Okay, but there's no denying that while the golf course is not very close at all to home for Scott, it was just 30 miles from the Mexican border. And that's not all, because when the police caught up with Scott, he was driving a new car. He had dyed his hair and his beard, and he had $15,000 of cash on him. Plus four mobile phones,

camping equipment, 200 sleeping pills, 20 Viagra pills, and his brother's ID. Sleeping pills and Viagra is an odd combination. Yeah. I just don't know. No, I've got nothing.

I don't know. I've got nothing. But what I do have is that it really looked like he was going on the run. But as usual, Scott had an explanation for everything. Apparently, his mum Jackie had accidentally taken $15,000 out of Scott's account. Apparently, they had once shared a joint account, and Scott had just forgotten to take her name off it. And she had accidentally withdrawn the money from that account

and decided to just give it to him as cash with an apology. Okay, Jackie. So why did he have his brother's ID? Well, his family were going to play a round of golf at Torrey Pines and his brother, who's a San Diego resident, apparently gets a discounted rate. So that's why. They're very thrifty for people who are waiting to find out if Lacey and Connor's bodies have been found. I mean, I was about to go off on petrol prices and how much it would cost you to drive 420 miles. It's 2003. And America. Yeah, it's California in 2003. 50p. It's really not, that's not an argument either, so I'll just shut up.

Okay, so why the bleached hair and beard? If you look at pictures of him, his hair is like a sort of dirty blonde greenish colour of somebody who has done a bad bleach job on themselves i wonder what that feels like for those of you don't follow us on social media you will be unfamiliar with hannah's little trip down bleach lane it's starting to come back through at the ends well that's gonna be there a while yeah i know in my defense i had a car panic and i had to dye my hair myself because I ran out of time. We were going on tour the next day and then the good people of Dublin saved my bacon. But yeah, I need to go and do it again because it's starting to come through. The good thing is red is the largest colour molecule, so it'll take the longest to fade. So hopefully you'll be just fine for the many years it will take for that to grow out so anyway scott peterson didn't have anybody to help

him dye his hair and his beard but he also at first didn't say that that's what it was he said that it was the chlorine because he'd been going swimming a lot lately and it had bleached his incredibly dark brown hair a weird dirty blonde blonde. Chlorine doesn't do that. Unless your hair is already dyed, it doesn't fuck with your hair like that. No, it doesn't. Obviously he dyed it and later he did admit that he had dyed it, but he said that it was to help him evade the media. Now, before anybody jumps out of my throat, I do have to admit,

if it had been to hide from the police, it wasn't a great ploy because they'd already seen him with dyed hair the day before they arrested him. But as we do know, he was going on all those weird little like secret driving trips to the bay. I don't know. Maybe, maybe. The media were hounding him. I'll give you that much. People also say, if he was on the run, why didn't he run sooner? If he was going to run at all, surely it would have made more sense to do it earlier in the game. But we posed the question, why would he? The police had no bodies, and without the bodies, the prosecutor wasn't going to move ahead with the case. Scott also had a family who were totally on his side, covering for him, as usual. Why would he have prematurely left all of that and a very good life that he had behind, unless he had to?

We think that he thought he'd just wait it out for a little bit. Just keep an eye on the body discovery situation, which explains his little trips to the San Francisco Bay. And then he was convinced he could talk his way out of everything else as long as the bodies didn't show up. But even if you explain away each and every oddity about the situation on the day of the arrest, like why does he have four mobile phones? He doesn't really have an explanation for that. He sort of answers everything else. But even if you explain away each and every oddity about the situation on the day of the arrest, like why does he have four mobile phones? He doesn't really have an explanation for that. He sort of answers everything else. But even if you explain all of that away, like the hair, the cash, the mobiles, etc. Again, if you add them all up, because it's not just one thing, it's again many things,

it really does look like he was a man who was about to go on the run. Again, can't prove it, but it really looks like it. Especially when you throw in that the day the police arrested him, the day that he was a mere 30 miles from the Mexican border, was in fact the exact day of the autopsies of the two bodies that had been found on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay. And that was the day that it would be 100% confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt if it was Lacey and Connor who had been found. And this news, that it was indeed Lacey and Connor,

surprise surprise, was confirmed to the police on their long drive back from San Diego to Modesto. The officers claimed that Scott, who was sat in the back of their police car, had no reaction at all when they told him. He says that he did have a huge reaction on the inside, but that he didn't want them to see it. And maybe, like maybe, people point to this again being like, aha, look. But like his reactions for me are so secondary to everything else we have to discuss today. And so Scott Peterson was charged with the first degree homicide of Lacey Peterson and Connor Peterson. And the district attorney wanted the death penalty.

Within two weeks, Scott had ditched his public defender, and thanks to his parents, who remortgaged their house, he was able to secure the services of Mark Geragos. Geragos is notorious. He's defended the likes of Chris Brown and Bill Clinton's brother, so he ain't cheap. Fuck no, is he cheap. It was a million dollar retainer for Mark Garagos. In the documentary, The Murder of Lacey Peterson, which, watch if you want to,

but it is riddled with inaccuracies and, quite frankly, straight up lies. Anyway, in the documentary, they interview a lawyer who went to meet with Scott, and he says, I asked him what happened. If she slipped and hit her head, tell me, you'll be out in a few years. But he was adamant. I did not do this.

And I believed him. Over the next few weeks, you could tell he was so sad. He wanted to die. He'd lost so much weight. He was this baby, this mama's boy, who'd been turned into a monster by the media. I beg your pardon.

Honestly, I just have no words. I was watching it and I was like, I don't know what to say. A baby? He's a 33. He's a, well, 31 when Lacey goes missing, 33 by the time he stands trial. So he's in his early 30s. Had multiple affairs on his wife, was having an affair when she goes missing. What about him as a baby i don't know that's like what his mum would say and i just think this whole thing right is that they present

that in the documentary as if we're meant to like have any stock in it they want us to believe in scott's innocence now based on his behavior they're like he was so upset he couldn't believe it he wanted to die he lost so much weight but we're not allowed to look at any of the odd behavior that might point to his guilt yeah good point and also where was this baby's loss of appetite and sadness and wanting to die etc when his pregnant wife lacy was missing for four months before they found her body like this is the thing when you see pictures of him after he's been arrested at like his pre-trial hearing at the trial the trial takes quite a long time to like come about. When you see pictures of him after he's been arrested at, like, his pre-trial hearing at the trial, the trial takes quite a long time to, like, come about.

But when you see him during all that time, he loses so much weight. And he does. He looks like shit compared to how he looked before. But again, between Lacey going missing and her body being found, so a time which you would imagine is filled with intense anxiety for the husband, he doesn't seem to lose any weight then. He doesn't seem to look like shit then. But he does after he's arrested. And maybe you could say, well, he wasn't that sad when Lacey went missing because even if he didn't kill her, that he hated her. He

didn't want to be with her anymore. And it was a sort of blessing out of the blue that his wife had gone missing, this woman that he wanted to divorce anyway so maybe even if he didn't kill her he wasn't all that sad that she'd vanished that's pretty cold about a woman you've been married to for five years even if you don't love her anymore but what about your unborn child that she is carrying eight and a half months that baby was born then he could have lived like i just don't buy this thing that some people say that, like, maybe he just wasn't that sad because he wanted to divorce her anyway. She was pregnant with his kid. But in any case, with Scott now charged,

everyone turned their attention to the trial. And it was challenging right from the start. For example, where was the trial going to take place? It would have been tough to find anywhere in the state of California, possibly even the country, that would have been somewhere where this case hadn't been reported on extensively. But eventually the judge settled on Redwood City, about 90 miles from Modesto. Then there was jury selection. And this went on for weeks. The defence needed to find people who were open-minded about the case, despite all of the media coverage about the affair,

and with the likes of former prosecutor Nancy Grace analysing Scott's actions and assessing his guilt on a nightly basis in her usual bombastic way. It definitely wasn't easy to overcome all of the media coverage, and of course the media's behaviour did impact people's opinions. But that can and does happen. It's not the first time it's ever happened. And that's why the bar for conviction is set extremely high. The prosecution have to show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The defence only have to poke holes in that narrative. And again, I'm not saying that wrong convictions don't happen. Of course they do. But to say that the media's behaviour in this case is the only influencing factor and that everybody was so swept up in it and that that's what condemned him and it was Amber Frye and it was the media and it was everybody else's fault, I think, again, it just doesn't hold true when you look at all of the other evidence we're going to go into. So just bear that in mind.

So in the documentary, when they're talking about jury selection, the documentary, which is very much on the side of Scott Peterson being innocent, says that 50% of people who took the jury questionnaire said that they thought that Scott was guilty. But to me, that implies that 50% of people thought that he wasn't or that they didn't know. So they were open minded. Now, I know there were likely a lot of people lying about saying that they didn't know or that they thought he was innocent in order to get on the jury in this case. It was a very high-profile case. A lot of people wanted to be on this jury. But again, the criminal justice system isn't flawless. You have to take these people's word for it when you're doing jury selection.

But the trial is where all of the evidence is presented, overseen by a judge, and the jury are meant to decide there what they ultimately think. Even the fact that we use laypeople just off the street to be on juries makes the situation less ideal, but that's the situation. It isn't perfect. Another issue that people point out is that the jury in this case were not sequestered, which means they weren't hidden away. But it was likely going to be an incredibly long trial that went on for months. And while sequestering a jury on the one hand does keep them away from media reports and might get rid of the less serious candidates who are just in there to rub a neck, but the other problem is that it can lead to a group of desperate people willing to return a verdict that they aren't totally happy with just to be allowed to go home. Exactly what happened to the Central Park Five.

Exactly. Again, it is tricky. You could argue it either way. It works for either argument. Exactly. So in the end, the judge just has to make a decision. The last thing we want to say before we go on to the trial itself is something that Scott's supporters continuously harp on about.

The fact that this was a circumstantial case, not a direct evidence case. Let's be crystal clear on this once and for all. Circumstantial evidence is evidence. A circumstantial case is fully valid and just as powerful under the law as a direct evidence case would be, no matter what any defence attorney might claim. Yeah, when you see people talk about this and they'll be like, well, it was just a circumstantial evidence case. I'm like, under the law, that judge oversaw that case and was like, this is valid and powerful. There is no distinction that this is a lesser type of evidence in the eyes of the law. Also, I think the problem is that people misunderstand what circumstantial and direct evidence even mean. Direct evidence is things like eyewitness testimony, something we know can be and often is total and utter nonsense. And circumstantial evidence can actually include

things like every juror's favourites, like DNA and fingerprints, which people will often call physical evidence. And yes, it is physical evidence, but it's still also circumstantial evidence because all they do is place someone somewhere. If you find a fingerprint of somebody somewhere and a crime just so happened to be committed there, it is still only circumstantial. Other evidence is needed to tie the person whose fingerprint it is to the crime being committed. So if you're a patron and you listen to our Delphi update that we did last week, two weeks ago, they found a bullet casing in the woods that quote unquote matches a gun that they found in Richard Allen's house. But they have to now prove that that bullet casing was involved in the commission of the crime because he could have been there another day shooting his gun and that's why the bullet is there. That is still

circumstantial evidence, even though you'd also call it physical evidence. So like don't disregard and don't allow people to tell you, people who have other interests, that circumstantial evidence is not as powerful. It absolutely is. The key thing we have to remember with any criminal case like this one is that it's like building a wall. Every brick of circumstantial, behavioral, physical, direct evidence makes the case more and more solid. It's not about individual pieces of evidence, it's about the totality of evidence. Every messy detail and loose end can't be cleared away and neatly tied up. You often see with this case people being like, pick out one little thing that's a loose end and be like, well you can't explain that, therefore he's innocent. That's not the standard. That's not how this works.

Everything is messy. You can't explain away everything. But the point is, at the end, can you stand back, look at that wall and say that you have been convinced one way or another, beyond a reasonable doubt, as to somebody's guilt? That's the standard. So the moment you have all been waiting for, It is trial time. Let's get into it. Scott Peterson's trial started on the 1st of June 2004. And the prosecution's theory was that Scott had killed Lacey on the night of the 23rd of December and dumped her body in the San Francisco Bay on the 24th of December. The prosecution said that Martha Stewart hadn't been talking about meringues on the show that was aired on the morning of the 24th of December, so Scott was lying when he said that

he and Lacey had watched it together. I don't know why the prosecution went so hard after this. They really worked very hard to show that he killed her on the night of the 23rd. On one hand, you can be like, they're just trying to provide a really clear timeline for the jury to follow. But like, it's really irrelevant if he killed her on the night of the 23rd. On one hand, you can be like, they're just trying to provide a really clear timeline for the jury to follow. But like, it's really irrelevant if he killed her on the night of the 23rd or the morning of the 24th, because like, nobody sees her after they go to see her sister Amy. And she calls her mum at like 8.30pm that night. Nobody sees or hears from her again, ever. So like, it could have happened at any point. I don't know why they go on about this so hard, because it really fucks them over.

And it fucks them over in an extremely embarrassing way when the defence play a tape of the episode of Martha Stewart that went out on the 24th of December, and it featured Martha Stewart talking very definitely about meringues. The thing is, this doesn't make a difference to Lacey having been murdered by Scott or not, but it really does undermine the prosecution's something awful. And that's all the defence need to do. In any case, they just need to cause enough doubt.

This is a fucking capital murder case and they are fucking up like this almost in the opening statement. It is ludicrous that they allowed this to happen. But again, remember, it doesn't make a difference as to whether it's indicative of Scott's guilt or not. It just made the prosecution look stupid. The defence also stated that someone had been using the Petersons' home computer at 8.40am on the morning of the 24th to look at

sunflower umbrella stands and women's scarves. And they claimed that this was a smoking gun, that Lacey must have been alive that morning, so the morning of Christmas Eve. They even had the Petersons' maid testify that when she had cleaned the house the day before, a bench and a pair of hair colours that had been found in the bathroom when the police got there hadn't been there. Scott said that Lacey had sat on the bench that morning, so the morning of Christmas Eve, trying to curl her hair, like how her sister had showed her to do the night before. But so fucking what?

Neither of these prove anything. Firstly, anyone could have been using that computer to google sunflower stands. In fact, Scott's emails were also accessed within minutes of those sunflower stand searches and women's scarf searches. So what, were he and Lacey like jumping on and off the computer like within minutes to do these two different things? Or was it Scott pretending to be Lacey and opening his emails, forgetting that he's meant to be establishing some sort of weird alibi? Or maybe Lacey was indeed alive that morning and she had indeed dragged that bench in there to sit down and curl her hair. And then she'd looked up some sunflower stands and scarves and then she had looked at Scott's emails. Maybe she'd found one from Amber and a fight had erupted.

The point is, the bench and the Googling doesn't prove anything. All these things do is back up Scott's unverifiable story, and we already know that he lies. Yes, please see last week's episode. As for the timeline of when Lacey actually died, all we know for sure, for sure, for sure, is that Lacey last spoke to her mum on the phone at 8.30pm on the 23rd of December when she and Scott got home from the hair salon.

And Lacey was never seen alive again. Scott could have killed her that night or the following morning. Interestingly, neighbours said that the first thing Lacey did when she woke up was to open all of the curtains in the house. And on the morning of the 24th of December, the curtains were not opened, even though Scott says that Lacey woke up and had breakfast at least half an hour before he did. The prosecution also asserted that after killing Lacey,

Scott cleaned up and that's why the mop was out. Then he wrapped her up and put her in the bed of his truck, hidden by the three garden parasols that we were talking about last week that he had loaded up on the bed of his truck that day. Then he drove Lacey's body to his office where he moved her onto his boat. And then he hooked his aluminium boat onto his truck, packed his fishing gear, forgot his saltwater lures and then drove to San Francisco Bay. Yeah and some people will point out here that he was only at his office for 25 minutes. We said that last week. He gets there, he does some emailing, he does some googling. Remember the mortiser? He does a google to look up how to assemble this woodwork tool and people are like well the tool had only arrived a few days before and it was assembled after that and he had sat there and googled how to assemble it so are you telling me

that he got there googled how to assemble a tool wrote some emails to his boss assembled that tool and found the time to move Lacey's body into the boat and like attach it to the truck and all of that stuff we only have his word for it that that tool was assembled that day. Him googling how to assemble a mortiser does not prove that that's when he assembled it. Like, that's not proof. He lies. He lies all the time.

So people are like, in that 25 minutes, he couldn't have had time to do all of that and assemble the tool. No one fucking saw when the tool was assembled. It is again yet an unverifiable piece of evidence that we only have his word for. So coming back to the prosecution, they were able to show at trial that Scott had also researched the tidal patterns that we had talked about last week. Before he had even bought a boat, which is quite advanced planning.

And they were also able to show. You would do that though. I would do that. But I wouldn't kill my wife. Yet. And they also were able to show that he had focused on the current patterns specifically around the area of Brooks Island, the exact place he went on Christmas Eve. Brooks Island is also directly parallel to the strip of shoreline where Connor and Lacey's bodies were found. And also, going back to that Christmas Eve interview that Scott Peterson does with Al Brichini, in that he's like, oh, I just found this little island that was sort of covered in trash and I thought that would be a good place to go fishing. He had googled that island by name.

He knew what that island was called, but he pretends like he doesn't know what it's called and it was all just so spur at the moment. So anyway, the prosecution had an expert hydrologist testify that the tidal flow of the bay would have led to both bodies washing up where they did if they had been dumped exactly where Scott was fishing, off Brooks Island. The defence discredited this witness, saying that he had no expertise to make such claims. And like, maybe not, maybe he fucking doesn't. But Lacey and Connor were found in the San Francisco Bay not far from the island so when people are like he has no expertise to say this that's where the fucking bodies were often with this case what you find is people acting like Scott is being

railroaded like the police spend all of their time looking in San Francisco Bay ignoring every other possible avenue and that they never found the body or that the body was found like on the other side of the state and they still went after Scott completely changing like their narrative about how he had done it. No, no, no. The police are like, we think it's him. We think the bodies are in San Francisco Bay because that's where he was that day.

They spend months looking there and then they find them there. So Scott and his defenders also will always say that he was an avid fisherman. He even took Lacey on a deep-sea fishing expedition on their first date, for example. So they say that him researching nautical charts and currents and tidal patterns, buying a boat and going fishing were just, you know, part and parcel. They were standard practice for Scott.

But let's remember that he did all of his research, his boatie research, on the 8th of December. And he bought his boat on the 9th of December, at the same time he was having to break the news that he'd lost his wife to Amber Fry, and also two weeks before Lacey vanished. And very interestingly, he had bought a two-day fishing licence for San Francisco Bay on the 20th of December, four days before she went missing. Odd that he had a two-day fishing licence applied for in advance for those two specific days

when he claims that he decided to go fishing on the spur the moment on the morning of Christmas Eve. Who buys a fishing licence for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? A two-day fishing licence? And also, if he's an avid fisherman, why doesn't he already have a fucking boat? Yeah. And also, why does he already not have a fucking boat yeah and also why does he already not have a full year pass this is very interesting a two-day pass costs about twelve

dollars a full year's license something that scott hadn't owned since 1994 cost thirty dollars you only have to go fishing twice basically to make your money back so it didn't really look like he was planning on using that boat much. It's just fucking ridiculous. Honestly, I just don't know what to say. Well, I've got loads of things to say. Let's carry on. We've also got an expert that takes the stand at trial to assess avid fisherman Scott's set-up that day. Apparently his rods were not set up properly

and some of them didn't even have lines attached. Seems like a very half-assed attempt from someone who just drove 90 miles on Christmas Eve and did all of that googling and research on current patterns and tidal trends and just bought a fucking boat. But he forgot his laws Hannah. We all know that the best story at trial wins. So the prosecution had to explain the state of Lacey's body. And this is what they put forward. They put forward the idea that the most likely scenario is that Lacey had been weighed down by something attached to her arms, one of her feet and her head, and that when her body had decayed to the point that those limbs detached, Lacey had literally

fallen apart and risen to the surface, helped by a storm that had raged over the bay the night before she and Connor were discovered. This fits with her headless, lower armless and one footless body washing up on the shore. The prosecution even claimed to know what had been used to weigh her down. Scott had made his boat an anchor using cement. One anchor was found on the boat by police but at his garage they found the wooden plank that he'd used to make it on. So he basically has like a mould and he's sort of like setting it on top of this wooden plank and on this plank they spotted several cement rings and people dispute whether you can see these rings or not.

I think you can, or at least you can see a lot of cement on it, and it's a big old plank to make one cement anchor. But again, you know, make up your own mind. The interesting thing is, even if you don't think there are cement rings on there, his bag of cement was empty. So where was the rest of it? Scott claimed that he'd used the leftover cement that he had mixed after making his one anchor to fill in a

hole in his driveway at home. But the bag of dry cement was found in his garage. So what, he mixed the cement there and then drove it 10 minutes wet to his house. Or... It's equally stupid. I have in fact mixed cement myself. Oh, do tell. Do tell. So what you do if you don't have a cement mixer is you put the powder on the ground, you put water on it, and then you go over it with a spade until it looks like sand. Like wet sand, right? Labour intensive.

Uh-huh. I think I did it because I think a gardener was at our house or something and I was just like a really irritating child and he was like, go over there and mix the cement. So he could have taken the powder out of the cement bag, left the bag and then transported that to his house and mixed it at his house with water and a spade. But again, why would you do that? Exactly. You just put the bag in the van. Exactly.

Everything could be something else, right? And the prosecution said that they had an expert who confirmed that the cement on the driveway and that that had been used to make the anchor were not the same. So they're saying that's not what he did with the rest of the cement. But the defence said that they had someone who could confirm that it was the exact same cement. You can find an expert to say anything. We say this all the time on the show. So you just have to ask yourself, what makes more sense? Did this man buy an entire bag of cement and only make one singular anchor? An anchor, again, I'm not a boat expert, that other boat experts have said was not heavy enough to weigh down that 14-foot aluminium boat.

So where are the rest of them? The defence needed to counter all of the boat narrative presented by the prosecution. So they created a little experiment, which I feel like defence councils in the United States fucking love these. You don't see it here, really. No, it's so, like, theatrical.

They love it, especially Geragos.os like he is made for this shit here's what they did they got a guy a boat and a dummy that weighed 150 pounds and they sent all of these happy merry men out onto the san francisco bay and then they filmed this solitary guy as he tried to tie four anchors to the dummy and push it overboard. And this guy makes it seem totally impossible. He's falling over constantly, slipping all over the place. At multiple points, he looks like he's going to drown. And the defense conclude that thanks to this demonstration, if you can even call it that, they conclude that it would have been impossible to dump Lacey's body overboard. The judge, however, disallowed the video from being submitted to the court. And despite what Scott's defenders say, the judge was absolutely right to do so. Because firstly,

it is not even the same type of boat. It's similar. I'll give them that. But it's not the same. This is a death penalty charge. Like, get the same boat, for God's sake. It's just sitting there in his house. It's not the same this is a death penalty charge like get the same boat for god's sake it's just sitting there in his house it's not doing anything secondly the man that they used in this demonstration was about 130 pounds scott is 200 pounds or was 200 pounds at the time that's a big difference this guy is tiny compared to scott and the way the defense remedied this discrepancy was to tie weights to the boat actor man. So obviously it's going to make it more difficult for him to move and not drown. They've literally just weighed this man down and sent him out to sea.

And giving someone ankle weights or whatever they fucking did doesn't give them the strength of a man who was 70 pounds larger than them. It doesn't make any sense. It's laughable. It is. The whole thing was completely farcical for example you can watch the video of this demonstration it is on youtube in the video you see the man just keeps trying to like push the dummy over the side of the boat and the boat keeps tipping over it capsizes all this sort of like chaos is going on but any boat expert don't even need to be a boat expert anyone who's been on a fucking boat who's's jumped off a boat, will tell you that you jump off, you throw things off the end of the boat, the part of the boat that is more stable.

You don't throw things off or jump off the side of the boat or the boat's going to fucking capsize. And this idea that it was impossible for Scott to have thrown Lacey overboard. Let's clarify. Scott was six foot and 200 pounds. Lacey was shorter than me. She was five foot one and maybe 150 pounds pregnant. And someone chucked Lacey's body off a boat into the bay. Her body was not dumped at the marina because of where it was found. She must have been dumped off a boat. So trying to prove that it's impossible for her to be pushed off a boat is outrageous

because obviously somebody did. Exactly. And why couldn't it have been Scott? He certainly had the physicality to do it. The only way, the only way that it would have been easier for somebody to dump Lacey's body off a boat would have been if they had had a bigger boat and possibly more hands. But then I would argue also that more people on a boat could cause it to be more unstable. You could argue it either way. We'll come back to the issues with this particular theory later. All I will say is the idea that it was impossible for Scott to get Lacey's body over the boat that he had is nonsense.

And the judge even said to Mark Garagos and the defence, I'm not going to allow this video because you've got fucking weights tied to this guy, but I will let you do the experiment again and film it again while I am there. Geragos turned it down. The defence also pushed the point that the police never looked at anyone else for the crime, claiming that they focused solely on Scott and ignored vital leads, like a burglary that occurred in the Medina house, the house across the street from the Petersons' home. A neighbour reported to the police that at 11.40am on the 24th of December, so the day that Lacey vanished, she saw some suspicious-looking men and a van on the street opposite the Petersons'

house in front of the Medina's house. The police found the two men responsible and ruled them out of having been involved in Lacey's murder, and a lot of people are very sceptical about how the police managed to rule these men out. And here's why. The burglars claim that they had carried out the burglary on the 26th of December and not on the 24th. But the eyewitness saw them there on the 24th and by the 26th, with Lacey already missing, the street was awash with reporters. Someone would have seen a burglary if it had happened on the 26th. So the burglars are clearly lying about something. Yeah, they're clearly lying about the day on which they carried out

the burglary. I do think it happened on the 24th. But for a lot of people, this lie makes them look incredibly suspicious. I do find it hilarious that Scott's supporters will be like, well, you can't trust them. They're burglars and they're liars. And I'm like, well, Scott's a cheater and a liar, but we have to trust him. Okay. So the point though that these people make is that surely if you have some criminals in the area burglarising a home opposite the Petersons, they must be viable suspects. And I'm not saying they shouldn't have been looked at. Of course they should have been looked at. And they were. These people argue, what if Lacey had come out to take Mackenzie for a walk, seen the burglars, and maybe said something to them? So they abducted her, killed her, and then dumped her body. Well, maybe.

But there are quite a few issues with this theory. Firstly, Scott said that when he left the house that day, on the morning of Christmas Eve, Lacey was mopping. We know that he left just after 10am. And like we said last week, he changes the timing he leaves quite a few times. But we know that it was just after 10am because the voicemail that he got from his boss came in at 10.08am. And at the start of that call, Scott's phone pings off the cell tower near his house. But by the end of that call, which just lasted a few minutes, his phone was pinging off the cell tower near his office and his house to his office is about a 10-minute drive.

So we know that he was already on the move roughly about this time, so about 10.08. Karen Severus, the neighbour who found Mackenzie in the street with his lead-on and returned the dog to the Petersons' yard, did so at 10.18am and she has literal receipts to prove that that was the time that she did that So for the burglary abduction timeline to work Lacey, who was mopping when Scott left around 10.08 would have had to have stopped, put the lead on the dog gone out, been interrupted by a burglary

then been abducted, leaving Mackenzie to be found by a neighbour, all within the space of ten minutes. And those ten minutes were in the morning, in broad daylight, and nobody on the street saw or heard a thing. And they're awake enough, they're, like, alert enough to notice what Lacey does every morning and draws her curtains. Like, it's not like they're not looking, you know? No, it's suburbia.

Also, when neighbour Karen found Mackenzie, her curtains like it's not like they're not looking you know no suburbia also when neighbor karen found mackenzie she didn't report that the dog seemed agitated or stressed mackenzie is a retriever like he's a big dog i just can't believe that that type of dog would just be calm within minutes of being found because like you said scott left let's say at 1008 lazy comes out gets abducted and mackenzie is found by Karen within 10 minutes. She must have been abducted just minutes before Karen found him and Karen didn't see anything and Mackenzie is totally fucking chill. And as we'll go on to discover, Mackenzie was a barker. He wouldn't have just sat there if Lacey had been taken while he was there. Scott himself says in

that first interview that he gave the police on Christmas Eve that Mackenzie was a quote, very protective dog. So if Mackenzie had barked, as we would expect, how did no one see or hear any commotion? Also, what's all burglars abduct a woman with a massive fucking dog?

And how does the dog get out of that unharmed? You abduct this woman and then you let the dog just run away. It wasn't even running, it was just wandering around in the street. The other problem for me is that these burglars had waited until the Medinas, the family who lived in the house they targeted, left for the holidays before they went in. This was their whole plan.

They sat and they waited until the Medinas were gone. This is a very different type of crime to abducting and murdering a pregnant woman in broad daylight. Going into a house you know is empty to steal is not the same as murdering a pregnant woman. And you might disagree, you might think, you know, one type of criminal is the same as any type of criminal. I disagree, but maybe you think differently.

So even if you can buy all of the rest of it, there is a huge issue as to the timeline for this theory to make sense. Because the Medinas have stated that they did not leave that day, so Christmas Eve, until 10.30am. But Mackenzie was found wandering the street at 10.18am. And the neighbour, who saw the burglars, saw them at 11.40am. If Mackenzie was on the street because Lacey was abducted while she was walking him, then she would have had to have been taken between 10.10, 10.08,

roughly about that time, and 10.18 when Karen finds Mackenzie. So that would have been before the burglars even went into the Medina house. Yes, it doesn't add up really, does it? The Medinas were still in the house at this point. So then we have to believe that lacy saw these men casing the place they catch sight of her there's a confrontation they abduct her and somehow silently because like i said there's no reports that anyone heard or saw anything they knock her out or kill her they leave the dog to wander off quietly not making a sound and then take the huge

risk of staying there on the street with lacey, either dead or unconscious, in their van until they've managed to burgle the Medina home and then they drive off with her. And then, in this fantasy story, these burglars kill her, if they hadn't already, and then they dump her body 90 miles away in the exact same place that her husband happened to go fishing that very same day. This is what I'm saying.

There's just too many of them. There's too many of them. And that's why, I mean, as we have extensively discussed in the office over the past few weeks, this is what I'm saying. There's just too many of them. There's too many of them. And that's why, I mean, as we have extensively discussed in the office over the past few weeks, that's why I find the argument so frustrating of the people who defend him. It's like, yes, of course, any of these things, isolation could be explained away, but not all of them.

No, not even slightly for me. Still, the defence have a job to do. So they theorise that whoever killed Lacey may have dumped her body in the San Francisco Bay because they wanted to frame Scott. But why? Yeah, they say that all of the media attention, all the police, like, you know, showing them constantly searching the San Francisco Bay. These people were like, aha, what do we do with this murdered pregnant woman we've got? Let's go dump her body 90 miles away from where we have killed her to frame her husband, even no one's looking at us and this is why it doesn't work if it was a stranger abduction which mon cheri are

they are incredibly rare a home invasion ending in a murder is incredibly rare and also being abducted by someone you don't know equally incredibly rare of course it happens but barely if this is a stranger abduction killing why would they even bother to hide her body, let alone try to frame her husband? Surely they would just dump her body in the first ditch they saw, get away from it, or bury it somewhere. Or there's a bajillion things you could do, one of the freshwater lakes, except there's loads of other options other than the San Francisco Bay. And also, as we know, the police were at the San Francisco Bay regularly after Lacey vanished because they suspected Scott. You would like to hope that they would notice someone dumping a body of a pregnant woman in there.

Yeah, and also, if you were the burglars who had killed her, why would you take the enormous risk of taking her to the place where you know the police are in order to dump her body when any shallow pit grave woods would have done. Also, these two guys that they arrested, where did they get a bigger boat than Scott had? I would love to know because when you see them, they're just like two fucking low-end criminals. Where have they got a bigger boat in order to allow them to dump Lacey's body? Because remember, the defence said that it was impossible to dump a body out of the one that was the size that Scott had and okay this is where I said we were going to come back to the fact that maybe it would be easier if there were two of you well I don't know the very fact that there were two of them makes it less likely to me because while the defense can argue that this would have made it

easier for them to dump a body into the bay it also kind of makes it less likely that both of them would have stayed quiet one of them would have presumably led on the kill. One of them is probably the more dominant one. And both of them were going to get sent down for the burglary anyway. Wouldn't one turn on the other in order to get a plea deal if they had actually killed Lacey? And these two guys look like the fucking burglars out of Home Alone. I do not believe for a second that they managed to pull all of this off and not get seen for one second and have any iota

of suspicion towards them. I think they absolutely lie that they committed the burglary on the 26th because I think they're so scared of being associated with this but I don't think that that's what happened. And finally as Hannah has alluded to let's look at the stats shall we and just assess the likelihood of these various scenarios. Because what do we all think is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US? I believe that this is the same for the UK as well, but these stats are from the US. Well, it's homicide. And the killer is usually a partner, ex-partner, or the baby daddy. We've talked about this before. We've talked about how when women are in dangerous relationships, and I'm not saying Scott Peterson was hitting Lacey before that. A lot of people say there was no evidence of that. I don't think there was. But we also know that that doesn't mean anything. We also know that when women are pregnant, that is when they are at the highest risk of being murdered by their partner. And it's so interesting, isn't it? Because loads of fucking pro-life people, Kanye included,

will be like, oh, like the most dangerous place for a baby to be is in the mother's womb. The most dangerous time to be a woman is when you've got a baby in you. Yeah. And for comparison, a study that looked into household burglaries that resulted in a homicide

found that of the 2.1 million that took place in the US between 2003 and 2007, 0.004% of them ended in homicide. Now I know before everybody yells at me that is not a perfect comparison. I'm just asking you to consider what is more statistically likely. Geragos also claimed at trial that police had botched the investigation and that some serious misconduct had occurred.

For example, during the investigation there had been leaks from the police to the media, there were reports that vomit had been cleaned up near the pool at the Petersons, that there was a smell of bleach at the house and that the mop and bucket in the kitchen had blood on them. None of that was true. And Geragos argued that the prosecution had no physical evidence at all that the murder had been committed by Scott, or even that it had happened in his home. After all, forensics had been all over that house with a fine tooth comb and found nothing. But again, that doesn't prove anything, because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

In a case of manual strangulation, there would be no blood, for example, only messed from a struggle that could easily be cleaned away and mopped up. At trial, Detective Al Brichini did also have to admit to an omission from his police report. Again, we'll talk about it, but I don't see how this particular point makes a difference as to Scott being guilty or not. But I understand that the defence had to bring it up because it would have brought Bruchini's bias into account and raised questions about his thoroughness. Because Bruchini said that Lacey had never been to Scott's garage slash office and that she didn't know about the boat. But a person who had the unit opposite Scott's

told police that Lacey had actually been there the day before and that they knew this because Lacey had actually asked to use her loo. For some reason Brichini redacted this from his report. It seemed like the defence were saying basically that he was really invested in making it seem like this was a secret boat and the defence argued that Lacey knew about the boat and actually it was going to be a present for Lacey's dad, like stepdad, but like Lacey's stepdad is like a proper fisherman who had a nice boat. Why would he want a 14 foot aluminium secondhand piece of shit like Scott bought so I don't know secret boat not secret boat I don't really think it makes much of a difference and the police were also shown to not have recorded certain other things in their reports like when they had asked Scott outright at

the start of the investigation if he had a girlfriend and he said no they didn't record this anywhere and this would have helped their case so I think it's just the fact that I'm not making excuses for them obviously as a detective, as somebody investigating a missing woman that turns into a homicide investigation. Your thoroughness is going to be pulled up at trial but they omitted things that would have helped them as well as things that make them look like they were biased. So yes mistakes were made and Brichini definitely honed in on Scott early in the investigation. But they certainly looked at other suspects. And also, the defence make it seem like the police again were on this total fishing expedition,

constantly searching the San Francisco Bay. But once again, they miss out the key point that that's exactly where they found Lacey and Connor. During the trial, the prosecution and defence had very different styles. The prosecution actually seemed to have been pretty boring, being described by those who were there as lacking passion. Geragos, on the other hand, was a bulldog, and you would hope so for a million fucking dollars. He was theatrical and brash and knew how to spin a good tale.

And he knew that Amber Fry was coming. So Geragos even said in his opening statement, you're not going to like my client, making it clear that infidelities were not to hamper the jury's view on whether or not Scott Peterson was guilty of murder. As we said last week, a love rat does not a murderer make. But there was no doubting that Amber Fry would play a huge role in this trial. And boy, did she.

She turned up, took the stand and had the receipts. The prosecution played call after call after call that she had secretly recorded with Scott after Lacey disappeared. The lies, the sex, the scandal. It was unbelievable. And so many people who endlessly defend Scott Peterson go after Amber. They say that she and Scott had only been seeing each other for a little while, she should have just got over it and got on with her life, but instead she was out for revenge, willing to do anything to bring him down.

And they paint her as this sort of crazed, bunny-boiling, scorned woman. It's not at all. It's such a lazy argument. It is. They make it sound like basically she's just pissed that he lied to her. And so she goes to the police, gets this secret recorder, and then she's constantly calling him trying to get stuff out of him. He's on the call to her for hours. I can't remember who calls who from the candlelight vigil,

but he calls her back at midnight California time, because remember he's pretending to be in Parisis and he talks to her for an hour that is not a man who's being harassed by a woman that he has no interest in so please enough with that argument and enough with smearing amber fry constantly it makes me sick i she's actually kind of my hero like can you imagine finding out what she's found out and instead of just like going into a depression pit going down to the fucking police station and being like, what can I do? I have so much time for Amber. Get it, Amber. And people will be like, oh, she wrote a book after and got money. So?

You would too. I fucking would. Do it. Get that bag. Scott lied to Amber repeatedly about everything. He told her he'd lost his wife and he was sobbing and putting on this big drama. He dragged Amber into this mess. So to make it look like she's any sort of agent in this is absolutely gross.

And the worst thing is, like, so many women you see doing this. That's what I was just going to say. All of the examples of that argument I have seen... Are women. Women on women, and I don't... I think she's a hero. And again, I'm not here to be like, you should blindly defend her because she's a woman.'m saying she is dragged into this by scott peterson if you listen to the calls we have played you the clips if you look at the time stamps for how long

these calls went on for almost every single call that was submitted by the prosecution from amber to the trial were all over an hour long that is not a a man. Scott Peterson, say what you will about him, does he strike you as the kind of man who does anything that he doesn't want to do? No. Do you think he would be on the phone to a woman he didn't want to talk to for that long? It's nonsense.

I also find it laughable that so many people who support Scott say that Amber Frye's tapes are irrelevant, claiming that just because he had an affair, it doesn't make him a killer. We've said this time and time again. And basically they say that Amber Frye was nothing more than a character witness and that these tapes served only to make the jury emotional and angry and blinkered them from being able to see the truth. But I'm not having it. Yes, Scott Peterson is a massive piece of shit for cheating on his eight and a half month pregnant wife. We can all agree on that.

But that is not what makes Amber's testimony or the tapes important, at least to me. The tapes recorded at Lacey's vigil and over the course of January 2003, so after Lacey has been missing four weeks, and as the time was edging closer and closer to Connor's due date in February, Scott was phoning his secret girlfriend he thinks no one knows about for hot steamy chats and this whole like he's a sex addict thing like please give it a rest and this is important because these calls after Lacey goes missing

are totally different to pre-Lacey vanishing affair if you could show me a man who had been having an affair before his wife vanished, then his wife goes missing and he completely ends that and he's focused on finding his wife even if he doesn't love her anymore, whatever. I'd be like, that's not evidence of much. But he continues it and he loves it. So I think it's so important because this behaviour after Lacey went missing shows a man who had absolutely zero concern for the safety or well-being of his wife and unborn child and it certainly looks like a man who had a very clear motive to get his pregnant wife out of the picture. And again we're not

saying so we could be with Amber before everybody tells us well she's got a kid blah blah blah we covered that very extensively last week. Also the fact that Scott had told Amber two weeks before Lacey vanished that this would be the first holiday he'd be spending without his lost wife. Again, are you really telling me he's the most unlucky man in the world? Or is it a clear sign of premeditation? And that brings us on to the bit of the story that the defence went after the hardest to try and convince people that Scott just had to be innocent. Baby Connor. Connor's body had been found on its own, separated from Lacey, and his body was in much better condition

than his mother's. The defence therefore claim that Connor must have been born and killed or died after Lacey and then dumped in the San Francisco Bay later. Why would they claim this? This is why. Because it means they can say Scott, who was being watched night and day after Lacey vanished, couldn't have done it. So Lacey must have been abducted. Both the prosecution and the defence pull onto the stand

experts who claim to know exactly when Connor died. The prosecution's expert said that Connor couldn't have died any later than the 23rd or the 24th of December. The defence's expert said that baby Connor couldn't have died any earlier than the 29th of December, five days after Lacey was seen. In reality, it would be next to impossible for either of these experts to definitively prove the gestational age of Connor, a foetus that was eight and a half months old, down to the day or even the week. By that stage, the foetus is basically fully formed and the size and growth rate can vary massively. And it's not constantly changing, like with a younger fetus. So for either of them to say that they can pinpoint the day that this fetus Connor died is nonsense. For them to say he didn't die any later than the 23rd or the 24th or any earlier than the 29th,

it's just not something you can prove. And while there's all this talk on the internet about what the defence's expert said regarding the size and length of tibias and fibias to prove that Connor lived past the 24th of December, sure, okay, if you want to believe that, if you want to believe that that is real science, if you want to believe that you can prove gestational age down to a day, fine, but it still leaves a huge question open as to how then Connor was born. Because, for as bad a condition as Lacey's body was when it washed ashore, they did have enough to say in the autopsy that Lacey Peterson never gave birth. If a vaginal birth had occurred pre or post-mortem, there would have been evidence. It would have been

obvious. And before anybody's like, her body was in the water for four months, how could you have told if there had been a vaginal birth? Well, you can tell if there's a vaginal birth from the female pelvis bones. So even if there was just bone, which wasn't the case, even if there was just bone, they would have been able to tell if Lacey had had a vaginal birth. And she hadn't. No such birth, pre or post-mortem, had occurred. And this is a grisly fact that I wish I hadn't discovered, but I had. And so you can all know about it too. A post-mortem vaginal birth where the baby is expelled through the vaginal canal after the mother's death is known as a coffin birth. Jesus.

Yep. And I just want to clarify, this has been reported in places that that's what happened, that she had a coffin birth. That's not what happened. Again, if that had happened, they would have seen it in the autopsy. So just to be crystal clear, Connor was not born vaginally to Lacey Peterson pre or post her death. There were also no cuts to her abdomen, indicating a C-section had been performed. So Connor had not been cut out of Lacey while she was alive or after she was dead. So how did Connor get out? Clearly not while Lacey was alive. And if you thought coffin death was bad,

this is worse. The most likely scenario, the only one that makes sense given the evidence, is that baby Connor was inside Lacey's body the entire four months she lay at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay. The reason he was less decomposed than his mum was because her body protected his from the water and from the elements. For example, if you put a body in a suitcase and then put it in the water, it will decay slower than a body that is just straight in the water with no protection. They are going to decompose at different rates. And even more than that, he's in an amniotic sack. He's in an airtight Tupperware, essentially, like nothing's getting at him. Yeah, and I just want to say this because I'm sure some people will bring it up,

is that all of Lacey's internal organs were missing and, you know, not there. I believe there were even barnacles growing on her bones how long she'd been down there, which is just... When I read that, I honestly burst into tears because that's the most just fucking grim thing I've heard in such a long time. But again, the thing is here, you have to weigh up the other possibilities. And there is no explanation for how else Connor could have been born. So the answer must be that he was inside Lacey. There isn't another explanation.

So even if it doesn't make total sense because her other organs are missing, the idea that he was born or cut out of her can be proven that that didn't happen. So here is what makes sense. Connor is inside Lacey and then when her head detached the night of the storm, thanks to whatever was weighing her down, probably concrete, Connor came out of the top of Lacey's torso and they were separated. I don't really see how else you could explain them being found relatively close together within a day. They're found a mile apart on the shore, 18 hours apart. The defence have a crack at it, ignoring the fact that there was no way that Connor could have got out of Lacey's body without there being very clear evidence that that is what he had done,

they claim that he was born and then killed or died, and then whoever had him disposed of his body in the exact same place they had dumped Lacey. Again, for the squillionth time, why would anybody do that? Especially because the police are there the whole time. If you believe this theory, that means you believe that these people whoever they may be just so happened to dump connor's body at the exact same time that lacey was found as well yeah and connor's body is found first by the way it's 18 hours later that lacey's body's found it's too much man so you can't even say that lacey's body was found and then these people were like aha it's our chance now to get rid of this baby that we've been keeping. Let's go dump him down the same shoreline.

For what purpose? And also, he's found first. What a fucking ginormous coincidence. The other point often jumped on by Scott's supporters is that of the dog walking eyewitnesses. So basically, on Christmas Eve 2002, several people, 12 to be precise, claimed to have seen a pregnant woman matching Lacey's description walking a dog matching Mackenzie's description around the local area, including in the park where Lacey often walked the dog. One witness even said she saw the woman

with the dog being shouted at by two men in the park. But there are several issues with these sightings. Firstly, as much as the documentary makes it sound like all of them saw Lacey, they actually all say that they saw a pregnant, and in some cases, just a round woman walking a dog. Now, some of them, obviously, since it's come out that they could be a vital eyewitness, say that they saw Lacey. But at the time, they say that they saw a pregnant woman or a round woman. And the prosecution

were able to bring in literally like a parade of women who kind of look like Lacey, who were walking their dog that same day. So it was just nonsense. And also in suburban California, the idea of seeing a pregnant woman walking a dog hardly seems to be definitive. Now, don't get me wrong. Some of them claim, like I said, that they absolutely did see Lacey. But not one of them had a direct interaction with the woman. Not one of them had a conversation with the woman to confirm that it was indeed Lacey that they saw. They also claim that the woman had been wearing a white top and black leggings or trousers. This matches with what Scott had said Lacey was wearing the day that she vanished, and also what she'd been wearing the night before, the night they went to see her

sister Amy. But are these people just making something they saw that day fit with Scott's description of Lacey that morning? Because when Lacey was found, she was actually wearing beige maternity trousers, not black leggings. The outfit she'd worn the night before, which is probably what Scott was describing, was found hanging up in her wardrobe. These witnesses also all made their sightings of the woman and the dog after 10.18am, which makes Scott fans very happy because it would mean that if it was Lacey, Scott was already at his office by then, so he couldn't have killed her. And these dog walking eyewitnesses also tie in with another huge point made in this documentary about the postman and his evidence.

Scott's family in this documentary basically say that the Petersons postman was never heard from in court. They say the jury were never allowed to hear the postman's testimony and so therefore they didn't have all of the information. And they say that this happened because the prosecution didn't give the defence this information during discovery. But this is just not true. The postman testified. I can find and have read the postman's testimony. Mr Russell Greybill, the postman, delivered a parcel to the Peterson house between 10.35 and 10.50am on the 24th of December, the day that Lacey vanished. He said that the back garden gate was open and that Mackenzie did not bark at him like he usually did. So again, Scott's supporters say that Lacey must have taken Mackenzie out for a walk after neighbour Karen returned him to the

garden at 10.18, because he wasn't there when Russell delivered the parcel. And therefore, Lacey must have been alive after 10.18. But the problem is that, once again, this makes so very little sense, because if the 12 eyewitnesses did see Lacey after 10.18, and Mackenzie really wasn't there when the postman came by, that means that the dog must have got out of the Petersons' garden while, say, Lacey was mopping the house, like Scott said she was when he left, then he was returned to the garden by neighbour Karen. Lacey then had taken Mackenzie out for a walk, oblivious to his little escape, been spotted by all of these people. And during

this walk, she must have been abducted. And Mackenzie must once again, therefore, have been found wandering the streets with his leash on and returned once again to the Petersons' garden by another mystery person who, to this day, has never come forward because mackenzie was in the garden with his leash on when scott got home at 4 30 p.m so if lacy was abducted on this dog walk how the fuck did mackenzie get back into the garden oh and between the mopping and taking mackenzie out lacy must have changed her clothes but also she can't have because those people saw her all in a white top and black trousers, but when her body was found she was wearing beige maternity pants.

What? If you can't buy that the dog was returned a second time, the only explanation that fits is all of the above happened, except Lacey did get home safely from her walk, and then she got changed and was abducted from her house. But there was absolutely no evidence that anyone had ever entered the house. There was no evidence of struggle that Scott reported seeing when he got home that afternoon. This is the thing.

It's again, it's like, if she was abducted from the house, why would burglars clean up after themselves? And how could they have taken her so calmly with no evidence behind? Maybe, maybe they managed to take her with no physical evidence behind. Because like we said, there doesn't always have to be physical evidence. But again, no one saw a single thing. I don't know. on top of everything else this is i'm going to keep saying it like this is the thing people bring up a point that isn't easily explainable and they pretend that that negates everything else we've talked about finally several of lacey's friends testified that by the end of lacey's pregnancy, she'd been struggling. She was in a lot of pain and she could barely walk. They said that a few days before she vanished, she had to

be helped out of a yoga class and walk to her car because she was in so much pain. So actually, it's unlikely she would have been walking Mackenzie at all. But whether or not you agree that these witnesses are credible or not, guess who didn't think they were worth very much? Mark Geragos. Because he didn't call a single one of them to testify at trial. Why? Because he knew this was all nonsense. He knew that the prosecution would just make the exact same argument we just made.

And he knew that they would be able to present this parade of women who looked like Lacey who were walking their dogs that day. He knew. He knew that it didn't make any sense. And he knew that it would have torn the defence's argument apart in court and completely undermined them. And say what you will about Mark Geragos, but he's a very good defence attorney. You can say he's brash and rude and loud and crass, he is, but he's good at what he does. And Mark Geragos tried everything. He even went as far as to pull in some good old-fashioned satanic panic. You knew it was coming. In the case that has everything, you can't leave it out.

The case that just keeps giving. Because the defence genuinely tried to point the finger at a satanic cult being responsible for killing Lacey and Connor. They claim that devil worshippers just love to kill on the 24th of December because it's some sort of holy day for Satanists. Is it? I don't fucking know. I don't fucking know.

I was thinking about that this morning. The only argument I could come up with for why it might be a satanic celebration Please. is it celebrating the last day that the earth didn't have Jesus Christ. Maybe. Is the only argument I can think of. Well, Geragos gives some more. He says that this is a very important day in the satanic calendar

and that they wanted Lacey's baby for a sacrifice. He even said the road that the Petersons live on is called Covina Road. And he's like, sounds like Coven. Oh my God. I know. Send help. I know. So the defence backed this whole satanic panic, satanic cult theory up

by saying that when Connor's body was found, there was a piece of string entangled around his neck and body and a bit of black tape stuck to his ear. Firstly, why would anyone strangle a fetus to death? Why would you do that? It's gonna die. Why would you use string? So the string that Garagos described as a noose-like object and the tape that are found stuck to Connor clearly are just debris from the water of the bay. I've only been to the San Francisco Bay once and looked at it. I can't remember, but I'm presuming like most bodies of water in major cities it's probably gross and filled with especially after a storm yes and so i find it really shocking to see so many people out there being like well how do you explain the string i have also been quite surprised by how

i'm like pretty easily virulently people are like but the string i'm like it's rubbish it's there was just been a storm and it's it bay. It's literal rubbish. Yeah. The string is literal rubbish. Are you serious? If he had been found in a shallow grave in the desert and he had string wrapped around his body and his neck. Connor is found in the San Francisco Bay and he has some string wrapped around him and a bit of tape stuck to his ear.

Garagos also pointed out that seven other women had gone missing in the area whilst they were pregnant. And one of them, Evelyn Hernandez, her body turned up in the San Francisco Bay too, just like Lacey. But, we already know, because we already told you that pregnant women are at high risk of being murdered by their partners,

not by satanic cults. The trial eventually wrapped up in November 2003, almost five months after it had started, and the jury were sent for deliberation. But this jury had its problems. One of the jurors was removed about five days into the trial because she had admitted to googling the case. A few weeks into the trial, juror number five, Justin Faulkner, was dismissed after he spoke to Lacey's brother one day about the media standing

outside taking photos. Justin Faulkner was replaced by Rochelle Nice, who would go on to gain the nickname Strawberry Shortcake because of her dyed red hair. And I mean, I know she's difficult to forget, but remember her because she comes up later on. But for now, we need to tell you about one more juror who was removed, foreman Gregory Jackson. Jackson has spent the entire trial filling up journal after journal with notes, Now, people who support Scott say that apparently Gregory Jackson didn't think that Scott was guilty. And he was very insistent that they go over every piece of evidence and they're like, oh, look, he was the one who didn't think Scott was guilty. And they complain about him because he wants to be thorough.

And then the judge removed him. But they remove him saying that he was being like an obstructive member of the jury. I don't know what the precedent is on things like this, but the judge allowed it and removed this person. So we're not hiding it from you, we're telling you what happened. So soon after the foreman was removed, the jury announced that they had reached a verdict. Guilty.

Scott Peterson was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Lacey Peterson and the second-degree murder of Connor. And Scott Peterson was sentenced to death by lethal injection. And I found it really interesting in conversations after and interviews he does after and like a jailhouse phone call that he gives, Scott Peterson is able to describe in immense detail his devastation and the very real and agonising physical response he felt to being convicted. He gives a very, like, descriptive explanation of how this made him feel.

Something he never really seemingly was able to convincingly convey when he found out about the murders of his pregnant wife and baby. When Scott Peterson was found guilty, the crowds outside, because yes, there were huge numbers of people waiting outside the courthouse, erupted into cheers. And some of the jurors walked out and gave impassioned speeches to the media. Rochelle Nice, Strawberry Shortcake, was one of them. He is a jerk, and I have one comment for Scott.

You look somebody in the face when they're talking to you. Well, just another day in paradise for Scott. Another day that he had to go through emotions. But he's on his way home, Scott figured. Well, guess what, Scotty? San Quentin's your new home. And it's illegal to kill your wife and child in California. You might find that a bit distasteful. We certainly do. It's actually completely unnecessary, tacky and just far too boisterous, considering that Lacey and Connor are still both dead. But what these impassioned speeches did is they made defenders of Scott Peterson double down on the idea that he had been convicted on hate, emotion and vitriol, which I think we have made ourselves quite clear. If you believe that, you have to ignore absolutely everything we've just discussed over the past two episodes.

Yeah. And also, if they had been recorded saying these kind of things halfway through the trial, absolutely, that is horrific. That is like complete juror bias because they haven't heard all of the evidence, but they've already made up their minds about whether he's guilty or not. They're saying this after they've listened to all of the evidence and after they've convicted him and after the sentencing has been done. So you might find it distasteful and tacky, like I said, I certainly do. But they're allowed to have the opinions they have after the work is done because they've already heard all of the evidence and reached a conclusion. So you'll remember from last week that we mentioned at the top of the episode

that Scott Peterson managed to get his death sentence overturned in 2020. And that decision was based on reports that the judge had dismissed prospective jurors improperly. So essentially the judge dismissed from the jury pool anyone who didn't agree with the death penalty. Which they, I think they have to do that in death penalty trials, don't they? I think what they are meant to do is say whether you agree with the death penalty or not would you be open to exploring that as a sentence or handing it out as a sentence based on the fact that it is in the law and they're meant to answer yes but he kind of seemingly just did it to anybody who disagreed with the death sentence i disagree with the death sentence anyway so i i'm fine that that death sentence was overturned. We don't know if he's getting a new trial or not at the point of recording this,

but I certainly hope he spends every last minute of his life in prison. But this latest appeal that, like we said at the time of recording, we are still waiting for the verdict on. You might be listening to this when the verdict is already out. We don't know. But basically, this appeal is based on prejudicial misconduct by juror Rochelle Nice, aka Strawberry Shortcake. Scott's appeal team are accusing her of lying her way onto the jury, claiming that she concealed her past experience of domestic abuse and committed prejudicial misconduct when she filled in her jury questionnaire. So this questionnaire asked if she had been involved in a criminal proceeding in the

past and Rochelle Nice answered no. But it turned out that in 2000, when she was four and a half months pregnant, she had filed a lawsuit to get a restraining order against her then-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend who had been harassing her. But that case didn't go anywhere. And also a lawsuit isn't a criminal case. It's a civil one. It's also not really domestic abuse. The lawsuit was against her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend. Yeah, because the appeal team are saying it's because she has a past of domestic abuse, but she was basically reporting someone who was stalking her, who was another woman, not her partner. And also, I would say that if they're going to claim that this kind of thing is bias, and you could argue

whether Rochelle Nice understood the jury questionnaire when she was filling it out or whether she outright lied to get on the trial. That's a separate thing. But if you're saying that this caused prejudicial bias against Scott Peterson because she had been a victim of a woman stalking her, I kind of feel like you would have to ask everybody if they had a child because that could cause them to be emotionally biased against Scott Peterson. You would have to ask them if they'd ever been cheated on. Like, I don't know. I just feel like, again, it's coming back to what we said last week. It's impossible in the system we have to make it perfect. So yes, you can argue whether she lied or not, but I don't know. We're all going to have to wait and see. We might have an answer as to whether or not Scott Peterson will be getting a new trial by the time you are listening to this.

And hopefully, hopefully we will know. And hopefully you will know so you can feel like a big smarty pants. As soon as we do know, we'll be coming back with an update in the new year. So what do we think? Well, this whole case comes down to the fact that someone killed Lacey and dumped her body in the San Francisco Bay. Is there enough evidence that it was Scott? Or is there enough evidence that it was someone else? Or is there enough enough evidence that it was Scott or is there enough evidence that it was someone else or is there enough reasonable evidence that it was someone else? There's no evidence as

far as I can see pointing to it being anyone else and as far as I can tell there's more than enough evidence pointing to it having been Scott. The timelines don't work for it to be anyone else. He also had the motives, means and opportunity. He had a boat, he went fishing to the place her body was eventually found, he was the last one to see her alive and so much of the narrative around this case, so much of the little details are based just on what he tells us and he's a proven liar. Like so many stories that we tell you on this show, we will never know exactly what happened on that day. But it is likely that Scott had it in his head that he was going to do this. Something happened. Maybe Lacey saw a message from Amber.

Interestingly, in the spare room, some duffel bags had been pulled off the shelf and were lying on the floor. Was Lacey packing up to leave? Is that why Scott killed her? Yeah, like maybe she found out that day, but also she's eight and a half months pregnant. The clock was ticking for Scott. If he was going to do this, he had to do this now. So I think the reason that people sort of give Scott a lot of the benefit of the doubt in this and sort of are willing to look at the possibilities for why he may not have been the killer, is I think people want cases like this to be more than they are. I think they want them to be more interesting, more horrific, more twisty-turny,

with a shock plot twist like the latest TV crime drama. Like it wasn't the husband after all, it was this unsuspecting burglar. Or a satanic cult. But in real life, cases like that are rare. People are typically killed by people they know. And heartbreakingly, pregnant women are all too often killed by their partners. That's it, guys. We did it.

That is the two-parter on the murder of Lacey Peterson and Connor Peterson. And I truly, truly, truly hope that Scott Peterson does not get a new trial, mainly because I want him to spend the rest of his life in prison, and secondly, because I never, ever want to talk about him ever again, apart from giving you an update next year where I say he's not getting a new trial. So yeah, it has been a lot. There's a lot of research that went into this. And I know people might have different opinions. That's fair enough. I hope that you know at Red Handed, we take our time, we are considered in how we reach our decisions. And I've certainly changed my mind on whether people are guilty or not after I've started the research I just didn't feel that way at the end of this so yeah that's that so there you are Scott Peterson and yeah in two parts yeah

and uh that is also that for Red Handed for the year of 2022 52 parts has come to a close absolutely so guys we hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. And we will be back next year with some absolute bangers of cases we're already working on. But we need like two weeks to just have a little break. So there's not going to be any shorthand next week, but it will be back on the 3rd of January, where we are actually going to be doing a shorthand on Diana, Princess Diana, Lady Di, the People's Princess. And we will be back with Red Handed proper on the 12th of January with the first of two parts on Mr. Jeffrey Epstein.

Everyone have a wonderful time and we will see you in the new year, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Exactly. Hopefully we will be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by then as well. Precisely. Have a lovely Christmas. Don't abuse your family or whatever. No, don't murder your wife. And if you have forgotten to get your wife a present,

and it is... Queen of the sequestration. And you're listening to this on the 22nd of December and you're like, holy shit, I've only got three days until Christmas Day, the holiest day of the year, then maybe you want to consider buying her either some wonderful red-handed merch, it will arrive late, but that's your fault, not mine, or maybe this is a speedy buy, you can just print it out and put it right in a card, you could get her some tickets to our North American tour. She's not lying. No. You could do that, you piece of shit.

So that's it, guys. I have to go. I have to stop talking. So bye. Bye. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.

I was up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal.

We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.