The Viall Files - Rabia and Ellyn Solve the Case is Available Now!

Episode Date: October 8, 2022

Rabia Chaudry and Ellyn Marsh, both well known names in true crime podcasting, will bring their separate audiences, experience, and unique talents to tell you all of the things you might not know about some of the most famous true crime cases. This bi-weekly true crime talk show will ask why celebrities are obsessed with true crime, and also will examine some of the most infamous cases they are obsessed with through the lens of Chaudry’s legal expertise and Marsh’s comedy. It's the cross-over podcast listeners have been waiting for.... can you solve the case? Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rabia-and-ellyn-solve-the-case/id1646694616 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ojMLLts8DyhcyrpFIrf7G?si=osASMgs2TVGvXCn0-vfOog See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you love true crime podcasts, then you've probably heard of the names Rabia Chaudhry and Ellen Marsh. So separately, they host some of the best true crime podcasts. I love true crime podcasts. They have Undisclosed and Obsessed with Disappeared, but now they're combining because two are better than one. They're bringing their expertise together for something one of a kind. True Crime Meets Talk Show. Join the two hosts along with celebrity guests as they explore some of the most infamous cases in history and ask themselves what really happened. Every episode, a celebrity will share their favorite true crime case with Rabia and Ellen.

Rabia and Ellen will extensively research the case and bring forward all the evidence you might not know. Using Rabia's legal expertise as a guide, prepare to see some of your favorite cases in a whole new light as Rabia and Ellen set out to solve the case. With comedy, of course. And we have a clip of episode one,

their first episode of all time, which I'm so excited for. But first, you have to follow Cast Media's newest podcast, Rabia and Ellen Solve the Case, wherever you get your podcasts. That's Rabia, R-A-B-I-A, and Ellen, E-L-L-Y-N, solve the case.

Hello and welcome to the first official episode of Rabia and Ellen solve the case. Hi Rabia. Hi Ellen. How are you? You look beautiful today. You look amazing too. You're so beautiful. I am so happy. Hopefully some people stuck around after our intro episode and they know we're actually going to talk about true crime and not just talk about, you know, our favorite colors and us taking a trip to Pakistan. Yeah. And our secret crushes. Yeah. And your lips, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In our intro episode, Rabia and I wanted to have a little episode where we solve the case before we invite our guests onto the episode. And Rabia said to me, what case do you want to do?

And it was probably the easiest conversation we've had thus far. I think it took like two text messages and we're like, we're in. It's done. So we're going to be talking about the murder of Lacey Peterson. So why was this so easy for us to decide, do you think? I think because we are decades out from this case, right, when it actually took place in 2002. And all of us were riveted by it, right? Like, it just triggered this incredibly deep emotional response.

Across the country, we all were part of the mob. And, you know, I look back at that and I am deeply ashamed. That was the time well before like serial and like this turned into a crime. I was still in law school, by the way, when we started realizing that, oh, things can go wrong and everything you hear in the media is not always right. And so all these years later, like we have like evidence coming forward that actually existed then, but was drowned out and nobody heard it or listened to it. That made me realize that this is a very problematic conviction.

It really is. And now we made a conscious decision to today. We're really we're going to talk about this case, but we're really going to talk in fact. Now, I, of course, am a lawyer and Rabia is too. But I think that's really, really important because chances are everyone who's listening is probably well acquainted with this case, you know, unless you're new to the earth. But we're going to be born after 2002, which is possible. Sure. But like you said, there are some facts that people don't know. Some of it might be some reminders and some of it, you know, might be new information. But we're really going to focus on the facts of the case.

And I think we all understand, though, why everyone is so drawn to this case. I want to ask you what you remember of that time. First of all, where were you in your life in that moment? I told you I was in law school. I was in San Francisco. I'm from the Bay Area. You were right there. Yeah. And after I graduated college, I went back and worked on a show there. You could not go to a supermarket. You could not turn on the TV without Nancy Grace barking in your face at any moment. So I was deeply embedded and invested in this case and the outcome for that matter. And the thing is, like, this also came not too long after the O.J. Simpson chase that

riveted us, the trial that was like every single day and every spectacle was televised. And at that point, the media knew like when you get a case like that, that you, this is big ratings, it's big business, it's big viewership. This case was a media circus from the first day and it was deliberately so because the police wanted it like that. And when you do that, you do not have a defendant who begins a trial with a presumption of innocence. It's impossible. It's impossible. But should we talk about like kind of set up like the broad view of kind of what happened? Yeah. What I would love everyone to do today, if possible, is just kind of listen with new ears.

I think that's really important because in our research, you'll hear a lot of probablys, a lot of may have beens, a lot of it's assumed. And I guess my big question in reinvestigating and diving into this case again is do probablys and maybes and may have been measure up to the standard of reasonable doubt? Beyond a reasonable doubt, right? That's what we beyond a reason. Yeah. Beyond a reasonable doubt. What law school did you go to? I'm sorry, I just- It was the, it's a small academy in Northern Ireland, the law academy of the law. So yeah, it's prestigious. They did a great job. Thank you so much.

But let's just dive in with our overview. Yeah. Okay, so I can set this up. So it is Christmas Eve, 2002, December 24, 2002. So it's a sleepy little news night. Not a lot's going on. Everybody's home. But it's in the daytime.

And Lacey and Scott Peterson are a married couple, young, beautiful couple. They live in Modesto, California. And basically that day, Scott Peterson says, you know, they've got the day off. In the evening, they're going to have dinner with his in-laws, Lacey's parents. So he decides to go on a fishing trip and he just got a new little aluminum boat, nothing fancy, like this tiny little dingy thingy. And Lacey has her plans for the day. And when he gets home, she's gone.

And she's eight months pregnant, by the way. That's also very, very important. And I think that's also why people were so like, I mean, there are so many things that like drew people to the case, right? She's young. She's pretty. She's a young white woman. He also is like a young, attractive guy, but it's like, oh, he's probably the psychopath.

And then she's pregnant. So it's like on Christmas Eve, the Virgin Mary herself is being attacked, right? Like there's like this kind of, yeah. And so she disappears. They don't know what happened, but really from the get-go, the police are looking at the husband, as is like normal police procedure. And the body, her body and her son's body are found like three and a half months later in the San Francisco Bay Area, basically in the water. And remember, he had been fishing. So that's those are like the big kind of facts of the case. And then he's arrested and faces a trial. I don't like sweeping statements, but I'm going to say a trial almost like we've never seen before in terms of media frenzy. Yeah. I mean, O.J. O.J. was pretty up there. But but, you know, O.J. proved that this is like sellable stuff. People want this. Somehow people who have jobs still manage to watch that trial every single day.

Absolutely. The 24 hour news cycle, remember, is a thing in our life. It wasn't always a thing. It was pretty new then. Yeah. So that's kind of the overview of the case. That is the Wikipedia, really fast elevator pitch of this case. So to understand where this all started, we do know that Lacey went missing on Christmas Eve.

But to actually understand the intricacies of kind of this very specific timeline, we have to go back to December 23rd. The reason we go back is not so much because it helps kind of prove Scott's defense to a certain extent. And I'll get into why. So on the 23rd, Lacey has a sister named Amy who has a hair salon. And they go over there and she gives Scott a haircut. And she shows Lacey like how to curl her hair with a curling iron so it flips up. So she looks cute for Christmas. And, you know, they just hang out.

And Amy tells the police on the day that she disappears that when her sister came to visit her, she was wearing tan pants and a black blouse that had tiny flowers on it. So she remembers exactly what her sister's wearing. And the next day when Lacey is reported missing and the police start searching the house, they find that exact outfit. So Lacey is not dressed in the same clothing that she was when, like, you know, she clearly has gotten out of those clothes at some point. And the reason that's important because the police's entire theory is this, okay? That Scott killed Lacey on the night of the 23rd, not on the 24th, Scott killed Lacey on the night of the 23rd,

not on the 24th, but he killed her on the night of the 23rd. They came back from the hair salon. Maybe they had dinner, maybe they didn't. He says they had dinner and watched some TV and went to bed, but that he killed her on that night, that he wrapped her in a tarp, stuck her in the middle of the night on the back of his truck so nobody in the neighborhood could see. If you know anything about this case, you have definitely seen footage. These are houses right next to each other. We're not talking about acres between, they're like right next to each other. And the police stuck with this theory. The state stuck with it throughout the trial because they would not have been able to explain that he killed her on the 24th because there would

have been no time to get her into the truck. There were too many people around. So they had to stick with that. But Scott says, we came home, she changed, got into her PJs. This is what she was wearing. They actually found her PJs also that she'd been wearing the night before. Because he said that she got up the next day and showered and changed again. They found the PJs that he said. So those things kind of track with what he's saying. And that's why that's important to know that either, like, if he had actually killed her that night, that means he killed her after she changed.

The point is, that's one more detail of his story that matches up to like what other people are saying, too. So Scott had mentioned a Lacey sister, Amy, that night, you know, casual conversation. He was going to go golfing the next day, pick up gift baskets. And they actually invited Amy over that night. And she had plans. They were just like, we're just going to order pizzas and, you know, watch football. So the idea that the police were going with was that he killed her. Scott also had a warehouse about nine minutes from their home. And he kept the boat there and he had a computer there. Now, something to note with this theory that this is how he did it. His truck did not fit in the warehouse. So he would have had to, whatever their theory is, he would have had to have done this all outside. But we know that Lacey called

her mom on the night of the 23rd at 830. And that was the last conversation, sadly, that Sharon had with her daughter. There are so many things that discredit this 23rd murder that happened. Yeah. It's very hard for the police to make the argument that he killed her on the 23rd. However, they're kind of stuck in a way because they're like, well, if he killed her on the 24th and the 24th is nearly impossible because so many people saw her. But I think let's go through what Scott says he did that morning and what him and Lacey did that morning. I think that's important to do. So Scott said that Lacey woke up at about 7 a.m. and she put those pajama pants. She was wearing these like blue pajama pants that were actually his because probably, you know, her eight month belly was wanted something not tight on her or something. She put them in the hamper.

And we know that to be true because they found the pajamas when they searched the home. hamper. And we know that to be true because they found the pajamas when they searched the home. And we know that Lacey logged onto her computer at 8.40 in the morning and she had shopped for a red scarf and a sunflower umbrella. And she logged off at 8.45. So hold on a second. So when the police realized that somebody had been on the home computer at 8.40 a.m., they're like, oh, that had to be Scott because Lacey's dead as far as they're concerned, right? But making the argument that Scott was with his wife's dead body in his truck was shopping for a red Gap scarf and a sunflower umbrella stand. I mean, what a stretch, right? But the state will argue, and they did argue, that this is how clever he is. He's making it look like she's still alive, right?

He's like creating all these little things that, oh, that was Lacey doing it. But Lacey was obsessed with sunflowers. She liked sunflowers and everything. So anyhow, going on. Yeah, we're giving this dude a lot of credit for the amount of planning that he had the foresight to say, oh, let me log on this computer, do something that my, you know, silly sunflower loving wife would do. I mean, they're throwing their shoulders out with that. With a dead body in your truck outside in broad daylight.

Outside in broad daylight. I mean, come on. Exactly. So Scott tells us that as the day progressed, Lacey told him that she was going to walk the dog and go to the store. She was going to make this delicious sounding French toast. I'm starving. And yeah, for their for their Christmas Eve dinner with the family. Yeah, right.

But something else that discredits their original 23rd story was that remember that photo in the bathroom with the curling iron? A hundred percent. So the house cleaner had testified that she had cleaned that house and on the 23rd and there was no curling iron. So obviously Lacey was practicing that hairdo that her sister Amy had taught her. And we see a picture of that in the evidence from when they searched the house. Right. So there is a clear photograph of that curling iron. It's still plugged in. It's in the bathroom. And again, if to the average person, to the reasonable mind, it would be evidence that Lacey came home and plugged it in. Now, the police could argue, well, she did it the night before, right before she was killed. She practiced. But her hair had already been curled, right, by her sister. Scott actually, when he was interviewed, he was interviewed that same night. He said, yeah, this morning she was curling her hair. She was doing all these things. He said that he remembered

looking, watching her and thinking she looked so cute when she did it in the morning. And they found like the evidence to back it up. But like I said, the prosecutor was like, well, yeah, because he set that up too. Yeah. Truly, they're giving this man genius level credit for the planning of this murder happening the way they said it happened. I could come, I have straight hair down to almost my waist. If I could get a full perm and my husband would notice, I don't know what they're talking about. There's no way. I could show up with like blonde curls and my husband would have no idea that I did. You know what I mean? Like that kind of attention to detail requires a woman.

Absolutely. All in favor of Rabia going blonde, raise your hand. I, you could pull off anything, honestly.