True Crime All The Time - Scott Peterson Part 2

Episode Date: January 16, 2017

This is part 2 (and final part) of the Scott Peterson story. Gibby and I finish up this sad and tragic tale of the death of Laci Peterson and her unborn son Conner Join us as we discuss the details of the discovery of the bodies down to conviction. This case shows what pure evil is and how a master manipulator can be so callous that they can harm two of the people that should have meant the most to him. Please visit our website at http://truecrimeallthetime.com for all info related to the show. If you like the show please rate us on iTunes. You can help support the show financially for as little as $2 a month by going to our Patreon page. You can find it  through our website by clicking on the Patreon button. And please tell your friends who enjoy true crime about the podcast!   Episode sponsor: SimpliSafe sponsored this episode. Simplisafe is an industry leader in the home security field. They are offering our listeners $200 off of their defender package if you use the url www.simplisafe.com/crime.   True Crime All The Time is an Emash Digital production. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Well, you hear that sound. You know what time it is. Welcome everyone to episode nine of the true crime all the time podcast, an E-Mash digital production. This is part two of the Scott Peterson story. As always, I've got my sidekick Gibby here with me. Ghibie, what's up? What's happening, man? Not much. I'm ready to do this part two on Scott Peterson. That's going to be pretty fun, man. It's exciting. He's a fascinating. He's a prick. He's a prick, but he's a fascinating. character to talk about for sure. It's definitely going to be interesting. So let's do a couple shoutouts. Actually, we've got a few shoutouts today. We got Cookie Gao on Instagram, said some very nice things about the show, and we always

appreciate that. Thank you, Cookie. Chris from Facebook, he gave us some great future episode suggestions, and I think he's down Cincinnati way, so he's pretty close to us. Yeah, neighbor. And then we got Rammar from Twitter. He's been lighting it up. Lately.

Like Rammer, man. We like Rammer. I'm saying rammer, even though it's, there's an at sign, there's an E in there. Just sounds cooler to say Rammer. I think that's what he was going for. As always, visit our website at truecrime all the time.com for all of our contact info. You can help support the show for as little as $2 a month through our Patreon button. That help is greatly appreciated.

So, Gibby, we're on to part two of Scott Peterson. Yeah. I think to start this episode, what I want to do is hear from Scott himself again in an interview that he did, I want to say about maybe a month after the disappearance of Lacey, just because I find it fascinating. I don't care what people think of me. You know, as I've said, question of my moral character if you want to. But look at your heart. think of Lacey, her picture, baby, and make the effort to bring her home. And that's a simple reality.

That's a simple thing we need to do. Just, you know, think whatever you want to me. As long as you're out there and you're comfortable with yourself that you're doing what you need to be doing to find Lacey and bring her home. I know that law enforcement officials have told me that you won't take a lie detector test, that you've wavered back and forth on that. Why? Well, let me say this about the investigation. I gave you two times earlier, 930 and 10.30 when the dog was returned here. Investigators on both sides, law enforcement and private,

have asked me not to comment anymore about times, about conversations they have with the police, about the possible polygraph tests if I've taken or not not, and other things surrounding the investigation so that it can be clear. So I'm simply not going to comment. On why are you having to take it? I'm not going to comment if I have or have not taken a polygraph with the police. The life insurance policy, why take one out on Lacey?

$250,000. We have life insurance policies in place that were established when we bought this home that you're in right now two years ago. There was no life insurance policy taken out recently, as has been reported in the National Enquirer, a dubious source of, you know, alien information as well. I know that a neighbor saw you removing things on the 24th. You mentioned this morning that it was umbrellas.

Yeah, we have some large umbrellas for the backyard pool area, market umbrellas, I think it's a term for them. Why would you store those in the winter? It started to rain, so he was going to store them. Just like you asked, why would I store them? I was taking them from the pool to store. Officials of my have told me, sources have mentioned to me, that there were cement bags that were in the storage area,

and apparently a few of them were empty? Sure. Well, I could take you out in the backyard and show you all the cement work and brickwork that we'd done to this home, and you'd find cement bags around her. So this was something that it was at home remodeling, or what were you doing with this?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And again, we're starting to go into areas that investigators have asked me not to comment about, so we should probably, you know, simply put the brakes on at that point. I don't mind comment about the life insurance policy. But I don't want to give specific times or other information that could jeopardize what they find is valuable information in finding Lacey. Are you in any way connected to Lacey's disappearance?

I had nothing to do with Lacey's disappearance. And again, even if people out there question that, if they would just look at their hearts, and make the effort to bring her home to her family. I don't care what you think of me. Sources of mine have mentioned that you also, when you came home on the 24th, did some laundry. You washed your clothes? Do you understand why that may look a little suspicious to the average person?

Why would he come home and do his laundry? Well, the average guy that goes out in the ocean fishing, gets some salt water on him, comes home wet. When it comes to traces of blood, possibly found in his pickup. Scott says that's not a big surprise to him. Well, take a look at my hands. You can see, you know, cuts here on my knuckles, numerous scars. I work on farms. I work with machinery. I know I cut my knuckle that day. On what day? On Christmas Eve. Doing what?

Reaching in the toolbox of my truck and then into the pocket on the door. I cut out my knuckle and there there's blood stain on the door. At one point, Scott teared up when he talked about Lacey and the agony of the past month. Do you think she's still alive? She is. You're sure that? Yes. Lacey's still alive.

She's out there and someone's holding her. And these are critical days that we have left until the due date of February 16th. And we just need all of your help. You haven't said anything about your baby. that's entirely too difficult to speak about. There was a couple of reasons, Mike, that I wanted to play that. And he talks about some of the things that are going to come into play later on, the life insurance, the cement bags, the, he says that he cuts himself on December 24th.

So I thought it was pretty important to play that as we start this episode. I thought it was kind of interesting how he, said, you know, I cut it on my, you know, cut it that day. You know, the way he said that, I cut my hand that day. Like, he didn't realize what he just said. Basically, to me, he's like, I cut it that day, the day that I committed the crime, you know, but then he tries to cover it up. And the other thing he talks about, you know, washing his clothes when he got home, I don't know about you. That's not something I would do.

I wouldn't either. And I've been fishing many times. You know me, I go fishing all the time. I throw the clothes and the hamper and wash them with the rest of the clothes. There's no sense of urgency. We're dissecting his words. And it's very hard to do. But I wanted to play that.

More importantly, let everybody listen to it and let them make of it what they will. So we've got to get on to what is probably the toughest part of this case. And that occurs. the first part occurs on April 13th, 2003. And there's a couple walking their dog, and they come across a decomposing, but pretty well-preserved body of a late-term male fetus. And they find this on the shoreline of the San Francisco Bay.

I guess it was north of Berkeley. But the significance, I mean, obviously, significance that they found this male fetus, which ultimately turns out to be Connor. Right. But the significance is that they found, the place where they found Connor's body or Conner's fetus was pretty much the exact place where Scott had been boating slash fishing the day of Lacey's disappearance. Right. That's definitely going to come into play. Absolutely. So the very next day, April 14th, a partial female torso is found missing hands, feet, and head. It's just the torso,

found basically in the same area. It was identified as Lacey. And as we talked about, the fetus was identified as Connor through autopsies. The decomposition was so, I guess, severe is the word I'm looking for, that they really could not determine the exact cause of death. The medical examiner noted that there were some broken ribs, but did not think that those injuries could have been caused by her body being dragged along the rocks. So basically what they're saying is they thought that those injuries, were had occurred somewhere else right prior to the body ending up where it did in three i mean i think

they called out three broken ribs right yeah fifth six and the ninth and that's some pretty heavy trauma yeah to break to break those three ribs yeah so this led the FBI and and modesto police to start searches you know they searched um the peterson home they searched they searched um the peterson home they searched Scott's truck. They searched the toolbox in his truck, his warehouse, and his boat. Boat is going to come into play big time during the trial. But, you know, all of this searches, all of this circumstantial information is starting to build up, right?

Again, Scott. There's no doubt about that. And I find it interesting, Mike. There was a wiretap. It's Peterson's mom, Jackie. And she basically says something like to Scott, you know, not even you, Scott would be that stupid enough to dump, you know, the bodies in the same locations where you went fishing. So surely that wasn't you.

It was. Yeah, ultimately, I mean, we're not getting the cat out of the bat. Right, right. But here she is saying, surely you weren't that stupid, you know, and they have it, you know, record it that, you know, she had this conversation with them. And, you know, of course, he denies anything. but I just find it interesting that that conversation was had. Yeah, and we'll definitely get into some of that, you know, in a little bit,

but if you're in a boat out in the middle and I don't know if you ever watched the show, Dexter, but that's how Dexter disposed of all of his bodies. Now, he did a much better job. He weighed them down, but ultimately they surfaced. Was Dexter a active running show at that time back in 2000? back in 2003. I don't believe so. I want to say that Dexter ended two, three, four years ago and maybe ran for six years.

It could have been. I just didn't know maybe that's where he got his. It'd be interesting to look up. I'm sure, you know, one of our T-Cats out there will let us know. Yeah, we like it when they do. Sometimes we just talk about these things so people will write in and give us the answer because we like it. So like I said,

all this circumstantial evidence is pointing in the direction of Scott Peterson. And he's ultimately arrested on April 18, 2003. And he's arrested in kind of a strange place. Yeah, kind of high end. I've been where he was arrested. You're a world traveler. We talked about that last episode. You know, the Torrey Pines golf course is...

It's nice. It's very nice. Mahoyahua. Yeah. It's very expensive. Apparently, he was meeting his father and his brother for a game of golf, and that's where, I guess they had a task force that converged on the golf course. Just driving Mercedes, too, right? Why wouldn't he?

I mean, yeah. Sales must be good in the fertilized business. But what is crazy about the craziest part of the arrest is bizarre. That is what he has in his possession. And we've got to go through it. I don't care how tedious it is because it's just too bizarre not to. I definitely find it strange. So number one on my list is he has $15,000 in cash.

I don't have $15,000 in cash. But if I did, I sure wouldn't be carrying it to the golf course. I left mine in my car. Did you? Yeah. It's a good place to keep it. I'll check that before you leave. Above the visor.

He's got four cell phones. Yeah. not one not two but four right i i could understand two one personal one business but four you're getting into a weird territory multiple credit cards not in his name so it makes me feel like the family knew and they were helping him get away yeah because these are in the names of his different members of his family right he's got an array of camping equipment he's got it almost like prepper type stuff, you know, things to warm up food, tents, tarps, water purification systems. I mean, we haven't, we're not even halfway through, but you can already tell this is a,

if I have to get away. Well, sure, because the next item, nine pairs of footwear, not one, not two, not a pair of dress shoes and gym shoes, but he's got nine different pairs of shoes, including footflops. Gibby, I don't even know nine pairs of shoes. I don't either. And if I was going on the lamb, I sure wouldn't take them with me. I've got three pairs if I count my slipper mohican thingies. Yeah, a real man only needs three or four pairs.

That's it. Work boots. What else do you need? Yeah, he's got change of clothing, which that's probably not out of the ordinary. Sometimes I'll take a change if I'm going to play golf. He's got a T-handled double-edged dagger. So he's ready for business if he's got to stab somebody. A shovel, two ropes.

Here's where it starts to get even more weird. He's got a MapQuest map. So this is back in the day before you just pulled it up on your phone. Remember you had to go on the web and print it out. Type in the address and print out the actual little color map. But he's got a MapQuest map to Amber Fry's workplace. That somehow they were able to determine he had, he had, he had printed just the previous day.

He's got 200 sleeping pills. So he planned on doing some driving, nonstop, right? No, these are sleeping pills, not keep me awake pills. This is the put you to sleep. This has put him down.

Right. So he's either going to put her down. Or put himself down. I think he's going to put her down. And then he's going to use the 12 pills that he's got for himself because he takes Viagra. Right.

He does have Viagra with him too. I mean, that's Viagra had to be new right then, right? I mean, I don't, I mean, Viagra hasn't been out that long. Yeah, I would think so. And I think you're on to something. If you've got, if you add the MapQuest to Amber Fry's How, or workplace, shovel, ropes, and sleeping pills. Sounds like BTK. Yeah, that's like a hit kit.

Yeah. If we're going back to BTK. And then to top it all off, he's got his brother's driver's license. Did he steal that? Was it given to him? With the credit cards? Right. And his appearance has changed a little bit, right?

Definitely. He changed his hair and his goatee and there's a lot of pictures out there. So we'll definitely throw some pictures up on all of our different outlets. But basically he bleached him. Yeah. Right? He went like bleached blonde. So he was doing everything to, to me, it sounds like, to invade potential arrest and maybe Amber, his third victim, right?

But he wasn't hiding. No. Right? He's not hiding. He's playing golf at Torrey Pines golf course. Yeah. And did they confirm that he was actually going to play? Or was that just the meeting spot?

What I read said he was meeting his father and brother for a game of golf. I don't think they got that far. Right. But I assume he was going to play. Interesting. One thing that I found funny was when asked about the hair color, he had said something about that it was a result. of chlorine from swimming in a friend's pool.

Really? I don't know if you saw that or read that, but the owner of that pool later testifies that, to his knowledge, Scott Peterson had never swam in his pool or never used his hot tub or anything. Yeah. Well, you know, I grew up with pools and hot tubs and I know...

My hair never changed. Yeah, it never changed, you know. Exactly. So conveniently for him. So after the arrest, the police have already done a lot of searches, but they continue to do some more searches. One thing that they do that's very specific is they're searching the bay where the bodies were found. And what they're looking for are handmade concrete anchors.

And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to play that clip, because in that clip he talks, he's asked pointedly, by the reporter about why there's so many empty bags of concrete. And so I'm assuming that they thought that was maybe something that he had done was to make these concrete anchors to use to weigh down the body. The body. Parts, pieces. But they did not find anything.

Doesn't mean it didn't happen. But he's arrested. And we move on to the trial. phase of the story. And, you know, I think in the beginning, he shuffled around attorneys quite a bit, at one point saying that he was too poor to hire an attorney to represent him. Yeah, I can see him being too poor. I mean, 15,000 on driving the Mercedes. Cash with the Mercedes, 12 Viagra pills. Those are expensive. But ultimately, he changes that. Right. and he does hire a very high profile criminal defense attorney named Mark Garagos.

And I don't know if you know who Mark Garagos is. The only reason I know of him is because he does a podcast with Adam Crolla, which I actually listen to on a weekly basis. Yeah. And it's very good. You know, they talk about legal things and. Well, he's that one attorney that he'll get some live phone calls. Yeah.

Right? When he's doing this podcast. I mean, he's very, very high profile. He's, I think he's represented Chris Brown and, I mean, just a ton of stars. So he's, he's a very high profile attorney. But he, Mark Garagos does take the case to defend Scott Peterson. Actually, I think he talked about it on one of the podcast episodes. You know, I'm sure he got a lot of flack for that.

you know, normally any of the attorneys that sign on to represent, because we talked about it, right? At this point, Scott Peterson is probably the most hated man in America. Absolutely. If not farther, you know, out into the world. The story is, um, was such a big story. So I'm sure, you know, Mr. Garagos got a lot of, a lot of flack for that. And I think I remember him saying that he just, he felt that it was his duty. to, you know, represent him, you know, and I don't fault attorneys for that, right? That's,

that's a job that they're doing. Right. It's the constitutional right. Yeah. I mean, everybody deserves as good of an attorney as you can afford. Yeah. That's basically how the system works. Right. So another part of this is that, and we haven't talked about Amber Fry in a little while, we did so much of it in the first episode with all of her phone calls, but she's still, and she's hot and heavy in the media as well. Yeah, she's in the mix for sure. And she retains Gloria Allred, who, you know, is a very famous attorney in her own right. I'm not sure.

Well, I shouldn't say I'm not sure she probably needed an attorney at that point because she's involved in the case. Right. But in no way I don't think was ever. I think she's tasked to protect her interest. Yeah. And, and liability, you know, what she says, civil suits later, things like that. Probably more for guidance than anything else. And also just to protect, you know, PR.

Yeah. Try not to be the bad woman that messed with a married man. She wasn't under. Tell her story, right? Yeah, she wasn't under scrutiny or, you know, wasn't thought to have had any part in this. Correct. So there's an interesting part about as the trial's going on because the judge, it does a couple of things. Number one moves the trial out of Modesto to Redwood City, which that's pretty normal, right, for a case of this magnitude.

Scott Peterson wasn't going to get a fair trial probably in Modesto. So that argument is usually pretty easy to make. And the second thing that the judge does is issues a gag order. That also, I think, is pretty common in some of these very high-profile cases. The interesting part about it was Allred's not bound by that. The prosecutor is bound by that. Peterson's defense attorney is bound by that. So what ends up happening is you see Gloria Allred on the news nightly.

She's just blowing it up. Oh, yeah. She's just talking, you know, but she's not saying that, you know, he's guilty or he's not guilty. But I think she, her leaning was towards the prosecution. And she's working on the story. Yeah. So we get into the trial. We're going to talk about, we're going to save the, a lot of the evidence talk for a little bit later in the show. Basically, it was prosecution stating that Scott Peter.

murdered Lacey for a mix of money, I believe, and freedom possibly to be with Amber Fry, you know, is what I got from that. The issue is that they faced was there wasn't a lot of direct evidence. Right. What they had was a shitload of circumstantial evidence. I mean, they had a ton of it. We've already talked about a lot of it, and we'll talk about even more. But that's what this case came down to. Right.

In a nutshell, circumstantial evidence. There really wasn't much in the way of, you know, hardcore like you would see on CSI that just. Right. Lock the case up. Lock the case up. It really wasn't that. Look at them, Dano. Yeah.

They didn't have that. Right. So now the defense. They hammered on the circumstantial evidence, basically saying that that's all there was. It's circumstantial. You can't convict beyond a reasonable doubt. Is this when they brought in Donnie, the Donnie story? They had a theory that there was a, the killer was some man named Donnie.

That could be the possible killer. He was linked to the mysterious brown van. So I don't know if you saw that story out there or not, but that was one of the, the things that the attorney put out there to try to take the heat off of Scott and say, look, there's somebody else out there. And that's a defense attorney's job. Sure. I think one of the other things that they threw out there was a suggestion that the,

that the fetal remains of Connor were actually full term, meaning he had been delivered and then killed. This is the satanic? Yes. This is when they offered up the the theory that that someone had kidnapped Lacey. They'd held her until she had given birth. And then they'd killed both Lacey and Connor. The defense has to throw out all these different theories to combat the prosecution's, you know, suggestions.

And as you said, one of them was that a satanic cult had kidnapped Lacey. Helder killed. And the reason why they would say that is obviously if that were to be true and Connor is not killed as a fetus and he's killed as after he was actually delivered, that would change everything as far as the timeline. Right. Because they're going to go back and say that Scott killed. on Christmas Eve, the fishing was a cover up, all of that, right?

And we'll talk about that a little bit more. All of these suggestions are meant to blow that up. Right. The timeline. So basically what Garagos does is say, you know, Scott's a piece of shit. Not in those terms, but he's a cheater. He's a bad guy. All that's known.

but what he's not is a murderer. So, you know, that was part of the defense. I think you and I talked a little bit earlier before we started the show about, this is a weird jury. A lot of things happened. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's, again, you know, I think we were talking that, you know,

between the jury issues, I mean, that's a podcast itself if someone really wanted to go that deep into it, you know, as is Amber Frey. I mean, that's a whole other podcast, itself too, right, with everything that happened with her during and after the trial. Right. So a couple of juries were removed during the trial. One of them was the foreman. So jury number five got removed also. I'm not sure what the number was, but the jury foreman being removed, that's, yeah, that's,

that's huge. Yeah. And he, and that one, the one jury was removed for misconduct. The jury foreman actually requested to be removed. So you don't see that a lot. But they were, replaced by alternates and the trial went on. And jury number five, he was caught on tape talking to Lacey Peterson's brother, which is that the misconduct. That's a misconduct one, yeah. There was some reports that there were some threats made that may have prompted the foreman to kind of pull out.

They go through the trial. And on November 12th, this jury that's been, that ends up deciding the case, has some alternates, they ultimately convict Peterson a first degree murder, and they add on the, um, the special circumstances, which is, um, uh, killing Lacey and then with the second degree charge for killing the feet, killing Connor, the fetus. The penalty phase of the trial began. So we're up to like November 30th now. So we're, yeah, we're really far along. Yeah. And so that started on November 30th, concluded on December 13th, and the 12th person jury came back with a verdict of death. So they sentenced Scott Peterson to death.

I shouldn't say they sentenced the judge has to do that. There were a couple of things that I read that I kind of thought were strange, where the jury gave some statements and press conferences. and a lot of it centered around Peterson's demeanor. I know you and I have watched a lot of the what's available out there online of his interviews and I mean, we can only play the audio here. But if you watch him, his demeanor is not, does not make him look good. Let's put it that way. I think the jury relied heavily on that and the circumstantial evidence.

There was some jury. that said, you know, he showed no emotion. Phone calls to Amber Fry were a big deal. They thought, I think that circumstantial evidence was weighed really heavily against him. But when it really came down to it, they had no smoking gun, which we talked about before. So what they did is they used all these little pieces of circumstantial evidence that came out during the trial. Right. Along with what we talked about as far as his demeanor and the way that he acted in the months after the disappearance, they used that to convict him.

But there was a lot of circumstantial evidence. Oh, absolutely. No doubt. And, you know, we're going to talk about it here in a minute. But I do want to play the verdict. All right. There's the case of people versus Scott Peterson. That director showed the defendant's present in the console, the three box line with the alternates.

And Mr. Fourperson, it's my understanding that the jury has arrived at a verdict in this case. Is that correct? We have the verdicts to Jenae, please. I want to read the verdicts. I'll start with this. State of California versus Scott Peterson. We, the jury, in the above entitled cause, find the defendant, Scott Lee Peterson, guilty of the crime of murder of Lacey Denise Peterson.

In violation of Penal Code Section 187A, as a last one last year, as election count one of the information filed here in. Date of November 12th year 2004, four-person number six. Mr. Four-person, he's at the man, Mr. Chairman, this verdict of the jury with respect to the degree. We, the jury, for the final degree of the murder to be that of the first degree. Debated November 12, 2004, four-person number six. And the jury number six, is that the men, it's verdict of the jury with respect to the degree. And one do we count two?

We, the jury, in the above and title cause, following the defendant, Scott Lee Peterson, guilty of the crime of murder of baby Conard Peterson, in violation of penal code section 187A, as alleged in count two, of the information filed herein. dated November 12th, 2004, four person number six. Is that unanimous verdict of the jury with respect to count two of the information? It is, Your Honor. I want to read the degrees next. We, the jury, further find the degree of murder to be that of the second degree. Dated November 12, 2004, per person, number six.

And Mr. Four person, is that the unanimous verdict of the jury with respect to the degree? It is, Your Honor. I read the special circumstances. We, the jury and above entitled cause, find to be true, the special circumstance, pursuant to Penal Code Section 190.2 subsections A3, that the said defendant, Scott Lee Peterson, has in this case been convicted of at least one crime of murder of the first degree and of one or more crimes of murder of the first or second degree.

dated November 12, 2004, four person number six. So how nervous would you be, Mike, if you were the one that had to read that, knowing that the whole world is going to be listening? I'd be pretty nervous. Yeah, I definitely would too. So Mike, we got a backup. I don't want to say backup, but we kind of chose to talk about the trial and then talk about evidence and motives and everything.

kind of on its own. Right. Instead of trying to weave it into the trial. To me, the evidence is very important as we're talking about this case. And we mentioned it. We mentioned mostly circumstantial evidence. I think at trial was brought up that there was a single hair that was found in a pair of pliers that came from Scott's boat. It was thought to have been Lacey's, but I don't know that they ever conclusive.

you know, it was conclusive that it was hers. And I think the tough part is, right, it's a husband-wife. And you can easily say, we always went fishing together. She was on the boat with me. Her hair was on my shirt. And then it fell off in the boat. Right. And she cast a line.

She got a hook in her and made her bleed. It's easy to cover up a lot of the stuff. And it's hard to, for the prosecutor to use a lot of that. It's great for a defense because, the defense can say exactly that. Their husband and wife, they loved the fish together, they did this together, they were in the boat, they were in the truck all the time. Sometimes she would go visit some of the farms with him and sit in the back of the tailgate.

I mean, it's easy to wash over that kind of evidence. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. If you're a perpetrator that murder somebody that you don't know and you've never been to their house, that's a much different story than. And if maybe you don't even live there, but you're there all the time. It's a friend and you're there all the time. Your DNA or your skin cells or hair or whatever it is is a little more natural for it to be there. So I agree with you on that.

But what we really need to do is, you know, look at all of these different circumstantial pieces of evidence. You know, in the first episode, you talked about the, um, Scott adding to pornographic television channels. Right. Days after his wife's disappearance. Oh, yeah. I mean, he didn't waste any time. Is that a smoking gun?

No. I just find it. It's odd. Yeah, it is odd. I mean, your wife's missing. And you're thinking about porn? And you order two porn stations? Yeah.

I mean. And I think you and I have talked about it. This whole case and in particular, Scott's actions, they're just bizarre. at almost every turn. I think it's weird, especially when you hear the, you know,

the fray tapes, just to listen to him, talk to her. To me, it's bizarre. The ordering the porn, bizarre. Yeah,

because the prosecution used that to suggest that Scott knew that she wasn't coming home. Right. Because you and I both know you're not going to, you're not going to add porn

to your cable lineup if your wife's on her way home. and is going to see the bill or accidentally turned to that channel. Right. So he knew, I mean, they used that against him to say. Sure. You knew she was never going to see the cable bill. Right.

You ordered this for your pleasure, you know. I mean, and there's reports, what, like December 9th, he told Amber that his wife was gone. We talked, we touched on that in the first episode. All of that stuff with Amber telling, basically fabricating. stories to her telling her that his wife was gone. You know, apparently he had expressed to some people interest in selling the house. Right. Fairly, you know, early on.

Early on. This is before they even knew what I think had happened. And just listening to him, you know, acting like he was in Paris when he was at the, you know, the vigil. I think he sold her Land Rover. He sold the Land Rover. And I think he made the comment at one of the news outreach, something about that we just had to realize that she's probably just gone now. Instead of doing the help finder, we need her. She's still out there alive.

And, you know, he makes the comment to one person that it's probably she's gone. Which is crazy because you and I both know that. if our wives were missing at no point, 10 years down the road, maybe, or however many years down the road, do you have to at some point give in and say, you know, something bad has happened. I may never know what it is. But we're talking about a month, days, months. Yeah. I mean, that just doesn't.

Within, within days, weeks. I mean, he's acting like she's gone. Right. never coming back is that because he already knows that she's gone well absolutely is this way i would you know that's what the if i was obviously that's what the jury thought yeah and and i would too right if i was sitting on that jury i would think you had zero hope that she's still that she could have still been your actions reflected that you had zero hope and to have zero hope you know and we know you're this terrible person, you're this outscrewing different women and saying bad things about

your wife, but still to have zero hope that your unborn child and wife is nowhere to be found and you're basically given up. I don't know. It just tells me. Yeah, it doesn't compute to me. And obviously it didn't to the jurors. I mean, the prosecution, I think, laid on the taped phone calls, which we played a lot of in episode one. They laid heavily on that, and I'm sure that swayed or meant a lot to the jury.

All these circumstance evidence that you heard, what do you think was the most biggest key piece of evidence? What solidified it for you? I don't know if I can point to one, but I'm going to say the fact that he chose to go fishing on Christmas Eve, when his wife is eight months, month's pregnant. Number one, I don't know how many guys would do that. You're not spending time with your wife on Christmas Eve. You choose to go fishing. And then the fact that he did that.

And then her body, as well as his unborn son's fetus was found in the same area that he went fishing. Right. I think that was a biggie. And I think you're right. And I think the fact that even the, police say that, you know, they, they, during this time that they tracked Scott and he drove to that marina three times in early January, and he would look out over that water in that marina out on that

bay. So, you know, and the police were out there searching that area and he found himself over there and out looking. It just seems like, you know, he was watching. It's today, the day they're going to find it. Is this the day that, you know, I'm going to have to turn up my alibi, my defense, you know. And that's one thing we haven't talked about. Yeah. The number of subsequent trips. Yeah.

Different visits that he makes. Yeah. And also, I think it's out there that he was keeping an eye on that area. He was asking people about that area. You know when someone comes to you and talks about something that. What their intentions are. Or what they're trying to get through and go, you know, here's somebody that sounds like they're probably guilty of something. Right. Or, you know, they're fishing for information. Or they're fishing for information. Yeah. So I think, you know, and he's doing this.

You know, he's bringing up stories about how he came across other fishermen in the bay and talked to them that day. Of course, the police can't find these fishermen, you know, that he's talking about. But he's acting like they're there all the time. But yet when it comes, time to find them. They can't find the fishermen to produce in court. To me, he's the ultimate and I've been in sales a big chunk of my adult life. Sales people are great, man. They're the forefront of the country. They make things happen. And you are a bullshit artist. And I am that too. You can be. Yeah. He is the biggest salesman. And this is his biggest sell. Right now, the murder of Lacey and the unborn is his biggest sales job. And he is really trying to turn it on with the BS.

And he holds that all the way through. I mean, he never lets up on the sale. The interesting thing on Facebook recently, since we announced that we were going to do the Scott Peterson story. And then once we released episode one, There was a lot of messaging back and forth on Facebook. One person in particular, and I wish I could remember her name because I'd give her a shout out for it.

But we had this conversation about that you could almost look at what he does in this scenario as being worse than some of these big-time serial killers. Yeah. And that you may, people may find that strange for me to say that. You can look at BTK who killed many, many more people, right? He killed, what, 10 altogether? But what Scott Peterson did or what he was convicted of doing, let me put it that way, killing his wife, very intimate.

I mean, that's the person that you're supposed to protect and love for the rest of your life. Yeah. Killing your unborn child. Mutilates them. Yeah, you can make an argument that that's much worse. I think it is. Then some of these other serial killers that, not that it's not bad what they do.

All of it's bad. It's all bad. But we were having this conversation and the person, I kind of, we both kind of came to this realization that because of the intimacy of what happened in the brutality, that this is pretty much, it's basically worse than what BTK did.

I mean, when you go to bed tonight. And I don't want to piss people off. about especially victims of no no and I think it's right you know family of victims you go to when you go to bed tonight then your wife's laying next to you you think that you should be able to close your eyes and go off the la-la land well and she should too without having any reservation that she probably has a little reservation because the stuff that you research and love to talk about i do spend a lot of time talking about yeah she probably should be a little concerned about a lot but just a little bit versus you know someone

busting through the door right now and shooting you, you know, you don't, you don't expect that. You don't know the person, but to know the person and for them to do something terrible to you, I mean, it's just a, it's a different level. Yeah, so I do want to make that clear, because I don't want to get a bunch of nasty messages that all of these murders that we talk about, they're heinous. Absolutely. I think one of the things that you and I try really hard to do is show compassion for the victims and the victims families and try not to glorify the um the the the killers or the

accused so i i i really don't want to demean or or not that's not we're not lessening the yeah i don't want to lessen what some of these other people did it's just the intimacy of this case i mean this is this is a spouse yeah you marry you marry somebody thinking well and an unborn unborn child. Yeah. And I can't even, you know, I had a hard. That's horrible. When you talk about, you know, babies and kids, we talked about Huckabee, that crime, you know, it just teared me up.

Yeah. But in this case, you know, he was, you know, Peterson was the ultimate, the ultimate sales job here. He sold everybody in his life on, it wasn't him, tried to sell it to Amber. And he did it for a pretty good while, right? He had the, he had the Roka family behind him. Yep. We talked about that in episode one. He had Amber Fry completely fooled for a period of time before she realized that his wife was missing and started, you know, working with the police.

Clearly, a lot of women found him attractive. He had early on a lot of, I don't want to call fan mail, but he had a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, of female followers that would write him in prison, that would send him pictures in prison, in jail, not prison, but in jail. That seems pretty, that seems like it happens a lot, that there are a lot of females attracted to, like Richard Ramirez, and we're, we're going to definitely cover him the night stalker at some point. That guy got so much fan mail from admirers.

And I think it's crazy. It's not the, you know, the bad boy thing that a lot of, you know, women say that they're attracted to the bad boy. This is a whole different level. Yeah. That's not bad boy. That is horrible, crazy. But he has this, you know, following.

No doubt about it. He was nice, you know. I hate even talking good about him. But he was a good-looking guy, I guess, you know, because, I mean, Lacey was absolutely beautiful. Yeah. And I'm sure at one point, the guy probably wasn't horrible. I don't know that he did anything horrible

before this. Yeah, I don't know what, well, I mean, besides the adultery. Well, adultery, yeah. I don't know what, which is horrible, but what caused him

to cross that line. Besides the fact that, you know, as we discussed before, he wanted to be with Amber. Well, and so that leads us into talking a little bit about motive, right?

So I think the prosecution would present that it was his affair with Frye. That was a motive. Mm-hmm. Right? He wanted to be rid of, his wife and soon be, I don't think he wanted to be a dad. I think I read a few things that I don't know

if he had expressed that or he was feeling trapped or, but I think there was a part of him that wanted to be with Amber Fry. Right. And he's made, he, he had made comments to previous girls on the side that he, he didn't wish to have any children. Yeah. And I think the other big motive that they put out there. And it was one of the reasons why I wanted to play that news clip was the life insurance policy because there was definitely some talk about them being in debt or him especially racking up some debt. Right. And so that life insurance policy would obviously get him out of that situation. We're going to get to, I want to talk about his sentencing and I want to talk about his appeal.

Right. But one of the things that that I found, and if you can say that there's something good that came out of this, which is a hard thing to say, but, you know, the death of Lacey and Connor, you know, it did lead to Congress passing the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. And it's widely known as Lacey and Conner's law. And that was passed in 2004. Sharon Rocha and her boyfriend, Ron Gransky, which we heard in the 9-1-1 tape that started off episode one. You know, they were at the White House.

George W. Bush signed this bill into law. And it basically recognizes unborn children as legal victims if injured or killed during a listed crime of vile. So I don't know how it was classified before that. Right. But and maybe that is why he, they could only push the, the second degree charge for the fetus

because they couldn't prove that, or because they knew it wasn't, it didn't go full term. So now if you kill an unborn child, it can be prosecuted the right way. It's first degree. That's what I took from this. So, you know,

I don't know that you can ever say something good comes from something this heinous, but that is, it is definitely something that should have been on the books before. It's sad that it took this heinous crime to get it there, but they got it there and that's a good thing. It is a good thing. So, you know, we talked about the jury returning the verdict of death for Scott. And he was formally sentenced March 16th. 2005, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. The judge, as he should have, you know, I was laid into him pretty, pretty good, called Scott Cruel, Heartless, Callas, and he ordered him to pay $10,000 towards the cost of Lacey's funeral. How much solaceous

Lacey's family took in that. And that doesn't seem like a whole, and maybe he didn't have a lot of money. I don't know. Peterson Yeah Well, we had $15,000 in cash Why is the judge only ordering him to pay $10,000? Well, and his family raised over a million dollars For the attorney

Right, so why did it And maybe that's all the judge Had authority to Maybe that was it That was just the yeah The Rokas, you know, I'm sure went after I'm just trying to figure out In a civil trial

Who donated to his defense Why? It's funny that you bring that up Because if you go Facebook or certain websites, there are a lot of people that think Scott Peterson is innocent. You know, when I post the episodes as they come out, when I posted episode one on Facebook, in the comments, there was a person that definitely said that they would be glad when the real killer of Lacey and Connor was caught.

So who do they think the real killer is? Didn't say. I like to know that. Didn't post that. And wasn't this person wasn't malicious. No, no, no. Didn't say anything mean. I'm just curious, you know, I mean because the evidence is pretty strong, even though it's

circumstance. And I think that's probably why there are a lot of people that have some doubt. Yeah. To his guilt is because it is pretty much all circumstantial. And you can convict somebody on circumstantial evidence alone. Well, clearly. just was a ton of it. Right.

And it's like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. It's just really nothing solid that would tell you otherwise, didn't push you to the direction of this Donny guy or this, you know, this cult possibility. Right. It just, you know, I mean. But I thought that was interesting because now there's way more, there's way more people making comments that, you know, this guy was a piece of shit. I hope he fries in hell.

I mean, there's tons of those comments. Right. But there were a number of comments that led me down a few rabbit holes to different websites and different Facebook pages that are certainly in the camp that Scott Peterson is innocent and they're still out looking for the true killers of Lacey and Connor. Well, you know, I know that when he was sentenced, Lacey's mom. mom, you know, she did read and made some comments at the sentencing, which she's allowed to do. They allow that.

And, you know, one of the critical points in that is that she actually read, and made a comment basically saying something to the effect that, imagine, you know, your unborn son, Connor, being murdered, and Connor asking you, Daddy, why are you killing Mommy and me? I guess basically there was not a dry eye in there except for, you know, Peterson was unemotional about it. But the way she read it. Dude, I'm about ready to tear up right now. Just thinking about her, just thinking, hear her voice. I'm sure it was crackling. Oh, she's grieving. Yeah.

And she's saying, this is Connor as you're murdering, being as he's being murdered, he's saying, you know, daddy. or are you killing mommy and me? And I know I've talked about this on a lot of episodes. People are probably going to get tired of me saying it. But one thing that we do a lot is we analyze how we think people are supposed to act. Right. Right. We do that from 911 calls to how they act in the courtroom.

But I don't care whether you didn't murder. You did murder. How can you not show any emotion? Because either way, your wife. and son are dead. Absolutely. Show them that raw emotion, right? I don't know how you can hold it back.

Other, unless you are a psychopath, which. And you just associate yourself with it all. Is incapable of showing any empathy. Like we heard in BTKs, trial tapes, you know. I mean. I don't know that Scott was a psychopath, but for him to, I don't, even if he was, even if he's innocent, he didn't, he never showed any emotion. I never saw it.

Right. He tried what looked like fake tears and some of the interviews and things that we watched. But yeah, I don't know. Just the raw motion for me. On March 17, 2005, Peterson arrives at San Quentin State Prison. He joined other inmates in the only, I think that's the only death row facility in California, which seems strange because California is pretty big. Right.

And I think really we have to jump up. all the way to 2012 because I used to have a really hard time about this. And I don't know what you think, Mike, about how long it takes for somebody to be executed. You know, I'm not in no way am I against the death penalty. But in the past, I've always had a hard time figuring out why it took 20 years or whatever it was. But now if you look at a lot of these cases where people are being exonerated by DNA evidence. Right. Now it makes sense.

Now it starts to make a little sense, although you hate as a taxpayer to be paying for these people to eat and sleep and do whatever for 20 years. I mean, if you just want to talk costs real fast, I mean, just the initial trial up to the point where he got sentenced, not any of the appeals, none of that stuff.

Just up to that point was, you know, just over $4 million dollars. to the county. Yeah. That the county residents had to pay for that to go on. Yeah. Costs them more than $4 million.

Which is crazy. But, you know, that's our justice system. And if I was in that seat and I hadn't done anything, I'd be wanting to have, for me, afforded all those opportunities. But anyway, I've kind of changed, I guess what I was saying is I've changed my thinking a little bit just because there have been now with DNA technology there have been so many exonerations that it does make a little more sense maybe to so you're saying it warrants some time frame yes before but yet but not these 30 been on death row for 30 years right well in the

old days they just hang you or shoot you or whatever it was well they had it right in the wild west yeah I mean, I'm sure they got it wrong now. Nobody knew about it because there was no DNA or there was nothing to quickly bury you to come back. So we got to get up to, you know, before we close this out, 2012, you know, there's still filing appeals on Scott's behalf. At this time, his lawyer is a man named Cliff Gardner. And he actually files an appeal that's 423 pages. I don't know if that's, that sounds big. It sounds like bedside table reading.

It's what I read before I go to bed. Yeah. Basically what he cites in there is that the jury was, you know, affected by all the publicity that was hostile towards Scott Peterson. The case was flimsy. As we talked about, relied pretty much solely on circumstantial evidence. As you would expect, the state attorney files there. response in November 2015, the defense files something else. They file a habeas corpus petition claiming that a juror lied on her jury application

and that there was evidence that neighbors saw Lacey Peterson alive after Scott left home. So, I mean, there's still things going on. Right. Well after, you know, so what he was sent to. in what, 2005, so 10 years later, they're still working through that appeals process. And obviously, nothing has come to fruition. He's still, to my knowledge, on death row and will be until the day he dies, unless there's some blockbuster bombshell like we've seen in some of these other cases,

but I just don't see it. I think he'll end up dying in prison. I don't think that they're going to rush to get this to follow through on the on the death, you know, sentencing part. That's just my opinion. Pretty liberal state. So I just don't see that occurring. It's a fascinating case.

There's a lot of layers to it. Oh, like we've talked. You could go on and on in different directions with this case. You know, like you said, we could talk about the jurors, you know, and the issues with the jurors. More about the phone calls and the phone calls. The Frye relationship. And it's something that you and I always talk about. when we're selecting a case and starting out is how much detail is too much detail.

Most of the comments that we have received and we love comments, everybody, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram doesn't matter. We love your comments. But I think most of the comments that we've gotten have been in favor of the detail. Right. Now, it can probably get sloggy and slow at times when you're dealing with so much detail. But that's what I've taken away from the comments that they like the fact that we get into the mud as much as we do. Get little details, get some givey facts mixed in with it. Yeah.

But what that leads to is in some of the bigger cases, this is a two-parter, some of the big, you know, Dahmer, Gacy, you're looking at probably at least three. Yeah. When we get there. Dommer's going to put a hurting on me because I'm going to be able to eat meat for a while. I know. But anyway, I'll speak for Gibby that we just really appreciate everyone that takes the time to download and listen. You know, our numbers have really increased at a rate that we never expected.

And we love hearing all your comments on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and the interaction. The one thing I would say is if you like the show, and you're on using the iPhone, definitely go out to iTunes and, you know, give us a rating. The review is optional, but the rating really helps us move up the ranks. And it helps other people when they're doing searches for true crime podcasts. So, Mike's there anything else you got? No, I really like the memes. I know we had another meme the other day.

We need more memes. Is it meme? I think it's meme. M-E-E. You and I are old. But we need these younger people to send in more memes. That's right. Speaking of memes, I've got to give a shout out to Sarah Beth for her Tyrone Biggams.

Y'all got more podcast meme? That was hilarious. One of the funniest ones we've had. Thank you, Sarah Beth, so much. All right, guys. Well, we're wrapping up the second part of Scott Peterson. We appreciate it. As always, stay safe and keep it.

your own time ticking.