True Crime Campfire - Perfect Mask: The Murder of Laci Peterson, Part 1

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

It’s our first anniversary at True Crime Campfire, y’all, and we decided we wanted to do something special. So this week and next, we’re doing a deep dive into the much-requested case of Scott Peterson, whose death sentence for the murder of his wife was recently overturned. If you’re not familiar, here’s a thumbnail sketch. In 2003, a radiantly beautiful young woman named Laci went missing on Christmas Eve. She was 8 and ½ months pregnant, and her disappearance immediately captured the attention of the nation. As the case unfolded, it became increasingly clear to most that Laci’s husband, handsome salesman Scott Peterson, knew more than he was saying about the case. For months, revelation after revelation popped up about Scott’s double life, and the many lies he told to cover it up. Finally, the bodies of Laci and her unborn son, Connor, washed up on the beach at the San Francisco Bay, and Scott was arrested, tried and convicted for murder. Now, in the years since, Scott has acquired some very vocal supporters. A documentary series on A&E theorizes that the jury may have gotten it wrong—that Scott might actually be innocent. Yeah, not so much, in our opinion. We’re not going to pretend we don’t have a stance on this, because we wouldn’t be us if we did—we have pretty strong opinions on this case, because both of us have been obsessed with it for years. I watched the trial gavel to gavel in real time. But we do want to give Scott’s supporters their due—so here’s the plan. We’re doing this one over two weeks. This first part will be your basic TCC format—we’re going to tell you the story as we believe it went down, and based on the jury’s guilty verdict. But next week, we’ll get into the trial, including the arguments on both sides, and we’ll examine Scott’s defense in detail. And hey—if you end up disagreeing with us on this one, we’re not mad at you. Just don’t break up with us over it. We hope you’ll reserve judgment until we’ve released both parts. Sources:A Deadly Game by Catherine CrierBlood Brother by Anne BirdWitness for the Prosecution of Scott Peterson by Amber FreyFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

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Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. It's our first anniversary at true crime campfire, y'all, and we decided we wanted to do something special. So this week and next, we're doing, a deep dive into the much-requested case of Scott Peterson, whose death sentence for the murder of his wife was recently overturned. If you're not familiar, here's a thumbnail sketch. In 2003, a radiantly beautiful young woman named Lacey went missing on Christmas Eve. She was eight and a half months pregnant and her disappearance immediately captured the attention of the nation. As the case unfolded, it became increasingly clear to most that Lacey's husband, handsome salesman Scott Peterson, knew more than he was saying about the case.

For months, revelation after revelation popped up about Scott's double life and the many lies he told to cover it up. Finally, the bodies of Lacey and her unborn son Connor washed up on the beach at the San Francisco Bay, and Scott was arrested, tried, and convicted for murder. Now, in the years since, Scott has acquired some very vocal supporters. A documentary series on A&E theorizes that the jury may have gotten it wrong, that Scott might actually be innocent.

Yeah, not so much in our opinion. We're not going to pretend we don't have a stance on this because we wouldn't be us if we did. We have pretty strong opinions on this case because both of us have been obsessed with it for years. I watch the trial gavel-gabble in real time. But we do want to give Scott supporters their due, so here's the plan. We're doing this one over two weeks. This first part will be your basic TCC format. We're going to tell you the story as we believe it went down and based on the jury's guilty verdict.

But next week, we'll get into the trial, including the arguments on both sides, and we'll examine Scott's defense in detail. And, hey, if you end up disagreeing with us on this one, we're not mad at you. Just don't break up with us over it. We hope you'll reserve judgment until we've released both parts. This is Perfect Mask, the murder of Lacey Peterson, part one. So campers were in Modesto, California, December 24th, 2002. 5.17 p.m. Christmas Eve. Sharon Rocha was rushing around getting ready for a holiday dinner with her family that night.

Everyone was due to arrive at 6, so she was making sure everything was in the oven that needed to be, putting the finishing touches on things. And then the phone rang. It was her son-in-law, Scott Peterson. He said, hi, mom, is Lacey there? Lacey was Sharon's 27-year-old daughter and best friend, an energetic, vibrant, beautiful young woman who was eight months pregnant and so excited to become a mom. Sharon talked to her just about every day, but she just realized she hadn't talked to her at all

so far that day, which was kind of strange. Sharon was confused. Why would Lacey be here? She said, no, why? Scott said, Lacey's car is at the house and the dogs in the backyard with his Lyshaun. Lacey is missing. That word, missing. It hit Sharon's ear like a wrong note in a song. Lacey is missing? And like most moms would be, Sharon was instantly scared to death. Her first thought, of course, was that Lacey had gone into labor. Maybe she was at the hospital.

She told Scott, call your friends. Ask him if they've seen her. Then call me back. Sharon told her husband Ron, Lacey's missing, echoing Scott's language from a minute before. And a couple minutes later, Scott called back. He said, OK, I checked with friends, but nobody's seen her. Sharon told Scott to try the neighbors and call her back. She was trying not to panic. She'd talked to Lacey the night before and everything had been fine. But Scott called back a few minutes later.

He'd checked with the neighbors, he said. Nobody had seen her. Lacey had planned to walk their dog Mackenzie that morning, Scott said, East Loma Park near their house. He reminded her about finding McKenzie dragging his leash when he got home. At this point, it was 532, 15 minutes since Scott's first call. Later, it would occur to Sharon that 15 minutes was awful quick to have checked with all Scott and Lacey's friends and neighbors, but it didn't occur to her at the time. She was starting to panic.

Sharon told Scott to meet her at the park. She called her best friend Sandy to come help her look for Lacey, and when her friend pulled up a few minutes later to pick her up, she asked her husband Ron to call the police. She and her friend booked it over to East Leloma Park. For months, Lacey had watched her. walked in the park every day with McKenzie. But as Sharon arrived at the park, it hit her that this was really strange, because recently Lacey had stopped her daily walks. She told her yoga instructor and her OB doctor that she was getting exhausted easily, and they had both told her to knock off the walks until after the baby was born. Lacey had agreed, and she hadn't been walking McKenzie

lately. Not for weeks. In fact, neighbors would later confirm with police that they hadn't seen her walking the dog in a while. Sharon ran around the park, shouting for Lacey. It seemed to take forever for Scott to arrive, and Sharon was surprised at how calm he seemed. She noticed he seemed to be avoiding her eyes, too. In fact, Lacey's family would all notice, starting on day one and continuing throughout the ongoing investigation into Lacey's disappearance, that Scott seemed to be avoiding them, especially Sharon. Very strange, given how close they'd always been. Probably because of Lacey's advanced pregnancy, police took Ron's 911 call seriously right away and sent officers to me. with Scott and Sharon. Okay. Now, campers, here's the thing. There are a ton of details about these

first few days of the investigation. We cannot possibly tell you all of them without devoting an entire season of the show to this case. It would take five hours. Somebody actually begged me. She's like, please just do a six-parter. I'm like, are you serious? You know who you are, you know who you are. Yes. And we cannot. We'd just be basically reading you. every book. It'd be an audio book series. So what we are going to do, we're going to compromise like any healthy relationship. We're going to highlight what we consider to be some of the most important things that were said and done in those early days. It's not everything. If you want the full story, the best book to read is probably Catherine Cryer's A Deadly Game, which is

fantastically detailed. So if you wonder at any point, well, why didn't the cops do this or why didn't they do that. It's very likely that they did, but we just didn't have time to tell you about it. We just wanted to be clear about that since we have to leave out a ton of stuff. Okay. So, Scott told the first investigator on the scene at the park that he'd last seen Lacey at 9.30 that morning before he'd left to go fishing. He said she was planning to walk the dog and go to the grocery store and then bake cookies. When he left the house, he said, she was mopping the floor. He'd come home to find McKenzie dragging his leash in the backyard and the house empty. He said he didn't know if Lacey's purse was still in the

house. Investigators found the front door of Scott and Lacey's house unlocked. Here are some things they noticed during that first walkthrough. The place was decorated for Christmas with gifts under the tree. A throw rug was bunched up on the floor against the patio door. The officers felt that it looked like something had been dragged across it. A carefully decorated nursery for the baby Lacey was expecting, a mop bucket and two moths leaning against the outside wall by the side door. The mop bucket was still wet. No ransacking or obvious signs of a burglary. Also, on the Peterson's bed was one of those really fluffy, poofy, down comforters. The investigators noticed that in the middle of that comforter was a big dent. It looked very much like a person

had lain across the bed to create it. When Scott arrived back at the house, He found Lacey's purse hanging in the bedroom closet. Her wallet and keys were in it. Scott said nothing seemed to be missing from the house. He told them Lacey had been wearing expensive jewelry when he left that morning, diamond earrings, a diamond necklace, and a pricey watch. The officers asked Scott where he'd been all day, he said fishing. Without being asked, he showed them a receipt that said he'd entered the Berkeley Marina at 1254 that afternoon. One officer asked, what did you go fishing for? No response. Weird. What did you use for bait? Some type of silver lure. Okay. Scott said he kept his fishing gear at his company's storage facility.

If you've ever talked to a fisherman, like a serious fisherman, you know that this is immediately weird. I went to grad school with a guy that tied his own flies and he could talk for hours about how each lure was different and what it was meant for. Like, fishermen are like target moms. Sounds exhausting. So then he started to rattle off all his movements since leaving home that morning. He'd gone to his company's warehouse, he'd fafed around doing work stuff and cleaning and assembling some new tool he'd bought, and then finally hitched up his boat and headed to the marina at 1130. The detectives wondered, he said he decided to go fishing two hours earlier than that. It was Christmas Eve Day. He said he had errands to run before dinner with Lacey's parents at six, but he messed around for two hours at the warehouse before heading out for

the 90-mile trip to the marina. Seemed a little odd, but okay. In fact, Scott's half-sister Anne Bird later said that Scott's fishing story surprised her from the start. Lacey tended to order Scott around like he worked for, like in a good-natured way. Everyone who knew her said that she'd had a honey-do list a mile long on the day before Christmas. Lead detective Al Bracini, who I like to call Detective Brockolini, because I am a weirdo, had Scott start over from the very beginning of the day. So he said, okay, they woke up.

He wasn't sure what time. Lacey got up first. She had to eat first thing or she'd get sick because of the pregnancy. He laid in bed until around eight, got up, show, showered, watched a little bit of Lacey's favorite show Martha Stewart. He said they were making meringue cookies. Bikini noted Scott didn't mention either of them making the bed. He asked when Scott made the decision to go fishing, and Scott said he decided that morning that he would either play golf or go fishing. It was too cold to golf, he said. Uh, I'm sorry, what? Okay, so it's too cold to golf, but zipsopping along the ocean in a speedboat with the salt spray in your face is a-okay, right?

That's a bit odd. And, in fact, the investigators later found out that Scott had told Ron his father-in-law that he had gone golfing that day, not fishing. For the first time, but most definitely not the last, they'd caught him in an outright lie. The theory here is that when it occurred to Scott that people had seen him and his truck and boat at the marina, he had to change his. story on the fly. He'd originally planned to say he was golfing. Scott now said he was fishing for sturgeon, specifically trawling for them. Later, police determined that he hadn't brought the right equipment for that kind of fish. It was the wrong season to fish for sturgeon. The time of the morning was way too late in the day to start, and it was illegal to trawl for sturgeon in the bay.

So, thanks for playing. It had rained, Scott said, so he only fished for about 90 minutes. Later, when police went to the marina to check Scott's story, they learned that it absolutely had not rained that day. Wom! Scott said he'd made two calls to Lacey from his cell on the drive back. One to her cell phone, one to the landline. He left messages. Cops later listened to them.

They were syrupy sweet. Hey, beautiful. Can't wait to see you, sweetie. I didn't just murder you and dump your body at sea, et cetera. Such a trope in true crime, isn't it? those fake phone calls. He'd driven the boat back to the warehouse, then gone home to find McKenzie with the leash still on, the house dark and empty. He'd found the mop bucket still full of water and two mops in the hall. He'd carried all that outside and emptied the bucket. Then he'd

gotten some cold pizza out of the fridge. He'd put his clothes into the washing machine and started it. He took his shower, changed. Then he called Sharon Rocha. Bracini wondered. Why hadn't he called sooner? He said Lacey had planned to spend the day cooking and baking. When he got home and didn't smell cookies baking, didn't see any groceries laid out or put away in the fridge, didn't see Lacey anywhere, found the house dark and empty and the dog still wearing his leash? Why didn't that ring immediate alarm bells? Why did he wait more than 45 minutes to try to figure out where his heavily pregnant wife was? Also, why wash his clothes and his clothes only? There was an overflowing.

and camper next to the washing machine and some filthy towels on top of the dryer. Yet the only thing Scott washed were the clothes he'd been wearing, which he said were wet with rain and sea spray. Still wet after a 90-minute drive? Plus the time it took him to put the boat back in the warehouse and drive back home. And also it didn't rain, but okay. Had Scott called Lacey's OBGYN or the hospital where she was planning to have the baby? No. Okay. Yeah, that's a huge red flag. So your wife is eight months pregs. On Christmas Eve, when you're scheduled to go somewhere soon, you get home, you can't find her,

and you don't immediately think early labor and start calling her doctor? Yeah, I call big shenanigans on that. Detective Bracini went out into the driveway with Scott to take a look in Scott's truck and Lacey's Land Rover, with Scott's permission, of course. They were parked right next to each other. Bracini noticed four big patio umbrellas in the bed of the truck. When the detective opened the driver's door of Scott's truck, it bumped so gently, so gently against Lacey's car door, and Scott immediately demanded they stop the search. He wanted to move the truck forward.

Burkini said, no, no, no, we'd rather not move either vehicle right now. So Scott brought out a glove and offered to hold it between his truck door and Lacey's car so it wouldn't get dinged. Holy shit. Brickini agreed to be more careful, but this floored him. It was the first time he'd ever seen a family member of a missing person worry about protecting his stuff. Yeah, indicative, in my opinion, not only of seriously fucked up priorities given the situation, but also possibly of control issues. And I think we're going to see those control issues pop up again and again throughout the investigation.

Detectives were already exchanging glances over Scott's contradictory. sometimes evasive answers and odd behavior. Brickini's notes mentioned his casual and nonchalant manner and noted that he seemed bored, tired, and devoid of urgency. Now, campers, I know what some of y'all are thinking. Everybody reacts differently to stress. And you're right. And this isn't proof of anything.

But the thing about this case is, it's not really any one thing that points to the solution to this mystery. There's no smoking gun. This case is about hundreds of puzzle pieces. Each one just a little blob of color by itself, but when you put them together, you start to see a very clear picture. So just hang with us. Yeah, and I mean, everybody else was a hot mess of tears and panic. That's not nothing that Scott was the only one that wasn't.

And as you'll see, there are a lot of things that point to a lack of concern for Lacey on Scott's part and a lack of urgency to find her. This stuff unfolded all through the course of the investigation leading up to Scott's arrest. For example, detectives were surprised to find out that Scott hadn't checked the house to see if any of Lacey's shoes or jackets were missing. And remember, he hadn't checked for her purse either until they told him to do so. Also, the investigators asked him to give them the name of Lacey's Dennis so they could get her dental records. That's important stuff in a missing person's investigation. But it took him days to do it. He kept saying,

I can't remember who were dentist is. Silly me. And he only finally provided the name when Burkini called and prodded him about it. Oh, I almost forgot. Later they found out it was the same dentist that Scott used. I mean, I can see how you could forget that name, right? Oh, my God. Okay, so back to day one of the investigation. As the detectives began combing over the property, Scott suddenly came out with this. You know, if they find blood anywhere, that doesn't mean anything. I'm a sportsman. Just look at my hands. I could drop blood anywhere. Okay. Good to know. You know, not something most people would probably be worrying about in their situation, but okay. Good to know. And a little later, Scott asked an officer if they'd used cadaver dogs yet. Oh my God. Cadaver dogs. Lacey had been missing for hours at this point. Most loved ones of missing people can't bear to think that the person is dead and people will engage in the most heartbreaking mental genital. nastics to convince themselves that their loved one is still alive. So to be asking about cadaver dogs on day one, that is not something you normally see. I also can't even begin to deal with the fact that this kind of comes off as like detectives planning. Like, sir, have you considered using,

you might have not heard of them. They're called cadaver dogs to search for my missing wife. Like, dude, maybe focus on keeping your fucking story straight, you great value benefit. That Fleck. He really is. Police were suspicious already on that first day that this was going to turn out to be a homicide investigation. It just had that feel about it. I mean, for one thing, they knew that the number one cause of death among pregnant women is homicide. And that, by the way, was true in 2002 and it's true in 2020 as well. Homicide by the baby's father. And that's not after medical causes. That's the number one cause of death period in pregnant women. Isn't that insane? 20% of women who die during pregnancy is bonkers. Bonkers. So, Brickini wanted to do everything by the book. So as officers began with Scott's permission to take some pictures around the house,

Brickini drove Scott to his company's warehouse. He wanted to look at that boat that Scott had gone fishing in that day. And as they pulled up to the building, Scott suddenly said, oh, there's no lights right now. The electricity is off. So Brickini had to turn his bright car headlights on to illuminate the warehouse just enough to take a few pictures of Scott's boat. It didn't occur to Burkini right then,

but later he remembered that earlier that day, Scott had told him he'd used the computer and the fax machine in that building that morning. But now there's no electricity? He later determined from the electric company that this was a lie. Now, Campers, you tell me, why would Scott lie about this?

Why on earth would he tell the detective assigned to find his missing wife that there were no lights in the warehouse where he kept his boat? Oh, geez. Let me think. Could it be that he didn't want Burkini to get a good look at that boat in the area around it? It's a thinker, but you have a theory there. I'm sure he had a good reason. Whatever. So later, the warehouse would in fact be thoroughly searched in the boat, too. And here are just some few notable details from that search. In the boat, the CSIs found a chunk of concrete with a loop of rebar stuck into it. So kind of like a makeshift anchor it looked like.

Scott said it was a homemade anchor, but there was no rope or chain attached, which was weird, because obviously you can't use something as an anchor unless you're going to tether it to the boat. Also odd was that Scott said he'd only made one anchor, but there were crescent moon-shaped stains from wet concrete that suggested there had been multiple anchors, but the others were nowhere to be found. The forensic team also found concrete debris along the ribline of the boat and concrete dust on a table nearby. They later determined that Scott had bought a huge, huge bag of concrete mix soon before Lacey's disappearance. They noted some odd scratches down one side of the boat as well, and probably most notably, a pair of needle-nose pliers with a black

hair twisted up in them. This hair was later found to be consistent with the hairs from Lacey's hair. They couldn't check the DNA, unfortunately, because there was no bulb attached to the hair. Scott said he'd bought the boat on December 9th. He claimed he'd told Lacey about it, but the investigators soon learned that no one knew about it. Not one family member or friend, and Lacey wasn't the type to keep quiet about a big new purchase like that. The first night, Bracini asked Scott if he'd be willing to take a polygraph. Scott said, yeah, they're accurate, right? Bracini said, yeah, it's nothing that can be used against you, but yeah, I believe they're accurate. Scott said he was definitely up for it, no problem. But,

the next day, he backpedaled, said he'd talked to his dad, and his dad had advised him not to take the polygraphs. Now, say what you like about polygraphs. I will probably agree with you. You know we've expressed dubiousness about their value many, many times on this show. But this is unusual behavior for the worried loved one of a missing person. It 100% is. If my husband went missing, I would do anything. They asked me to. Anything. I'd want them to rule me out as fast as possible. so they wouldn't waste any time and they could move on and actually find out what is happening. No way in hell would I say, no, I won't do that.

Right. As Bracini interviewed Scott, other detectives and officers canvass the neighborhood. The Peterson's neighbors had some interesting observations to share. They corroborated Sharon's point that Lacey had not been walking McKenzie lately. They also said that Lacey always raised her shades every morning and lowered them every evening. but the shades were down on Christmas Eve morning for the first time ever, the neighbor thought. She assumed that meant that Scott and Lacey were away from the holiday.

And this was interesting. One neighbor saw Scott's truck backed into the driveway on Christmas Eve around 4.45. It was the first time she'd ever seen him park that way. What were you doing there, Scotty? A little bit suspish. Literally never back your vehicle in anywhere. Your neighbors will fucking notice or have cameras in the case of Chris Watts.

Either way, you will get on the investigator's radar immediately. Everyone's like, how did he back that in? He never does that. Why would he back that in? And then it's like in their brains forever. Over the next few days, the investigators found a few people who thought they may have seen Lacey around the time of her disappearance. For example, one lady said she'd seen a pregnant, dark-haired woman with a dog of McKenzie's type on a leash near the county hospital walking with two men. The dog was barking and one of the men kept shouting at her to shut the fucking dog up. When the woman saw the missing flyer with Lacey's pick, she called the police. At first she said she was certain it was Lacey, but within a few minutes, she had backpedaled,

saying, well, I'm pretty sure, and insisting she was real good with faces. She also said the woman was wearing black pants and a white shirt. When Lacey's body was eventually found, she was wearing white pants and a bra, not black pants, not a white shirt. The eyewitness also described the woman as looking six to seven months pregnant. Lacey was an obvious eight and a half. Investigators could never establish a definite timeline with any of these witnesses. And of course, there are many. dark-haired, pregnant women, and Modesto.

And don't even get us started on how a garbage eyewitness testimony is. We're probably going to do a whole big thing about that in the next episode. But yeah, it's really unreliable. They also started interviewing sex offenders and violent parolees in the area. But this didn't produce any leads. Early on, search doggos and helicopters were brought out. And a search dog named Merlin, who I'm sure was a very good boy. I'm sure he was such a good boy.

Tracked Lacey sent all. all the way out of the neighborhood, suggesting she, or her body, had probably left in a vehicle. Meanwhile, they put an officer on Scott's office to make sure no one took anything out of there without permission. And lo and behold, on December 26th, the guy said Scott had arrived and tried to take a computer out of the office. Nope. So they snagged that back. And then 36 hours into the investigation, detectives Burkini and Grogan, who's the other guy, approached Scott to ask to formally, thoroughly search the couple's computers, their very,

vehicles in Scott's office. They said, look, this could help us find out if there was something Lacey was keeping under her hat, like a stalker or something. This could help us find her. So Scott took the consent forms and he read through them very carefully and then he said, you don't expect me to sign these right now, do you? I'm going to have to consult with an attorney before I sign anything. Now, y'all, again, if your spouse was missing, your pregnant wife, would you not give police immediate permission to search whatever the fuck they needed to search? I would let them search my physical body if they needed to. I would do whatever it took if my husband was missing. No questions asked. And maybe you wouldn't, but I sure as hell would. If my dog was missing,

I'd give consent to search my entire house. Are you kidding me? Yeah, it's someone you love. Absolutely. This is a crazy reaction. This response baffles me every time I think about it. This isn't a fucking job contract, Scott. This is a group of people trying to find your wife an unborn child, you poorly bred parasite. And it gets weirder. When the police asked for some things to give the scent dogs, Lacey's scent, he gave them several of her things and one of his own slippers. And it was like little piddly stuff, like a pair of sunglasses and like a shirt or something.

And then he asked them, are you writing down the items that you're taking? So again, his focus was on protecting his stuff. And it's not like nice, just like sunglasses and a slipper. an officer brought out a form to write out a receipt for Scott at his insistence and Scott slid a piece of paper under the form as the officer wrote on it to keep him from scratching the wooden tabletop. Oh my God. Wow.

Oh, my God. And the officer said later that this was the first time in 20 years that any missing person's family member had asked for a receipt in a situation like that. Like usually people are just frantic and here, here, take whatever you need. Not Scott. In fact, Scott pretty much took an antagonist. position with the detectives from day one. And so, by the way, did his parents. Jackie and Lee Peterson leaped into protection mode immediately, which I find really odd. For example, after a press

conference on day two, Jackie came in ranting that the police chief had mentioned that it would be strange for Lacey to go out walking without her cell phone. She said, well, everybody knows Lacey's cell phone had been dead for weeks, so why would she be taking it on walks with her? Now, why would Jackie assume that the police chief meant that comment as any kind of indictment of Scott? Why the protective, combative attitude for minute one? Detective Brickini pricked up his ears at this, though. He said, Jackie, if Lacey's phone was dead, which it was, by the way, they'd found it in her car the day before, then why did Scott leave her that message on it on Christmas Eve?

Ooh, Jackie didn't like that. She was like, well, I don't know. I was just repeating what other people said. Interesting. That's just an Olympic-level backpedal, Jackie. Yeah. She's like, whoopsie. According to friends and family, they interviewed in the early days,

Scott and Lacey seemed like the perfect couple. No one had ever even seen them fight. Scott seemed to do whatever Lacey told him and do it with a smile. Lacey's stepdad Ron said, even when he should get mad at Lacey, he doesn't. Now, we could view this as they have a great relationship. But I think there's another way to view it, too. See, it's not normal, never to fight.

It's not normal to never get annoyed or angry. So another way that you might view this is he's not invested emotionally. But most of the people who knew them were convinced, at least at first, that Lacey and Scott were a golden pairing. Lacey's parents and siblings initially told police there was no way Scott could ever hurt her. Jackie went on talk shows and gushed about their perfect relationship. Interesting, because later, police would learn from Scott's half-sister, Anne, that Jackie had been catty as hell about Lacey, complaining about her all the time, and that in the weeks leading up to their murder, Jackie had repeatedly told her that Scott and Lacey were having problems. Sharon Rocha later told police that the last time she'd seen Lacey, Lacey had told her that Scott never wanted to feel the baby kicking. He'd just flat out refuse.

It hurt Lacey's feelings, and it had bothered Sharon, but she chalked it up to first-time dad nerves. Unsurprisingly, the media pounced on the story right away, pretty pregnant young woman missing on Christmas Eve, and everyone was shocked at how Scott avoided the cameras. The roaches were all over talk shows, doing press conferences, everything they could. But Scott told reporters, don't get me on camera. And went so far as to make formal requests to a victim's rights group and the searchers who were helping find Lacey to never release his image to the press. Wow. Every day, Scott would come to the searcher's command center, go over to the big wall where Lacey's friends and family were putting up pictures of Lacey and take down every picture he was in. Oh, I want to keep this, he'd say.

But it was only ever the pictures he was in. It would soon become clear why. As the case gathered steam in the media, national as well as local, tips started to flood in. And on December 30th, they got a heater. A woman named Amber Fry, a 27-year-old massage therapist and single mom of a little girl named Ayana, called the Modesto Police Department. She was concerned that her boyfriend might be the Scott Peterson she'd just. just seen on the news, whose wife was missing. She was upset.

A friend had brought her a newspaper with a story, and she wanted to know if this was the same Scott Peterson. She'd been dating him since November 20th, five weeks before Lacey's disappearance. He'd told her he was single. They'd been talking about marriage. Worst of all, Scott had initially told her he'd never been married. But then, on December 9th, he'd come over to her house and broken down in tears. He told her, he'd lied to her, that he had been married before, but that he'd lost his wife.

This would be his first Christmas without her. He hadn't offered any specifics, but Amber had gotten the impression that Scott meant his wife had died. Yeah. I'd assume that, too. I wouldn't go like, oh, you mean you, like, misplaced your wife again. You know, she's always in the last place you look. I just left her at the airport, I think. I'm not sure.

I always lose her right when I need her. He seemed so upset, and he said he didn't want to talk about it anymore. She didn't want to upset him, so she let it go. Detectives rushed to Amber's house in Madera, and they quickly determined, based on the pictures Amber showed him of her and Scott, that, yep, Amber's single boyfriend was the Scott Peterson. Ooh, boy, it's getting real now. Amber met Scott through her friend Sean, a colleague of Scott's in the agricultural sales biz. He and Sean had met at a conference,

hanging out with other co-workers at the hotel bar. Scott was wearing a name tag that said, HB. He said it stood for horny bastard. Oh, my God. Check out Mr. Classy, y'all. By the way, I think this is the part in the story where we can go ahead and start calling Scott

by the affectionate little nickname that we have for him. Twat. Oh, and by the way, Scott, was a fertilizer salesman, so he was literally a bullshit salesman for a living. Anywho, Scott thought he was funny and cute and charming. I guess there's no accounting for taste. Ever the big man, twad had paid for everybody's drinks at the bar. He hadn't hit on Sean, because she was engaged and talking a lot about her fiancé,

but he asked her if she thought there was one special person out there for everyone. He said he thought he'd found the right person to make him happy, but it hadn't worked out. And he was hoping to find his true love. I'm sick of bimboes, he told her. I'm done with one-night stands. Yeah, that's a bit of a red flag. If he's calling women names, he might be a little bit of a misogynist. Agreed. Scott, by the way, would later tell his sister Anne, when the news about Amber broke and she confronted him about it,

that he'd cheated on Lacey multiple times throughout their marriage, and it didn't mean anything. It was just sex. He said he'd once, quote, taken turns with two women in an airport bathroom on a business trip. So I think we can add that to our list of romantic hookup spots from our cases, don't you? So what was it now? We had the porta-potties from the Clara Schwartz case. Trey Romantic. Yep.

The stockroom of the Vaughan supermarket and the Michael Dalley case. Ooh, baby. Now we have an airport bathroom. Sanitized for your protection. So hot. I don't know what airport bathroom you've been in lately that was sanitized. I guess it's been a while since I flew anywhere. You might be right.

they're not exactly what I would call sanitary and the smell it's like stress shits and despair oh my god gross okay remind me not to fly ever again anyway so predictably twat spun Sean a whole big web of lies about where he lived etc and for some reason Sean liked Scott and after quite a few phone conversations with him about both personal and business things she set him up with her friend Amber. He promised her he wasn't a cad, because apparently he'd been watching movies about the flipping Count of Monty Cristo or something, and assured her he wouldn't hurt Amber, who had apparently been hurt a lot before and did not flip and need it to happen again. And Sean told him that, and this is what he does. And oh man, his and Amber's first date, y'all, who, Scott pulled out

all the stops. Got a hotel room, pulled the old, hey, could you just come up to my room for a minute before we go out so I can change real quick, and once they got up there, she saw he'd ordered champagne and strawberries and bought her like a shit ton of roses, which was his MO, as we'll see later, just charm the pants off her, both figuratively and literally. Can we say love bombing? Right? Amber did not stand a chance, and they hit it off big time. And it was all going great until in early December Sean met another colleague of Scots and he came up in conversation

and as they talked two giant red flags came blazing out. First Scott had told this dude that he was independently wealthy, that he'd sold his own business in Europe and come to Modesto to start Trade Corps, which is the name of Scott's company but Scott was most

definitely not the owner. He was just a lowly fertilizer salesman. Shop with Racketon, and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cashback, the most savings on your shopping. So join Racketon and start getting cash back at Zafora, Uniglote, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cashback. Just start your shopping with Rackaton to save money at over 750 stores.

Join for free at racketing.ca or download the racketon app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N, rackettin.ca. mentioned his wife. Sean was furious. She called Scott immediately and confronted him. He vehemently denied being married, but she called a closer coworker of Scots, and he confirmed that, yep, Scott's married. So Sean called Scott back and demanded he tell her the truth. He denied it again. Oh my God, dude, give it up. Hours later, Sean came home to a weepy voicemail from Scott. I'm sorry I lied to you it's just so painful for me to talk about I lost my wife give me a call and please don't tell Amber anything blah blah blah if it was half that annoying I can't believe she ever stopped yeah I'm annoyed with myself don't worry oh lord she did call and he told her he was not currently married he said he'd lost his wife for

From his tone, it seemed 100% like he was saying she died because what other conclusion are you coming to? Yeah, if she divorces you or something, that's not the language most people would use at all. No. Sean said, okay, but look, man, you need to tell Amber. If you don't, I will. And as Amber would later tell investigators on December 9th, he did tell her. He said he'd lost his wife.

and this would be his first Christmas without her. Weeks before Lacey went missing. So is Scott a psychic? Or is Scott a murderer? I don't know. It's crazy. By the way, campers, this was not the first time Scott had cheated on Lacey. Earlier in their marriage, Scott had two other girlfriends. That we know of. I'm sure there were probably more.

Scott and Lacey lived apart for about a year after they got married, so Scott could finish college, and Lacey. could start her first job. Scott lived in a house with roommates, and despite the fact that Lacey came to visit most weekends, his roommates said he lived like a single guy whenever she wasn't there. The first mistress was a young woman named Janet Ilsa. This was the more serious one. Scott love-bombed her, too, on the first date, bringing her a dozen roses. Oh, no, it was a dozen I saw that. A dozen dozen. That's just a freaking bonkers amount of roads. I would be pissed off, I think. I'd be like, buy me a damn car. What are you doing? Can you imagine? I can't be responsible. How much is a dozen? Like, it's not cheap. 144. Oh, you're talking about cost. No, I'm talking about cost. Like, it's got to be like 30 bucks or something, right? Per. Yeah. So multiply that by 12. Like, buy me some damn jewelry.

Great. Gravy. But he was all about the show, see, because that's an impressive. as hell to walk in and see a dozen dozen roses. Is it? It stresses me out thinking about, because, like, I don't have that many vases. This is true. I don't have, like, is my cat going to eat those roses? Like, that's where my brain goes, not

like, oh, how romantic. But most people aren't complete weirdos like we are, okay? I'm like, most girls would like a dozen dozen roses. I guess. I don't know. A dozen, dozen. So he showered her with gifts and affection, moved really fast emotionally. She'd fallen for him head over heels. He made her feel like she was the only woman in the world when they were

together. Janet was vegan, and Scott even stopped eating meat for her. Or at least he pretended to. At that conference where he met Sean, he joked with her that he once stopped eating meat for a girl because the sex was so great, but that he'd only avoided it when they were together. Whenever she left, he'd have a burger. Yeah, Scott is most definitely a chameleon. With Janet, he claimed to have gone vegetarian. With Lacey, who was into Martha Stewart,

he got into lifestyle stuff like food and wine and home decor. With Amber, he claimed to be religious. Later, detectives would find a bunch of fake diplomas in Scott's house. He'd ordered them, of course, online. One was for a degree in theology. See, Amber was a devout Christian, and he had bought that one right after he started dating Amber. He used to call her to read her Bible verses. Barf, this guy never went to church.

This wasn't real. This was all for show. This man was fake through and through, a man of masks. He and Janet broke up when she came over to surprise him one night and found Lacey in bed with him. Scott seemed to have no reaction to this whatsoever. He just laid there in bed watching the scene unfold, totally cool and detached. Later, he came over and just said, sorry you caught me in bed with Lacey. The second mistress, Katie, no relation, was the first person he'd tried his,

oh, I lost my wife, story on, but like Janet, she soon found out he was lying when, at Scott's graduation, Lacey came up and planted a kiss on Scott. Scott coolly introduced her Katie, this is Lacey So anyway Scott charmed the absolute shiz out of Amber He cooked for her, he sucked up to her two-year-old daughter Ayanna Bought her a present, a book

Interestingly, it was the same book that his sister Anne had given Lacey as a present at her baby shower a week or so before Now there's no proof it was the same one But I think it's very possible that that was a re-gift Yep Amber thought he was a perfect man, the golden boy. So they moved fast. And once he explained about losing his wife,

even that little wrinkle of his initial lie about his marital status got ironed out. Amber was in love. So bless her heart, she was just devastated about all this, of course. And when detectives asked her if she would be willing to not tell Scott what she knew and start recording his phone calls to her, she said, absolutely. Before we get into the phone calls though, which by the way are explosive and point as much to Scott's guilt as anything else in the case. Let's put a pin in that for just a little bit, because I want to give you some more background on Scott and Lacey. Scott grew up in a well-to-do family, the golden boy son of Jackie and Lee Peterson. Jackie had given up two of her other kids for adoption earlier in her life, and she had a rough childhood herself. Her dad was

murdered when she was little, and her poor mom had a nervous breakdown over it and couldn't take care of her anymore, so she grew up in an orphanage, and it was not a nice one. Her fortunes turned around, though, when she met well-to-do businessman Lee Peterson. Suddenly, she was wealthy. And Scott was her and Lee's child together. Now, I've mentioned Scott's sister Anne. Anne was one of the two children that Jackie gave up for adoption. And she met the Peterson family about five years before Lacey's murder and got really close with Scott and Lacey both. She believes wholeheartedly in his guilt now, but that came after months and months of total denial and defending him and, you know, believing in him when all this first broke. And her book, Blood Brother, is completely fantastic.

It's a really intimate view of the case, and you should all read it. Anne tells a story about Scott's position in the family that I think is really telling. She was introducing him to some friends once, and she jokingly said, this is Scott. He's the golden boy. And she was surprised to see that Scott seemed like bothered that she was joking about it. So her impression was Scott was dead serious about that role. Just, yikes. And he had that mask on firmly. For the most part, but as masks often do, Scots would sometimes slip. His mistresses both said he was usually Mr. Smooth and Charming, but sometimes he'd just randomly get moody for no discernible reason. Sometimes he'd have crying jags and he'd never explain what was wrong.

Scott learned at a young age that he needed to fill those golden boy's shoes. People close to the family, Anne included, seemed to think that the Peterson's were the kind of family where negative emotions were not to be tolerated. And for Scott, anything less than fulfilling Jackie and Lee's dreams for him would also not be tolerated. They were also the type of parents to cover for their kid like no matter what. Like, my little angel can do no wrong. Which is just toxic nonsense. This became very obvious during the investigation and trying. Scott wanted to be a pro golfer in high school and college, but he wasn't quite good enough. This was typical of Scott. He had a lot of grandiose plans and dreams, like he talked about wanting to be mayor and stuff, but he usually didn't do much of anything to bring them to fruition. So after college, Lee made him partner in his lucrative corrugated box company. And Lee was really proud of this company. He was proud to be working alongside his son. He wanted Scott to take the reins when he retired, you know. But two years later, Scott bought Lee's share when Lee was. was ready to retire and quickly sold the company, Tilly's total shock. Scott first met Lacey when he was her waiter one night, and she slipped her number to one of

his co-workers to give to him. He initially asked her out to make his ex-girlfriend, who he was obsessed with, jealous. Lacey figured this out at one point and was really hurt how their relationship survived that, I'm not sure, but they married in a lavish wedding about a year after their first date. An interesting little factoid about their wedding, by the way. Scott asked a relatively new acquaintance to be his best man instead of like any of his brothers with whom he was allegedly very close, which I think says a lot about how he views relationships,

just like him selling his father's company out from under him. Yeah. By the way, that first date was a boat trip. Lacey got horribly seasick, and that was the last one of those. Remember how Scott said Lacey knew, all about the new boat, was all enthusiastic about the new boat? Yeah, Lacey didn't want a boat. Lacey hated being out on the water. Lacey was vibrant, funny, fun to be around, huge megawatt smile, loads of friends close to her family, but she's had some darkness in her past that I think

made her a prime target for Scott. Her dad left when she was a kid, and before that, there was a lot of traumatic stuff between her parents. Then Lacey got into an abusive relationship with a guy who ended up in prison for assaulting his next girlfriend and who, creepily, kept her picture in his cell. Lacey needed things to be pretty and nice. In college, she majored in ornamental horticulture. She loved flowers and decorating in Martha Stewart. She desperately wanted that perfect family, and I think she was ready to accept the fiction that was Scott Peterson. Yeah, I get the impression that their relationship was very much based on surface things, like food and wine and home decor and kind of acquiring wealth and acquiring things. They both wanted to be wealthy and upwardly mobile and Ann Bird in her book makes some observations, which granted are in hindsight about how a lot of their conversations seem to be like about the food or the decor or the flowers or the house or gossip about mutual friends.

It was never deep stuff, and it was nothing ever negative. It was always just kind of up and positive, shallow a little bit. Both Scott and Lacey were big spenders, and they didn't make enough to support the lifestyle they wanted. So they had a fair amount of credit card debt, and they often asked Jackie and Lee for help. Jackie and Lee gave them $30,000 for a down payment on the house, paid for Scott's $23,000 a year membership to the country club, which is just, obscene. Must be nice. Jeez. And, you know, there's more stuff like that where they just kept

giving them money. They'd recently splurged on all new furnishings for their house. Lacey got regular expensive spa treatments, manny petties, salon hair treatments, etc. When she got pregnant, she announced she wanted to quit her job and be a stay-at-home mom, and she wanted both a new, bigger house, and a new car. Lacey was genuinely caring and fun. She was a smart person, driven. She could also be a little bit exhausting to be around. And this is according to the people who loved her most, her family and friends. We mention this only because we think it may help explain what happened.

I suspect Scott was simmering with some deep-seated anger for years before the murder. She talked so incessantly that people would literally have to just leave the room to escape her. And sometimes she would follow them. She'd follow Scott to the bathroom and stand right outside the door, continuing to talk as he used the restroom. Oh my God, yeah, I'd have to shut that down right now. Also, everyone agreed that Lacey pretty much ordered Scott around like an employee. Like, it was in a good-natured way, not a bitchy or mean way, but still.

Some of her friends said they wish their husbands were more like Scott because he would do whatever she asked, when she asked, with a smile, and no complaints. Always the golden boy. He'd had a lot of practice growing up with Jackie. So those are some examples of the stressors in their marriage, and then there was impending fatherhood. Scott had once told his mistress Janet Ilsa that he never wanted kids, and he didn't usually get real emphatic about stuff, but he was unusually emphatic about this. He said kids would interfere with the lifestyle he wanted, he wanted no part of it. And later, he told Amber Frye he wanted to get a vasectomy, that she and Ayanna would be all the family he'd ever need.

When Lacey got pregnant, he told family members he'd been. kind of hoping for infertility. He told Sharon that he'd just turned 30 and was going to become a father the same year. He said, I think I might be having a midlife crisis. She took it as a joke at the time, figuring if he hadn't wanted kids, he wouldn't have allowed it to happen. Multiple people have noticed how uncomfortable Scott seemed to be around children. But once Lacey got pregnant, Scott quickly reaffixed that perfect husband mask and seemed enthusiastic about it. If people were watching, he'd rush over to feel the baby kicking and said he was

looking forward to playing catch with the little guy. He said this last part to his sister Ann Bird, who said she was surprised by how flat his affect was when he said it. She said it seemed forced and insincere. But at the time, she just, again, put it down to first-time father nerves. And this is interesting. Lacey had had a tumor removed from her abdomen as a child, and the surgeons had had to remove one of her fallopian tubes.

And I wonder if this is one reason Scott chose her as his wife, because he may have mistakenly thought she would be infertile. Okay. So back to Lacey's disappearance and back to Amber. I'm not going to go into all the calls she recorded for detectives because there are way too many. I'll just hit a few high points. So seriously, buckle up for this, y'all. All right. So it was New Year's Eve. Lacey's family was hosting a candlelight vigil for her that evening. Scott was there, staying away from the cameras as usual, because he doesn't know that Amber knows yet, right? And while he was there, he called Amber and told her he was in Paris. Because, see, he had told her before Lacey disappeared that he was going to spend Christmas in Maine with his parents and then go to Europe for work and that he wouldn't see her for a little while, but he'd call her whenever he could. So here he is at his wife's candlelight vigil on his phone saying, I'm at the Eiffel Tower. This crowd is huge. And, man, he spun her a whole little story. He talked about the quaint little cobblestone streets and the awesome fireworks and his work friend Pascal from Spain.

He made up a whole dude named Pascal. who had supposedly joined him and his, you know, work buddies to go out for the evening, and all this, while a candlelight vigil is going on for his missing, pregnant wife. And before they hung up, it was a bad connection, he said he'd call her back soon. He told her to think of a New Year's resolution to tell him later. He said, talk to you soon, baby. He said, Amber, I miss you. Now, just, come on, people, just come, please.

Why in God's name would an innocent man do this? He just wouldn't. He just wouldn't, y'all. He just wouldn't. Yeah, the dichotomy between the tragedy and the romance is so startling here. And I think it's unbelievably scary and creepy. Oh, my God. He is standing at an event for his wife who still hasn't been found and painting this vibrant, beautiful picture on the phone, creating it out of whole cloth. What kind of person has the ability to lie like that? A scary one. Terrifying. This is the scariest thing I've ever heard. I say that a lot, but genuinely, this is the scariest fucking thing I've ever heard. In a later call, Scott said, I could care for you. We could fulfill each other.

He talked about being a family with Amber and Ianna. he talked about what to do for Amber's birthday in February and Ianna's third birthday around the same time. They talked about Scott meeting Amber's parents. He told her he was reading books by Jack Kerouac. He said, I never had a prolonged period of freedom like that from responsibility, which fuck off.

Your parents have basically written you a blank check for your entire life. Scott Peterson, more like twat, privileged son. Oh, no. Such a dad joke. So good. But seriously, go fuck yourself, actually. Like, don't stop any, just as a note, any dude that romance

sizes Jack Kerouac, red flag. Unless he's in high school or college and then you can give him a pass. Yeah, he gets a pass. Because it's required at that age. Grown man that's like, oh, I wish I was a beatnik. Fuck off. No. I'm going to go on the road.

rucksack, my bray. He joked on this phone call about his cracking knees. He told Amber she was sexy and that he liked that she seemed to have a good self-confidence. At one point, Amber started crying, mourning, I'm sure, the relationship she thought she had. And Scott said, don't ever be sorry for sharing. I'm here for you. Ugh. Amber did a damn good job of keeping it together in these conversations.

You would never know she knew about Lacey. Yeah, Amber Fry is a badass. And I think it's a travesty how she was treated in the media when all this was going on, like just like a slut and, you know, like people were selling her bikini pictures to the National Enquirer and stuff. It's ridiculous. She did something incredibly hard and she was incredibly brave to do it. And she didn't know he was married. That was the whole point.

And if it wasn't for Amber, they seriously. might not have gotten the bastard. Yep. So, good going, Amber. Yeah, hats off to you. You're a bad bitch, but in a good way, Amber. Yeah, exactly. Detective soon heard from the earlier mistresses, too, and Janet had some very interesting stuff to share.

Scott had been obsessed with his dick. Apparently worried it wasn't big enough. Does that not surprise me? It does literally the least surprising thing about this. case. She said he had issues in the bedroom. She also heard, though she didn't see it, that after they broke up, Scott had gotten like super shwasty and taken his penis out at a bar. Gross. Yep, super gross. On January 4th, the police started 24-7 surveillance on Scott. One other creepy thing from that time, as police searched the San Francisco Bay for Lacey's

body. On five different occasions, Scott drove to the bay and just sat in his car, watching the search. Never interacted with the searchers or asked any questions. Just sat and stared. On January 5th, at a police request, Amber dangled a hook in the water. Told Scott, her friend had left her a cryptic message mentioning Scott possibly being involved in something she needed to know about. Scott was all, hmm, weird. I don't know what that could be about. But then he called her the next day and told her about Lacey and her disappearance.

It was an intense conversation, as you can imagine. He tried to spin her a big bunch of bullshit about how, well, yeah, I told you I lost my wife, but there are different kinds of loss. You know, because he told her, oh, I lost her back on December 9th, weeks before Lacey went missing. They both cried. Scott told her how much he cared for her, which, God, every time he says it, I get chills.

Gross. Amber asked if Lacey had known about her. She had, Scott claimed. How did she feel about it? Fine, Scott said. Fine. An eight and a half months pregnant woman. Fine.

Yeah, and Scott would echo this later in interviews into family members, by the way, and nobody bought this, I assure you, except his mama. Because Lacey was not the type to keep quiet about something like this, and she hadn't told anybody. And she sure as shit was not the type to be fine about it, even if by some bizarre miracle she did decide to keep it from everyone she loved. She wouldn't have done. Later in an interview with Diane Sawyer, Twatt would claim he told Amber the truth on December 24th, the night Lacey went missing. Another fucking lie. That's a big fat lie. And I mean, why?

Why all these lies? Why would he keep lying like this if he was innocent? Soon after this, the investigators found out that Amber's story was going to break in the National Inquirer. Some asshole had leaked it. So they brought in the roaches and told them, showed them the picks of Scott and Amber. Lacey's mom, Sharon, who had loved Scott like a son, and supported him right up until this moment, broke down immediately and said, why did he have to kill her? It was a gut-wrenching moment for everyone in the room.

Oh, and by the way, they showed those same pictures to Scott soon after this, and in true twat fashion, he tried to lie his way out of it. He looked at these crystal-clear, full-color photos of him and Amber Frye with their arms around each other and said, with a straight fucking face, is that supposed to be me? Good God, man, just give it up already. I mean, it's clear that like this bald-faced lying had gotten him out of enough that he had no other tools to rely on at this point. He was just like, got to lie. Once the Amber thing broke in the media, Scott continued to call her for a while and she kept on recording the conversations until finally, in mid-February, she asked him to give her some space until there was resolution in the case.

And this, by the way, was the only thing that seemed to really hurt him since the investigation began. He'd shown casual indifference about his missing pregnant wife, but when Amber dumped him over the phone, that got him all mopey and depressed. Oh, poor baby. His little heart was broken. Yep. I need five minutes with this man in a locker. That's all I'm asking. That is all I'm asking for, guys.

That's all I need. Come on, San Quentin. Just loan him to us. Please, please, just five minutes. Scott started doing interviews at this point because now he had some damage control to do, and there was very little point in keeping his face out of the camera. cameras. Public opinion turned on him big time after Amber came forward. She did a press conference on January 24th where she just kind of got up there and briefly explained that she dated him and he told her that he wasn't married and stuff. And the two big interviews that he did were total

disasters for him. He just told lie after lie. He cried really theatrically and unconvincingly. And at one point, when his phone rang in the middle of the interview, he said, here, let me turn that off. what if that was somebody with information about your missing wife what if it was your missing wife like what if they had found her you don't want to get that what the hell and everybody noticed it if you were like oh my god the phone thing right as the investigation continued and his relationship with amber started to fall apart scott stayed with his sister anne bird who became increasingly convinced of his guilt as she watched him just kind of sail through his days seemingly unconcerned about his wife never saying he missed her or loved her, never seeming to break down, never even mentioning the baby, who they had already named Connor, by the way. Taking every opportunity to party and hit on her college age babysitter, seeming totally uninterested in the searches, and the babysitter was massively creeped out by him. One night he came over and made what he called flirtinis for her and hit on her so much so she got

uncomfortable and left. What is with these wife murderers and their inability to keep it in their pants. Just for like a few months, dude. I know you can do it. You can touch your own dick for a little while. Anne's experience of him all through Lacey's disappearance right up until his arrest was that most of the time he just seemed like a guy without a care in the world. He certainly didn't seem to be a man in grief or despair or even under much stress most of the time. And one evening at Anne in her husband's house, they were watching news coverage of the search for Lacey and Scott said, they're looking in the wrong places. Okay, well, how do you know, first of all?

So Anne brought out a map and said, well, where do you think they should look? And she tried to get him to think of places Lacey might have gone, places they'd been together in the past, but Scott just seemed like disinterested, he seemed annoyed. And eventually, when she pressed him, he just kind of irritably pointed to a random place on the map. It was like a ranch that they'd once been to together, and he said, maybe there.

And then he just went back to his wine. and just couldn't understand it. As Lacey's family desperately searched for her, these seemed to be Scott's priorities. He sold Lacey's Land Rover in late January. The owner of the dealership thought this was so fucked up that he just gave it back to the roaches. He was like, I can't.

Here's your daughter's car. Scott met with a realtor about selling his and Lacey's house a month after she disappeared. How do you know she's not coming back? A month. Scott threw his and Lacey's wedding album in the trash can while Lacey was still missing. Police found it during a surge. He upgraded his cable package to include a hardcore porn channel.

That's nice. He traveled to L.A. with Ann Bird and buddied up with her wealthy Ferrari driving friend Charlie to the point where it was embarrassing to... Anne. Oh, and there's a really interesting story about that. Scott was paying for drinks at the bar all night, and at one point, Anne's friend noticed a shit ton of pesos, Mexican currency in his wallet. Now, why would he have that in that quantity? Thinking of going to Mexico, for some reason, Scott? At another point that night, one of Anne's friends got just drunk enough to just straight up ask Scott if he killed his wife. The question did not seem to phase him. He just said,

no, I loved my wife. Past tense. Past tense. He grew a goatee and bleached his hair and lied to Anne that his hair had gotten like that because of swimming in a pool, not because of intentional bleaching. Uh-huh. One night, he went out to a gay bar with a gay relative, and he came back to Anne's house looking all kinds of bummed out. The gay relative told Ann Bird that Scott had gotten a little too drunk and was acting all kinds of obnoxious, and that he was bummed because nobody had hit on him. My lord. Scott confirmed this the next morning. He wasn't kidding. He felt for sure some dude would hit on it.

Jesus. Murphy. Narcissist much. Settle down, man. Your wife is missing. Yeah. Yeah. This is every straight man's fear, by the way. It's like, the gay guys don't want you. See? God. On February 10th, Lacey's due date, and coincidentally, Amber Fry's birthday, Scott left a birthday gift under a bush for Amber. A copy of Nora Jones' album, Come Away With Me. Which damn it was my husband's and my wedding song, which really super pisses me off. I'm sorry. There was another candlelight vigil that night.

Scott didn't bother to go. Jackie became more and more unhinged as the investigation went on, ranting about the media and the police, calling Amber a bimbo, railing against the detectives. when Anne confronted Jackie about Scott's affair and especially the Eiffel Tower call from the candlelight vigil Jackie said so Scott's been to all those places in Paris Wow Jackie not the point sugar And Jackie also referred to Sharon charmingly as that evil woman Sharon being Lacey's grieving mother

And after the story about the babysitter and flirtini night got leaked to the National Enquirer Jackie and Lee called to tell Anne to tell the police that none of that ever happened or that she just didn't recall. Real nice. Real nice asking your daughter to lie to the police during a missing person's investigation. And she and Lee went on Barbara Walters and made total fools out of themselves talking about how men cheat on their pregnant wives all the time and it doesn't mean anything. Yeah, quick question to Jackie and Lee. If all the other sons were jumping off a cliff, would you be okay with Scott going to? Only if he did so spectacularly, because he's the golden boy. And Lee, interestingly, describes Scott in that interview as too good to be real.

Yeah, exactly. Detectives were becoming increasingly convinced that Scott was guilty, but they still didn't have a body. They were surveilling him. They had a GPS tracker on his truck, and he was amazingly good at avoiding the tail, like better than some of the drug lords that Burkini had chased when he was in narcotics, which is creepy. And at one point there was a false alarm when the body of another pregnant young woman was found, but it wasn't Lacey. And then on April 13th, a dog walker discovered the body of a full-term baby boy on the north side of the San Francisco Bay. And then the next day, a woman's legs and torso washed up in the same area.

The same area, in fact, where Scott had been fishing the day Lacey went missing. The coroner sent the bodies to be identified, which would, of course, take some time. Meanwhile, after his L.A. trip with his sister Anne, Scott snuck over to Anne's parents' house while they were away in Europe. He stayed there off and on during the investigation, and he still had a key. But he didn't tell Anne or her parents, and he didn't have permission to be there. This was right after the bodies were found, while everyone was waiting on the IDs. It seems Scotty wanted a place to hide out from the media. Yeah. And while he was there, a young woman who was supposed to be coming and checking on things for Anne's parents came in and found him just sitting there on the computer. And, I mean, he was all over the news at this point. So she knew immediately who it was. Can you imagine how freaking creepy that would be like this guy who's suspected of killing his wife? So she was enormously creeped out. And Scott got like way too close to her and was being really like intense and creepy. And she said one of the things that she usually did for the family when they were gone was to feed their cat, but that they didn't have the cat anymore. She was just kind of. nervous and she was making small talk. And Scott blurted out, did you kill the cat? Did you kill the cat? And this poor woman just basically fricking ran for it. And I don't blame her. Like she just was like, nope, and she just turned around and left. So the bodies were soon identified as those of Lacey and baby Connor. Lacey was terribly decomposed. Her head and arms were missing

and part of one leg. She was dressed in white maternity pants and a nursing bra. The baby, in contrast, was almost perfectly intact, suggesting that the fetus had been protected inside Lacey's womb for most of her time underwater, and it only emerged because of her decomposition, which is a sad phenomenon that they call coffin berth, which is really, but it happens. Scott's defense would later claim that Lacey's missing limbs and head indicated that she'd been dismembered, but no, this probably happened because there were places where Scott had attached anchors to her to weigh her down, and as she decomposed, the extremities were basically. basically torn off as her body rose and pulled against the anchors weighing her down, which is horrible. I know. I'm sorry. Because of the condition of her body, the medical examiner couldn't determine cause of death. Once the bodies were ID'd, it was time to put the habeas grabbis on Scott. Long, long last, baby. And boy, did they grab him just in the nick of time because motherfucker was definitely in the process of fleeing.

He took them on a high-speed chase, so bad that the cops thought someone might die. He was driving like an absolute maniac, right in the direction of the Mexican border. And side note, this always really amuses me when people think they hit Mexico and they're home-free. Do criminals think this is a game of tag where once you get to Mexico, you're like, you're home, you're safe? weird. Mexico in the U.S. have an extradition treaty. They go mad people all the time in Mexico.

Yeah. It was confirmed in the 70s, y'all. And I know the goal is to get to South America to a country that does not have such extradition treaties. But they already found you, Scott, you wet noodle. At one point, it seemed like Scott thought he'd shaken his pursuers. He pulled into the Tory Pines, golf course. parking lot, possibly to hide out a little before making a break for the border. But fortunately, some new undercover guys, not one Scott knew from previous tales, saw him

and went in after him. He was arrested without incident. And man, he was cool as a cucumber. They found a whole wild array of stuff in the car. Elaborate camming gear, about 15K in cash, Mexican cash, his brother's ID, all kinds of different outfits, 15 pairs of shoes and boots, fishing gear, rope, knives, and printed directions to Amber Fry's workplace. Yeah, that part creeps me out. So fucking creepy. They told Scott that the bodies had been

IDed as Lacey and Connor. He made one tiny little baby sniffle, no tears. A few minutes later, when detective stopped at In-N-Out Burger for a bite. Scott asked for a double-double with cheese, fries, and a vanilla shake. How could you eat? My God. So Ann Bird went to visit Scott a number of times after his arrest, and they wrote letters back and forth for some time. At no point, did Scott ever break down about how much he missed Lacey or that he was sad that she was gone? And at one point, Anne said, you must really miss Lacey, like trying desperately to get some emotion out of him. And he was just like, yeah, just totally flat. and it wasn't long after that that Anne finally realized her beloved brother was guilty.

He'd been looking up tide patterns on his computer a week before the murder. And remember how we told you he bought that boat on December 9th? The boat that it seems clear Lacey never knew he had? Well, December 9th was the day he confessed to Amber Fry that he had been married but had lost his wife. So Scott was behind bars now. Soon his trial would begin and it would be one of the most highly publicized trials in American history. history. Scott scored a high-powered high-dollar attorney, Mark Garagos, who promised the media that he was going to prove Scott's stone-cold innocent. Garigos put forward various sensational

theories of the crime, a satanic cult, a pair of burglars, and whatever the outcome of this trial was going to be, everyone knew it would be a hell of a thing to watch. Meanwhile, the Rocha family were reeling with grief. Okay, so we're going to stop there for now, Campers, because as part of our one-year anniversary special, we're doing a deep-dive. into this case. Next week we'll focus on the trial. The defense's arguments as well as some of the newer arguments that Scott's supporters, because he has them, have put forth in recent years. We'll also get a much closer look at the evidence against Scott, since we've focused mostly on behavioral evidence in this episode. Next week you'll get to sink your teeth into some forensic stuff too.

And we'll tell you our theory of how the murder happened. So hang in there for a week and we'll wrap this puppy up. And hopefully once we do, y'all will agree with us that this man is the guilty guilt face in all of guiltvania. So that was part of a wild one, right, campers? You know we'll have the rest of it for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe. Until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons.

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