Scott had set up a blind dinner date with 27-year-old massage therapist and single mom Amber Frey just two months before Conner’s due date. A flirtatious Scott had struck out first with Shawn Sibley, a brunette saleswoman whom he had met at a conference of the California Association of Pest Control Advisors six months earlier. Shawn told him she was already engaged to her “soul mate.” Scott “told me that that at one point in his life he had found a woman that he thought was his soul mate—but then he lost her,” Sibley would testify. “He asked me, did that mean that this was going to mean that he was going the to spend the rest of his life alone? I told him, I said, ‘No, I don’t believe that. I believe there are a thousand people out there in this world who can be your soul mate, but because of circumstances, or whatever, you are not going to meet all thousand of those people.’” So Scott pressed Shawn to help him find one of the “other” thousand he was meant to be with, and to set him up with an appropriate single friend of hers. Sibley thought of her pal Amber, but recalled telling Scott that “she’s been through a lot of bad relationships, so if you’re not serious about having a long-term, meaningful relationship, then I don’t want to hook you up with her. But if you are, then I would be willing to introduce you. He was very interested in meeting her,” Sibley testified. “His first question was, ‘Is she intelligent?’ And I said, ‘You know, there are different levels of intelligence. I think she is intelligent.’” He asked if she was pretty. “I said, ‘I think she’s pretty. Some people think she is too thin.’ He said, ‘I like thin women.’” Scott and Shawn e-mailed after the conference, and Scott continued to press for a meeting with Amber, signing his e-mails “HB” for “Horny Bastard.”
Figure 13.3. Scott and Amber Frey get up close and personal in a car on their way to a night out on the town while a pregnant Laci spends the evening home alone. Presented in evidence at Scott Peterson’s murder trial.
Amber and Scott finally talked on the phone after Shawn helped arrange the conversation for “HB.” Scott used the same tender manner and careful attention to romantic, thoughtful detail that he had used to woo Laci. He joked about himself over the phone setting up the date, saying he was “not very tall, overweight, belly, long greasy hair, kind of jokingly telling me about himself,” recalled Amber in her courtroom testimony, which elicited a laugh from the easily spooked, relationship-shy woman. He was thrilled to see her the evening they met at the Elephant Bar in in her hometown of Fresno before having dinner at a nearby Japanese restaurant. He arranged for them to dine in a small private room, where they exchanged a litany of personal information. Scott presented an imaginary alter ego. He worked in Modesto, but lived in Sacramento, and had a condo in San Diego, he told Amber. He was spending the Thanksgiving holiday fly-fishing with his dad, brother, and uncle in Alaska, and would be spending Christmas with his parents at their compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. “He was easygoing,” Amber testified. “He was easy to talk to. He made me feel comfortable.” He pulled out a bottle of champagne and strawberries later in a Fresno hotel room. He poured the champagne, and dropped a single strawberry into each of their glasses—though Amber would testify that her strawberry was a “little bit sour.” They slept together that night. Scott continued to see Amber when he could, but there were so many demands on his time, he explained, like his adventure travels in Alaska, a sales trip to Paris—none of which actually occurred. He sent fake photos and pretended to be calling from far-off locales to support his tall tales.
In early December, Scott and Amber planned to hike Squaw’s Leap in the mountains of Auberry with Amber’s two-year-old daughter, Ayiana. Scott arrived at Amber’s home with a potted amaryllis plant and a bag of groceries so he could prepare dinner. First they hiked to the peak, where Scott pulled out a blanket and baby carrots, almonds, cookies, drinks, Frey testified.
Frey: He lay back, we talked. We were all munching a little bit, watching a helicopter that kept flying by overhead.
Prosecutor David Harris: Was that a nice afternoon?
Frey: It was chilly.
As it became colder, the three headed back down the hill, Scott carrying Ayiana, and they sat in his truck.
Figure 13.4. A dressed-up Scott and Amber pose together at a Christmas party just weeks before Laci was due to give birth to Scott’s son. Amber had no idea Scott was married or that he had a baby on the way. Presented in evidence at Scott Peterson’s murder trial.
Frey: We sat on the back of his truck bed, and we’re looking at stars.
Harris: It was dark at this point in time? Sitting in the back of the pickup truck, and you are looking at the stars, did you have some kind of contest at that time?
Frey: Who could find the first star. Seeing who could find the first star.
Harris: Who found the first star?
Frey: Scott.
The three returned home, where Scott cooked seafood lasagna and spent the night. The following afternoon, Scott picked up Ayiana from daycare, and Amber came home from work that day to find her daughter happily ensconced in her high chair, eating, and Scott fixing lasagna leftovers and pouring wine. The three traveled after dinner to buy a Christmas tree, which they set up and decorated. During pillow talk that night, Amber asked Scott if “he had any children, or if he ever was close to having children. And he said no,” she testified. Then the issue of trust came up.
Frey: I was talking about, I don’t recall how the conversation was brought up, but about trust and how I felt about trust and lies and how for me, it’s easier to handle the truth, no matter what it is, versus a lie, and that knowing that a person could come to you with the truth is easier to handle than it later coming out that it was a lie. And, basically, just being truthful and how I responded to that.
Harris: Did the defendant make any comments or agree or disagree during this part of the conversation?
Frey: Yes.
Harris: What did he say?
Frey: He complimented me on my way of thinking about other people or how to handle situations that we were talking about.
Despite the conversation, Scott continued to spin a secret life for Amber. His lies were overblown, grandiose, and served to portray him as a wealthy jetsetter rather than a Modesto fertilizer salesman. He kept up the subterfuge even as rescuers were searching for Laci’s body. On New Year’s Eve, Scott pretended he was calling Amber from Paris during a fireworks celebration, and acted as he were having a difficult time hearing her because of a scratchy phone connection from way across the sea, revealed in a tape of the call played at his murder trial:
Frey: Hello.
Peterson: (loud music playing) Amber?
Frey: Hi.
Peterson: Amber?
Frey: I can hear you.
Peterson: (loud static) Amber?
Frey: l can hear you.
Peterson: Amber, if you can hear me it’s New Year’s.
Frey: I know. I can hear you.
Peterson: (static) Amber? Amber it’s News Year’s! Are you there?
Frey: Yes. Are you having a good time?
Peterson: Amber? Hey, Happy New Years!
Frey: Happy New Year.
Peterson: I wanted to call you.
Frey: Thank you.
Peterson: Amber, are you there?
Frey: I’m here.
Peterson: Amber?
Frey: I wish you could hear me.
Peterson: I’m on the, uh . . . I think that you’re there. I’m uh near the Eiffel Tower and the New Year’s celebration is unreal. The crowd is huge.
Frey: The crowd’s huge?
Peterson: Amber?
Frey: Yeah, I’m here.
Peterson: Amber, if you’re there I can’t hear you right now, but I’ll call you on your New Year’s.
Frey: Okay. I’ll hear from you then.
Peterson: Amber? Amber, I miss ya. I’ll see you soon.
Figure 13.5. Scott clowns around in a Santa hat with his mistress, Amber, before a Christmas party. Laci vanished a short time af
ter this photo was taken, and Scott was arrested for her murder a few months later when her body washed up on shore in San Francisco Bay. Presented in evidence at Scott Peterson’s murder trial.
Scott kept up the Europe tale for a number of days. He next “traveled” to Brussels, and told his lover he did a face-plant while jogging on the slippery cobblestones. “Can you hear the light-rail train?” he asks her at one point, and gushes about the “neat big churches,” and the “clean” European capitals where people get up in the morning at 9 or 10 and enjoy “two months off a year.” His “French has gotten a lot better in the last week,” he tells her. Then, it’s off to Madrid, where his company’s production headquarters are located (Brussels is the firm’s “financial headquarters,” he tells Amber). He tries to explain the time differences between California and Europe, and peppers his conversations with: “Amber, are you there?”—pretending to be having trouble with his international phone connection. These lengthy, affectionate calls in which Scott professes his love and calls Amber “Sweetie” occur when volunteers are hunting for Laci, divers are searching the park canal, and members of the public are reporting sighting women who look like her. Scott asks Amber, “Can I tell you how wonderful you are?” and cites poetry to her: “We huddle under a large tree round with ivy with the storm raging around us. The only thing keeping me grounded are my hands on your waist.”
The last time Peterson saw Amber in person was December 14, and he used several stories—other than traveling to Europe—to explain his absence, including the distance to her home from his “in Sacramento,” Detective Allen Brocchini testified. Their last night together, he told Amber he was going back to Sacramento, then flying out from San Francisco to Maine or Arizona, Brocchini testified. Frey “also said that she spoke to him twice on Christmas day, correct?” prosecutor Rick Distaso asked Brocchini.
Brocchini: Yes.
Distaso: Before that, she said he called two days later from Sacramento, and said that he was getting ready to go to Kennebunkport in Maine, to stay with his parents for Christmas, right?
Brocchini: Yes.
Distaso: And did you later find out that that information was not true?
Brocchini: Yes.
Distaso: Where was he?
Brocchini: At the police station.
Distaso: Okay. So he wasn’t in Kennebunkport, Maine?
Brocchini: No.
Chillingly, Scott told Amber that December that he’d be able to spend more time with her in January. He also told her that he intended to get a vasectomy because he didn’t want children. He then mentioned an interesting book he had read: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. It was “mentally interesting to me simply because I never had a prolonged period of freedom like that from responsibility, you know, and interesting to me and something that you could incorporate into life,” Scott said in his taped phone conversation played for jurors. He also named his favorite movie, The Shining, about a psychopathic killer dad, played by Jack Nicholson, who tries to murder his wife and young son.
Just weeks before Laci went missing, Shawn Sibley learned from a mutual business associate that Scott was married. She was furious, and she confronted him, but Scott again insisted he was single. Later, he left a voice message on her cell phone. “He’s sobbing on my voicemail saying, ‘I’m sorry I lied to you earlier. I had been married. It’s just too painful for me to talk about. Call me,’” Sibley testified. When she called him, “Scott’s just sobbing hysterically,” she recalled. “He says, ‘I’m so sorry I lied to you earlier. I had been married. I lost my wife. It’s too painful for me to talk about. Please just give me the opportunity to tell Amber in person. Please don’t tell her. He’s begging me this whole time. And I said, ‘Scott, I don’t care if you are widowed, or you’re divorced. All I care about is are you currently married right now?’ And he said, ‘No, absolutely not.’”
A week later Scott arranged over the phone to meet with Amber at her house because he had something important to tell her.
Harris: And what did the defendant say to you?
Frey (so softly the judge had to tell her repeatedly to speak up): He said that he had lied to me about ever being married, and he stated that sometimes for himself, it was easier for him to say that he was not or never had been married.
Harris: Did he tell you why he had lied about being married?
Frey: That it was painful for him.
Harris: Did you ask him or did he explain why it was painful for him to say he had been married?
Frey: [He said] he had lost his wife. I asked him, as far as the time frame is, had it been long. And he stated that this was the first holidays that he would be spending without her. I thanked him for sharing that with me, it being so painful for him, and understanding that it was hard for him to do so.
Harris: What did he say?
Frey: He said that I was amazing, and that he was intrigued by me and by my response. After he stated it was the first holidays without her, I asked if he was ready for a relationship with me.
Harris: What did he say?
Frey: He said absolutely.
Figure 13.6. A boat mobile and tiny life preserver decorate a nursery awaiting Baby Conner in the Petersons’ Modesto home. Shortly after Laci’s disappearance, Scott would begin to use the room for storage. Presented in evidence at Scott Peterson’s murder trial.
Laci Peterson disappeared the day of Christmas Eve 2002 on what was supposed to be the couple’s last holiday time together before they became parents. They were going to dinner that night at Sharon Rocha’s house, and Laci planned to have her mom and family at her home the following day. She had already set up candles, glasses, and Christmas crackers on their pine dining-room table in preparation for the guests. She intended to cook that day, and hopefully have time to pick up some quick extra gifts for family members. She might walk the Petersons’ golden retriever, McKenzie, in the nearby park or the neighborhood, but she was doing that less and less because of her discomfort and occasional dizziness from her advancing pregnancy. Scott had offered to pick up a large fruit basket for Laci’s grandfather. When Scott was getting a haircut at a local salon from Laci’s half sister, Amy, the previous day, she had mentioned the basket that she had ordered. He said he could swing by the fruit stand preparing the basket, which was close to the Del Rio Country Club, because he planned to play golf there before Christmas Eve dinner.
Exactly what happened that day remains a mystery. Scott told Amy and Grantski that he was going golfing that day, but instead drove almost 200 miles in his truck, telling police it was too cold to golf so he decided instead to drive from Modesto 90 miles to the Berkeley Marina to fish, using a new boat he kept at his company warehouse, that neither Laci nor his in-laws knew he owned, according to the prosecution. A surprised Amy received a late-afternoon call from the Vella fruit stand informing her that no one had come to collect the fruit.
Later that day, Sharon Rocha was about to get dressed for her Christmas Eve dinner, and she told Grantski to call Laci to tell her to bring whipping cream for apple pie that Sharon had made. No one picked up Laci’s cell, so Grantski left a message. Shortly after, Sharon got a call from Scott.
Rocha: I remember looking at the clock on my stove in the kitchen and it was 5:15, and I remember thinking that I needed to get myself together because everybody was supposed to be there at 6 o’clock. So it was another minute or so when I walked down the hall to my bedroom. And then when I get into the bedroom the phone rang. He said, “Hi, Mom.” He said, “Is Laci there with you?” I said, “No.” And he said that her car is there in the driveway, and the dog was in the backyard with the leash on and Laci was missing. I remember telling him to call her friends to see if anybody had seen or talked to her that day. I just thought that maybe she was with one of her friends, but I remember hanging up the phone and walking back toward the door of the bedroom to walk down the hall. I was going to tell Ron, and that’s when I realized he said that she was “missing.” And I just
, I just knew. I knew she was missing. He wouldn’t have used the word “missing.” I remember changing my clothes that time. I was already dressing warmer because I felt I knew something was wrong, and I knew that I needed to go to the park because he said the dog has his leash on so my first thought is she would have been walking the dog.
Rocha told Grantski to call 911, and she communicated again with Scott, arranging to meet him in the park. Her friend, Sandy Rikart, came with her.
Rocha: Sandy and I drove down into the park. I got out of the car and I was running all around through that area and I was screaming her name, and I just kept yelling her name. The lights were on in the park in that area, the outer areas weren’t lit, but I was running all through that area that I could. I was looking in, I remember looking in trash cans, and then Laci’s neighbors came to the park. The police arrived, and I remember seeing Scott at one point. He was walking alone, closer to the river, looking toward the river to the left and he had McKenzie on a leash in his right hand. I kept calling out his name, and he never did turn to acknowledge that I was calling out to him. I was yelling his name. I was yelling out to let him know here we are. “We’re over here.”
Distaso: And how would you say your demeanor was at that time?
Rocha: I was very upset. I was anxious. I was looking for Laci. Scott never did acknowledge that I was yelling his name.
Distaso: Did you ask him anything else down in the park?
Killer Dads Page 19