A Deadly Game

by Catherine Crier

  The detective asked if the bags could have been ready-mix cement. Prater could only say that the sacks were the right size. Prater also noticed a pair of brown shoes on the open tailgate. Brocchini re-called seeing a pair of brown shoes when he was surveying the shop, and went back inside to retrieve them. When Prater identified them as the pair he had seen, Brocchini marked them into evidence. While inside, the detective also checked for the bags, but he found nothing matching Prater’s description. The detective was convinced Scott had made the anchors on that very day; they would have set up in plenty of time for the “fishing trip” the next morning. When asked about Scott’s boat. Prater told the detective he had seen it parked, but never actually hitched to Scott’s pickup.

  At 5:40 P.M., Detective Grogan called, asking Brocchini to return to the Peterson residence and collect a small sample of what appeared to be fresh concrete on the north side of the driveway. Grogan thought it might be leftover concrete that had washed into the dirt along the driveway.

  Meanwhile, another detective on the case, George Stough, was following up on a lead from a woman named Diane Jackson, who had reported witnessing the burglary across the street from the Peter-sons. At 11:40 on December 24, Jackson was driving along Covena Avenue. As she passed the Medina residence, she saw three “short of stature, dark-skinned, but not African American guys” standing in the front yard near a van. As she passed, the men turned and looked at her. Two of the men were standing at the rear of the vehicle, and a third person was in the front yard. At the time, she thought they were landscapers, but when she noticed them staring as she passed, she changed her mind. At first she said the van was white, but then decided it might have been a darker color.

  “Try to remember back as you were driving by and see if you can visualize the van in your mind,” the detective told her.

  “It might have been tan or brown,” she replied. In any event, she said, it was an older model, with a door or doors that opened at the rear. She couldn’t remember anything else.

  After the interview with Jackson, Detective Stough phoned the Medinas again, related what Jackson had told them, and asked if that description “rang any bells.” Mr. Medina said it did not. He asked the detective to speak with his wife. Susan Medina listened intently, then asked if the men were Vietnamese.

  “All I have is short in stature, dark hair, dark-skinned, but not African American,” the detective said.

  Mrs. Medina recalled a Vietnamese crew that had poured some cement at their home in July, but those workers had a construction truck, she told Stough, not a van.

  At 7:30 P.M., Scott Peterson phoned Detective Grogan and told him he was sitting in his pickup outside his home. Members of the press were there, interviewing a uniformed pohce officer. Scott wanted Grogan to stop the cop from speaking to the media and have the journahsts leave the neighborhood so he could return home for the night.

  “As long as the members of the press are not on your property, I cannot force them to leave the area,” Grogan told him. “However, 1 could have the officer remove the crime scene tape and leave the area. You can possibly return home if the media loses interest and leaves the scene.”

  Scott opted to have the officer removed from the scene. The detective explained to him that his house was not secured and he would be taking responsibility for it if he returned. Scott agreed.

  The press is a ravenous animal; it will chase a story until fed. And the meal doesn’t always have to be the truth. In fact, if a tale is good enough, complete enough, the media can become satiated and bored, leaving of its own accord. But Scott approached this inevitable part of the search as a guilty man from the inception, and his behavior piqued the press’s interest. Although his mantra was “I want the focus to be on Laci,” he never explained persuasively how a husband’s pleas and or press appearances could have a negative impact on the search. Meanwhile, Sharon, Ron, Brent, and even his own parents were benefiting the cause with their press conferences.

  Furthermore, in his private dealings with the police, Scott still didn’t seem very curious about the progress of the investigation. “Scott’s demeanor was courteous throughout our telephone conversation,” Grogan noted in a police report several days after Laci disappeared, but “he did not inquire as to the result of the search warrants. As I received this telephone call. Detective Buehler and Detective Brocchini gave me a recording device for my cellular tele-phone. A portion of our conversation was captured on audiotape.”

  At 10:00 P.M., Detective Brocchini contacted Captain Boyer and asked to have the Brooks Island area of the San Francisco Bay searched by cadaver dogs and the marina parking lot searched by tracking dogs. Boyer asked for Laci’s sunglasses and pink slipper to be delivered as scent objects, then scheduled three patrol boats, two cadaver dogs, one dive team, and a helicopter for nine o’clock the next morning. The police also made available a team of specialized cadaver dogs with the ability to smell bodies in the water.

  Members of the Contra Costa County Search and Rescue team initiated the search an hour early on December 28. It was a nippy 53 degrees, and the air was thick with moisture as the three orange crafts were launched. Police did not limit themselves to Brooks Island, but widened their scope to include forty miles of shoreline in nearby Richmond.

  Later that morning, Detective Brocchini called Deputy Chris Boyer and told him that two trailing dogs had searched the parking lot. The first dog, from Alameda County Emergency Services, was unable to detect any scent in the lot area. The second dog, Trimble, had begun searching at the northeast entrance of the launch area. After turning north, he ran approximately ten feet, turned and circled several times in the immediate area, then stopped by his handler’s side, indicating that she had no scent. Eloise Anderson then moved Trimble closer to the launch area and directed her to check that section of the parking lot. Again, the dog circled, sniffed the nearby foliage, and returned.

  Trimble was next walked to the northwest entrance of the boat launch area, where she was again given Laci’s items to smell. This time, the dog turned north and trotted about thirty feet. “She then turned, circled and headed south towards the launch area with a steady pull on her harness,” Anderson later wrote in her report. “She took me to the western-most point of the pier at the launch area, and pulled steadily to a pole pylon where the pier took a sharp right and then a sharp left turn. She went approximately 15 feet past the sharp left turn, turned around and returned to the pylon where she again checked out over the water, turned and stopped, indicating the end of the trail.”

  “Deputy Boyer said this is not a conclusive search,” Brocchini noted in his report. Yet, “in his and the handler’s opinion, the dog was reacting to Laci Peterson’s scent as it ran through the parking lot and down the right side of the boat ramp.”

  Meanwhile, Detective Grogan had been working at headquarters almost nonstop since Christmas Eve. Although his suspicions about the case were growing, he had no hard evidence or material leads. Then the phone rang.

  An officer was calling to report a strange conversation with a sexual assault counselor, Jill Smith. Smith said she had counseled a “confidential victim of a sexual assault” about two weeks earlier who claimed to have been lured into a brown van, either a Chevy or Ford, by the woman’s ex-girlfriend.

  “While in the van, two men and two women raped the victim, and a satanic ritual was conducted,” the officer related. “The victim told Smith that the group frequented area parks and was currently living at Woodward Reservoir. Smith stated that during the ritual the group mentioned a Christmas Day death, and that she would read about it m the paper.”

  After news of the brown van broke in the press, the Modesto PD found itself racing with Scott’s defense team to gain control of the vehicle. A private investigator hired by Mark Geragos was reportedly offering two thousand dollars for information about the van, and po-lice feared the defense team might get hold of it first and “find” evidence that Laci had been inside.

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p; Grogan immediately dispatched two officers to the Woodward Reservoir to search for the van. Theories about the brown van and satanic cult were quickly seized upon by the media, many of whom seem to have read too many detective novels. Satanic murders have been reported in contemporary America, to be sure. However, almost without exception they prove to be the work of a single demented individual, not a collective action by some cult or coven.

  When the Modesto officers ultimately located the brown Chevy van, the human occupants—Rayoune Miranda, 33, Sherry Miranda, 36, Mary Renfrow, 63, and Donnie Renfrow, 55—were carefully interviewed. They had been camping at Woodward for about three weeks, they said. One of the four, Rayoune Miranda, told the officers that he had been in Modesto the previous week when Yosemite Boulevard was blocked off with police vehicles. The officers were given permission to search their trailer, tent, and van, but nothing of significance was found.

  However, the van was also home to six resident mice. When the vehicle was turned over to the DOJ for examination, the rodents escaped into that office for a time. The van was never reclaimed by its owners, and when the MPD and District Attorney decided to sell it for scrap, Geragos immediately purchased it. Many reporters thought he must have a real lead that might exonerate Scott, but the van was never produced at trial. Its current location is unknown.

  In another part of the station house, a call was coming in to the Laci Peterson Hotline from Laci’s prenatal yoga instructor, Debbie Wolski.

  Wolski, part owner of the Village Yoga Center in Modesto’s McHenry Village, told an investigator that Laci had begun classes during her first trimester, but soon quit because she wasn’t feeling well. Laci resumed classes in her second trimester, and attended regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays for the next five months.

  On one Wednesday in December, either the fourth or the eleventh, Laci had attended a session wearing about fifty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds. Wolski described the pieces as a pair of one-carat solitaire diamond earrings, a single brilliant cut two- to three-carat diamond necklace, and a large diamond ring with a three-carat stone in the center, a diamond stone on either side, and a row of half-carats in a platinum or white gold setting. On her left ring finger, Laci wore her wedding rings. Asked if the pieces were real, Laci blushed and said yes, explaining that the diamonds had be-longed to her grandmother. Laci hinted that the rings only fit her be-cause her fingers had swollen during her pregnancy.

  Laci told Wolski that she was planning to “break” the ring into smaller pieces, including an engagement ring for her sister. She had worn them to class because she was going to have them appraised afterward, and she didn’t want to leave the gems in her car.

  During the chat, Laci also mentioned that she was in the process of putting her grandfather in a nursing home, and that the family was going to sell his house and his furnishings. Laci said the house contained a number of antiques, and inquired if Debbie would be interested in purchasing anything.

  Laci told her that her exercise consisted of walking her dog every morning. The instructor remembered Laci describing a day in early December when she was starting to feel dizzy and lightheaded. The feeling was like a “hot flash,” she said, and she had to turn back early.

  The last time Wolski had seen Laci was on December 13. Scott was “very excited” about the baby, Laci had told her. “I got the impression they were very happy,” Wolski reported.

  Another friend of Laci’s, Terri Western, spoke with Detective Jon Buehler that afternoon at the Detective Division on F Street. Western, a fifty-four-year-old real estate agent and mother of Laci’s girl-friend Stacey Boyers, was the broker who sold the couple their Covena home. She had known the “outgoing” Laci since she was a child. She noted that Scott was the quiet one in the couple’s relation-ship, but the couple “always appeared to be on their honeymoon.”

  Scott seemed to adore her. Western said. “He would stand up as she entered a room or get up from the table and seemed like a gentleman who was in love with his wife.”

  Western had last seen Laci at Stacey’s holiday party on December 14. That night, Laci told her that Scott could not attend because his boss had flown into San Francisco from Europe unexpectedly and Scott had to go to the city to meet him. Western found the story “extremely difficult to believe.” As a businesswoman herself, she found it implausible that a boss would fly from Europe unexpectedly and require an employee to meet with him on such short notice.

  As the police would soon learn. Western was right on target.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DECEMBER 29, 2002

  On day five of the investigation, Detective Grogan began his shift with a telephone call to Laci’s parents, Sharon Rocha and Ron Grantski. Grogan needed to know more about the couple’s missing daughter. He asked them to meet him at noon at Modesto’s Tenth Street police headquarters, about a five-minute drive from their home on Marklee Way.

  As Grogan worked, a woman named Kim Peterson showed up at headquarters. No relation to Scott and Laci, Peterson was a representative from the Carol Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation, a victim’s assistance group that was helping members of Laci’s family cope with the traumatic events.

  Kim brought with her a videotape she had been given by Laci’s parents. Sharon and Ron wanted to release the footage to the media, but first wanted official approval. Kim also had some information she wanted to share with the detectives.

  First, she told the officers that Scott Peterson had requested that no images of him be distributed to the media. Beyond that, in viewing the video herself, she “saw some behavior that indicated Scott may not have been excited about having a child.”

  The three sat down and watched the video together. In one segment, dated Christmas Eve 2001, Laci is seen repeatedly coaxing Scott to hold a friend’s baby Her voice can be heard telling her husband to hold the child for “five minutes,” “one minute,” then “two minutes.” Finally, he relents.

  An image of Scott cradling the infant shows up on the video, and Scott can be heard saying, “This isn’t that much fun.”

  Laci’s voice is again heard on the video. “This is your one and only time you’ll see him do this,” she lamented. Grogan made a note in his case file.

  Kim Peterson had been actively involved in criminal cases since the horrific murder of Carole Sund and her daughter, Juli, by a serial killer. In February 1999, Carole, Juli, and a young woman named Silvina Pelosso went missing on a trip to Yosemite National Park. Desperate to locate them, Carole Sund’s parents, Francis and Carole Carrington, established rewards for any information about the case. The couple was convinced that the reward money and media attention were instrumental in locating their daughter’s rental car—the first break in the case. Although the case ended tragically when the women were found violently murdered, the Carringtons resolved thereafter to help others in similar circumstances. They established the Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation to help families without economic means offer rewards for information that might help police locate missing loved ones.

  As executive director of the organization, Kim Peterson might be expected to suspect foul play. Yet it was her experience, coupled with everything she had learned thus far about the case, that made Kim suspicious of Scott Peterson.

  Later that morning, Grogan met with Laci’s parents. As Sharon sat nervously on the edge of her chair, listening purposefully, the detective probed for more details about their daughter’s life, from her childhood through the day she disappeared.

  Sharon and Ron had been all over the talk shows, pleading for news about their missing daughter. The last time Sharon had seen Laci was on December 15, nearly ten days before she disappeared.

  “Mom, come quick,” Laci had excitedly urged her. “Put your hand on my stomach to feel the baby kick.”

  Sharon rushed over, placing a hand on Laci’s belly. She held it there for a long time, but when she didn’t feel anything she put her ear to her daughter’s stomach mstea
d. “Hello, little Conner,” she said. “Your Nana loves you. I’m waiting to see you.”

  “We haven’t completely decided on Conner yet,” Laci replied. “We’re thinking we might name him Logan.”

  “And then that was the last we had talked about it,” Sharon explained. Laci’s parents thought Laci and Scott had a good marriage. “Even when Scott should have been mad at Laci, he wasn’t,” Ron told the detective. The couple had never separated according to Sharon and Ron, and they spent up to 90 percent of their time together. They shared the same goals, including having a child and buying a larger home.

  Grogan was taking notes. “Neither Sharon nor Ron ever heard Scott or Laci become involved in an argument, raise their voices at each other, or complain about any problems with their relationship,” he noted.

  On the surface, it sounded like the kind of relationship most people dream of having. But human nature rarely affords such perfection. A keen observer might have drawn a different conclusion from Scott’s behavior: that he simply wasn’t invested, wasn’t emotionally involved in his marriage. It’s easy enough to do whatever your wife wants, after all, if you just don’t care one way or the other.

  Sharon and Ron were both surprised when Grogan asked them about Scott’s boat. Neither of them knew that Scott had purchased a boat, or that he was even thinking about it. They were both visibly upset to hear that Scott had been fishing in this boat the very day Laci disappeared.

  Detective Grogan was back at headquarters early on December 30 when he received a call from Scott Peterson. Scott wanted the cell phone number for Sergeant Cloward.