After a long pause, Scott agreed.
When Amber told him she understood because he was in the “public eye,” Scott changed the subject, stating that he “feels sick.”
Amber pressed Scott about the promise he’d made to her several days after Christmas—that the two of them could soon start planning a future together.
“Okay,” Scott said, pausing for what seemed like a long time. He then added that they couldn’t talk with each other until the case with Laci was resolved. He also told her that he’d spent the night at a motel in Merced, where he learned that his home had been burglarized. In fact, he had driven home that evening and discovered it on his own.
Another telling call came from Kim McGregor, who phoned Scott after taking a polygraph to tell him “it was easy.” The polygrapher had asked her to find out why Scott hasn’t taken one, she said.
“Well good, you sound relieved,” he replied. He then told McGregor that he hadn’t actually been asked to take the test.
Kim said she was asked whether she’d known the Petersons be-fore Laci’s disappearance. She was surprised that her denial registered as inconclusive, since she really didn’t know them before that time. The police noted, Scott didn’t sound at all concerned when McGregor told him her test had come back inconclusive; it was obvious he didn’t suspect her.
That evening, about 1 1:00 P.M., Scott called his parents in San Diego. His father answered the phone. After some talk about Scott’s lawyer, Kirk McAllister, their conversation moved on to the break-in at Scott’s house.
“They smashed up my French doors pretty good,” Scott said. “I had to get them repaired.” Even though Kim McGregor had already confessed to him, Scott told Lee he thought Laci’s father, Dennis Rocha, might have done it while on a “drunken binge.” He also speculated that Brent may have helped.
When Scott wondered if Ron Grantski could be involved behind it, Lee said he was betting on it. He asked if Scott had given the po-lice the three men’s names. Scott said he had. “I gave Dennis’s name as the number one suspect,” he added.
At one point, Jackie Peterson joined the conversation.
“I know it was one of those guys, Ron, Brent, or Dennis,” Scott told his mother. “It was probably Dennis.”
Jackie said she didn’t think Ron was involved. He had called Lee that afternoon to express the hope that the two men could still go fishing together.
“This guy is a snake,” Scott replied, adding that Ron didn’t have a “good past.”
“Oh, I love it when the pot calls the kettle black,” Jackie said ruefully.
There were more enlightening interviews in the days to come. Detective Buehler tracked down David Fernandez, who had dined with Scott and Shawn Sibley at the conference in Anaheim that past October. David had originally intended to introduce his friend Eric to Shawn, but he soon learned that Shawn was engaged.
David said that Scott Peterson didn’t seem to be deterred by Shawn’s engagement. He assumed Scott wasn’t married because of the way he was “hitting on Shawn.” According to him, Scott made suggestive comments throughout the evening, and at one point asked Shawn about her “favorite sexual position.” Scott pressed her about why she hadn’t picked a wedding date, and asked whether she was really happy in the relationship.
David said that Eric Olsen was turned off by the conversation and left right after the meal. Scott boasted during the dinner about having a lot of money and a high salary. He told the group that he owned two homes, one in Modesto and the other in Southern California. These stories, also used with Amber, suggested Scott’s clear need to elevate himself in the eyes of others—particularly women.
The investigators were also asking friends and family to review the events since December 24 with fresh eyes. Were there any inci-dents or conversations that may have seemed unimportant, but might have a different significance now that they knew about Amber Frey?
Sharon Rocha described a conversation she had with Scott about a week after Laci went missing. Although her son-in-law was “vague” about details, when he left home on Christmas Eve morning he told Sharon that Laci was sitting in a “little chair,” combing her hair in a style that her sister Amy had taught her on the previous evening. Scott had never mentioned this detail to the police.
Sharon also told police that she was taken aback when she learned that Scott continued working out and golfing at the Del Rio Country Club after Laci went missing. She was having trouble eating and sleeping and could barely imagine a moment of relaxation or leisure while her daughter’s fate remained uncertain.
In mid-January, Sharon and Ron had invited Scott over for dinner. Although he arrived late, he seemed to be “in a good mood.” Scott told the group that someone had asked him earlier that day how he was doing and he had said “fine.”
“That’s the first time I’ve said that,” he added.
During the meal, Scott prattled on about computer problems he was having, but he barely mentioned Laci. At one point, Sharon told him she’d been watching coverage of the case on the Fox News Channel. A fisherman being interviewed about Scott’s alibi mentioned that shrimp was the appropriate bait for sturgeon fishing in the bay. Scott just shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
Sharon told Grogan that she had tried to dismiss Scott’s behavior because she realized that if Scott was responsible, Laci would not likely be coming home.
Brent Rocha and his wife, Rose, recalled that several years earlier, after the funeral for Laci’s grandmother, the family gathered to talk. At one point, Rose, Scott, and Laci began discussing their child-hood. Rose was taken aback when Scott suddenly burst out crying. From his outburst, she assumed that his childhood had been an un-happy one. She later told Brent that she found Scott’s display of emotion out of character, considering his usually reserved, calm demeanor. Scott’s flowing tears suggested to Rose that Scott had not come from a “loving family.”
Brent also described an early visit with Scott on December 25, 2002. He arrived at the house at about 7:00 A.M. to find Scott still wet from a shower and wrapped in a towel. While Brent waited, Scott went into the bedroom to dress. When he emerged, he told Brent that “he had a bad night.”
“I was very angry, but anger came out.” Scott did not elaborate, and Brent didn’t press him further.
Brent was frustrated when Scott ignored his repeated requests to check Laci’s clothing. Brent wanted to see if any items were missing. “I kept asking him, and he wouldn’t do it,” Brent told Grogan. “Scott seemed uninterested in doing what he could to assist.”
Sharon showed up at the house soon after Brent. Scott and Sharon spoke briefly with a neighbor, and then Scott announced that he was going to the warehouse to retrieve some tape so that he could start hanging missing persons flyers. He left around 8:45 A.M., and for the next several hours, his whereabouts were unknown.
I believe that Scott must have used this time to move things around from the night before. We know he returned to the warehouse at some time that morning because the jacket and the lures turned up in the boat. We know the tarp and umbrellas were moved into the backyard. We may never know whether he used this time to dispose of other incriminating items.
Detective Grogan also reached out to Scott’s half brother, Mark Peterson. He learned that the Peterson clan wasn’t as close-knit as Jackie and Lee had claimed. This was no Brady Bunch story, as the Petersons had been telling reporters.
A sales representative for a packaging company, Mark Peterson had been estranged from the family for nearly thirteen years. A dis-agreement with his father and his brother, Joe, over the family business had placed an untenable strain on the father/son relationship. Mark said that he and his father had barely spoken since the falling out—that is, until Laci went missing.
Mark had met Laci only three times—once before her marriage to Scott, again at their wedding, and then once more at Thanksgiving dinner that past November. His sister, Susan Caudillo, had hosted that gathering, and Mark
and his family had attended. It was the first time in years that everyone was together for the holi-days. Mark acknowledged that he and Lee were still on the outs when he accepted the invitation. However, Susan was anxious to show off her new house, and his wife wanted to maintain a relationship with his children’s grandfather, so Mark agreed to go. He was also excited by the news that Scott and Laci wete expecting a baby.
“The only thing I really remember is that Laci was pregnant … just kind of tired and a little bit uncomfortable,” Mark re-called. “I remember her being a little bit on the quiet side that evening. But, there was, you know, a house full of people, so I didn’t really … I don’t even think I had much of a conversation with her that night.”
The next contact Mark had with his family was on Christmas morning, when he was advised that Laci was missing.
“Well, I’m obviously, I’m a little curious about the family dynamics, and I know that Scott was obviously the youngest child,” Grogan said. “Jackie had children from another relationship, right?”
“Through my sister, I did hear that a man and a woman approached Jackie and said, ’We’re your children that you, that you adopted out,’” Mark said, referring to Don Chapman and Anne Bird. “Since then, I think that Jackie has tried to kind of stay in touch with them. I don’t know any specifics about her past,” he explained.
In response to questions, Mark admitted that he actually knew very little about Scott, or about the Peterson family dynamics. He and his siblings, Joe and Susan, lived with their mother growing up, and only visited their dad on weekends. There was a ten-year age difference between Mark and Scott, and the two spent very little time together as kids.
“We always lived in the same town, we all lived in San Diego and we would probably see Scott ah, on the weekends, you know, that kind of thing,” Mark explained.
“As a child, what was Scott like?” Grogan asked.
“Well, I was a child when Scott was a child so,” Mark chuckled, “I don’t know what he was like. I mean he was just a normal kid.”
“Lee and Jackie seem kind of protective of him,” Grogan said. “Do you know why that is?”
“I think my dad does because essentially Scott … I think he raised him pretty much like an only child, really. You know they did everything together. Scott came along at a time in my dad’s life … when Scott was probably, oh … when he got to that kind of re-ally fun age of, like, eight and ten years old, you know, my dad was … he was doing okay financially then. And I think he was able to kind of spend a lot of time with Scott. I mean, if they traveled, they took Scott with ’em, that kind of thing.”
During the conversation, Grogan tried to establish who in the family had been closest to Scott. Jackie’s third child, John, had come to live with the family when Lee and Jackie married, and he and Scott had grown up together. John went by the last name Peterson, yet Mark wasn’t sure whether Lee had actually adopted him.
Mark believed that John was about five years older than Scott, but had no information about how to reach him.
Grogan was particularly curious about Lee and Jackie’s over-protective ways with Scott. The detective explained how they had tried to stop him from questioning Scott at headquarters on Christmas Day. “They came over to the station here when I was talkin’ to Scott, and, you know, wanted to pull him out of an interview and didn’t want him talkin’ to me without an attorney, and didn’t want him to take a polygraph test. And it just seemed unusual the amount of concern there. Do you have any idea why that is?” Grogan inquired.
“Well, I can’t get into my dad’s head,” Mark responded, “but we had this case a few years ago … ” He described the murder of Stephanie Crowe, which occurred just inside of San Diego. “The case was thrown out because the judge in fact said you guys [the police] coerced this child, basically, to confessing,” Mark said, “and there was a TV movie about it and I’m sure Dad watched it… . You watch that a week before your own son is being interrogated, I think there’s a tendency there.”
The TV movie Mark was referring to was The Interrogation of Michael Crowe, a special presentation on my network, Court TV. Court TV was instrumental in obtaining and airing the interrogation video, which led to the suppression of Michael’s confession. Some years later, a drifter, Richard Tuite, was tried and convicted of Stephanie’s murder.
“Okay, so you don’t think there’s anything different there?” Grogan pressed. “I mean, what I am struck by is, I don’t know the theories.” He changed course. “Not too long ago, they gave him twenty thousand dollars for a membership to a golf club.”
“Lee and Jackie did?”
“Well it just seems to me that they’re very protective of him,” Grogan said, “like he’s able to get whatever he needs from them.” Grogan thought that the Petersons seemed to do “a little bit more in helping him along than, you know, a normal thirty-year-old guy” might expect from his parents. “So I was just kind of curious if there was, you know, something that happened to Scott previously, or if there was some reason that that’s going on?”
“Yeah, I don’t know, I couldn’t help you with that,” Mark advised. “I don’t think there was anything where they feel like they owe him anything. … I mean, he grew up in more of a privileged background, you know, upbringing than, than my other siblings did. He grew up in basically the nicest neighborhood in San Diego County, and you know it’s probably one of the nicer neighborhoods in the whole country. I think he was just kind of their little, you know, baby and they …
“Like I said, he was kind of raised as an only child. But I’ll tell ya, I’m really surprised that they would give him that amount of money for a country club membership. … I never really thought that they gave him anything.
“I always thought they were very proud of the way Scott went out and worked while he was going to school at Cal Poly, and was able to start a restaurant on his own, and was able to get an education and find a job in Modesto,” Mark continued. “They thought of their son as someone who just went out and made his own life. I was under the impression that they were extremely proud of the way Scott was able to get these things done on his own, so when you say they gave him money for a golf club membership, I’m kinda really surprised at that.”
“As far as any violence with Scott,” Grogan asked, “any violent acts that you’re aware of as a juvenile or anything?”
“No, absolutely not. I mean, not even as a, not even as a five-year-old or ten-year-old, I never saw him lose his temper,” Mark said.
“Never, even as a child?”
“No.”
As the conversation drew to a close, Grogan asked Mark if he had any questions for the police.
“Well I’m curious about reports of Scott’s finances. I hear reports of bankruptcy and heavy debt. … ”
“Right now it looks like he is having some financial problems,” Grogan said.
“And it doesn’t look like the business was doing very well… . And then personal debt … what we do have shows that he is quite a bit in debt.”
“Yeah.” Mark seemed to be digesting the information he was now gleaning from the detective. The picture the officer was painting was quite different from what he’d been led to believe by family members. “I guess our concern, the Peterson family concern, is that with all this heavy focus on Scott, that other leads might be put on the back burner?”
Grogan explained that police were working all leads, but had been unable to eliminate Scott as a suspect.
“Would the simple fact of Scott taking a lie detector test and passing—would that be enough to, I don’t wanna say clear because I know there’s some margin of error, but … is there too much evidence for even a lie detector test passing on Scott’s part to clear his name?” Mark asked.
“Right.” Grogan replied.
“Scott has chosen his path and declined to take it. I guess I’ve been wondering if Scott would have just taken this test and passed it, you know, it wouldn’t have …
’cause I’m real troubled by this, you know. I just don’t see his personality as the one that could perpetrate this kind of thing, planned it, you know, especially for monetary gain… .”
“Yeah,” Grogan commented.
“I guess I was looking for a little bit of ammunition to go to my family and say you know what? If he would just do this, it might help things along. But I’m not so sure that’s what would happen anyway … ”
“Well, ah, it certainly would not hurt his position,” Grogan said.
In late January, an agent from the FBI interviewed Timothy Caulkey, a childhood neighbor of Scott and the Peterson family. From the time he was about five years old until they moved away four years later, Caulkey had lived across the street from the Petersons. He told the investigator that he remembered Scott’s older brother John as a troubled child, and recounted several minor incidents of violence and mischief that he believed may have involved John. But there was no proof linking John to these events. More to the point, as the FBI noted, Caulkey “couldn’t provide any information on Scott,” be-cause “Scott was three years old at the time and Caulkey couldn’t re-member much about him.”
In the coming days, police learned that Scott was meeting with friends to discuss the sale of his home and was looking to purchase a new vehicle. From the wiretap on his phones, police found out about a meeting between Scott and two real estate agents, Brian Ullrich and Brian Argain.
“I want to keep this quiet, obviously,” Scott told Argain on one call. “Even if Laci comes back we will not wanna stay there, either way, however this comes out.”
“How soon do you wanna look at doing it?”
“I’d like to put it on the market right now,” Scott said. “Make sure you keep it quiet… . Can I sell it furnished?”
“Yeah, you can.”
The police dispatched an officer wearing a wire to the Appetez Restaurant to record the conversation, but very little of it was caught on tape. Police also learned that Scott had been phoning around to local car dealerships, wanting to sell Laci’s Land Rover and buy a new truck. Investigators also learned that Scott was planning to travel to southern California to appear on Good Morning America. The show’s producers offered to pick him up by limousine, transport him to the airport, and return him home the following day.
A Deadly Game Page 28