Murder of Laci Peterson

Laci Peterson
Born	May 4, 1975 (1975-05-04) Modesto, California, United States
Died	c. December 24, 2002, (aged 27) Modesto, California, United States (presumably)
Occupation	Substitute teacher
Spouse	Scott Peterson (1997-2002) (her death)
Children	Conner Peterson (fetal death)
Parents	Dennis Rocha and Sharon Rocha

Laci Denise Peterson (née Rocha; May 4, 1975 – c. December 24, 2002)^[1] was an American woman who was the subject of a highly discussed murder case after she went missing while seven and a half months pregnant with her first child. Peterson was reportedly last seen alive on December 24, 2002. Her husband, Scott Peterson, was later convicted of murder in the first degree for Laci, and in the second degree for their prenatal son. Scott Peterson is currently on death row at San Quentin State Prison.

Early life and marriage

Laci Denise Rocha was born in Modesto, California. Her parents, Dennis Robert Rocha and Sharon Ruth Anderson, met in high school and married shortly after graduation.^[2] Their first child, Brent Rocha, was born in 1971. Laci was the couple's second child, born in 1975. Her parents separated after Laci's first birthday. Dennis later remarried and had another daughter, Amy. Laci grew up visiting her father's dairy farm in Escalon, California,^[1] and she was a cheerleader in junior high and high school. After graduating from Thomas Downey High School, Laci attended California Polytechnic State University. At Cal Poly, she majored in ornamental horticulture. She hoped someday to open a specialty plant shop. While at Cal Poly, Laci met Scott Peterson at a small restaurant in Morro Bay called Pacific Café.

In December 1996, Scott and Laci became engaged, and they married on August 9, 1997, a few months before Laci's graduation. For the first two years or so of their marriage, they delayed trying to have children, but Laci began to express an interest in starting a family. In December 2000, they decided to try for a pregnancy. Becoming pregnant took longer than expected, and on the verge of scheduling fertility tests, Laci and Scott Peterson conceived naturally in May 2002. The baby was due on February 10, 2003, and the couple planned to name their son Conner Latham Peterson.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]}

Disappearance and discovery of the bodies

Apart from her husband, the last two people known to have spoken to Laci before she disappeared were her half-sister, Amy Rocha, and her mother, Sharon Rocha. Amy cut Scott's hair and showed Laci how to style her hair on the evening of December 23, 2002 at Salon Salon. Later that evening, Sharon talked to Laci on the telephone around 8:30 pm. Shortly after 10:00 am the following morning, a neighbor found the family dog, a golden retriever named McKenzie, running loose in the neighborhood, wearing a collar and a muddy leash. The neighbor then returned McKenzie to the yard. Laci's 1996 Land Rover Discovery SE sport utility vehicle was in the driveway, and her Louis Vuitton purse, containing her keys and cell phone, was hanging in the bedroom closet.^{[says who?]}

When Scott Peterson returned home from fishing that evening,^{[citation needed]} Laci was not there. He washed his clothes, ate some cold pizza, took time to clean up the kitchen, and took a shower. At that point (roughly 5:15 pm), he called Sharon Rocha to ask if Laci was with her. When Sharon told Scott that Laci was not there, Scott said, "Laci's missing." Sharon later said that she knew in her heart something horrible had happened to her daughter. Scott stated that when he left that morning, Laci was watching an episode of Martha Stewart, and planned to walk the couple's dog, McKenzie, in nearby East La Loma Park. However, Scott later changed his story by telling Sharon he last saw Laci curling her hair the way her sister showed her the night before.^{[citation needed]}

Laci's parents called the police at 6 pm. A search of the park and surrounding areas immediately ensued. It was highly out of character for Laci to leave without a word. ^{[says who?]} Police, family members, friends, and neighbors searched widely on foot, in all-terrain vehicles, patrol cars, and sport utility vehicles, helicopters equipped with search lights also heat sensors, water rescue units, search dogs, and horseback teams.^{[citation needed]} Law enforcement agencies from several counties became involved. Police suspected foul play, doubting that Laci would vanish on Christmas Eve without contacting anyone. At a press conference, detective Al Brocchini said, "That is completely out of character for her."^[10]

A $25,000 reward was offered, later increased to $250,000, and finally to $500,000 for any information leading to her safe return. Posters, blue on yellow ribbons, fliers circulated, and the LaciPeterson.com website was launched. Friends, family, and volunteers set up a command center at a nearby Red Lion Hotel to record developments and circulate information. Over 1,000 volunteers signed up to distribute information and to help search for Laci.^[11] Critics alleged that this was another example of missing white woman syndrome, and that similar cases (primarily that of Evelyn Hernandez) were being ignored by the media and the community.^[12][13] However it should be noted that it was the immediate family and friends of Laci and the Rochas that organized the initial search and vigil for Laci: In the first two days up to 900 people were involved in looking for Laci, before community officials or police directly participated in the actual search and prior to significant media coverage.^[14]

On April 13, 2003, a couple walking their dog discovered the decomposing but well-preserved body of a late-term male fetus on the San Francisco Bay shore in Richmond's Point Isabel Regional Shoreline park, north of Berkeley.^[15] One day later, the body of a recently-pregnant woman, wearing cream-colored maternity pants and a maternity bra, washed to shore one mile away from where the baby's body was found. The woman's cause of death was impossible to determine due to decomposition; the body was decapitated, the forearms were missing, the right foot was gone, and the left leg from the knee down was missing. Later reports from the medical examiner revealed that there were injuries, two cracked ribs, that happened at or about the time of death. DNA tests verified that they were the bodies of Laci Peterson and her son, Conner. Mother and fetus had not been separated by coffin birth, as had been speculated. Rather, Laci's upper torso had been emptied of internal organs and allowed for the fetus to pass through a perforation in the top of the decomposing uterus.^{[citation needed]}

Aftermath

From the start, Scott Peterson was reluctant to talk to the press; at one point, he stormed out of a family press conference when reporters asked if the police considered him a suspect. Laci's brother, Brent Rocha, defended Scott, claiming that Scott was too distraught to make public statements about Laci, and adding that did not mean he was involved in her disappearance. "No way," Rocha said. "Absolutely not." Laci's family maintained Scott's innocence,^[10] and volunteers said that he joined their efforts at the command center every day.

It was later revealed that Scott Peterson had had numerous extramarital affairs, one of which Laci knew about, but the most recent with a massage therapist named Amber Frey, a single mother from nearby Fresno. The affair began after Scott met a woman, Shawn Sibley, at a trade convention where he represented his company, TradeCorp, and told her he was single and "looking." He joked that he should put "Horny Bastard" on his name tag to help him meet women. Though Sibley was attached, she thought Peterson would be a good match for Frey, a friend of hers. She set them up on a blind date in mid-November 2002. Frey informed police of her relationship with Peterson shortly after seeing news of Laci's disappearance on TV^{[citation needed]}, and agreed to record their phone calls. She informed them that, a few weeks before Laci's disappearance, on December 9, Peterson had told her that he was a widower and that these would be his first holidays without his wife.^{[citation needed]}

Scott Peterson was arrested on April 18, 2003 in La Jolla, California in the parking lot of a golf course, where he claimed to be meeting his father and brother for a game of golf. At the time of his arrest, Peterson was carrying $15,000 in cash, had four cell phones, camping equipment, a gun, a map to Frey's workplace that had been printed the day before, Viagra, and his brother's driver's license. His hair and goatee had been bleached blonde. The police took this as an indication that Peterson had planned to flee, possibly to Mexico.^{[citation needed]}

During Scott Peterson's trial, audio recordings^[16] of Peterson and Amber Frey's telephone conversations were played, and the transcripts were publicized. The recordings revealed that in the days after Laci went missing, Peterson continued to call Amber on a regular, almost insistent basis. In one of the calls recorded, Peterson claimed to be celebrating New Year's Eve in Paris, at the Eiffel Tower, with friends named Francois and Pasqual. He said the crowd was "huge." He called Amber "Sweetie" and sounded happy, even excited. In reality, he was attending Laci's New Year's Eve candlelight vigil during the course of that telephone call to Amber.^[17]

The death of Laci and her fetal son led to the United States Congress passing the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which is widely known as Laci and Conner's Law. On April 1, 2004, Sharon Rocha and her common-law husband Ron Grantski were in attendance at the White House when President George W. Bush signed the bill into law.^[18]

Late in 2005, a Stanislaus County, California judge ruled that Peterson was not entitled to collect on his late wife's $250,000 life insurance policy, having been convicted of her murder. Under California state law, criminals may not profit from insurance policies. On December 19, 2005, the money was given to Laci's mother, Sharon, as the executor of Laci's estate.^[19] The California Court of Appeal (Fifth District) later affirmed the trial court's decision on October 31, 2007.^[20]

In 2006, Sharon Rocha wrote For Laci: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Justice, a biography and memoir about the life and death of her daughter. All proceeds are used to fund the Laci and Conner Search and Rescue Fund, which Sharon Rocha had founded.

Many observers of the unfolding case have drawn parallels between the murder of Evelyn Hernandez and that of Laci Peterson, as both were murdered late into their pregnancy, their mutilated torsos lacked heads, and parts of their limbs were both found in the San Francisco Bay. Scott Peterson's attorney, Mark Geragos, suggested at one point that the two pregnant women could have been murdered by a ritualistic Satanic cult, pointing out the way both women's bodies were decomposed and the location where both bodies were found.

On September 20, 2006, former Congressman William E. Dannemeyer sent a letter to Attorney General Bill Lockyer pointing out that both Laci and Evelyn disappeared on satanic holy days, and that they both ended up in the San Francisco Bay with their hands, feet, and heads missing.^[21]

See also

• Jessie Davis, murdered near-term pregnant woman, the father of her unborn child was convicted.
• Lori Hacking, killed by her husband in 2004, search earned national attention before her husband confessed.
• LaToyia Figueroa, disappeared in 2005 while five months pregnant, found strangled.
• Domestic violence, a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "COURTTV.COM - Laci Peterson Case - Key Players" (bio), Court TV, 2003, webpage: CT-LPet.
2. ^ "Ancestry of Conner Peterson". Wargs.com. http://www.wargs.com/other/peterson.html. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
3. ^ "The Laci Peterson Case". Courttv.com. http://www.courttv.com/trials/peterson/. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
4. ^ "Up to Date Trial Information". Petersontrial.info. http://www.petersontrial.info/. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
5. ^ Jonathan Smith (2008-10-11). "LaciPeterson.com". LaciPeterson.com. http://www.lacipeterson.com. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
6. ^ Laci Peterson Case Information
7. ^ "The UPI's April 27 report". Upi.com. 2003-04-27. http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030427-103248-4669r. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
8. ^ CNN: Larry King Live Panel Discusses Laci Peterson Case
9. ^ CNN.com January 12, 2003 article Detectives Search near Bay for Missing Pregnant Woman
10. ^ ^{a b} Gregg L. DesElms. "What's happening". LaciPeterson.com. http://www.lacipeterson.com/whatshappening/page03.html. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
11. ^ The Modesto Bee webpage^{[dead link]}
12. ^ "Race Bias in Media Coverage of Missing Women?". Transcripts.cnn.com. 2006-03-17. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0603/17/sbt.01.html. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
13. ^ "Eerily similar case languishes in obscurity; Torso of missing pregnant mom was found in S.F. Bay last year". Sfgate.com. 2003-04-21. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/21/MN275651.DTL. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
14. ^ For Laci: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Justice
15. ^ Laci Peterson's remains identified; husband arrested,^{[dead link]} CNN, April 18, 2003, retrieved September 23, 2007
16. ^ By GARTH [e-mail] (2007-12-23). "Five years after Laci Peterson disappeared, reporter details covering the case". The Modesto Bee. http://www.modbee.com/local/story/160574.html. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
17. ^ "Laci Peterson Case: Scott Peterson's Ex-Mistress Testifies". CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/11/court.archive.peterson5/index.html. Retrieved 11 June 2008. 
18. ^ "White House webpage". Georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. 2004-04-01. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040401-3.html. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
19. ^ "Court TV report dated December 19, 2005". Courttv.com. http://www.courttv.com/trials/peterson/12192005_ap.html. Retrieved 2011-06-21. 
20. ^ Principal Life Ins. Co. v. Peterson (Rocha), 156 Cal. App. 4th 676 (2007).
21. ^ Dannemeyer, William E. (September 20, 2006). Letter to Attorney General Lockyer. Retrieved July 8, 2007.

• Rocha, Sharon (2006). For Laci. Crown Publishing Group.

External links

California portal

• Official site of Laci Peterson
• Find Laci 2003 Website

Persondata
Name	Peterson, Laci
Alternative names	Rocha, Laci Denise (birth name)
Short description	Murder victim
Date of birth	May 4, 1975
Place of birth	Modesto, California, United States
Date of death	December 2002
Place of death	Modesto, California, United States