Latest / 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories / Scott and Laci Peterson

Transcript

Scott and Laci Peterson · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

0:08
Dispersion business arts. Scott Peterson entered the world in nineteen seventy two to an
0:41
industrious and prosperous family. Both of his parents owned and ran their own businesses
0:46
and provided a stable, affluent life for their son. Lee and Jackie Peterson
0:51
had six children between them from previous relationships, but Scott was the only child
0:56
that they'd had together, and he was the apple of their eye, and
1:00
Scott seemed to be doing all he could do to live up to his family's
1:03
lofty reputation right from the start. He grew up on the golf course with
1:07
his father, and by the age of fourteen, Scott was actually better than
1:11
Lee. This natural talent and passion paved the way for a bright future for
1:17
Scott, and before long he was one of the top teenage golfers in the
1:21
whole of San Diego. That dedication was starting to pay off. He got
1:26
into Arizona State University with a partial golf scholarship, alongside other future pro golfers
1:32
like Phil Mickelson. But for Scott, it turned out that pro golfing wasn't
1:37
all it was cracked up to be. Chris Couch, another young golfer with
1:40
a potentially bright future was in Arizona for a recruiting trip when he and Scott
1:45
did what young people at college typically do and went out for a drink.
1:49
Somehow the cat got out of the bag, and Chris's father, Chipcouch,
1:53
took things to a higher authority. He went to the golf coach at Arizona
1:57
State University and complained and pinned the whole wayward night on Scott Peterson. Scott
2:05
then lost his place on the team, which then led to him losing his
2:08
position in the golf program and his scholarship. But perhaps more faithfully for Scott's
2:14
story in life, it turned him away from professional golfing. Scott dropped out
2:19
of Arizona State and enrolled in California Polytechnic State University instead, where he studied
2:24
agricultural business and his path took a turn again. The daughter of local dairy
2:30
farmers, Lacey Larocha was no stranger to hard work. She grew up helping
2:35
her parents and her brother run the farm, and she had a green thumb.
2:38
She was studying ornamental agriculture at cal Poly, the same university as Scott
2:43
Peterson, when they met through a mutual friend. A short while after that,
2:47
Lacey gave Scott her number. A little while longer, and Lacey was
2:52
calling up her mother to tell her that she'd met the man she was going
2:54
to marry. Scott seemed to agree. Scott seemed to agree, and he
2:59
put all lingering thoughts of a professional career playing golf behind him so he could
3:04
focus on getting a business degree and providing for his future family. Scott and
3:08
Lacey married in nineteen ninety seven, and by nineteen ninety eight they'd already bought
3:14
and were running their own business together, a local sports bar in San Luis
3:17
Obispo called The Shack. The Shack did well, and life moved on,
3:23
and before anyone knew it, Scott and Lacey had sold their restaurants and were
3:27
moving to Lacey's hometown of Modesto, California, to find their roots and grow
3:31
their family. Lacey pulled away from a career, choosing instead to work part
3:37
time and to focus on becoming a housewife and preparation for any children she and
3:40
Scott were be having. It took a few years, but finally, in
3:45
two thousand and two, the couple received the news that their first child together
3:50
was on the way. Little Connor Peterson was due in February two thousand and
3:54
three, and it looked like he would come into a charmed and picture perfect
3:59
life phil with stability and love. But wheels had been set into motion that
4:03
would unfortunately derail the whole thing. On December twenty third, two thousand and
4:10
two, Scott and the very pregnant Lacey stopped by her sister's salon to get
4:15
Scott's haircut. Christmas was around the corner. The young couple were full of
4:19
excitement and the holiday spirit, and they had the perfect Christmas Eve planned out
4:24
in front of them. Scott was going to go play golf and Lacey was
4:28
staying home to rest up, clean up, and watch one of her favorite
4:30
programs, Martha Stewart. But by the following morning, plans had already changed.
4:38
As Lacey sat down to watch her episode of Martha Stewart, Scott gathered
4:42
up his things and told her that he was on his way to Berkeley Marina
4:45
to go fishing. The couple said their goodbyes and that was that. Later
4:49
that day, a neighbor found the Peterson's dog, Mackenzie, out and on
4:55
the street with a muddy leash still attached. To his collar. The neighbor
4:59
let the dog back into the Peterson's yard and didn't think any more about it.
5:03
At around two fifteen, Scott called Lacey's phone and left a message saying
5:09
that he was just leaving the marina and would be home soon. He arrived
5:13
shortly after to find his dog still out in the backyard, Lacey's car in
5:17
the driveway, and his home empty. Scott then hopped in the shower,
5:23
changed his clothes, and when he found out that his wife still wasn't home
5:27
from whatever it was she must have been doing, he went out looking for
5:30
her. He knocked on her neighbor's door and told him that he'd been out
5:33
playing golf all day and hadn't seen Lacey since he came home. He also
5:39
said that she wasn't answering his calls and he was starting to get worried.
5:43
After that, Scott called Lacey's family and asked if they'd seen her. At
5:46
around six pm, pretty much as soon as Lacey's mother, Sharon got the
5:50
call from Scott, Sharon reported her daughter as missing. The police immediately took
5:56
a report of a heavily pregnant missing woman very seriously, and they rushed to
6:00
the Peterson home, where many of Lacey's family and friends were already gathering ready
6:05
to help with the search. Many of those same family and friends recounted that
6:10
Scott told them that he'd been out playing golf that day, despite the message
6:15
that the investigators later recovered saying that he was leaving the marina at around two
6:18
o'clock that afternoon, and despite what Scott would say to the investigators himself.
6:25
To everyone else, Scott allegedly said that he'd gone to play golf that day,
6:30
but to the police, he told them that he'd gone fishing in Berkeley
6:32
Marina, just like he did in his message to Lacey. Lacey's family all
6:38
jumped at the opportunity to defend Scott from many probing questions from the police,
6:42
and rushed to describe Scott and Lacey's relationship as perfect. A little over a
6:47
month after Lacey first disappeared, and all of that changed. Seeing the news
6:54
that Lacey was missing on the TV, a woman called in to the police
6:57
and delivered some case breaking news herself. The woman was Amber Fry, and
7:02
she'd been in a relationship with Scott since November of two thousand and two.
7:08
Amber said Scott first told her that he was single, and on a following
7:11
date had mentioned that his wife died and this upcoming Christmas was the first Christmas
7:15
he would be spending without her. Amber believed him and didn't realize that she
7:20
was actually the mistress until she had seen Lacey on the TV. It turned
7:26
out that Amber was the latest of three affairs that Scott had on Lacey over
7:30
the years. One of them even dated back to around nineteen ninety eight,
7:34
when Scott and Lacey had just opened the shack together in Saint Louis Obispo and
7:39
hadn't even been married a year yet. When they found all this out,
7:43
the investigators found themselves asking what else Scott had been hiding from them and everyone
7:47
else around him. But it's what he'd said to Amber to put the authorities
7:53
on high alert. He told Amber that Lacey was already dead, and he
7:57
told her that about a month before Lacey had even gone missing. Had Scott
8:03
just been telling a lie to gain sympathy from a woman he wanted to have
8:05
an affair with, or had he already been planning to get rid of Lacey
8:11
When investigators broke the news that Scott had been having affairs with Lacey's family,
8:16
All of them changed their tunes and said that he must have killed her,
8:20
but murder is a difficult thing to prove when there isn't a body to back
8:24
the claim up. In April the two thousand and three, around two months
8:28
after his due date, a couple found the body of a baby on the
8:31
shore of San Francisco Bay. The very next day, about a mile away,
8:37
the remains of a woman washed up from the water, her head,
8:41
arms, and most of her legs missing. It was only through DNA testing
8:45
that the pair of them were identified as Lacey and Connor. No cause of
8:50
death could be determined for either of them, but Lacey was in a far
8:54
worse condition than her son was in. It looked like Connor had survived longer
8:58
than Lacey had and had been protected by her body for an indeterminate amount of
9:03
time. Investigators couldn't even say if he'd been alive when he hit the water,
9:07
as his body shows signs of changes that only tend to happen after a
9:11
baby is actually born. The discovery of the bodies led to the almost immediate
9:16
arrest of Scott, who had changed his hair color, had both his and
9:20
his brother's driver's license on him and around fifteen thousand dollars in cash in his
9:26
car. He also had camping supplies and food, but claimed he had been
9:31
living in the car because of all the media attention and had not been planning
9:35
on running away. What started after that was a grisly trial. The prosecution
9:41
argued that his long history of affairs, Lacey's tempting life insurance policy, the
9:46
fear of becoming a father and finding the new love of his life, Amber
9:50
Fry, had pushed Scott into murdering his wife and his unborn child. The
9:56
defense argued that someone who'd built up as good of a life for himself Scott
10:00
had wouldn't be throwing it away for a masseuse and a mistress like Amber Fry.
10:05
The prosecution and the defense went back and forth, with the prosecution relying
10:09
heavily on circumstantial evidence and witness testimonies, like the witness who claimed to have
10:15
heard Scott saying that he was out playing golf, not fishing that day.
10:18
Jury members came and went, but finally they came back with a verdict.
10:24
Scott Peterson was guilty of the murder of his wife and child, and he
10:26
was sentenced to death. The two hundred and fifty thousand dollars life insurance policy
10:31
went to Lacey's mother, and Scott was sent to death row, where he
10:35
continued to claim his innocence and fight the case. In twenty twenty one,
10:41
the court commuted his death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
10:46
In twenty twenty three, his lawyers filed a suit claiming that new evidence
10:50
has emerged that would prove Scott's innocence. In January of twenty twenty four,
10:56
the Los Angeles Innocence Project, a non profit organization that provides defense teams for
11:01
the allegedly wrongfully convicted, announced that they would be taking over Scott's defense.
11:07
And that's where the case of Scott Peterson rests today. That's ten minute murder
11:28
for today Brief and binge able True Crime. I'm Joe the host, and
11:33
thank you so much for taking the time to listen. And by the way,
11:37
speaking of this Scott Peterson episode, I've mentioned before that this is a
11:41
story that I've kind of avoided a little bit because of the uncertainty of his
11:46
guilt. Personally, I have my own beliefs it's slanted toward guilty, but
11:52
obviously I have no way of knowing that for sure, but it certainly looks
11:56
like with his actions that he is guilty. Again, I don't know.
12:00
But with the thing that bothers me the most about this case, other than
12:03
the actual crime of it all, aside from that, is the treatment.
12:07
At the time of Amber Fry, I was alive and consuming true crime stories
12:15
at that time in my life and pretty young person, but still able to
12:18
recognize that they were doing her dirty. Like the media, she was the
12:22
other woman, the mistress. She always had unflattering photos of herself posted all
12:26
over tabloids and news all the time, and she was just the lady that
12:31
was in a relationship with a single guy. She thought and did nothing but
12:37
helped the case. They got him convicted, She turned him in. What
12:41
she did behind the scenes helped to convict Scott of murder, and she did
12:46
nothing but positive for the case. And she still gets just absolutely trashed on
12:50
the media. And I don't understand it. I mean, I get that
12:54
she was hooking up with a married guy, but she didn't know that.
12:58
It was pretty clear that she didn't know that. So that's the part of
13:01
the story that gets to me the most outside of the actual crime of it
13:07
all. Hey, if you're new to ten Minute Murder, I really appreciate
13:09
you taking the time to listen today, Like I said, and make sure
13:13
you hit subscribe wherever you are listening. If you happen to be checking it
13:16
out on YouTube, that's cool. Just know that there are many, many
13:20
more episodes available on all of the podcast listening apps, and coming up on
13:26
the next episode of Ten Minute Murder, we're going to be talking about a
13:28
young black boy that was executed in nineteen forty four for the murders of two
13:33
white girls in a small southern town. Eighty years later, his guilt is
13:39
still a topic of debate. Not only is this case still debated, but
13:43
it's as fresh in the minds of the family members as it was then.
13:46
The emotions are raw and the outcome is devastating. And we're going to be
13:50
talking about George Stinney Junior. That's coming up on the next episode of the
13:56
podcast, and that's going to do it. Thank you for listening to another
13:58
ten ye Murdered podcast episode. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.