Scott and Laci Peterson

Scott Peterson entered the world in 1972 to an industrious and prosperous family. Both of his parents owned and ran their own businesses and provided a stable, affluent life for their son. Lee and Jackie Peterson had six children between them from previous relationships, but Scott was the only child that they’d had together and he was the apple of their eye.

And Scott seemed to be doing all that he could to live up to his family’s lofty reputation right from the start. He grew up on the golf course with his father and by the age of only fourteen, Scott was actually better than Lee. This natural talent and passion paved the way for a bright future for Scott and before long he was one of the top teenage golfers in the whole of San Diego.

That dedication was starting to pay off.

He got into Arizona State University with a partial golf scholarship alongside other future pro-golfers like Phil Mickelson, but for Scott, it turned out that pro-golfing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. 

Chris Couch, another young golfer with a potentially bright future, was in Arizona for a recruiting trip when he and Scott did what young people in college typically do and went out for a drink. Somehow the cat got out of the bag and Chris’ father, Chip Couch, took things to a higher authority. He went to the golf coach at Arizona State University and complained, pinning the whole wayward night on Scott Peterson. Scott then lost his place on the team, which then led to him losing his position in the golf program and his scholarship, but perhaps more fatefully for Scott’s story in life, it turned him away from professional golfing.

Scott dropped out of Arizona State and enrolled in California Polytechnic State University instead, where he studied agricultural business and his path took a turn again.

The daughter of local dairy farmers, Laci Rocha was no stranger to hard work. She grew up helping her parents and her brother run the farm and she had a green thumb. She was studying ornamental agriculture at California Polytechnic State University, the same university as Scott Peterson, when they met through a mutual friend.

A short while after that Laci gave Scott her number. A little while longer and Laci was calling up her mother to tell her that she’d met the man she was going to marry. Scott seemed to agree and he put all lingering thoughts of a professional career playing golf behind him so he could focus on getting a business degree and providing for his future family.

Scott and Laci married in 1997 and by 1998 they’d already bought and were running their own business together: a local sports bar in San Luis Obispo called The Shack. The Shack did well and life moved on and before anyone knew it, Scott and Laci had sold their restaurant and were moving to Laci’s hometown of Modesto, California, to find their roots and grow their family.

Laci pulled away from a career, choosing instead to work part time and to focus on becoming a housewife in preparation for any children she and Scott would be having. It took a few years, but finally in 2002, the couple received the news that their first child together was on the way.

Little Conner Peterson was due in February 2003 and it looked like he would come into a charmed and picture-perfect life filled with stability and love, but wheels had been set into motion that would, unfortunately, derail the whole thing.

On December 23rd, 2002, Scott and the very pregnant Laci stopped by her sister’s salon to get Scott’s hair cut. Christmas was around the corner. The young couple were full of excitement and the holiday spirit and they had the perfect Christmas Eve planned out in front of them. Scott was going to go golfing and Laci was staying home to rest up, clean up and watch one of her favorite programs: Martha Stewart. 

But by the following morning, plans had already changed. As Laci sat down to watch her episode of Martha Stewart, Scott gathered up his things and told her that he was on his way to Berkeley Marina to go fishing. The couple said their goodbyes and that was that.

Later that day, a neighbor found the Peterson’s dog, Mckenzie, out and about on the street with a muddy leash still attached to his collar. The neighbor let the dog back into the Petersons’ yard and didn’t think anymore about it.

At around 2:15, Scott called Laci’s phone and left a message saying that he was just leaving the marina and would be home soon. He arrived shortly after to find his dog still out in the backyard, Laci’s car in the driveway and his home empty.

Scott then hopped in the shower, changed his clothes and when he found that his wife still wasn’t home from whatever it was that she must have been doing, he went looking for her. He knocked on a neighbor’s door and told them that he’d been out playing golf all day and hadn’t seen Laci since he’d come home. He also said that she wasn’t answering his calls and he was starting to get worried.

After that, Scott called Laci’s family and asked if they had seen her. At around 6:00, pretty much as soon as Laci’s mother, Sharon, got the call from Scott, Sharon reported her daughter as missing.

The police immediately took a report of a heavily pregnant missing woman very seriously and rushed to the Peterson home, where many of Laci’s family and friends were already gathering, ready to help with the search. Many of those same family and friends recounted that Scott had told them that he’d gone to play golf that day, despite the message that the investigators later recovered saying that he was leaving the marina around 2:00 that afternoon and despite what Scott would say to the investigators himself.

To everyone else, Scott allegedly said that he’d gone golfing that day, but to the police, he told them that he’d gone fishing in Berkeley Marina, just like he did in his message to Laci. Laci’s family all jumped at the opportunity to defend Scott from any probing questions from the police and rushed to describe Scott and Laci’s relationship as perfect.

A little over a month after Laci first disappeared and all of that changed.

Seeing the news that Laci was missing on the TV, a woman called into the police and delivered some case-breaking news herself. The woman was Amber Frey and she’d been in a relationship with Scott since November 2002. Amber said that Scott had first told her that he was single and on a following date had mentioned that his wife had died and this upcoming Christmas was the first Christmas that he would be spending without her. Amber believed him and hadn’t realized that she was actually the mistress until she’d seen Laci on the television.

It turned out that Amber was the latest of three affairs that Scott had had on Laci over the years. One of them even dated back to around 1998 when Scott and Laci had just opened The Shack together in San Luis Obispo and hadn’t even been married a year yet. When they found all of this out, the investigators found themselves asking what else Scott had been hiding from them and everyone else around him.

But it was what he’d said to Amber that put the authorities on high alert. He’d told Amber that Laci was already dead and he’d told her that about a month before Laci had even gone missing. Had Scott just been telling a lie to gain sympathy from a woman he wanted to have an affair with or had he already been planning on getting rid of Laci?

When investigators broke the news that Scott had been having affairs with Laci's family, all of them changed their tunes and said that he must have killed her, but murder is a difficult thing to prove when there isn’t a body to back the claim up.

In April 2003, around two months after his due date, a couple found the body of a baby on the shore of San Francisco Bay. The very next day and about a mile away, the remains of a woman washed up from the water, her head, arms and most of her legs missing. It was only through DNA testing that the pair of them were identified as Laci and Conner Peterson.

No cause of death could be determined for either of them, but Laci was in far worse condition than her son was. It looked like Conner had survived longer than Laci had and had been protected by her body for an indeterminate amount of time. Investigators couldn’t even say if he’d been alive when he’d hit the water as his body showed signs of changes that only tend to happen after a baby is actually born.

The discovery of the bodies led to the almost immediate arrest of Scott, who had changed his hair color, had both his and his brother’s driver’s license on him and around 15,000 dollars in cash in his car. He also had camping supplies and food, but claimed that he’d been living in his car because of all the media attention and hadn’t been planning on running away.

What started after that was a grisly trial. The prosecution argued that his long history of affairs, Laci’s tempting life insurance policy, the fear of becoming a father and finding the new love of his life, Amber Frey, had pushed Scott into murdering his wife and his unborn child. The defense argued that someone who’d built up as good of a life for himself as Scott had, wouldn’t be throwing it all away for a masseuse and a mistress like Amber Frey.

The prosecution and the defense went back and forth, with the prosecution relying heavily on circumstantial evidence and witness testimonies, like the witnesses who claimed to have heard Scott saying that he was golfing and not fishing that day.

Jury members came and went, but finally they came back with a verdict. Scott Peterson was guilty of the murder of his wife and child and he was sentenced to death. The 250,000 dollar life insurance policy went to Laci’s mother and Scott was sent to death row where he continued to claim his innocence and fight his case. 

In 2021, the court commuted his death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2023, his lawyers filed a suit claiming that new evidence had emerged that would prove Scott’s innocence. In January 2024, The Los Angeles Innocence Project, a non-profit organization that provides defense teams for the allegedly wrongfully convicted, announced that they would be taking over Scott’s defense.

And that’s where the case of Scott Peterson rests today.