Pod Insights Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries The Murder of Laci Peterson | CLUES Podcast About this episode Check out the first episode of CLUES, a Crimehouse podcast that I'm hosting with Morgan Absher of Two Hot Takes. You can find future episodes of Clues on Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts
When Laci Peterson vanished on Christmas Eve in 2002, the nation watched closely — but what investigators uncovered was darker than anyone imagined. Morgan and Kaelyn break down Scott Peterson’s suspicious alibi, the affair he tried to keep hidden, and the forensic evidence that turned the case. From hair found on his secret boat to disturbing internet searches and a chilling “go bag,” every detail is put under the microscope. This is more than a headline—it’s a puzzle that still stirs debate decades later. Join Clues Pod as we unravel one of the most haunting true crime cases in American history.
TW: Domestic Abuse, Child Death
Transcript 14,717 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kaelyn Moore? This episode is brought to you by Primally Pure. I feel like every time I run out of a product in my bathroom, I have this moment where I go, okay, do I just order the same thing? Or do I finally make a better swap? And that thinking is exactly what got me into Primally Pure. They're a female-founded brand that keeps it really simple. Fewer, better ingredients, and nothing you can't pronounce. I just got an order from Primally Pure and I am obsessed with their lip oil. I also got Eucalyptus and Lavender Body Butter, which has spa vibes for sure. If you want an easy starting point, their Clean Start Bundle is a great place to start. For under $50, you get three everyday essentials. Their best-selling aluminum-free deodorant, a mini body butter, and the lip oil that I love. It's also a really thoughtful gift if you know someone
0:45 Kaelyn Moore? who's been wanting to clean up their routine. Use code HSP to get 15% off your Primally Pure purchase. That's www.p-r-i-m-a-l-l-y-p-u-r-e.com and use code HSP at checkout for 15% off your order. This episode is brought to you by Bigelow Tea. By now, you should all know that I'm obviously a very curious person, and I'm also a big tea drinker. So I have always heard about this tea called Bigelow Constant Comment. It's been around forever and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate, and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil, and sweet spices.
1:29 Kaelyn Moore? The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City kitchen in 1945. She shared it with her friends and everyone kept talking about it. And all of those "Constant Comments" actually gave it its name. The recipe is still a Bigelow family secret over 80 years later. So this one is a mystery worth investigating for yourself. Bigelow Constant Comment: Curiously different, impossible to forget.
2:02 Kaelyn Moore? Hi, everyone. I have a little something extra for you this month. I wanted to give you a sneak peek of the new show that I'm hosting with Morgan Absher of Two Hot Takes. It's called Clues, and it's from Pave Studios. Our first episode is on the case of Lacey Peterson, who disappeared without a trace in December of 2002. A few months later, her body was found in the Berkeley Marina, which happened to be the place her husband Scott said he was fishing on the day she disappeared. Maybe you've heard of this case, but did you know that this year, the L.A. Innocence Project has come forward and said, "Everything we know about this case is wrong"? We cover that as well in this episode. Check it out, and I'll see you here next week. And you can find Clues wherever you get your podcasts.
2:53 Kaelyn Moore? Hi, welcome to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. And these aren't just ordinary cases. They're complex puzzles where forensic science, investigative techniques, and sheer grit collide to uncover the truth and deliver justice. I'm Kaelyn Moore, and I'll be piecing together the timelines and bringing the history to break down the hard facts of these cases.
3:17 Speaker 01 And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'll be diving into the theories and pulling up the threads of these cases that seemingly add up, or don't.
3:26 Kaelyn Moore? Each week on Clues, we'll explore how the smallest pieces of evidence, like a microscopic fiber, a partial fingerprint, even a small strand of hair, can lead to groundbreaking discoveries and may even bring long-awaited justice. These clues shine a light on stories that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard. So join us as we uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak, and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations.
3:54 Speaker 01 Clues is a part of Crime House, and at Crime House, we value your support. Please share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review, and follow Clues to help others discover our show. For bonus episodes, early access, and ad-free listening, join our Crime House Plus community on Apple Podcasts.
4:11 Kaelyn Moore? So you've probably heard of the Laci Peterson case. It's one of the most infamous criminal trials in recent history. A pregnant Laci vanished without a trace in 2002. But what you might not know is how a few key pieces of evidence shifted the investigation and ultimately led to a conviction, one that some people think they got wrong.
4:31 Speaker 01 Stay with us because we're about to break down the details that had the entire country captivated back in 2002 and still have people actively debating to this day.
4:44 Speaker 01 Okay, here we go. Our very first episode of Clues.
4:47 Kaelyn Moore? Our very first episode. I'm so excited. It's been a long time coming.
4:52 Speaker 01 It has been a long time coming and I'm, I'm sitting here, I'm very nervous, you guys. I'm sweating and I don't know if that's because it's our first episode or-
4:59 Kaelyn Moore? Well, this is a little outside of your domain because Two Hot Takes is so different from this kind of show. We cover a lot of stuff like this on Heart Starts Pounding, so-
5:06 Speaker 01 This isn't your first rodeo.
5:08 Kaelyn Moore? It's not my first rodeo and I think, yeah. But I think both of our audiences are probably very interested in true crime.
5:15 Speaker 01 Oh, I think this is gonna be have your cake and eat it too.
5:18 Kaelyn Moore? Absolutely. And so first of all, just thank you to everyone from our shows, Two Hot Takes and Heart Starts Pounding, that is here listening to us right now. Everyone that came over from our shows to listen to this new one, thank you so much for your support. It does not go unnoticed. We see you guys, we love you guys.
5:33 Speaker 01 Very, very appreciated.
5:35 Kaelyn Moore? And I was actually thinking, because a new show like this, ratings and reviews really help these shows grow, so if you're listening and you can comment wherever you're listening, leave a little THT or HSP in the comments so that we know where you're coming from.
5:50 Speaker 01 I know, what are we gonna end up calling this family? Our, our little blended unit over here?
5:56 Kaelyn Moore? I don't know, we'll have to come up, maybe, maybe you guys will come up with a title.
5:59 Speaker 01 Please do, because I have not come up with anything for my Two Hot Takes people. I'm like, I go back and forth, I'm like, the Hot Takeians? Like what? What are we over there, you guys?
6:09 Kaelyn Moore? Uh, yeah, what would that be? Hot Takes Army.
6:12 Speaker 01 Yeah. So what are we gonna be here? Detectives? Investigators?
6:15 Kaelyn Moore? We'll think of something. We'll, we'll definitely have something by the end.
6:18 Speaker 01 Okay.
6:19 Kaelyn Moore? But what's new in your life?
6:20 Speaker 01 I went wedding dress shopping recently.
6:23 Kaelyn Moore? Oh my gosh.
6:24 Speaker 01 It was a lot.
6:25 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
6:25 Speaker 01 I was very overwhelmed.
6:26 Kaelyn Moore? You went to like a really nice place, right?
6:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, I went to Kleinfeld's. Um, I was like a fan of Say Yes to the Dress, but like, I didn't know how intense it was gonna be. And it was still an enjoyable experience, but like you definitely feel the pressure there.
6:41 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. Did you feel pressured to pick something while you were there?
6:44 Speaker 01 I might have been peer pressured into a dress.
6:46 Kaelyn Moore? Oh, are you, are you happy? Like in hindsight, are you happy with the one that you got?
6:50 Speaker 01 I'm looking for a second dress.
6:51 Kaelyn Moore? Oh, yeah. Honestly, some of the prettiest dresses I've seen come from like Lulu's and like $60 dresses from online.
6:59 Speaker 01 Honestly, I went to like Anthropologie after and their dresses are like just beautiful and affordable and
7:05 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
7:05 Speaker 01 It's fine. It'll be a journey. You guys will see it when the day does come, but what's going on in your world?
7:11 Kaelyn Moore? Packing up my house to move back to LA full time.
7:14 Speaker 01 Woo hoo!
7:15 Kaelyn Moore? Everything's in boxes. It will be my second cross-country move in two, in a year, in 12 months.
7:22 Speaker 01 365 days, two moves. No, thank you.
7:25 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, it's a lot. It's like right when we unpacked the last box in the house, we packed it all back up and we're coming back, but.
7:32 Speaker 01 Eh, don't, don't feel bad if you have some boxes sitting there after a year of living in your place like me.
7:38 Kaelyn Moore? Are you speaking from experience?
7:40 Speaker 01 It's fine. It's fine. You know, we're, we're starting a new podcast. I don't have time to unpack after a year.
7:45 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
7:45 Speaker 01 No.
7:47 Kaelyn Moore? I know it's hard. It really is. It's, it's the, the packing is stressful. The unpacking.
7:51 Speaker 01 Oh, I'll pack all day.
7:52 Kaelyn Moore? Will just take forever.
7:53 Speaker 01 I will pack all day.
7:54 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
7:55 Speaker 01 I need someone to help me unpack.
7:56 Kaelyn Moore? I'd rather put it in the box than out of the box. I don't know mentally why we do that, but it is a thing.
8:01 Speaker 01 It's so odd.
8:03 Kaelyn Moore? But do you think we should jump into our very first case?
8:05 Speaker 01 Let's do it. Today, we are opening up the case file for the murder of Lacey Peterson. But before we get into this case, let's talk a little bit about who Lacey was. Lacey Rocha was born on May 4th, 1975 in Modesto, California. During all of my research for this episode, it was clear that Lacey was just a spark of light. I actually found a really great article from SFgate where some of her friends were interviewed and I love this quote from them. She didn't care what you thought of her. She was just happy to be where she is and who she is. Just so sure of herself.
8:41 Kaelyn Moore? I love that.
8:42 Speaker 01 Happy-go-lucky gal. In 1994, Lacey met a fellow student named Scott Peterson at a party in San Luis Obispo, California. But nothing came of that initial meeting until she ran into him again at a restaurant where he worked as a waiter. She was so smitten with him, and in a bold move, Lacey actually gave Scott her phone number.
9:04 Kaelyn Moore? Brave woman.
9:05 Speaker 01 There's actually an article I found where Lacey's mom Sharon recalled her calling her after this meeting and saying she's met the man she's going to marry. And her mom asked if they had even gone out yet, and Lacey replied, "Not yet, but we will." Like, she's just, she knew. She had a feeling. She wanted what she wanted, and she was gonna make it happen. For their first date, Scott took Lacey on a deep-sea fishing trip, but apparently things didn't go as planned because Lacey ended up getting seasick. Eventually, Scott proposed in December of 1996, and they got married in 1997. Lacey was an absolutely gorgeous bride. In 2000, they moved 200 miles north to Modesto, California, so that they could be closer
9:49 Speaker 01 to Lacey's family and really start building their life together. Lacey loved being a wife. She loved watching Martha Stewart, cooking, and everything that really went into being a homemaker. But what she really wanted was to be a mother. By some accounts, Scott did not want to be a father, or at the very least, it seemed like he couldn't really make up his mind and went back and forth quite a bit. But in May 2002, Lacey got pregnant, and by that point, Scott was seemingly getting on board. He was attending Lamaze classes with her, going to doctor's appointments, all of the things you would expect a loving, supportive partner to do.
10:30 Speaker 01 But in late 2002, when Lacey was around eight months pregnant, things took a dark turn.
10:36 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. And before we dig into the timeline of this case, I just want to make a note that if you're watching on YouTube, you will see some photos pop up that'll help you visualize a few different elements of this case. And if you're listening, don't worry, we want you to feel included as well. You can find those same photos on our social media, which is at Clue's Podcast on Instagram. But okay, so now we know a little bit more about who Lacey was. Let's talk about what was going on in her life in December of 2002. So on December 14th, Lacey and Scott were invited to a Christmas party. Lacey attended, Scott did not. Scott allegedly had told Lacey that he couldn't make it because he was on a business trip. On December 23rd, Lacey spent that day running errands. She and Scott went to
11:21 Kaelyn Moore? a doctor's appointment, and she also visited her sister, Amy Rocha, so Scott could go get his haircut. And that evening, she called her mom, Sharon Rocha, to talk about their plans for the next day, which was Christmas Eve. And that's when Lacey confirmed that she would be having dinner with her. At some point on December 24th, 2002, Lacey disappeared. According to Scott, this is how the day went down, he left the house at 9:30 a.m. And when he left, he said that Lacey was watching Martha Stewart, a special on TV. And he said that there was something about Lemon Morang on the TV. He remembered like that specific detail about what she was watching. And initially, he said that he had gone and played golf that day when he left.
12:04 Speaker 01 Yeah. And it wasn't like he just told one person he went and played golf. He actually told four different people that he played golf that day, but his alibi quickly shifted.
12:15 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. So while even Scott's family thought that he was going and playing golf that day, it turned out that he had actually gone to take a boat out on the marina. And there's a few reasons why this is suspicious to me off the bat. So Scott wasn't going to just take any boat out on the marina. He was going to take his boat out on the marina. And according to Scott, his family, including Lacey, didn't even know that he had this boat.
12:41 Speaker 01 So it's safe to assume that none of them had ever been on this boat.
12:45 Kaelyn Moore? Right, right. And that's something that I want us to remember as we keep digging into this. So Scott left his home at 9:30, he said, and he went to his warehouse to pick up his boat and to check some emails. He left that warehouse at 11 a.m. and he headed to the marina. Now, we know that Scott purchased a boat launch ticket at Berkeley Marina at 12:54 p.m. and we're not really sure how long he spent on the water, but later he left a voicemail for Lacey and that said, quote, "Hey, beautiful. I just left you a message at home. It's 2:15. I'm leaving for Berkeley. I won't be able to get to Vella Farms to get the basket for Papa. I was hoping you would get this message and go out there. I'll see you in a bit, sweetie. Love you. Bye." End quote.
13:29 Speaker 01 And just so everyone is aware, and again, look at social media if you're more of a visual person or YouTube for the picture, Berkeley is over 80 miles away from Modesto. And traffic patterns may have changed, maybe highways, roadways even changed, but when I plugged the two locations into Google Maps and searched what traffic would look like on, you know, Christmas Eve of this year, it shows that the drive is around two and a half hours. We're talking about a five-hour round trip. And given that he pulled the parking ticket at 12:54 p.m. and then left a voicemail for Lacey at 2:15 saying he was headed back, doesn't give you a lot of time to fish.
14:12 Speaker 01 And we also have to consider he was pulling his boat behind his vehicle. And from my experience hauling, you know, with a trailer, you do even have to drive a little more cautious, a little slower.
14:25 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
14:25 Speaker 01 So it could have been longer.
14:27 Kaelyn Moore? And he pulled the ticket for parking at 12:54, but it takes a minute to get into the water. It takes some time to do that. And then he called her at 2:15, so in theory, he pulled his boat out of the water. So it seems like he was in the water for, what, 30 to 45 minutes?
14:44 Speaker 01 Not long, especially considering Scott was by himself.
14:47 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, right.
14:48 Speaker 01 Like, it usually is so much nicer if you're working with another person as you're the one backing the boat down the launch and someone then catches it. But he was doing all of this by himself too, which really adds to the complexity of this.
15:01 Kaelyn Moore? Right, adds to the time it takes. So he made a five-hour round trip journey to be on the water for about 30 minutes.
15:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:07 Kaelyn Moore? On Christmas Eve.
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15:53 Kaelyn Moore? To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/hsp and use code HSP. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash HSP. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by SiJoh. A new season always makes me want to reset things. My space, my routine, how my mornings feel. And honestly, upgrading my bedding has made a big difference. And that's why I have been loving SiJoh Home. I have the Airy Weight Eucalyptus Sheets from SiJoh. They have a lightweight feel, cool to the touch texture. And now my bed feels like a real reset at the end of a long day. I know that every little bit of improvement I can do with my sleep routine makes a huge difference.
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17:11 Kaelyn Moore? So we're not sure at exactly what time, but at some point in the morning, a neighbor found the Peterson's dog, Mackenzie, wandering around with its leash on, but there was no sign of Lacey anywhere. Then Scott gets back to his warehouse around 4:15, he drops off the boat there and he heads home. He gets home at around 4:45 PM and he notices that Lacey is not there, but her car is in the driveway, her purse is hanging up, and upon arriving home, he immediately showers, he washes his clothes and he has some food. And then at 5:15 PM, he calls his mother-in-law Sharon and he asks if Lacey's with her, but of course, Lacey isn't.
17:55 Kaelyn Moore? And from Sharon's account, actually, on that call, Scott said, quote, "Lacey is missing." And that was enough for Lacey's stepfather to call the police just after 5:45 PM.
18:07 Speaker 01 It is so interesting to me how it went that fast. Like, he gets home, washes his clothes, which I don't know about you, but I find that kinda weird. You get home and right away, you're just washing one outfit?
18:21 Kaelyn Moore? Uh-uh. Unless it was really grimy from the boat, but...
18:25 Speaker 01 No, and it didn't seem like he started calling his mother-in-law right away, you know? He walked in to his gate, saw that his dog was loose, running around with a leash on, but didn't start getting worried initially.
18:39 Kaelyn Moore? Lacey's eight months, eight and a half months pregnant at that point. He gets home, her car's there, her purse is there, so she hasn't left the house. I don't leave the house without my purse.
18:48 Speaker 01 No.
18:49 Kaelyn Moore? And the first thing he does is washes his clothes. He doesn't even think to check on where she might be.
18:53 Speaker 01 Ate some food.
18:54 Kaelyn Moore? Ate some food.
18:55 Speaker 01 Really blasé, chill.
18:56 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
18:57 Speaker 01 No, no, no worries. But it is interesting that on that phone call, he goes to, "Lacey is missing."
19:03 Kaelyn Moore? Mm-hmm.
19:04 Speaker 01 It's not...
19:05 Kaelyn Moore? Immediately. Very strange. And it was strange enough that when Lacey's friends and family hear about this, they start panicking immediately. She's pregnant, she could be hurt, she's missing, what if she fell somewhere? So many things are running through their minds. And Scott during this time seems unusually calm. He's described as being detached and nonchalant about it. And also, as a quick note here, after Lacey was reported missing, the police start becoming a little suspicious of him because of this strange behavior. And so days go by and there's no sign of Lacey. On December 31st, they actually ended up having a candlelight vigil for her.
19:46 Speaker 01 And this is where I need to interrupt you a little bit.
19:48 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
19:49 Speaker 01 So remember how earlier it was mentioned that on December 14th, just 10 days before Lacey's disappearance, that she had gone to a Christmas party without Scott? He was on a business trip. He couldn't make it. Well, it turns out that Scott did go to a Christmas party that night on the 14th, but it wasn't with Lacey, it was actually with a woman named Amber Frye, who also happened to be Scott's mistress. And not only did Amber have no idea that Scott was married at the time of Lacey's disappearance, he also had allegedly told Amber that his wife was dead. From an article I found, quote, "Before Lacey disappeared, Peterson told Amber Frye he had been married, but that he had lost his wife, and that this
20:34 Speaker 01 would be his first Christmas without her."
20:37 Kaelyn Moore? And during this time too, Scott was calling Amber a lot, like while everyone was out there searching for Lacey. He even called her during that candlelight vigil that happened on December 31st. And I remember reading somewhere that he told her he was in Paris when she asked where he was, but he had just taken the call off to the side at the vigil.
20:58 Speaker 01 Which, sir, you're out of vigil for your missing, pregnant wife. Can't you call your affair partner later?
21:07 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, why are you thinking to call her?
21:10 Speaker 01 It's not just this. There's, there's a lot of comments that Scott made to Amber that she shared, you know, with police and all throughout this investigation. But there was one that really, alarm bells went off for me when I heard this. Amber mentioned that on December 23rd, Scott had actually called her and talked about wanting to go get a vasectomy.
21:33 Speaker 01 And as we know, December 23rd, he was at a doctor's appointment with Lacey.
21:39 Kaelyn Moore? Seeing an image of his almost fully formed son.
21:43 Speaker 01 Weird.
21:44 Kaelyn Moore? Thinking about a vasectomy and calling his affair partner.
21:47 Speaker 01 Where, what?
21:48 Kaelyn Moore? The timelines. And it's at this point too, that his behavior becomes even more appalling and bizarre. Because around this time too, the police are calling Scott with tips, saying that, you know, someone 90 miles away said they thought they saw Lacey at a record store. You should call them and you should see what's going on. And even his friends were calling him, saying like, I was listening to the radio this morning and someone on the radio said that they saw a pregnant woman who looked like Lacey around this area. You should call this police precinct and see if they got that tip too. And every time he would get these phone calls, he would tell them, yeah, yeah, I'll check in on it. Or he'd say, I looked into it. I called them. They said it was nothing.
22:33 Kaelyn Moore? But at that point in the investigation, the police were tapping Scott's phone. And they knew that he was not following up on any of these leads, even when he was telling people that he was looking into it. And to me, that's kind of because he knew that they would, there was nothing that would come from any of those leads.
22:53 Speaker 01 It is quite bizarre. You would assume as someone who had a wife that was missing, he'd be going above and beyond, making every call, making sure every lead was thoroughly investigated and following up and all of this. And he wasn't. There's even one account where he was talking to someone and was telling them, yep, I'm standing by at an airport, ready to hop on a flight and, and go and investigate if I need to. And he was nowhere near an airport at that time.
23:23 Kaelyn Moore? It's so bizarre. And I was also reading actually how before this whole thing really became like a big national case. Right when Lacey and Connor disappeared, Scott tried to sell his house. He wanted to sell the home. And when they asked, when can you move out? He was like, no, fully furnished. Like they can just have everything in the house. So he clearly wanted to get out of the house really quickly. And people at that time too, like his friends and family were saying, Scott, your wife is missing. Like, what if she comes back? What if she's being held hostage and she comes back or she hit her head and she's disoriented and she wanders back? The first place she's gonna go is your home. And you want to sell the whole thing and move away?
24:02 Speaker 01 It wasn't just the home either. He actually ended up selling Lacey's car. Making
24:08 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
24:09 Speaker 01 decisions that you know, you you would make as a couple or hey, we don't have answers yet. It's only been, I don't know, a little over a month at this point and he decides to sell her car? What's she gonna drive when she comes back?
24:22 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
24:22 Speaker 01 So that was really kind of goofy to me and it gets even weirder when, you know, later on, family and people start going into the home and they notice that Connor's nursery, something Lacey had really spent time preparing. Scott had ended up turning into a storage unit, basically.
24:42 Kaelyn Moore? Wasn't it like, it was full of junk. I saw pictures of it.
24:45 Speaker 01 There was stuff everywhere. Everywhere and he did end up getting a storage unit, interestingly enough. And this might be the worst one for me. In that unit, in a wastebasket, was Scott and Lacey's wedding album.
25:03 Kaelyn Moore? Wow.
25:04 Speaker 01 Wastebasket.
25:05 Kaelyn Moore? Garbage can?
25:05 Speaker 01 Discarded it. You don't want that?
25:08 Kaelyn Moore? I mean, interesting. It doesn't really sound like someone who thinks that their family's coming back. Uh, and I will say, I think maybe the weirdest one for me is that after Lacey went missing, within two weeks about, one thing that Scott did was he had ten hardcore porn channels installed on his TV. The type that you pay extra for. And according to reports, it was, they were added around January 8th of two, 2003. So not even a month later, he's having his cable package upgraded so that he can get those ten channels.
25:43 Speaker 01 No, not even a month. Wait.
25:45 Kaelyn Moore? It's like two weeks.
25:46 Speaker 01 Really bad at math here, guys, but yeah.
25:48 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, December 24th to January 8th.
25:52 Speaker 01 I have no words.
25:53 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
25:54 Speaker 01 I'm literally, I'm sitting here.
25:55 Kaelyn Moore? Skin crawl.
25:55 Speaker 01 I have no words and it's. You could say everyone handles traumatic, difficult, scary life events differently, but for me, if my partner was missing, that would be the last thing on my mind.
26:11 Kaelyn Moore? And it's all of these things adding up together. If that were the only weird thing, you might be given a pass because of grief, but it's just when you add all these things up together, it starts looking like a really weird picture.
26:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:22 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
26:22 Speaker 01 It's very apparent at this point that Scott is really just withdrawing from the investigation more and more each day. He's honestly, seemingly to a lot of people, uninterested.
26:33 Kaelyn Moore? Definitely. And throughout this entire time, while his pregnant wife and unborn child are missing, he's still actively talking to Amber. And we know a lot about this because his phone was being tapped by police. And it's somewhere in here too, that Amber actually becomes aware of Lacey's disappearance because a friend of hers tells her about it. And apparently, Scott didn't mention that Lacey was missing until early January of 2003.
26:58 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. And I believe Amber, you know, kind of played it off as she didn't listen to the news and things like that. So they were still able to carry on this seemingly normal relationship. But Amber did eventually confront Scott and asked him, hey, why, you know, back in early December, December 9th, why did you tell me that your wife was dead? And Scott really did not have a reason for her. He, he kind of just tried to like sweep it under the rug and move past it. And it's a weird thing to say when your wife isn't dead.
27:34 Kaelyn Moore? Totally. And part of the reason too, that Amber was having those conversations with Scott is because she was actively working with law enforcement. She was letting them tap her phone. She wanted to basically get a confession from Scott so she could help the police. And later that month, Amber goes ahead and she gives a press conference where she shares details about her affair with Scott. And that just takes so much bravery because think about it, this has now become this big national circus. She has a small child at home. She's putting her whole reputation on the line, coming forward, saying she had an affair with a married man, all because she's putting Lacey's disappearance ahead of her reputation. And I just, I think that's so brave of her to do. But she is clearly
28:17 Kaelyn Moore? in this press conference, very devastated by Lacey's disappearance. And she said that she just wanted to help the investigation any way she could. And also around this time, Lacey's family gives a press conference, their own press conference. And that's where they publicly revoke their support of Scott. His behavior was too suspicious for them. Why wasn't he following up on leads? Why wasn't he helping the investigation? Why was his unborn son's room now a storage unit? It just seemed too strange and they could no longer rule him out as a suspect.
28:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, and they, they really stood by him, you know, despite a lot of suspicious comments and weird things coming up. Um, I saw one comment that the day after Lacey went missing, Scott was asking if cadaver dogs were going to be used in the investigation. And, you know, at this point, it's still a missing persons case, so.
29:10 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
29:10 Speaker 01 And so when Amber came forward, which I completely agree, very, you know, commendable, very risky for her, they were done. And at this point, there's some comments that Sharon actually went to Scott and said, where is my daughter?
29:26 Kaelyn Moore? That's so devastating for a mom to have to ask her son-in-law that. So in late January, Scott decides that he wants to try to save his image. He knows that this is becoming a big spectacle. He knows everyone's turning against him. So he has the bright idea to do an interview with Diane Sawyer for Good Morning America. And I don't know if you've seen this interview. It is a unmitigated disaster.
29:52 Speaker 01 I've seen some of the clips, but why, like, why was it such a disaster? Like, what?
29:57 Kaelyn Moore? It's just so clear, he's lying the whole time. Diane Sawyer is asking him these questions and he's saying things that directly conflict other, with other things he said. And she calls him out on it, too. She's like, asking him about the affair and he says, you know, Lacey knew about my affair with Amber and she was actually okay with it. And Diane Sawyer is like, your eight-month-pregnant wife was fine with the fact that you were having an affair with another woman. That doesn't make any sense to me. And he's like, he said something stupid like, well, no one knows our relationship but us.
30:27 Speaker 01 Oh.
30:28 Kaelyn Moore? And no one bought it. Like, it just, it really tanked his reputation even more than it was already tanked.
30:34 Speaker 01 Well, didn't he try to lie about the picture that came out about him and Amber, too?
30:38 Kaelyn Moore? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:40 Speaker 01 Like, one of these pictures from the holiday party he went to with Amber, it ended up getting sold to a tabloid from someone. It was a company holiday party for her. I don't know, it got sold. And he tried to be like, is that me?
30:53 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. Sir! Oh, was that supposed to be me? It's clearly you! Yeah, and after this, after that horrible interview, Amber completely cuts off contact with Scott. And then, in mid-April of 2003, this is almost four months after Lacey went missing, the bodies of Lacey and her unborn son Connor were discovered washed ashore. And that kind of leads us to our first clue, which, Morgan, do you want to get into that?
31:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, so clue number one is autopsy report. At this point, all hope that they would be found safe, completely vanished, as Lacey and Connor's bodies were found on April 13th and April 14th, 2003. And we have some details from this autopsy report, but it is pretty graphic, so listener discretion is advised. If you guys want to skip past this, markers will be in the description. Please feel free to do so. According to the autopsy, Lacey's head and parts of her limbs were missing, but her cause of death was labeled as undetermined, because there was no evidence of any man-made wounds. Basically, there was no way to definitively say what happened to her and Connor with 100% certainty.
32:06 Speaker 01 Lacey's autopsy revealed that she had cracked ribs and her uterus and cervix were still intact. She was missing almost all of her internal organs, but the examiner speculated that the uterus was okay because of its location anatomically, and it was, you know, deeper in the pelvis. And this did provide some info. It showed that, you know, she never went into labor, no baby passed through the birth canal, and that will come up in our discussion. The right side of Connor's body was mutilated. The medical examiner pointed out that the baby's umbilical cord appeared to be torn. It wasn't cut or clamped, as you would see in normal birth practices. According to that same forensic pathologist,
32:49 Speaker 01 Connor was in the womb until shortly before the bodies were found, but it's unclear how he came out of her body due to the condition Lacey's body was found in. Reports also say that there was a piece of plastic around Connor's neck and that there was also tape on Lacey's lower torso. The medical examiner said that he believed the plastic found around Connor was debris. There had been a storm, you know, recently and concluded that, but he did say that the duct tape was deliberately placed or appeared to be.
33:21 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, interesting.
33:22 Speaker 01 And something I think that is crucial to mention here is where the bodies were found, and that is near the Berkeley Marina, the same place that Scott claimed he'd been fishing on the day that Lacey disappeared. The same place he handed over that parking ticket to investigators.
33:43 Kaelyn Moore? Puts him at the scene of the crime.
33:46 Speaker 01 At the scene.
33:47 Kaelyn Moore? Wow. Well, on April 18th, just a few days after their bodies were discovered, Scott Peterson was arrested at Torrey Pines Golf Course in La Jolla, California, where he was meeting his dad and brother. He had dyed his hair and his beard blonde. I don't know if you've seen photos of this. He did a bad job.
34:05 Speaker 01 It's not good, you guys.
34:06 Kaelyn Moore? No, it's like bright orange. It looks like he just did it in his bathroom at like 2:00 in the morning, like we all did in middle school. Exactly.
34:13 Speaker 01 Yep.
34:14 Kaelyn Moore? And so he tried to say that, you know, my hair is orange because I didn't want the press to recognize me. I want to be able to do things with my family and not show up on the tabloids. But there were some things found in his car that really don't make a lot of sense. He was found with nearly $15,000 in cash. He was found with a lot of Viagra on him, about 100 sleeping pills. He had camping and survival equipment, several changes of clothes, four cell phones, and two driver's licenses, his brother's and his. And he claimed that his brother's license was being used to get a resident discount at the golf course, but it's not really clear how he tried to explain away the other items.
34:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, I believe they found not one, not two, not three, but four cell phones in this bag. And which put all these items in a bag. It's a go bag.
35:10 Kaelyn Moore? You're, yeah, that's what everyone was trying to say, right? Cause he's like two, an hour basically from Mexico. He had already been talking about leaving the country when he called the cable. Camping equipment, a hundred sleeping pills.
35:22 Speaker 01 Fifteen thousand dollars cash.
35:23 Kaelyn Moore? You're planning on being gone for a while.
35:25 Speaker 01 I mean, to carry that much money on your person's just to go golfing, to bop around town. Like, that's an insane amount of money to carry on you. So it, it really to me, to me, looks like he was ready to go at any moment. And something that really kind of speaks to this and maybe, maybe, you know, Scott's mindset here is when Lacey and Connor's bodies were discovered, he didn't even make any calls. Didn't say, hey, you know, is that, is that my wife? And, you know, he just was seemingly going about his life.
36:03 Kaelyn Moore? Oh, he didn't try to figure out what was going on. He just accepted it.
36:07 Speaker 01 That's, uh, what I saw in some of the sources.
36:09 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. Interesting.
36:12 Speaker 01 But I want to get into a few more of these clues. But can you give us a little bit more background on Scott's boat first?
36:18 Kaelyn Moore? Yes. It's important to know a little bit more about this boat, actually. So Scott bought it on December 9th, 2002, about two weeks prior to Lacey's disappearance. And if you've been paying attention to the timeline here, December 9th is also when he told Amber Frye, his mistress, that he had a wife who had passed away previously. Just so we're all on the same page with that. He also bought this boat in cash, which when you also add in the fact that he was keeping it in a warehouse away from his family. No one knew about this boat. There's no paper trail leading him to this boat. Feels pretty secretive. According to Scott, on December 24th, the day Lacey went missing. That was the first time he had ever taken this boat out in general.
37:02 Kaelyn Moore? Even though he had bought it on December 9th, he had never taken it out before, but he thought that the day Lacey went missing also was like the perfect time to take it out.
37:09 Speaker 01 Christmas Eve, why not?
37:10 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, right. Five hours round trip. Can't get over that. Scott himself even said that Lacey had never been on this boat before. But, one of the biggest clues in this case was found on the boat.
37:23 Speaker 01 Which brings us to our second clue, which is two dark strands of hair that were found in a pair of pliers on Scott's boat. Initially, it was reported that only one strand of hair was found, but months later, it came out that there was actually a second strand of hair that was found in the evidence envelope. And investigators sent this strand off to the FBI for testing, and sure enough, it came back as a match for Lacey.
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39:51 Kaelyn Moore? And eventually, the prosecution for this case argued that because Lacey's hair was found on the boat, it meant that she had been on the boat. If not when she was alive, then when she was dead. Because hair wasn't just found on clothing. It wasn't just found strewn about in the boat, like maybe it had gotten on Scott's shirt and fell off, whatever. It was wrapped up in pliers. Yeah. Which is a very strange spot for the hair to be. I mean, it would seemingly have to be kind of intentional for it to get caught. I shed everywhere. Like if you went and looked in my car right now, there'd be blonde hairs everywhere. But it was the fact that they were wrapped up in those pliers. And it's not odd for someone to have pliers on a boat, especially when fishing.
40:35 Kaelyn Moore? You know, you could use them to take a fish off of your hook or cut a line that got tangled or whatever. It's not that. It's the fact that by his own admission, Scott said Lacey had never been on the boat. Right. And again, too, it makes me think about how maybe there was a chance that he hugged her goodbye in the morning. Hair got on his shirt, it got onto the boat, but we're never gonna know that because Scott washed his clothes the second he got home. So all of that evidence is gone now. But there's also another major clue in this case that's tied to this boat.
41:10 Speaker 01 Yeah. Clue number three, the cement anchors, which is a clue that is sometimes not even mentioned in documentaries or podcasts that you see on this case because it is so contested. And at first I was envisioning kind of that standard ship anchor, the nautical one. Sometimes people have as decorations in their home.
41:32 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
41:32 Speaker 01 But this anchor was not that. This was actually a bucket anchor. It basically looks like you took a small bucket and just poured cement in it. It has the same shape. It's cylindrical, it's a little wider on the top than the bottom. Sometimes you put metal rebar at the top to be able to tie a rope with it then.
41:53 Kaelyn Moore? Right.
41:53 Speaker 01 It's a very common way to DIY anchors if, you know, you wanna save a little money and and not buy an actual one.
42:00 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
42:01 Speaker 01 And there's even videos that walk you through it on YouTube, so not, not that odd. And I did find a report that said that Scott went out and bought cement not long before Lacey disappeared. And buying cement in itself is not suspicious. I mean, I use similar cement anchors for my stands at my podcast studio.
42:22 Kaelyn Moore? Right, just buying the cement or making an anchor is not really the thing that makes him look weird here. It's about what Scott did with that concrete or says he didn't do with the concrete that makes him look suspicious.
42:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, when investigators went to check out Scott's boat, they found that inside of the boat, there was a homemade concrete anchor that he had made. But as they're looking around his warehouse where he keeps this boat and made the anchor, there's concrete dust everywhere. It's all over the boat, the floor leading out of the warehouse onto the sidewalk outside. They actually even ended up finding some concrete in his home.
43:02 Kaelyn Moore? Wow.
43:03 Speaker 01 And in a boat cover for the boat that was then found in the shed later. Covered in gas, but. We're not, we're not gonna go there.
43:12 Kaelyn Moore? Side note, yeah.
43:13 Speaker 01 Most of this concrete dust was nearby where Scott said he had made the anchor. But investigators noticed that there's also four indentations of where it looks like additional anchors could have been made. I mean, there's dust everywhere, which kinda messy for making one anchor, but there's also no dust in four other spots. So imagine you're making a pastry or putting cinnamon on the top of a coffee.
43:40 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
43:41 Speaker 01 You put a stencil there, powder your sugar, where you pick up the stencil, there's no powdered sugar.
43:46 Kaelyn Moore? Right.
43:47 Speaker 01 That's kind of what investigators thought they were seeing in Scott's warehouse.
43:51 Kaelyn Moore? So it's not that they had seen the anchors, it's that they saw where they thought the anchors were made.
43:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:57 Kaelyn Moore? And then assumed that there were four other anchors made.
43:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, and we do have the pictures. It's a little difficult.
44:04 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, I know some people were describing it kind of like a Rorschach test.
44:07 Speaker 01 Which what is that?
44:08 Kaelyn Moore? That's where you see the blots and they're like, what do you see in this? It maybe describes your childhood or whatever. But so some people, when they see this photo, they see the indents. They see exactly where the the anchors were and some people are like, what are you talking about? There's definitely not indentations for anchors there. I've seen it. I think it looks like there were anchors that were made there, but some people, especially people who thinks Scott's innocent, like really don't see those indentations.
44:33 Speaker 01 I mean, the fact that there was this dust everywhere to make just one anchor, kind of odd.
44:40 Kaelyn Moore? Right.
44:41 Speaker 01 But Scott also told police that he used only part of a 90-pound bag of concrete to make the single anchor that was found on his boat. But there was way too much concrete missing for only one anchor to have been made.
44:54 Kaelyn Moore? Right, so then where is the rest of the concrete?
44:57 Speaker 01 So Scott claimed that he used the rest of the concrete to pave his driveway. And this is really where the point of contention is for this piece of evidence. A witness for the prosecution testified that the concrete in the driveway did not match the material used for the anchor. But a witness for the defense testified that they were a match. I believe Scott's, one of Scott's lawyers even said like, "Oh, it's, it is a match, but there was gravel on the driveway and it got mixed in." And so it's hard to determine, but conflicting and again, why it's contested a little bit.
45:36 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. So what are they, what's the reason they say he would have made these anchors?
45:42 Speaker 01 So the prosecution said that Scott definitely made four anchors. And because that they were missing, these anchors could have been used to tie down Lacey's body. Two on her wrists and two on her ankle.
45:54 Kaelyn Moore? Got it.
45:55 Speaker 01 And now this is where if you turn to Reddit a little bit and get into the subreddit for this case, that you will see a lot of people question, like, "How did the hair get in the pliers?" And a lot of people speculate that when Scott was attaching these anchors to Lacey, he might have actually put one of these cement anchors around her neck. And as he was twisting whatever wire or material he used to attach it, that is how the hair then got twisted up in these pliers.
46:26 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, that makes sense.
46:27 Speaker 01 So let's just say there were five anchors in total. Why would you need that many for a quick fishing trip? What are the chances that multiple anchors would go missing? Anchors are, you know, made with a specific purpose. If you're going to DIY these things, you're, you're making them to use fishing again and again, to keep your boat in place when you're casting out your line. And once you're done, you reel it back in. But something investigators noted here is there was no rope found on Scott's boat.
46:59 Kaelyn Moore? Oh, cuz you, yeah, obviously you would use rope when making anchors cuz you have to pull them back up. You don't just leave the anchors. Well, also cuz yeah, you don't, one, you don't leave anchors down there and then just like boat away.
47:09 Speaker 01 But also they have to be attached to your boat somehow. To hold it in place.
47:13 Kaelyn Moore? Right.
47:14 Speaker 01 And there was actually an expert witness that took the stand and implied that the one anchor that was found on Scott's boat wouldn't have even been enough to hold that boat in place in that bay with the currents and everything. I mean, it's the ocean.
47:31 Kaelyn Moore? And I remember reading that the anchors were about eight pounds apiece, right?
47:35 Speaker 01 I was very surprised when I saw the picture.
47:37 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, one eight pound anchor isn't gonna keep, I know his boat wasn't that big, but it's not gonna keep the boat in place.
47:42 Speaker 01 But still, we do have the fact that the others were never found.
47:47 Kaelyn Moore? Right, right, but maybe if he had five in total, yeah. So there was actually some, something interesting I found about the anchors and it comes from this guy named Jeffrey Baer. So he helped lead more than 15 diving expeditions off the Berkeley Marina to search for Lacey. And one of the defense's points was that these anchors were never found, so how do we even know they existed? Sure, there was concrete missing and the imprints in the dust, but still. So Jeffrey testifies during the trial and he says that there's thick mud, there's strong currents, there's dark waters and strong surges in the marina. And that can make it virtually impossible to find equipment like anchors, even when you know what you're looking for.
48:30 Kaelyn Moore? So basically, there's a ton of muck down there and Scott's anchors were small. Some reports say that altogether they were 30 pounds. Each of these like little eight pound things. So to this diver, it made sense that the anchors were just never found. It's totally reasonable to say that they just got lost down there, but they still existed. And to emphasize his point, he actually told a story on the stand about when his crew accidentally dropped their underwater sonar device in the water during the search for Lacey. And it took four different diving trips to find it. Even though they knew exactly where they had dropped it and where it had landed.
49:07 Speaker 01 And that's crazy to me. You have a professional, a trained diver, knowing exactly where an item he lost is, and he couldn't find it right away. Like it took four different subsequent dives to go back and get it.
49:22 Kaelyn Moore? Then you're not going to find those little anchors.
49:24 Speaker 01 There, no. And like, being from Minnesota and spending a lot of time out on the lake, I've dropped cell phones, I've dropped sunglasses, and they, sunglasses go off my face right in front of me. I see them sift down through the water. I know where they land.
49:38 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
49:38 Speaker 01 I can't find them.
49:40 Kaelyn Moore? They're gone.
49:40 Speaker 01 They're gone.
49:41 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, absolutely.
49:42 Speaker 01 So it does make sense that despite having this device and technology, that he wouldn't be able to find these anchors. Especially, I mean, it's a vast body of water, too.
49:53 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, absolutely.
49:55 Speaker 01 And again, in my mind, as I said, like, leave no trace.
49:57 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
49:58 Speaker 01 Why would Scott want to make anchors again and again and again? You make your own anchors to save money and DIY them.
50:06 Kaelyn Moore? Right, so you're not just like disposing of them in the marina and then making more.
50:09 Speaker 01 It's weird they would go missing.
50:10 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. Another thing that was brought up a lot during the trial is that Scott had owned boats his whole life. It wasn't weird for him to be out on the Berkeley Marina, they say, because he did love to go out on boats. We have all this recorded history of him loving going out on boats.
50:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
50:25 Kaelyn Moore? Even though, you know, his family didn't know about this specific boat, whatever, it was like common for him to own boats. But another interesting thing that the prosecution brought up during the trial was that Scott researched the tides in the San Francisco Bay the day before Lacey went missing. They tried to say that this was weird because Scott was probably looking for the perfect place to drop her, knowing that the tides would carry her out instead of washing her back ashore. But I will say, it's not that strange to look up the tides before you go fishing, before you go out on your boat. Also, there's like the argument too, I read about this on scottpetersenappeal.org, which is like the whole layout of the he is innocent case, if people want to look that up. But they really say
51:08 Kaelyn Moore? that, you know, on these websites he was on, it wasn't really the tides. There were websites for other things and the tides happen to be on the websites. It's like when you go on a website and there's an ad for something else. You're not really searching for that thing, it just happens to be on that website. So there's the argument that he wasn't even really looking for the tides.
51:27 Speaker 01 But on that initial seized computer that they found, the browser history also showed someone conducting searches on December 8th for boat ramps on the Pacific Ocean, and then examining nautical charts, currents, and maps for the Berkeley Marina and San Francisco Bay, including the area around Brooks Island. If we're looking at what Scott even said, on Christmas Eve, going fishing was a game time decision.
51:59 Kaelyn Moore? Right, he said it was a last minute.
52:01 Speaker 01 The weather was too bad for golf, seemingly easy pastime, you're gonna go out on the ocean.
52:08 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
52:09 Speaker 01 But he was searching these things back on December 8th.
52:13 Kaelyn Moore? And you were saying too, that he also was looking up specific types of fish?
52:16 Speaker 01 He sure was. So there were a bunch of different visits to fishing related websites, and he was looking up sturgeon and striped bass. And based on what Scott said, he said he was trolling, using bait dragged behind the boat to catch these fish, and he was using lures. Well, they actually had a witness take the stand of a fishing expert, and said that the time of day would be wrong for that type of, those types of fish.
52:46 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
52:46 Speaker 01 The area was wrong, and you can't even troll for that kind of fish. It's like against the fishing rules, laws.
52:55 Kaelyn Moore? Right, which he would have known because he was researching.
52:57 Speaker 01 He was researching. He seemingly should have known, but I mean, from the lures being wrong, those sturgeon like live bait, it just, it didn't add up based on expert testimony.
53:09 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, and I've been fishing twice in my life, and both times were like 10 hour endeavors. It's a really, it's an activity you do for a really long period of time, but we have already talked about the fact that he was probably on the water for what, 30 minutes?
53:25 Speaker 01 Not very long, and something that is literally just coming to my mind now, there's no mention that he ever caught a fish.
53:34 Kaelyn Moore? No, I don't, I didn't read anything anywhere that he had caught a fish.
53:37 Speaker 01 Which the expert did say wrong time. I believe the expert said if he wanted to catch a fish, he should have been coming back from the marina at around 10, not going there at 10.
53:49 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
53:50 Speaker 01 It just didn't make sense. And especially for someone that was familiar with boats and fishing.
53:56 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
53:57 Speaker 01 It just was not adding up.
54:00 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. Earlier, I briefly mentioned that the police were pretty much immediately suspicious of Scott after Lacey disappeared. And they ended up placing a GPS tracker on his car. And I know that this is something you've done a whole deep dive into.
54:17 Speaker 01 I went down the rabbit hole on this section specifically. And this is something that comes up quite a bit in court documents. First and foremost, my question was, how was this legal? It was. Investigators went by the book. They got a warrant to do this. And it did allow police to place surveillance outside the Petersons' home and add these GPS tracking devices to Scott's vehicles, which included a series of cars and trucks that he rented for a few days at a time, because his truck had been impounded.
54:48 Kaelyn Moore? Oh, wow. Weird. I didn't read about that.
54:50 Speaker 01 Yes. So we do have data that places Scott at the marina at least three different times in rented vehicles. First, on January 5th, he drove there in a gray Subaru, spent just five to 10 minutes there. Then on January 6th, he returned to the marina in a red Honda, again, only spending a few minutes there. And on January 9th, he drove there in a white pickup truck. Somewhere around this time, police had realized that Scott figured it out. Their cover was blown, so they seized these GPS trackers. But he did go back in Lacey's Land Rover. And that vehicle, because of the technology it had,
55:34 Speaker 01 they were able to get the data from the manufacturer.
55:38 Kaelyn Moore? Oh, wow.
55:39 Speaker 01 And it placed Scott there again.
55:41 Kaelyn Moore? Wow.
55:42 Speaker 01 And he went back a fifth time in a Dodge pickup truck.
55:46 Kaelyn Moore? And he was only going for like 10 minutes at a time, too, right?
55:49 Speaker 01 Just a few minutes.
55:50 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
55:51 Speaker 01 Didn't tow a boat up, wasn't trying to go fishing again. And again, you guys, we have to think about the distance that he was driving.
55:59 Kaelyn Moore? Five hours round trip.
56:00 Speaker 01 For just a few minutes.
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57:04 Speaker 01 So based on the data that investigators were able to gather, it was looking really suspicious. And in 2004, when Scott was on trial, this GPS technology had not been used in California's court system yet. But I will say prosecutors did really establish its reliability and proved that this GPS data wasn't just random tower pings. Or, you know, it added up. It was factual evidence and they did the legwork before this was admitted into the case.
57:34 Kaelyn Moore? Right, yeah, I remember reading about how GPS wasn't even used on planes at the time. So they were like, if it's not safe enough for pilots, how do we know it's really tracking Scott appropriately? So they had to like fight to get this admitted into evidence.
57:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I will say the judge did a seemingly fair job. From my perspective, there was a lot of evidence that wasn't admitted into this trial. So it did seem like this was a reliable, valid source of information.
58:02 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, and prosecutors really looked at this as evidence that Scott was returning to the marina to check on the bodies and make sure that they hadn't been found.
58:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, this GPS data kind of showed this obsession with returning to the marina. And it put him right at the location where Lacey and Connor's bodies were later discovered. Now, I've always heard that criminals go back to the scene of a crime, but I was curious about why this actually happened, so I did a little bit of research. There's a book called Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool by Ronald M. Holmes and Stephen T. Holmes, and Chapter 5 digs into this in a lot more detail. But basically, there's a few reasons why people would go back to the scene of a crime. First, to relive the crime. Being in that location helps evoke memories and brings them back to that experience.
58:56 Speaker 01 Next, to ensure there's no remaining evidence, or that things haven't moved or been physically exposed. And finally, to interact with law enforcement. Some criminals derive satisfaction from being close to the investigation.
59:11 Kaelyn Moore? I mean, to me, it doesn't really sound like he would be doing that last one because he was not interested in talking to the police that much. And he did not really want to be part of the investigation.
59:21 Speaker 01 No.
59:22 Kaelyn Moore? It kind of feels like someone who's panicked that their cover's about to be blown. So he's maybe going back to check and make sure everything's okay, that nothing's washing ashore. That's what it feels like to me, at least.
59:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, per some investigators' reports, Scott was even saying, like, "You're wasting time looking at the marina."
59:40 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
59:41 Speaker 01 "You're in the wrong spot."
59:42 Kaelyn Moore? Which, then, why is he going there so much?
59:44 Speaker 01 Exactly.
59:45 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
59:46 Speaker 01 To me, it really seems like Scott wasn't this worried husband searching for his wife. It goes back to he knew where they were, and he was making sure that they didn't surface.
1:00:00 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. So Scott's trial began on June 1, 2004. The trial lasted for over five months, and despite the defense claiming that the evidence was circumstantial, the jury still found Scott guilty on November 12. He was charged with first-degree murder for Lacey and second-degree murder for Connor. On December 13, 2004, almost two years after Lacey went missing, Scott was sentenced to death. And in August of 2020, the California Supreme Court actually overturned the death sentence in Scott's case, but they upheld his conviction. I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole on this one because I actually didn't think California even had the death
1:00:40 Kaelyn Moore? penalty in 2020. And it turns out, it's a little complicated. So there was a moratorium placed on executions in California in 2019. Gavin Newsom did that. And the last person who was executed on death row was, that occurred in 2006. So it's been a long time since California's executed someone.
1:00:59 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:01:00 Kaelyn Moore? And you can still seek the death penalty here, but there's a moratorium on executions.
1:01:05 Speaker 01 Interesting.
1:01:06 Kaelyn Moore? Which is, yeah, it's interesting. So the key reason they actually overturned Scott's death penalty sentence was that they found that the judge had improperly dismissed potential jurors who opposed capital punishment, as if they were trying to build a jury of people who were really pro-death penalty, and maybe they had like a specific outcome in mind.
1:01:25 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:01:25 Kaelyn Moore? And in September of 2021, Scott was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
1:01:32 Speaker 01 So that brings us to where we are today. We are now two decades since his initial conviction, and to this day, Scott Peterson maintains his innocence. And there's an ongoing debate with Scott's legal team pushing for a new trial. Plus, the LA Innocence Project has even taken up the case for Scott and are trying to get him freed. Kaelyn, can you talk a little bit more about the LA Innocence Project, LAIP, and how they came to get in contact with Scott? And this is different than the Innocence Project, right?
1:02:06 Kaelyn Moore? Yes. No, I'm glad you brought that up. So actually, when the LAIP took on this case, the Innocence Project basically tweeted saying, "That is not us. We are not affiliated with this."
1:02:18 Speaker 01 Keep my name out your mouth.
1:02:20 Kaelyn Moore? No, literally. They were like, "We are not taking on the case of Scott Peterson." And that's because the LA Innocence Project, or LAIP, is wholly independent from the Innocence Project. And according to an article I found when I was researching this episode, Scott reached out to LAIP the summer of 2023 requesting that they reinvestigate his case. The LAIP apparently thought he did have a very good case for his innocence. They filed motions in January of 2024 seeking DNA testing and post-conviction discovery for Scott Peterson.
1:02:55 Speaker 01 And I'm really curious what evidence they're trying to include in this. What do they think they have that is going to prove he's innocent?
1:03:02 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, so there's a few key pieces of evidence that LAIP is focusing on for this. The first one is eyewitnesses who may have seen Lacey walking her dog the day she disappeared, supposedly after Scott had already left for the day and went to the marina. They claim that the day Lacey went missing, multiple people reported seeing her. Two people claimed that they saw a pregnant woman that day around where Lacey and Scott lived. One witness said that the pregnant woman was with a dog and was arguing with a man. And another witness said that the pregnant woman was being shoved into a van. Also, it's worth mentioning here that multiple people, some who knew Lacey, some who didn't,
1:03:42 Kaelyn Moore? reported that they saw her outside walking her dog in the outfit that Scott said she was in when he left for the day. But I will say that that is not the outfit that her body was found in. The outfit that she was found in was confirmed to be the outfit she was in the day before, and that's because her sister Amy saw her in that outfit.
1:04:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, I will say this is something the subreddit has really picked apart. There's a post recently where someone went to the very same intersection near their home and took a picture of someone across walking their dog. It's really hard to make out details, identifying details. And they did live by a really popular park, so there could have been other pregnant women walking their dogs around the same time. And something that's important to note here is During the initial trial, Scott's team didn't call any of these witnesses to testify.
1:04:38 Kaelyn Moore? Right, right.
1:04:40 Speaker 01 Something to note.
1:04:41 Kaelyn Moore? Absolutely. Maybe they were mistaken in what they thought they saw.
1:04:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, but what else do they have?
1:04:46 Kaelyn Moore? So the next thing that LAIP is looking into is the Medina family. And they lived right across the street from the Petersons and they reported a burglary right around the time of Lacey's disappearance. The Madinas were out of town between December 24th and December 26th. And when they got home, they saw that they had been robbed. Now, police ended up finding the burglars who did it. And they said that they broke into the home on December 26th. Didn't make a ton of sense to the cops because on December 26th, there were vans and reporters and journalists and cops and everything outside of Lacey's home. So why would someone break into the house across the street?
1:05:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:05:26 Kaelyn Moore? If there's cops right there.
1:05:28 Speaker 01 I mean, I wouldn't want to be so close to all the spectacle.
1:05:32 Kaelyn Moore? Right, right.
1:05:33 Speaker 01 If you look at videos, I mean, the lawn was covered.
1:05:37 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
1:05:37 Speaker 01 But...
1:05:38 Kaelyn Moore? It was everywhere. And you know, when they talked to the burglars, they did say that they remembered seeing the whole like circus that was happening outside of Lacey's home and thinking, oh, that's weird. And then still robbing the house. So it seems like it could have been that day still.
1:05:53 Speaker 01 Also, I guess like there's something to be said about maybe like it's so crazy over here. No one's gonna see me over in this house.
1:06:02 Kaelyn Moore? No, I said earlier, I watched videos on people who pickpocket other people. And there is something about like, if you're a street robber, distraction is your best friend. Like if someone's looking over here, then you're robbing them over there. So there is something to be said about like, hey, all the cops in the area are looking over here. We're gonna go commit a crime in one of the other houses because like no one's gonna be thinking to check.
1:06:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's really, that's a really interesting point.
1:06:27 Kaelyn Moore? So the next thing that LAIP is looking at is on Christmas Day of 2002, the day after Lacey went missing, there was a suspicious van fire less than a mile away from their home. It's presumed that this van was ignited intentionally in order to cover up a crime. So inside the van, once they go over and they kind of inspect it, they notice that there's a mattress. And it's covered in this dark crimson stuff, like this big, deep, iron red stain. And when they test it, they find out that, yes, it is blood.
1:06:59 Speaker 01 It is blood.
1:07:00 Kaelyn Moore? The police don't really look into it that much, though. It's not DNA tested, and they don't know whose blood it is.
1:07:06 Speaker 01 And what's interesting about the van is a lot of people were speculating that it could have been linked to a cult. I believe there was-
1:07:15 Kaelyn Moore? Oh, interesting.
1:07:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, there was like some report that came out where a woman had reported that she had been assaulted and taken into a van. So there was some speculation that maybe it was tied to this cult.
1:07:29 Kaelyn Moore? Strange.
1:07:30 Speaker 01 But I didn't see much about it going, you know, further than that.
1:07:33 Kaelyn Moore? Right, right. And it does feel like a stretch when we kind of take into consideration everything else that was going on in this case.
1:07:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:41 Kaelyn Moore? I will say, the last major piece of evidence here that we know LAIP is looking into is a piece of jewelry. I know you've looked into this a lot. I've looked into it a lot. There is a whole rabbit hole that we could do on this. There's a whole other episode, essentially. But basically, Lacey and her family members inherited jewelry from Lacey's grandmother in November of 2002, a month before she goes missing. And one LA Times article that I found talks about how a jewelry store owner testified saying that Lacey and Scott came into her store together to have that jewelry appraised, along with some other personal jewelry they had, like her wedding ring. The jewelry ended up coming out to over $100,000.
1:08:24 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:08:25 Kaelyn Moore? And as a side note, a jeweler also testified that Lacey, quote, "wore a diamond pendant and told her she never took it off, even when she slept, because she was so afraid of losing it." But the same pendant was found sitting on a dresser in the Petersons' home after Lacey disappeared. So if she truly never did take this pendant off, then wouldn't it have been on her clothing when she died? And so Scott and Lacey actually pawned off some things on December 10th and December 14th. Lacey's watch during the investigation was also found to be missing. And we know that she had tried to sell a watch on eBay while she was still alive. The item in question was a diamond encrusted Croden watch that Lacey had inherited from her grandmother's estate.
1:09:09 Kaelyn Moore? An identical watch was brought to a pawn shop that was less than three miles from the Peterson's home. But the watch in question was pawned on December 31st. So the LEIP is arguing that whoever sold the watch must have been the true perpetrator of Lacey's murder. And again, there's a lot of information here. Maybe we'll do a deeper dive on Instagram or something. But the person who pawned that that watch was not Scott. And LEIP is basically saying that they found a similar watch in a different shop nearby, and they couldn't possibly know which one was Lacey's.
1:09:48 Speaker 01 There's a lot of speculation too about why pawn jewelry. You know, one account I saw, I think the jewelry that they did pawn around the 10th to the 14th was only worth like $250. And Scott had just bought a boat for thousands of dollars.
1:10:03 Kaelyn Moore? In cash.
1:10:04 Speaker 01 In cash shortly before. So there was a lot of speculation about, you know, motive. Why were they doing this? And I think something that I saw come up quite a bit is Scott had a lot of debt.
1:10:15 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, you were saying.
1:10:17 Speaker 01 Hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.
1:10:20 Kaelyn Moore? And it was from his business?
1:10:21 Speaker 01 From the business, which it was a fertilizer business of, you know, of a parent company. I'm not sure the exact details of that, but I think something important to note here too is that there was a $250,000 life insurance policy on Lacey. And some people say this was taken out when they found out she was pregnant, but it was actually about a year and a half before. That's the date we have on the policy.
1:10:46 Kaelyn Moore? Oh, okay.
1:10:46 Speaker 01 So I want to be clear about that. But one part of this that I do really want to touch on before we wrap things up is a part of this case that keeps coming back and Scott really uses as his I'm innocent piece of evidence.
1:11:02 Kaelyn Moore? This is the one that he points to when he's saying he's innocent.
1:11:05 Speaker 01 It comes up a lot and it's a piece of evidence that the trial judge actually did not admit in evidence. It is a reenactment that Scott's defense team made where they took a boat out. They went out into the bay, same bay, and tried to dump a 150 pound dummy off the side of this boat. However, this boat was not the same boat as Scott's. The motor was in a different place. The seats were higher and in different spots. There was plywood planking over some of the, the openings.
1:11:42 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
1:11:43 Speaker 01 Where the judge was like, I'm not sure if there's something in there. You're obstructing. The judge on that initial trial pointed out that the defense team member who was in the reenactment video wore a weight belt. He was standing on a portion of the boat that altered the center of gravity. And it appeared the boat was taking on water even before he went to put this dummy overboard.
1:12:09 Kaelyn Moore? So basically in this video, the boat just sinks and they're, they're just trying to prove that you can't dump a body off this boat without the whole thing tipping over.
1:12:17 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:12:18 Kaelyn Moore? Right. But it's not the same boat.
1:12:20 Speaker 01 It's not the same boat and there's, there's other podcasts and other things I've listened to that they bring up this boat as this big piece of evidence as to why maybe Scott didn't do this.
1:12:30 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, Scott couldn't have done it because everything would have tipped over.
1:12:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:12:34 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
1:12:34 Speaker 01 He would have fallen in, the boat would have capsized. However, this trial judge says to the defense team, like basically, hey, not trying to tell you how to, how to do your, your case here, guys, but this is not the same boat. I'm not admitting this, but I will let you use Scott's boat. You can have it from evidence, take it back out into the bay, find similar conditions and replicate it.
1:13:01 Kaelyn Moore? And let me guess, they said, no, we don't want to do that.
1:13:04 Speaker 01 They passed. They never brought it up again.
1:13:06 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, wow.
1:13:07 Speaker 01 They brought it up in Scott's appeal. They basically said that one of the judge's conditions, which was having a member of the prosecution present, violated his rights, or it wouldn't make it fair. And that's where they're mentioning it again.
1:13:24 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
1:13:24 Speaker 01 Current day, but him and his team were given the opportunity to reenact it with the boat with similar conditions.
1:13:31 Kaelyn Moore? To show that it was physically impossible without a question, you are innocent because you could not have done this.
1:13:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, and they passed. You know, they passed and I don't know why. If I was trying to prove my innocence and I said, I didn't do that and it's impossible, I would have taken that boat from evidence.
1:13:49 Kaelyn Moore? Of course.
1:13:50 Speaker 01 But.
1:13:50 Kaelyn Moore? Of course.
1:13:51 Speaker 01 They didn't. They ended up passing.
1:13:53 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah. And one thing that I was thinking of actually, when you were talking about Scott's debt is if he was in so much debt, you know, it's weird that he bought the boat in cash. He was having his wife pawn her jewelry. She disappears. He wants to sell the house. Maybe that's to make good on some of the debt. He wants to sell the car. Maybe that's also because he needs to cover some of the debt. But he is choosing to spend money on things.
1:14:16 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
1:14:17 Kaelyn Moore? He's not choosing to spend it on a watch. He's not choosing to spend it on a car. The thing that he spends his money on is the boat, which is the tool he used to dispose of his wife in theory. So it's just interesting that that's what his priority was.
1:14:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:14:34 Kaelyn Moore? If that's what he wanted to buy.
1:14:35 Speaker 01 I know. I'm going to be honest too. I think it's probably pretty clear at this point to tell where I'm at in this case. I do think Scott did it after reading the hundred and three page Supreme Court appeal document and their decision. I think it's, to me, it feels pretty indisputable. But before I got into this case, I honestly didn't know. I, I kind of leaned towards Scott being innocent.
1:14:59 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, we had talked about that, how when we were first getting into the research, both of us hit moments where we were like. Man, maybe he didn't do it. You know, there's no forced entry. There's no blood. There's no murder weapon. It's really hard to say exactly what happened. There's no evidence on Lacey's body would happen to her. So both of us did kind of hit these points where maybe there is a version of the story where he didn't do it. But I think the further we got into the research, the more we felt like he had definitely done it. Was there, is there one piece of evidence for you that is undisputable? You're like, that's what I point to as proof that he did it.
1:15:35 Speaker 01 It was the pliers for me.
1:15:37 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
1:15:37 Speaker 01 Finding her hair wrapped up in the pliers. I find it really hard to think it's from any other reason, but using those as a way to tie weights to her. I think by his own admission and him saying like she was never on the boat.
1:15:53 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah.
1:15:54 Speaker 01 That kind of sealed it for me, but what was it for you?
1:15:57 Kaelyn Moore? For me, I think it's turning Connor's room into a storage unit. Like that just to me comes across as someone who not only knows that his family's not coming back, but doesn't want them to come back.
1:16:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:16:12 Kaelyn Moore? And I am curious for all of those who are listening and watching, if you can comment, let us know what it is for you. Like what's the one piece of evidence that you point to that you cannot explain away? Cause I'm just always curious what it is for people. Either way too, if you're one of those people that doesn't, you don't think Scott did it? What is the one thing you point to where you're like, it couldn't have been him because of this? Like I'm so curious.
1:16:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, I want to see it all. I mean, where are the holes for you guys in this case? Are there, are there clues we didn't touch on that you're like, that's what convinced me?
1:16:44 Kaelyn Moore? Definitely.
1:16:45 Speaker 01 I really, really want to see it and it's a tough one, but it's hard to argue with all of this put together.
1:16:54 Kaelyn Moore? Yeah, I agree. I agree. It all compounds.
1:16:57 Speaker 01 It does. It compounds and you pull one thing out, it might not add up. But again, when you put all of this together and all of the behavior he exhibited after.
1:17:08 Kaelyn Moore? Absolutely.
1:17:09 Speaker 01 But to wrap us up, Lacey's story is one of unimaginable loss, but her legacy is one of undeniable impact. There's a law that was passed by the US Congress called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, also known as Lacey and Connor's Law. This law recognizes any unborn child as a separate legal victim if they're injured or killed during the commission of certain federal violent crimes, even in instances where the perpetrator may not know the woman was pregnant. Everything we read about Lacey in preparation for this episode shows that she was this deeply caring person who, without a doubt, would have made an amazing mother.
1:17:53 Speaker 01 And to me, it really shows what a remarkable person she was, because even after her death, Lacey was not only able to advocate for her own child, but for so many others. And that's something that will continue to matter long after headlines fade. One thing that is really important for us to mention before we close this case file is that, according to a 2022 Harvard study, the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US is homicide. There are way, way too many women out there who share Lacey's fate. So if you are going through something similar, please know that there are resources available,
1:18:35 Speaker 01 and we are going to make sure that they are linked in the show notes for this episode.
1:18:39 Kaelyn Moore? And justice isn't always as clear-cut as we would like it to be, but what remains undeniable is the profound loss felt by Lacey's family, her friends, and everyone who continues to seek and fight to uphold justice in her name.
1:18:53 Speaker 01 That is all we have for this episode of Clues. We really hope you enjoyed unraveling this case with us, and we're going to open another case file next week. And we want to hear from you, as we said, your thoughts, your theories. Did you dive down the Reddit rabbit hole like I did? We want to hear it all. Your feedback is crucial. We want to make sure we are doing these cases justice and making a show that you guys enjoy. It's really what's going to make this community so special.
1:19:21 Kaelyn Moore? And at Crime House, we value your support. So share your thoughts on social media. Remember to rate, review, and follow Clues so others can discover the show. And if you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
1:19:34 Speaker 01 And if you're hungry for even more content, we've got you covered. Join our Crime House Plus community on Apple Podcasts.
1:19:41 Kaelyn Moore? Okay, Morgan, we'll be back next week with another episode of Clues.
1:19:45 Speaker 01 Until next time, bye, guys.
1:19:46 Kaelyn Moore? Bye. Thank you so much for listening. To catch the rest of this episode and so much more, search for Clues wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll also drop a link in the show notes. Thanks, guys. This episode is brought to you by our partner, Vistaprint. If you run a small business, you know that there's a moment where you go from just doing the thing you love to realizing you need stuff, like physical stuff. Custom merch for an event, branded apparel for your team, business cards that actually look professional, that was definitely me with Heart Starts Pounding. What started as a podcast I made in my closet turned into something that had merch, had mugs, had stickers, had all of this stuff that I needed to get made. And Vistaprint made it so much less overwhelming. They are a true print expert.
1:20:29 Kaelyn Moore? Premium, quality products, fast turnaround, and design tools that actually make sense. I actually got custom mugs made from Vistaprint, and they are gorgeous and very, very good quality. The quality feels expensive without having an expensive price tag. There's a reason over 17 million businesses trust Vistaprint with their print needs. Vistaprint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at Vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at Vistaprint.com using code NEW20. Do you want more Darkly Curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more
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