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In 2004, Scott Peterson was convicted and later given a death sentence for murdering his wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn child.
Laci was seven and a half months pregnant when she went missing on December 24, 2002, and her body was not found until April 2003.
The world was shocked by the news of her death and the details that emerged during her husband’s trial, including the fact that her body was dismembered and dumped in San Francisco Bay. The authorities could not find her head and arms.
Now, the case is the focus of Netflix’s true crime docuseries “American Murder: Laci Peterson.”
It’s the streamer’s latest buzzy true crime documentary in the same vein as “American Nightmare” and “The Man with 1000 Kids.” It guides audiences through the investigation into Laci Peterson’s murder, and her husband’s first and second-degree murder convictions for killing her and their unborn child. Although Scott Peterson was sentenced to death by lethal injection in March 2005, he appealed in 2012, and the ruling was eventually overturned in August 2020.
This was because judge Alfred Delucci, who was presiding over the case but died in 2008, improperly dismissed two members of the jury in November 2004. They did not agree with the concept of capital punishment and the death sentence.
Here’s where Scott is now.
Scott Peterson is still serving a life sentence in prison.
As stated at the end of “American Murder,” Scott Peterson’s sister-in-law, Janey Peterson, trained to be a lawyer because she believes he is innocent, and helped appeal his sentence.
On August 24, 2020, the US Supreme Court overturned Scott Peterson’s death sentence but upheld his conviction, and resentenced him to life in prison. He was denied a new trial in 2022.
According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Scott is serving his life sentence without the possibility of parole in Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California.
Scott Peterson has always maintained his innocence, and his attorneys argued that Laci Peterson was murdered by burglars when she discovered a robbery taking place near their home in Modesto, California.
A juror on the original trial, Mike Belmessieri, told NewsNation in February 2024 that at the time, the police had already ruled out the possibility that Laci Peterson stumbled upon the robbery.
“The Modesto P.D. had investigated that issue and cleared those individuals who were involved in that burglary,” he said.
But Janey Peterson told People in 2023 that Scott’s attorneys filed a signed document from a man who claims to have overheard a burglar admitting to the murder.
“That’s always been our theory. There’s always been evidence that points to the burglary, but it’s all either been a couple degrees of hearsay or whatever,” she said.
The Los Angeles Innocence Project took up Scott Peterson’s case in January 2024 in an attempt to exonerate him.
The project submitted several pieces of evidence that they argued should undergo DNA testing. But a judge ruled in May that only one piece of duct tape should be tested.
The convicted murderer tells his side of the story in Peacock’s “Face to Face with Scott Peterson.”
“American Murder: Laci Peterson” mainly features her mother, Sharon Rocha, who recalls her family’s ordeal, and also features appearances from police officers, attorneys, and members of the jury involved with Scott Peterson’s trial.
But he tells his side of the story in the three-part Peacock docuseries, “Face to Face with Scott Peterson.”
In the series, he claims that the authorities refused to investigate other leads because they decided he was their prime suspect.
“There are so many instances where there was evidence that didn’t fit the detectives’ theory that they ignored. People want the answer they believed in to be the answer,” he said.
He also said he believed that Laci was kidnapped because she witnessed the burglary.
“There were a lot of people in that burglary and I believe that Laci went over there to see what was going on. And that’s when she was taken.”
Scott Peterson previously spoke to People about the interview on August 13: “I regret not testifying [at my trial], but if I have a chance to show people what the truth is, and if they are willing to accept it, it would be the biggest thing that I can accomplish right now—because I didn’t kill my family.”
He also addressed the affair he had with massage therapist Amber Frey while he was married. He said: “It’s horrible. I was a total a-hole to be having sex outside our marriage.”
During the 2004 trial, the prosecutors claimed that Scott Peterson killed his wife and their baby because he did not want to be a father.
“That is so offensive and so disgusting. I certainly regret cheating on Laci, absolutely,” he said. “It was about a childish lack of self-esteem, selfish me traveling somewhere, lonely that night because I wasn’t at home. Someone makes you feel good because they want to have sex with you.”
