What Scott Peterson Believes Happened to Laci Peterson 20 Years After Murder Conviction

In maintaining his innocence, Scott Peterson has a theory about what really happened to his wife Laci Peterson.

In his first on-camera interview since he was convicted for her murder 20 years ago—and the murder of their unborn son Conner, with whom Laci was over eight months pregnant with at the time­—Scott provides a possible answer as to who could have been responsible for her death, if not him.

"There was a burglary across the street from our home," Scott said in Peacock’s new three-part series Face to Face With Scott Peterson. "And I believe that Laci went over there to see what was going on, and that's when she was taken."

While a burglary was in fact committed near the Peterson’s home around the time Laci went missing, authorities have countered these claims by citing one of the convicted burglar's statements that the break-in occurred on Dec. 26 rather than Dec. 24, 2002, as the defense has alleged.

However, as part of the series, journalists and legal experts note that there are witnesses who told police they saw a suspicious van in the vicinity of the burgled home on Dec. 24, while one witness goes so far as to claim they saw a pregnant woman being forced into a van.

Yet the burglary was not brought up during Scott’s trial, which he cites in the documentary as supporting his claim that the cops didn't turn over evidence to the defense that could have potentially exonerated him during the discovery process as they were supposed to.

As Scott alleged, “There are so many instances where there was evidence that didn't fit the detectives' theory that they ignored.”

It’s an allegation Modesto Police are quick to discredit. In the series, two former detectives for the department Jon Buehler and Al Brocchini affirm they never hid evidence or failed to investigate leads during the investigation, and that nothing they’ve heard in the 20 years since Scott’s conviction have swayed their opinion on his culpability.

Yet while Scott was ultimately convicted of Laci and Conner’s murders, there are many—including his sister-in-law Janey Peterson—who maintain his innocence. In fact, the Los Angeles Innocence Project took on his case earlier this year, filing a motion to have pieces of evidence from the original investigation tested for DNA.

It is only one of the many noteworthy details examined in the three-part series. For more on the many unsettling moments in Face to Face with Scott Peterson, keep reading.

(E! and Peacock are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)

While there's no question Scott Peterson left a voicemail for wife Laci Peterson at 2:15 p.m. on Dec. 24, 2002, saying he loved her and would see her "in a bit," investigators alleged he made the call to cover his tracks hours after killing Laci and dumping her body in San Francisco Bay.

"To me, it was really meant for me to hear it," former Modesto Police Det. Al Brocchini, who worked the Peterson case and testified for the prosecution at Scott's murder trial, said of the voicemail he called "gooey" in Peacock's Face to Face With Scott Peterson.

Scott said that sort of sentiment was normal for him and Laci.

"We loved one another, we enjoyed one another," Scott, who was convicted of murdering Laci and their unborn son in 2005, told documentarian Shareen Anderson during a series of interviews from prison featured in the Peacock series. "We were great friends."

He suggested the cops who disparaged his message must have "really sad marriages" to think that he was faking it on the phone.

In a rare comment on their home life, Scott said he recalled them eating from the same cereal bowl the morning Laci went missing.

Later on in the series, he said, "Every moment remains so tactile. I'm still there, and the smells and the lighting, the sound of when I said goodbye to Laci. And then my family was gone."

Even the detectives who had no love lost for Scott from the beginning admitted in the Peacock series they were stunned when they found out that Laci's husband was having an affair.

"That really surprised me," former Modesto Police Det. Jon Buehler, who worked the case with Brocchini, said in the show. He recalled thinking, "Now things are starting to take shape."

Scott has no great explanation for why he was cheating on his pregnant wife ("Childish, lack of self-esteem, selfish," he said in suggesting a few reasons driving his decision), but he said he "certainly" regretted it.

He called the accusation that he killed Laci because he simply didn't want to be a husband or a father "so offensive and so disgusting."

Asked why he kept talking to Amber in a romantic-sounding fashion after Laci went missing, Scott said in the series that he was trying to keep police focused on finding his wife.

"Stay in contact with Amber, I thought," he told Shareen, "and she wouldn't get into the picture, complicate it, ruin the search."

He called the prospect of police finding out about his affair "a time bomb."

And when the world found out, Scott said, he became "the total a-hole to be having sex outside our marriage."

While it didn't come up during Scott's trial, a private investigator hired by his family had found several people (two of whom participated in the Peacock series) who said that they saw a woman matching Laci's description walking a Golden retriever after 10:18 a.m. on Dec. 24, 2002.

According to Modesto police, that was the last possible time the Petersons' neighbor Karen Servas could've seen Laci and Scott's dog running around alone outside the couple's gated yard with his leash on, going by what Karen told authorities.

Finding out later that there were people who said they saw Laci after the cops were convinced she was already missing was "devastating," Scott said in the series.

Attorney Lara Yeretsian, one of Scott's defense lawyers at trial, said in the series that they didn't put any of the alleged dog walking witnesses on the stand because, by then, police had done "a great job" discrediting their accounts.

Shareen asked Scott about the handful of interviews he gave before Laci's body was found and he was arrested, particularly his sit-down with ABC News' Diane Sawyer that aired Jan. 28, 2003.

He told Diane that Laci knew he'd had an affair and wasn't that upset, saying, "No one knows our relationship but us."

He also said during the interview that he told police about Amber "immediately" on Dec. 24, but, as relayed during the broadcast, he called ABC News back to say he actually never told police about the affair.

Scott said in the Peacock series that there was no way that any of those conversations would "present the reality" of the situation.

At the time, he said, he was getting death threats and had been spit on at the gas station.

"I wish I could say I was stronger but all that stuff did take a toll on me," he told Shareen. "I just remember how insane I was going with no sleep and worrying about Conner and Laci and what seemed like just an apathetic response from the police department."

In the Peacock series, Scott described his family as the kind of people who did stuff when times were tough, rather than talked about it. Stuff, as in activities. Which, he said, is why he was headed to Torrey Pines in La Jolla—about 430 miles away from Modesto—to play golf on April 18, 2003. Several days earlier, police announced a woman's body had been found a few miles up the coast from the Berkeley Marina, where Scott admittedly took his boat out on the day Laci disappeared.

Scott told Shareen he really didn't think the body was Laci's, or at least "it wasn't like it was the only possibility."

Dets. Brocchini and Buehler said in the series that, as they were tailing Scott to Torrey Pines, he was driving erratically (Scott said he thought he was being followed by reporters), so they arrested him before he could cause an accident.

Subsequent reports that Scott—who'd dyed his hair and grown a goatee—was arrested near the Mexican border with a fake ID and $10,000 in cash, or that he nonchalantly ate In-N-Out in handcuffs were misleading, according to him and his sister-in-law Janey Peterson.

Scott said in the series he had his brother's ID to get a discount at Torrey Pines ("I was gonna scam the golf course a little bit"). And, he said, "The reason I dyed my hair, was because of the harassment and death threats I was getting."

Janey, a longtime advocate for her brother-in-law's innocence, said in the show that Scott had all that cash because his brother was buying Scott's truck and had just paid him. They had family who lived in San Diego, hence his so-called proximity to the Mexican border, she added.

And, Janey said, Scott had been in custody "for hours" when he ate, while the "perception was he'd just been told his wife and son were dead and ordered a cheeseburger."

When the detectives told Scott his wife was dead, he had "a terrible physical reaction," he said. But also, he continued, "part of me just said, 'No, that's not possible.'"

Wanting to get out of jail and confident in the lack of evidence against him, Scott said in the series, he wanted the trial to be over as soon as possible.

Looking back on everything that's come out since, he continued, "I kind of wonder, gosh, if I had been more prudent or patient or whatever, maybe things would've been different."

He was found guilty of murder on Nov. 12, 2004, for the deaths of Laci and Conner and, following the sentencing portion of the trial, the jury came back Dec. 13, 2004, with the recommendation Scott get the death penalty. A judge formally sentenced Scott to death on March 16, 2005.

Scott's death sentence was overturned in October 2020 and he was eventually resentenced to life in prison without parole, but appeals to have his conviction thrown out have so far proved unsuccessful.

In recent years his lawyers have focused on a burglary that was committed near the Petersons' home as the possible missing piece that could shed light on what happened to Laci. Authorities have countered by pointing to one of the convicted burglar's statements that the break-in occurred on Dec. 26 rather than Dec. 24, 2002, as the defense has contended.

Journalists and legal experts who see merit in the defense's theory pointed out in the series that there are witnesses who told police they saw a suspicious van by the burgled house on Dec. 24, as well as at least one witness who said they saw a pregnant woman being forced into a van.

"There was a burglary across the street from our home," Scott said in the series. "And I believe that Laci went over there to see what was going on, and that's when she was taken."

The burglary wasn't brought up during his trial, and Scott reiterated his belief that the cops didn't turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense as they were supposed to during the discovery process.

"There are so many instances where there was evidence that didn't fit the detectives' theory that they ignored," Scott alleged.

Former Modesto Police detectives Buehler and Brocchini said in the series that nothing they've heard over the past 20 years has changed their mind about Scott's guilt, and that they never hid evidence or failed to investigate tips during the course of the investigation.

Asked about the Los Angeles Innocence Project's 2024 motion to have more than a dozen pieces of evidence from the original investigation tested for DNA in an effort to exonerate Scott, Buehler said it wasn't "totally unexpected."

Brocchini said he didn't have a reaction. "I believe this is bulls--t," he said. "There is no reasonable doubt. He did it. Jury got it right."

In May, a judge ruled that only one item—a piece of duct tape found on Laci's body—could be retested.

But, Scott's supporters remain optimistic. 

"This is not the end of it," Lara Yeretsian, one of Scott's original trial lawyers, said in the series. "It's just the beginning, and at least we've got one win."

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