Scott Peterson, who was convicted of killing his wife Laci and their unborn child in 2004, maintains his innocence and offers alternative theories about his wife's death in a new documentary series. Face to Face with Scott Peterson.
Directed by Sharon Anderson, the three-part series focuses on these alternative theories, and features Scott's first interview in more than 20 years. The biggest question mark he and others have raised concerns a robbery that took place across the street from the Peterson home the morning Laci disappeared.
“There were a lot of people involved in that robbery,” Scott said in a video call from Mule Creek State Prison in California, where he is serving a life sentence without parole. “I think Laci went there to see what was going on. And that’s when she was kidnapped.”
Laci disappeared on December 24, 2002: Scott had left that morning after breakfast to go fishing, and later that day, a neighbor found his dog wandering alone in front of the couple's home in Modesto, California. The robbery occurred sometime between December 24 and 26, and two people, Steven Todd and Donald Pierce, were arrested.
But authorities dismissed any possible connection between the incident and Laci's disappearance, and the judge overseeing Socket's case did not allow any evidence related to the robbery to be introduced. Prosecutors had successfully argued that the robbery occurred after Laci's disappearance.
But in Face to faceDiane Jackson, a neighbor of the Petersons, said she remembers driving home on Dec. 24 and seeing three people outside the house that had been robbed in a truck. Although she ignored it at the time, she later contacted police to report it after Laci went missing.
Similarly, a man named Tom Harshman said he saw a young, pregnant woman being forced into a car on December 24. (He called police with his story on the 28th and claimed the incident had happened four days earlier.) “I remember all of this,” Harshman recalls in the series. “We saw a girl, she was pregnant, she was in a pickup truck, and we were worried about her. She needed to pee, so they took her to a fence and forced her back into the truck, and they were being rough with her, and she was kind of scared.”
Another point of contention concerns blood found on a mattress in a burned-out orange truck, which police believe may have been linked to Laci’s disappearance and death. But at the time, authorities ruled out any DNA testing of the bloodstains, and until recently, a California court denied a request to retest the mattress for DNA results. (The request was filed by the Los Angeles Innocence Project, a nonprofit that began reviewing Scott’s case earlier this year.)
“Basically, it comes down to the crime. There's DNA. They might have to figure out whose DNA it is. It's pretty simple,” said Brian Spitolski, a former Modesto Fire Department arson investigator. Face to face.
throughout Face to faceScott claimed that Modesto police focused primarily on him as the prime suspect and were not interested in any other possibilities. “They decided to ignore the evidence and stick with the theory,” he said, adding toward the end of the episode, “I wasn’t the last person to see Laci that day. There were several credible witnesses who saw her walking.”
