The latest documentary on Modesto’s most notorious murders – of pregnant Laci Peterson and her unborn son, Conner, in 2002 – will air in a pair of two-hour episodes on A&E this Thursday and Friday.
Much can and will be said, but let’s get this out of the way: I’m in it.
I reported on the case for The Modesto Bee from the arrest of Laci’s husband, Scott, through his blockbuster 2004 trial and conviction and through his still-ongoing appeals.
Producers figured my perspective might have some value, and A&E interviewed me for their exhaustive six-part documentary back in 2017. It’s likely the best-known and most-watched of all the TV shows to date on the case that brought Modesto tons of grief and worldwide attention.
The case had many elements to hook readers and viewers – attractive subjects, her disappearance, his infidelity – all shrouded in a fog of mystery that cable TV and newspapers simply could not get enough of.
A conviction for double-murder sent Scott to death row in 2005, although a California Supreme Court ruling years later canceled that – and he was resentenced to life in prison.
He was moved to Mule Creek State Prison, near Ione, while awaiting a head-spinning array of appeals, including one sponsored by the respected Los Angeles Innocence Project. An April court decision ruled against Scott Peterson, but his legal team will ask the California Supreme Court for a different conclusion.
Why yet another Peterson show?
When a production crew in February floated the possibility of me sitting for a new A&E documentary, my reaction was similar to many of yours: What else can be said about an old case that hasn’t already been covered by two dozen books, two made-for-TV movies and a slew of documentaries?
Lots, it turns out, for people who think Scott was framed.
Producers told me the show would examine old evidence with new technology that didn’t exist 20 years ago. Although I could add nothing in that regard, I could help remind viewers what the mood in Modesto was like then, and maybe shed light on a trial I covered that stretched through most of 2004.
Chris Pixley, an Atlanta-based defense attorney and ABC correspondent who served as one of dozens of talking heads during the trial (and, like me, the 2017 documentary), was recruited to host the new A&E special.
(If the trailer is any indication – I appear in maybe 0.5 seconds of the 1-minute clip – my appearance in this new show could be quite minor.)
“This should matter to everyone because so much of this story is about what goes wrong when people in positions of power put their thumb on the scale of justice,” Pixley told me in a Tuesday telephone interview arranged for this column.
Like all technology, science has advanced in past two decades
A&E’s production affiliate, Left/Right, convinced several top-notch experts – none part of Scott Peterson’s legal team – into reviewing the so-called new evidence at the heart of his latest appeal.
Most intriguing to me is new science developed less than a decade ago purporting to pinpoint a fetus’s gestational age.
An expert had told jurors the science at that time showed Conner died when prosecutors said Scott killed Laci – before Christmas 2002. But a new technique, Scott’s legal team argues, says Conner died later – making it impossible for Scott to have killed Laci, and suggesting someone else did.
Like neighborhood burglars, or whoever else might have snatched her as she walked the couple’s golden retriever, according to the defense theory.
When Pixley interviewed me in March for the new documentary, he asked lots of questions about people I interviewed for newspaper articles – separate from police, sometimes before detectives reached them – back in 2003.
Another new expert cast doubt on 20-year-old techniques for estimating where the bodies of mother and fetus were put into San Francisco Bay months before they washed up in April 2003, Pixley said.
And another, he said, examined handwriting purported to be Laci’s.
But, I said, a judge denied Peterson’s LA Innocence Project appeal just in April – after crews finished filming. What good is an outdated documentary?
“I don’t want to be disparaging, but I think that the ruling is wrong,” Pixley said, predicting the California State Supreme Court – with much more experience in complex cases – will reverse it.
“Save for some terrible event, any one of us could be in that position, and if we are, we would want all of the evidence examined,” he said.
The April ruling hurting Peterson’s appeal is the focus of a bonus special, a producer confirmed. It shows Pixley and another legal expert, former prosecutor Joshua Ritter, scrutinizing the judge’s ruling and predicting Scott’s new-trial chances in light of it.
Scott Peterson’s defenders will appreciate this show. Others, not so much
I’m curious to see how A&E crafted this documentary, which has a much different feel from the first. The first examined both sides – prosecution and defense – while this one embraces the new defense theories.
That will upset some. Victims’ survivors – Laci’s family and friends, many still part of our Modesto community – deserve peace that can be disrupted with questions that seem never put to rest.
Show titles often reveal editorial bias, and probably tell us all we need to know. In a nod to the victim, the first was called “The Murder of Laci Peterson,” while this one is “Scott Peterson: The New Evidence.”
I truly hope the victims in this documentary – Laci and Conner – are not forgotten in the production crew’s zeal to advance Scott’s cause.
If he had lived, Conner would be 23 – perhaps a college student or graduate, maybe working his first or second adult job. He could even be a father, making Laci – can you believe she would be 51? – a grandmother, and her elegant mother, Sharon, a great-grandmother.
So here’s my prediction: People still captivated by the Peterson saga will love or hate this new show, whose marketing material acknowledges the case’s “deeply polarizing” staying power.
How to watch: A&E channel at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 16 and at 5 p.m. Friday, July 17. Or, see it those days on the A&E Crime Central app, check on-demand listings, or stream episodes the next day at aetv.com. Note: The bonus special examining a judge’s April ruling denying Scott Peterson’s habeas corpus appeal will appear only on the app, on Friday.
Garth Stapley is the accountability reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact him at garth@themodestofocus.org.