A Deadly Game

by Catherine Crier

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Scott assured him.

  “But she wasn’t home?”

  “No, I assumed she was at her mom’s.”

  “Okay, then what?”

  “I grabbed some pizza from the fridge.” He then went to take a shower.

  “Did you call her mom?”

  “After I got out of the shower, and put clothes on, that’s when I checked the messages.”

  “Were there any?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yours?”

  “There were three, two from me and one from Ron, her stepfather, asking for whipped cream when we came over.” With an air of annoyance, he added, “That’s when I said, hey man, he’s calling me for whipped cream?”

  “Did you erase them?”

  “No.”

  The detective made a mental note. Most people would erase un-necessary messages unless there was some other reason to keep them … like an alibi. “Okay, so then you called over to her mom’s?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Had they heard from her?”

  “No. Not all day.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “No. I think we were supposed to be there for dinner at six or six-thirty.”

  “Okay, so you told Sharon, or did you talk to Ron?”

  “Talked to, ah, talked to Mom, Sharon. I asked if Laci was there. She told me no.”

  “Who called us?” the detective asked.

  “Ron.”

  “Did he tell you he was gonna call?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who all did you call, other people then?”

  Scott said he had immediately called Laci’s closest friends, Stacey and Renee. He pointed out that he’d opened the phone book to start calling hospitals when Sharon rang back, but admitted that he wasn’t sure about the sequence. According to Scott, Sharon said they would call the police. He should check with the neighbors and then look in the park. “I mean, I may have checked the neighbors, then come back and got on the phone.”

  “Had any of your neighbors seen or heard anything?” Brocchini asked.

  “Ah, first neighbor I checked with was directly across the street; her name’s Amy.” He was referring to Amy Krigbaum, who lived at 520 Covena Avenue with her roommate, Tara Venable. Scott left a note with his next-door neighbor, Karen Servas. She was the person who later told Scott about finding McKenzie running loose with his leash on. Whatever the actual order of events, less than fifteen minutes transpired between Scott’s first call to Sharon and her insistence that he go to the park.

  “Was there anything unusual, out of the ordinary in your house?”

  “The only unusual things, ah, were the leash … and the door unlocked.”

  “How ‘bout the gun? How, how long has that been in your car?”

  Scott explained that the Llama .22-caliber had been in his glove box for about a month. Scott had brought the pistol on a trip to Lone Pine with his father to shoot pheasant. “I tried to shoot it once on the trip but it didn’t go off.”

  The detective shifted the focus. “Have you guys had any problems, ah, marriage problems?”

  “No,” Scott assured him.

  “Everything is good?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you have been married four years?”

  “Yeah, four or five, I’m thinking. I think this is five. I got married in ‘97.”

  Shifting again, Brocchini asked about the park. “Times you’ve walked in the park you said that, ah, you have seen campers, bums or whatever. Has Laci ever complained to you about somebody bothering her?”

  “Naw,” Scott replied. “I mean, like I said, I don’t think they’d come up to her and accost her in any way. You know, she has times she’s felt uncomfortable and thankfully she has the dog. We’ve called the police a couple times about people down there just to get ‘em to move on, you know, and it’s not uncommon for Laci or my-self to wake one of these guys or ladies up and tell him to get lost.” At this point, Scott still seemed convinced that McKenzie would have warded off any attackers. Later, he would change his story and assert that his wife was probably accosted in the park for her jewelry.

  The interview moved on to the Peterson’s housekeeper, Margarita.

  “Maggie or Margarita, she was there on Monday … and obviously she did a lotta work because the house wasn’t filthy.

  “Why was your wife mopping on Tuesday morning?”

  “I don’t know. Got me—I mean, she was pretty fastidious about it, though,” Scott replied—describing his wife in the past tense.

  “Was she?” Brocchini asked.

  “With the dog and the cats and her doing, ah, the Christmas deal, that was pretty common.” He added, “Yeah, she always had the vacuum or mop out.” The past tense again.

  “You haven’t fired any guns today?” Detective Brocchini asked.

  “No, it’s been a month since the trip to Lone Pine.”

  Brocchini asked Scott if they could test for gunshot residue on his hands. Scott hesitated as the detective produced a Gun Shot Residue Kit. He asked, “Will boat motor exhaust register positive?”

  “Would you be willing to take a polygraph?” Brocchini responded.

  “Sure,” Scott replied, but Brocchini noticed that Scott was shaking his head from side to side, indicating No.

  “So what you’re telling me, Scott, is you have no idea where Laci is.”

  “None.”

  “Just to eliminate you as a suspect, would you be willing to take a polygraph?” the detective repeated.

  “Yeah. They’re accurate, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Brocchini assured him, “I mean, it’s nothing that can be used against you, but yeah, I believe they’re accurate.”

  “No, I’m certainly willing.”

  Brocchini added, “It wouldn’t be now, it’d be, ya know, in a day or two… . It’s just like the next step in this thing.”

  “Sure,” Scott replied.

  “Really,” the detective concluded, “what’s left is the flyers, the canvass tomorrow, the media coverage. What concerns me the most is the fact that your dog came home with the leash on. That bothers me.”

  “No question,” Scott agreed.

  The interview was wrapping up when Scott asked something quite surprising.

  “The only question I have … what about resources available? You saw my mother-in-law tonight, um, anyway, you saw some of my friends, myself ... ”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Counseling and that kind of thing. Can you give us the numbers or do I have to search ... ”

  “No, I can give you those numbers. I just don’t know. You’re probably not going to get any answers today. It’s Christmas, I mean.”

  “Yeah, of course. And there is no need to call if we find Laci in the next days.”

  “Yeah, I agree. I’ll give you those numbers.”

  “I will need them.”

  The question is chillingly obvious: How was Scott so sure that he would need counseling, only hours after Laci disappeared? Families of missing people are generally so caught up in the moment—and clinging so dearly to hope—that it’s some time before counseling comes into play. Often the investigation and trial in a murder case so focuses the family that it’s not until well after the verdict that members really acknowledge their grief and turn to counselors. Yet Scott was already sure he’d need that kind of assistance only hours into the search.

  “I’ll get you the number to the victim services.” Brocchini replied.

  The interview was over. It was almost 1:30 A.M.

  Looking directly at Scott, Brocchini made a vow. “We’ll get the bastard who did this to Laci.” He wanted Scott to know that he didn’t believe Laci had just wandered off. He already believed she was dead. And he was not going to let go of this case until he solved it.

  I believe it was at that moment that the lines were drawn. Scott’s deadly game now included the police.

  Scott’s demeanor w
as an issue from the start of the investigation. His family, attorneys, and a gaggle of television pundits would make their excuses about how we all respond to tragedy and argue that nothing should be read into the young husband’s seemingly callous behavior. However, years of observing human nature would lead the experienced detectives to different conclusions. After the interview, Brocchini carefully recorded that Scott appeared “casual and nonchalant … bored, tired, and devoid of urgency.”

  I think most people would agree that an innocent husband whose pregnant wife is missing would show at least some emotion. Scott Peterson showed nothing of the kind. At the time, it might have been argued that he was simply trying to appear strong around the cops. But in the weeks that followed, he would demonstrate an extraordi-nary ability to turn his feelings on and off at will—in his private behavior with Amber Frey and during his public interviews with female members of the media.

  It was Detective Al Brocchini who first noted Scott’s strange behavior. Additionally, in his immediate search of Scott’s truck, he spotted items that were removed only hours later, including the umbrellas, tarps, jacket, and lures. By acting fast, he managed to survey Scott’s workplace before anyone could clean up the concrete particles or erase the computer hard drives. Had Detective Brocchini followed standard procedure and treated Laci’s disappearance as a standard missing persons case, that valuable evidence might have been lost.

  That Brocchini got Scott on tape at midnight, only seven hours after the initial call, was another important coup. By the next day, Lee Peterson was warning his son to refuse a polygraph. Had Brocchini delayed, it’s likely that there would never have been a taped interview with Scott to show to a jury.

  Scott returned to his home after 4:00 A.M. on Christmas Day, only to find the exterior completely encircled in yellow crime scene tape. As he entered the empty house, the phone rang. It was Laci’s brother, Brent, asking him to come to his mother-in-law’s house. Scott declined.

  Why wouldn’t he want to be with family at a time like this?

  On Christmas morning, residents of the dusty Northern California city woke up to a front-page headline: “Woman Vanishes on Walk, Police Start Widespread Search.” On television, local stations were reporting that the search for the missing Modesto woman was intensifying. As over two dozen police officers combed the La Loma neighborhood, Detective Brocchini was knocking on doors.

  His first stop was 520 Covena, where he met with Scott and Laci’s neighbor Amy Krigbaum, her roommate, Tara Venable, and Venable’s twelve-year-old son, Michael Thomas.

  When asked if they had seen anything out of the ordinary, Krigbaum spoke up. She recalled being awakened around 10:30 on Christmas Eve morning by a neighbor’s dog barking. She could not be sure exactly whose dog was making the noise.

  The women hadn’t seen Laci walking in some time, they told the police; they assumed it was due to her advanced pregnancy. “We sometimes feel sorry for Laci because she is alone so often,” Krigbaum said. Scott traveled a lot, and occasionally spent a night or more away from home on business.

  In a second interview with Detective Brocchini, Krigbaum would recall that when Laci Peterson was at home and awake, her typical routine was to raise her two front window shades in the morning and lower them in the evening when the sun went down. On Christmas Eve morning, Krigbaum observed, the shades were not raised. She simply assumed that Laci and Scott were away. When she put her Christmas turkey in the oven around 1:15 that afternoon, Scott’s truck was not in the driveway and the shades on the house were still drawn.

  Around 4:25 P.M., Krigbaum went to the Save Mart for marshmallows. She estimated she was gone about twenty minutes. When she returned home, Scott’s pickup was backed into the Petersons’ driveway—an unusual way for him to park.

  At 5:30, Scott appeared at her door, asking if she had seen Laci. Scott said he’d been trying to call his wife all day on her cell, but never got an answer. He appeared nervous and volunteered that he had been out golfing all day. She watched Scott walk over to an- other neighbor’s home, then saw him return home a few minutes later.

  Brocchini next interviewed the Petersons’ maid, Margarita Nava, at her home on Jarena Drive. As Scott said, she was hired only six weeks earlier; the twenty-third was her third visit to the residence. She arrived at 8:45 A.M. and finished her chores about two o’clock that afternoon.

  Laci was in the house that day, and according to Nava she complained about feeling extremely tired. The housekeeper didn’t believe that Laci would have walked the dog in her fatigued condition, but she didn’t believe the Petersons were having any trouble in their marriage. Having watched the couple work together on the nursery, she thought they were both very excited at the prospect of a baby.

  Brocchini asked about the very dirty towels he had observed atop the Petersons’ washing machine. Nava explained that she’d used them to clean the outside of the window frames and the inside of the fire-place screen.

  “Where did you leave the towels?” he asked.

  “I left them in a bucket so they could be washed at a later date.”

  Yet Scott had told the police he’d found the towels inside the washing machine. A seemingly minor discrepancy, but someone took them out of that bucket to fill it with water. Was this at Laci’s re-quest, or did Scott have some cleaning of his own to do?

  By 11:30 A.M., Brocchini called Detective Craig Grogan and requested that the Homicide Division become officially involved in the investigation.

  Modesto cops would see it as a lucky break that Grogan was next up on the rotation. Like Brocchini, Grogan was a seasoned professional. Fellow officers in the department had nothing but praise for the stocky detective with the thinning hair and bushy moustache who’d joined Modesto’s Crimes Against Persons Unit in 1998 after thirteen years in policing. Besides investigating homicides, kidnappings, sexual assaults, and other violent crimes, Grogan’s duties included missing persons cases.

  Technically, Grogan shouldn’t have been available to take the Peterson case. Two days earlier, a storeowner had shot and killed a robber, but Grogan knew it was a case requiring little or no investigation, so instead of taking it himself, he let a patrol officer handle it. Many investigators would have wanted the open-and-shut case to “get off the bubble”—that is, to move to the end of the rotation. Interestingly, the next officer on the rotation was in the middle of a contentious divorce. It would have been difficult for him to commit the time and attention the Peterson case would require. What Grogan didn’t foresee was just how much the intense investigation would test his marriage. Grogan, who lived on a ranch a good distance out of town with his wife and two small children, would miss his children’s birthdays while working on the case. On countless occasions, he was forced to tell his wife he was too busy to take her calls. Outside observers rarely understand the toll these cases take on the officers and their own families.

  As Grogan caught up on the details of Laci’s disappearance, other investigators hit the pavement. Detective Jon Buehler knocked on Karen Servas’s door just before noon. Servas, the Petersons’ next-door neighbor, had already told police how she’d discovered McKenzie the previous morning. Now she gave her official report.

  Around 10:30 that morning, about the same time that the other neighbors, Amy Krigbaum and Tara Venable, had heard a dog barking, Servas was backing out of her driveway. She spotted the golden retriever standing near the street. Checking his tags to make sure it was McKenzie, she decided to take him home.

  The Petersons’ front gate was locked, so Servas circled around to the second gate near the swimming pool. Seeing nothing unusual, she left the dog in the yard. She did notice that his leash was very dirty, so much so that she went back into her own home to wash her hands before getting back in her car to go run errands. She recalled a man walking near her car at the time, but noticed nothing unusual or alarming about him.

  Concerned for Laci’s safety, Buehler pressed Servas for more information. From what he�
��d learned about her family and life, it just didn’t seem likely that she would simply leave home without notice.

  Servas described her relationship with Scott Peterson as warm and friendly. She and her ten-year-old son were frequently invited to swim in the Petersons’ pool; from time to time, Scott helped her with chores and repairs around her house. She described the couple as active and upbeat. They enjoyed entertaining at their home and appeared to have a good relationship. Servas had last seen Laci and Scott on Sunday, the twenty-second, when they told her that their baby was a boy. They were planning to name him Conner.

  When he finished with Karen Servas, Detective Buehler joined Al Brocchini to check out several homeless encampments along the south side of Dry Creek Park. The area was a scattering of small tents, with clothing hanging from the trees, bags of rubbish, old wet mattresses, and plastic tarps amid the camping supplies and broken-down barbecues. When nothing appeared to be related to Laci’s disappearance, the officers left the area and went their sepa-rate ways.

  At 1:00 P.M., Buehler joined Grogan and Doug Mansfield, an agent from the California Department of Justice, at the division office. Scott Peterson’s polygraph was scheduled for that afternoon, and Mansfield was there to assist with the test.

  As the men talked, Buehler received a phone call. Scott Peterson had changed his mind, claiming that his father, Lee, suggested the exam wasn’t a good idea.

  It was one of many promises Scott would make during the case that he failed to keep. I suspect that Scott never intended to take the polygraph, and that his father merely provided the perfect excuse when he advised him against it. Scott never seemed concerned that he would have to face up to his lies, sometimes only hours after making them. Whatever new problem he’d created for himself, it seemed his only concern was to put off any reckoning just a little longer.

  Knowing that Scott was at police headquarters attending a press conference that afternoon, the officers walked over to confront him in person. Once inside, Grogan strode over to Scott Peterson and introduced himself. Grogan said he’d just been assigned as lead investi-gator in the case, and wanted to familiarize himself “with him and members of Laci’s family.” Whether or not Scott decided to take the polygraph, Grogan added, there were additional questions the detective needed to ask. Scott didn’t have to agree to an interview and was free to leave, but his assistance would be appreciated. Scott said he would stay, telling Grogan that he wanted to help.