A Deadly Game

by Catherine Crier

  With warrant in hand, Scott strode to the kitchen counter, grabbed a piece of paper, and thrust it at Brocchini. “Here,” Scott said. It was a two-day fishing license dated December 23 and 24, 2002. He must have seen the item listed on the warrant. As the investigator placed it in his folder, the telephone rang. It was Kirk McAl-lister, the attorney. Scott took the call in a back bedroom. Moments later he returned, telling Detective Grogan that the lawyer wanted to speak with him.

  McAllister informed Grogan that he now represented Peterson, and had informed his client not to speak further without an attorney present. McAllister knew there were questions his client should address, and Scott would make himself readily available. However, he had advised Scott not to take a polygraph.

  Just before six o’clock, Scott Peterson and his family gathered their belongings and headed to the front door. Grogan stopped Scott and asked for a set of keys to his truck, home, and business. Scott handed them over, then quickly left the house. Brocchini and Grogan secured the premises, then left as well.

  Grogan and Brocchini then joined Captain Boyer and the other dog handlers in Dry Creek Park, and Grogan listened as Boyer de-tailed his current findings. Based on the dogs’ behavior, he believed that Laci had left the residence in a vehicle, not on foot. After the dogs picked up her scent, they ran right down the middle of Covena Avenue following the trail, rather than tracking on the sidewalk. The primary tracker, a bloodhound named Merlin, started at the Peter-sons’ house, then headed north on Covena Avenue, west on Edge-brook Drive, and then south on Highland Drive. At Santa Barbara Avenue, he turned east until he reached La Loma Avenue. The animal went to the rear of a check-cashing establishment at the corner of La Loma and Yosemite Boulevard, then continued westbound on Yosemite. He stopped in the area of Santa Rosa Avenue, where he turned south.

  At that point, Merlin’s handler, Cindee Valentin, wasn’t sure if the dog was still following the trail. The dog’s behavior was now different from when he had the earlier distinct alert, she told Grogan. A deputy lieutenant with the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department, Valentin had joined the Search Dog Steering Committee of the State’s Office of Emergency Services a year ago. The agency was responsible for the development and publication of statewide guidelines for all search and rescue dogs in California. Valentin worked as a horse trainer be-fore expanding to professional dog training in 1991. Her unique background also included positions as an evaluator and trainer for several state certifying agencies for working dogs.

  Valentin explained that the dog tracking Laci “ran in a manner consistent with a vehicle trail as opposed to a trail left by a person that was walking.” Grogan asked Valentin to take Merlin to Scott’s warehouse. Valentin agreed, but requested that the pair start at a nearby intersection. She wanted to see where, if at all, Merlin would pick up Laci’s scent.

  At 9:30 P.M., Detective Brocchini, Lieutenant Valentin, and Merlin were standing at the intersection of Kansas Avenue and Emerald, about three miles south of Scott’s business. Valentin herself did not know where Scott’s business was. Brocchini watched as the animal sniffed Laci’s sunglasses case to pick up the scent, walked around in a circle on Emerald Avenue, then after only a few seconds began trotting south on Emerald.

  Brocchini followed Valentin and Boyer as they chased Merlin through the intersection at Kansas. The dog’s tail was up as he trotted at a steady pace down the center of the street. Merlin ran into the parking lot of a Laundromat on the southeast corner of Kansas and Emerald, slowing slightly, then trotted back onto southbound Emerald. Merlin continued south on Emerald to Loletta, when Brocchini asked Valentin to stop the dog.

  The dog was then returned to the initial starting point. Again he ran south through the intersection, following the exact route he had just taken. The officers stopped Merlin on southbound Emerald near Loletta. The dog handler told Brocchini that there was no doubt in her mind that Merlin was following Laci’s strongest scent. That scent was leading him southbound on Emerald. The dog was tracking away from Scott’s business, not toward it.

  He asked Valentine and Boyer to explain what the “strongest scent” would be if Laci had been driven to a location, remained at that site for an hour or more, then was driven away. They explained that the most recent scent, when Laci left the location, would be the strongest. Lieutenant Valentin then asked Brocchini to take her to the business. She explained that she needed to have a starting place or a stopping place when conducting a bloodhound scent search to testify in court.

  Brocchini took Valentin and Boyer to the parking lot of Scott’s warehouse at 1027 Emerald, and showed them suite B. The detective watched as she let Merlin out in the center of the parking lot and walked him toward Scott’s place of business. Once the dog neared the suite, his tail immediately went up, indicating that he had picked up Laci’s scent.

  Merlin immediately began trotting eastbound away from the business, down the north driveway. The detective trailed Valentin and her dog east through the parking lot, and followed as the dog again took off southbound on Emerald right down the middle of the street.

  The group continued south past Kansas Avenue until they reached the intersection of Emerald and Highway 132. Merlin slowed down at the intersection, appearing to have lost Laci’s scent. Deputy Boyer explained that a large intersection with heavy traffic such as this one sometimes mixed up the scent. Valentin said it would take the dog a short time to relocate the scent.

  Next they did an exercise called “the four corners,” walking the dog around the entire intersection. In the process Merlin relocated Laci’s scent, and took off westbound down the center of Highway 132. Brocchini and the others followed the dog about four hundred yards before pulling up. It appeared that the dog would have continued running on the highway if they hadn’t stopped him.

  Valentin told Brocchini she could testify that Merlin followed Laci’s scent from 1027 N. Emerald southbound, then westbound on Highway 132. “I told him again that this trail was consistent with a vehicle trail,” Valentin later wrote in her official report. Brocchini realized that the path Merlin had taken was the exact route Scott Peterson had driven to go fishing. The detective later measured the distance from Scott’s place of business to the spot where the dog was pulled up. Merlin had trailed Laci Peterson’s scent I.l miles.

  It was after 10:30 in the evening when Lieutenant Valentin and Merlin completed the search around 1027 Emerald Avenue. Captain Boyer gave the detective all the items they had used: Laci’s pink slipper, her Ralph Lauren sunglasses and case, her brown hairbrush, and her husband’s Gap slipper.

  It had been a very long day, but Brocchini went back to headquarters to examine Scott’s truck, impounded earlier that evening. His search proved fruitless. “During this search I did not see Peterson’s tan camouflage jacket that I had seen in the truck on 12/24/02. I also did not see the Big 5 bag containing two fishing lures, the back-yard umbrellas that were wrapped in the blue tarp, the tan-colored tarp that had been bunched up in the back of the truck, or the shotgun shells I saw in the green toolbox,” Brocchini later wrote. “It appeared that Scott Peterson had removed several items from the truck between 12/24/02 and the time the search warrant was served.”

  Brocchini did find a partial roll of chicken wire and a small hand tool that had a gardening fork on one side, and a hoe on the other. “The tool was coated with dry cement,” he wrote. “It looked like it was used to mix ready-mix cement. There was loose ready-mix cement in the bed of the truck.”

  In a subsequent search, police found what appeared to be four small bloodstains on the interior side of the driver’s door. A suspected bloodstain was also collected from the back of the steering wheel.

  Following a preliminary inspection, the pickup was turned over to the FBI Forensic Evidence Team, which had traveled from Sacramento to assist the police. Members of the team sprayed the questionable stains with Hemo-Glow, a fluid used to detect bloodstains. All the areas fluoresced. In addition, an area of the interi
or door pocket and on the vehicle’s door handle tested positive.

  At 10:45, Detective Grogan received a call from Scott Peterson asking about the bloodhound search. The detective advised him that the dogs had tracked away from his home through a series of residential streets down to Yosemite Boulevard, then turned west. During the five-minute conversation, Grogan admitted that the dog had lost the scent after traveling a distance on Yosemite.

  “Have you been able to get any sleep.-’” Grogan asked before hanging up that night.

  The detective recorded Scott’s reply, “He did not sleep well in a different bed. He now had the comfort in his own home with the ’smell of Laci’ in their bed.”

  Within twenty-four hours of Laci’s disappearance, her family and friends set up a command center at a local inn, the Red Lion Hotel, to assist police in their search for Laci. The general manager, Brad Saltzman, donated rooms for the effort. Thousands of fliers with Laci’s photo and reward information were printed. Hundreds of people hit the streets in those first days, distributing the materials and searching the Modesto area for signs of Laci.

  Sharon and Ron Grantski and Jackie and Lee Peterson were out before the cameras in these early days, but Scott was nowhere to be found. The young husband and father-to-be was declining all requests for television appearances, telling journalists that he wanted to keep the focus on Laci—not on him. This was unusual behavior for anyone in Scott’s position, and in fact it brought about the opposite result: Scott’s absence quickly became a topic of interest in the press.

  Ironically, I later learned that it was one of Scott’s parents, either Jackie or Lee, who had alerted the national media to the story through a connection with the Associated Press. It is my belief that Scott never expected the media attention that this case drew. I think he also miscalculated the abilities of the 270-member Modesto Police Department. He probably thought that some small-town cops on Christmas Eve were no match for him, and expected the story to dis-appear rapidly from the news when Laci’s body could not be found. If so, Scott Peterson chose the wrong small-town cops. The MPD has a 90 percent homicide clearance rate, almost a third better than the national average.

  Detective Craig Grogan dispatched officers to the Berkeley Marina, where Scott Peterson said he had launched his boat on the day Laci disappeared. The temperature was a cool 52 degrees, the December air humid, as Sergeant Andy Schlenker and Detective Rick Armedariz pulled into the marina parking area at 201 University Avenue on December 27. The Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline were buried in a dense layer of morning fog as the officers stepped out of their car.

  The marina, owned and operated by the City of Berkeley, is ad-ministered by the Parks and Waterfront Department. The expansive facility encompasses fifty-two acres of water and includes 975 berths. Also on the grounds are several restaurants, a Double Tree Hotel, and a 3,000-foot-long public fishing pier. The parking lot immediately north of the marina’s boat basin includes a four-lane launch ramp that is open to the public. An automated Iron Ranger ticket machine stands next to the boat ramp, providing customers a receipt upon payment of the $5 launch fee.

  As Detective Armendariz snapped photos of the area, Sergeant Schlenker located groundskeeper Mike Ilvesta. llvesta confirmed that members of the press had been canvassing the landing pier, trying to find anyone who had seen Scott on December 24.

  Ilvesta was working that day from about six-thirty in the morning to 2:00 in the afternoon. He recalled that there were few visitors to the marina that day, and although the day was “cloudy and over-cast,” it had not rained, despite what Scott had told the police.

  Over the gentle clanging of sailboat riggings, Ilvesta described seeing “a new, full-size, dark green, Ford 4x 4 extended cab pick-up truck with a small boat trailer” arrive around 12:45 P.M. on December 24. The Ford’s trailer was empty, and the vehicle was backing into the ramp area. The driver was a white male in his thirties, with sandy colored hair, wearing what looked like a polo shirt. The Ford was blocking Ilvesta’s path, and the driver was having trouble backing the trailer down the ramp. Ilvesta waited while the man drove back and forth, trying to align the truck and trailer. After several minutes, the driver succeeded and Ilvesta was able to pass. Ilvesta left the area and continued with his workday.

  Producing a photograph of Scott’s bronze pickup, Armendariz showed it to Ilvesta. The groundskeeper said that while the truck he had seen looked similar, he couldn’t be certain it was the same one. The detective next showed Ilvesta a photo lineup that included a picture of Scott.

  Ilvesta studied the images but didn’t recognize the driver of the Ford. Armendariz then produced a picture of Laci, and asked if he had ever seen her at the marina. He had not.

  The investigators next interviewed the marina’s waterfront manager, Cliff Marchetti. Marchetti had spent much of December 24 working in the office on the south shore of the grounds, across the boat-filled marina. He did not go over to the boat-launch area, and he had not seen any customers. He did confirm Ilvesta’s account of the weather as “cloudy with overcast” but no rain.

  Marchetti said it would be unusual for a fisherman to take a fourteen-foot aluminum boat out on the bay in late December because of weather conditions and the fishing season. He explained that crab fishing was the only type of fishing a person could do in a boat at this time of the year. “All other fishing is out of season,” he explained.

  Two workers at the marina’s bait shop said they did not remember seeing anybody in the boat launch area on December 24. They, too, remembered it as a cloudy but not rainy day. In addition to crab, they said, the only fish likely to be caught were “sand dabs,” a flat fish, and possibly perch and sturgeon.

  The detectives next drove to a Chevron gas station on Frontage Road in the city of Livermore, trying to establish where Scott allegedly bought fuel. The assistant manager told them he had worked Christmas Eve, and provided police with the surveillance tape for that day. He then directed the officers to another Chevron station on North Vasco Road, where they retrieved another surveillance tape.

  Meanwhile, at the adobe-style police headquarters in downtown Modesto, Detective Buehler was interviewing two of Laci’s friends, Stacey Boyers and Lori Ellsworth. Laci’s friends had briefly met the tall, rugged detective at the Red Lion Hotel on Christmas Day. He’d been working round the clock since the case broke. For Buehler, the Peterson case came on the heels of a double homicide he had been assigned ten days earlier. The long hours were taxing on the divorced dad. While his ex-wife cared for their daughter, Buehler had full custody of his teenage son and needed to be home for him.

  Buehler had been managing well enough thus far—his boy was getting A’s and B’s in school—but the night calls were hard. When his son was younger, Buehler sometimes bundled him up in a blanket and took him along to crime scenes, leaving him to sleep in the back of the unmarked car while he conducted his investigation. He’d gotten the scare of his life one night when he returned to his vehicle to find the boy gone. He combed the area frantically, until moments later he found his son in the CSI truck talking with the guys. With only that brief but terrifying experience to go by, he knew he could not imagine how the Rochas were coping.

  Buehler gave Laci’s friends an update on the case. Police were examining several possible scenarios: one based on the assumption that a stranger had entered the Petersons’ house, committed an act of violence, and taken Laci’s body away, the second involving Scott. Both Stacey and Lori told Buehler they thought it was more likely that Scott was responsible. They were growing increasingly suspicious as the days passed.

  Stacey had been at the Peterson home on Christmas Day, and ob-served Scott “doing an unusual amount of vacuuming” in the laundry room and the living room near the chairs and couch. When she questioned him, he said he was just trying to occupy himself. If Laci were there, he said, she would be doing the same thing because she was “extremely clean.” Both women found his remark strange. They
knew Laci and Scott quite well, and while Laci was a big fan of Martha Stewart’s entertaining style, neither she nor Scott seemed like “clean freaks.”

  Stacey also told Buehler that on Thursday evening, when Scott and his family were told to leave the residence before the search, Scott announced that he was growing “angry.” He didn’t like being taken out of his “comfort zone,” he told Stacey. Yet, neither woman believed there was any trouble in the couple’s relationship and could not direct Buehler to anyone who might disagree.

  As Buehler took notes, Stacey told the officer that she and Laci had been best friends since the third grade. She’d last spoken with her on December 23 at around 4:45 in the afternoon, when Laci called to talk about the holidays and her pregnancy. The mom-to-be complained that she was physically uncomfortable but said she was excited about becoming a mother. Stacey knew that Laci had experienced “female problems” in the past and confirmed that she was overjoyed with her pregnancy. Laci had recently begun complaining about her breathing, and Stacey suggested that she give up her walks in Dry Creek Park. It seemed “unlikely that she went walking in the area of Thousand Oaks Park,” Detective Buehler concluded after speaking with Laci’s friends. “This location would require one to walk down and return up several grades.”

  Despite Scott’s overnight trips, Stacey had never heard Laci ex-press any mistrust of her husband. Laci was not the jealous type, she said. She had never heard the two quarrel or complain.

  Then, around 5:15 RM. on December 24, Scott had called Stacey in a panic. (Stacey probably got the time wrong by a few minutes; at 5:17 Scott was just talking to Sharon Rocha.) He told Stacey that the police were on the way and said something about his dog being found by a neighbor in the front yard. He asked Stacey if she knew anyone who drove a white Ranger, but she had no idea what that question meant.