A Deadly Game

by Catherine Crier

  Interestingly, Anne Bird told me that she’d been at the Harvey Clars Auction Gallery in Oakland when a pair of one-carat screw-back earrings, eerily similar to the ones that Laci had been wearing, was being offered for sale. Screw-back earrings are not very common these days, so Anne asked where the seller had obtained them.

  “A reliable source,” she was told.

  “Would you speak to police?” she asked, suspicious that the ear-rings might have been Laci’s.

  “Yes,” she was told.

  Anne grabbed a brochure, then called Jackie to tell her about the earrings. Jackie contacted Sharon Rocha. As far as Anne knew, nothing ever came of the tip, and she learned later that the police never checked out the lead.

  Now that Scott’s infidelity was widely known, and allegiances within Scott’s circles were being tested, Buehler set about re-interviewing Laci’s friends in search of new insights. In late January he met again with Renee Tomlinson, Stacey Boyers, Lori Ellsworth, and Kim McNeely.

  The women all recalled being troubled by Scott’s healthy appetite on Christmas Day. They felt it “strange” that Scott began eating al-most immediately upon returning from police headquarters that day. They were also troubled by his directive that no photographs of him be used at the volunteer center, released to the media, or used in any fashion during the investigation. He also prohibited any wedding pictures or video from being distributed and did not want any photos of him involved in the search. Scott was often the first to arrive at the volunteer center in the morning, but he refused to permit the media to enter until 9:30 A.M. He made it a habit to leave by 9:20. One day, when a reporter came in early, Scott demanded that he leave.

  As the days progressed, friends reported that Scott remained “nonemotional,” organized, and very much in control. He was able to recall different ideas and suggestions that were made, as well as the assignments that were handed out at the volunteer center. When one of the women asked Scott to supply photos of Laci’s jewelry so that volunteers could show them to pawnshop owners around town, Scott simply ignored her repeated requests. Such controlled behavior clashed with Scott’s claims that he was so distraught over Laci’s dis-appearance that he was losing paperwork and unable to supply things to police.

  During the long meeting at headquarters, all four women reported that until recently they had viewed Scott as a “good, attentive” husband. They based their impressions on his willingness to endure some of the “small irritations” that Laci thrust upon him. The consensus was that Laci was an incessant talker, and that her ceaseless chatter sometimes irritated those around her.

  The women recalled that once, at a party, Scott had told a friend that Laci’s talking was so constant that he sought refuge in the bathroom—only to have Laci follow him to the door and just keep chatting. The women agreed that Laci’s constant jabbering didn’t dull their affection for her, but they admired Scott for his patience.

  Over the past few months, though, the women’s opinion of Scott had changed. Conduct they once dismissed as “isolated” incidents of rude behavior had now taken on a new significance.

  One friend recalled that Scott grabbed her buttocks at a party in November 2000. At the time she’d chalked it up to an accidental brush, but now she believed it may have been intentional. Scott also disturbed another of Laci’s friends when he told her he didn’t like her young nephew. Embarrassed by Scott’s rude comment, Laci apologized, telling her friend that Scott was not accustomed to being around children. Scott reportedly told his wife that he saw nothing wrong with his comment. After all, the boy wasn’t her friend’s child. Besides, he claimed, it was nothing against kids in general, he just couldn’t stand this particular tot.

  And there was more. Renee remembered that the previous summer, when Scott was out of town, she was at the house when he called to speak with Laci. Renee overheard Laci asking him about the status of their health insurance, since she was in the first stages of her pregnancy. When Laci learned that the insurance wasn’t active, she accused Scott of not caring about her and the baby. For weeks after the phone confrontation, Laci had expressed frustration over her husband’s failure to take care of the insurance issue. It was the only time that Renee recalled her being truly upset with her husband.

  The women also agreed, however, that Laci regularly ordered her husband around in front of her friends, telling him to take out the garbage, change a CD on the stereo, and perform other jobs around the house. At the time, the women all thought it was “so cool” that Laci was able to give Scott directions without him getting angry. Now, they wondered what resentment may have been building up within Scott.

  Renee also reported that Laci complained about Scott’s recent traveling, as well as his upcoming trip to Europe in late January. At a party the two of them attended on December 7, 2002, Laci had been upset over the prospect of Scott traveling to Brussels so close to the baby’s due date. She said she had even asked her husband to cancel the trip.

  On another mid-December visit, Laci had complained again about Scott’s increasingly busy work schedule. She explained to Renee that she was looking forward to a trip to Carmel she and Scott had planned for later in the month. Even though Scott’s family would be there, Laci was eager for the time to spend with her husband. She hoped he would stay home more once the baby arrived.

  Another friend, Heather Richardson, told Renee that she believed Scott never wanted children. Laci had mentioned having a three-way sonogram performed on the baby to appease Scott’s con-cern about possible birth defects, and told Heather that abortion would likely be an option if any were detected. Laci’s friends believed that Scott was pressuring her to have the test performed, and that the possibility of an abortion was his idea, not hers.

  During the conversation, the women recalled that on December 25, while everyone was congregated at police headquarters for a press conference, Scott told friends and family that he would not be taking a polygraph. He said he had spoken with his father, who instructed him to speak to an attorney. Lee also advised him that he was too emotionally distraught to do well on the test.

  After Scott’s pronouncement, Renee walked over to give him a hug.

  “Laci loved you so much,” she told him.

  “You make me feel so bad,” Scott responded—a strange reaction, which Renee now took as a sign that he had something to do with her friend’s disappearance.

  Another friend, Kim McNeely, recalled that Laci had learned she was pregnant soon after Renee’s baby shower. However, when she approached Scott excitedly about her home pregnancy test, he brushed her off, saying he was hung over from a party the night before.

  Kim also recalled Scott asking her then-boyfriend whether a father could expect to have sex again after a child is born. The boyfriend said that it wouldn’t be the same. Scott seemed concerned about how the arrival of the baby would change his sex life, in terms of frequency and quality.

  At one point, Kim asked Laci if she and her husband were still having sex. Laci told her “no,” but confided that she still “pleasured” her husband.

  As the interview drew to a close, Buehler asked the women if they’d ever seen Laci react under stress. They recalled Laci’s relation-ship with her longtime boyfriend Kent Gain. They knew the relation-ship had an element of “domestic violence” to it, they said, because Laci spoke freely about the situation. Stacey Boyers told Buehler that when she found out that her own boyfriend, Brian Argain, was cheating on her, both Scott and Laci were very supportive throughout their breakup. From things Laci told her, Stacey believed that Laci wouldn’t have tolerated Scott cheating on her.

  In the end, Laci’s friends agreed that she would have told at least one of them if Scott had confessed to his relationship with Amber Frey—even though she hadn’t done so with Janet Use.

  In the days that followed, Buehler met with two female employees of the real estate firm where Scott’s friend, Brian Argain, was employed. The women told police that when they mentioned
Scott, Argain made it clear that he was standing by his friend. According to the employees, Argain had said something to the effect that “Even if he did it, he’s still my friend.”

  For Grogan, a second interview with Laci’s aunt Robin “Marie” Rocha reinforced Scott’s discomfort around children. She recalled an incident at a birthday party with Scott and Laci in September 2001. At one point, she needed to put her infant daughter down so she could use the restroom. Marie approached Scott and asked if he would hold the child for just a moment. As she recalled, he leaned back in his chair, held his hands up in the air, and said “no.” She came away from the incident convinced that Scott never wanted a child.

  Marie also told the detective that her niece could be headstrong at times. Laci often talked about babies, and “If Laci wanted to have a baby, she would have a baby whether Scott wanted one or not,” she said. Marie described Laci as a loving and kind person, but also stubborn and accustomed to getting her way. Yet she was “totally in love with Scott” and never said a derogatory word about her husband.

  On January 30, Scott received a phone call from the Fox News Channel’s Rita Cosby, asking if he had heard about a possible Laci sighting in Washington State. Scott said he had but didn’t sound very optimistic about it. Excitedly, Cosby recited the details, explaining that a woman who appeared to be pregnant had come into a convenience store with no jacket on. When the clerk asked her why she wasn’t wearing one, the woman allegedly told her she’d been kidnapped and the guy had a gun. The clerk did not call police immediately.

  “Police are now looking at the video,” Cosby said.

  “Definitely, when did she see them?” Scott asked.

  “Apparently last week.”

  “Wow, okay. Do you know who is looking at it [the video]?”

  “It’s the local police there in Longview, Washington State.”

  The call ended abruptly.

  A little while later, Scott’s friend Heidi Fritz called about the same sighting. Scott confirmed what Cosby had said.

  “Oh my God, that’s great!” Heidi exclaimed. “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Scott said flatly. He explained that he’d called the Longview Police and they were getting the tapes together to view.

  Heidi asked Scott if he could drive up there. “Oh definitely, yeah, if it’s even close I’ll get up there… . We’re hoping it’s her.” Scott said he’d phoned the Longview Police and was waiting for a call back.

  Heidi said she was so excited because Scott had said all along that he knew in his heart that Laci was still alive and now this woman (the clerk] was reporting that she saw her.

  For a moment, Scott didn’t respond. Then he said he was hopeful. “We’re praying it’s her.”

  Heidi’s husband Aaron picked up the line and asked Scott how he was feeling.

  Scott hesitated, then remarked, “Um, I’m hopeful on this, I am feeling really good right now. I just want to know.” He promised to let the couple know as soon he heard back from the Longview Police.

  “Hey, stop cutting your hands, all right?” Aaron said.

  “I’ll try.”

  The following morning, Scott’s friend Mike Reed called about the incident in Washington. Scott told him he hoped it was true, so he’d know where to look. While the two were speaking, Scott’s mother was leaving a message on Scott’s voice mail, excitedly asking her son if he wanted to hop on a plane and go to Washington. She indicated that she was ready, and mentioned a friend named Rachel who lived nearby so they would have a place to stay. Jackie said that she’d called the Modesto PD, but the chief was in a meeting. She choked up and began to cry, saying that she hoped the sighting would come to something.

  Hanging up with Reed, Scott checked his voice mail. He laughed when he heard his mother describing Rachel putting up fliers, and he did not return her call. It was another telling moment that would be played for the jury at trial.

  About thirty minutes passed before Jackie called her son again and asked if he’d heard about the Longview report.

  “Yeah,” he said, “is there any more news?”

  “According to today’s paper, they are going to view the video,” Jackie replied. “I |asked] Dad, are they capable of viewing the video?”

  “Yeah, I know, I want to see the damn thing. How can they ID her?”

  “Why don’t you hop on a plane?”

  “Well, I’ll definitely [go], you know, I called up there and talked to one of them.”

  “Oh, good for you.”

  “Hopefully we’ll see what’s …”

  “God, at least that’s a lead,” Jackie said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t take much credence in it until I heard [the clerk] was forty-five, but she is still a ditz if she didn’t remember” the incident earlier.

  “Yeah, when was it she last saw her?” Scott said, laughing.

  “The end of December, which is [enough] time to get there, you know,” Jackie said. “And then I hope they have video on the border,” she added, referring to the Canadian border.

  “Yeah, it’s the end of January.”

  “Yeah, I know, sweetie.”

  “The report said she waited a week or something, but now [they’re saying] she waited a month.”

  “Chief said, yeah, it’s a month.” (Jackie and Scott often called Lee Peterson “Chief.”)

  “The woman only saw the pictures of Laci on CNN recently,” Jackie added.

  “Hmm,” Scott sighed.

  Before he hung up, Scott asked about McKenzie. “When I come down there, I’m going to give the dog a bath,” he said.

  “The gardeners are afraid to come in,” said Jackie, as McKenzie barked in the backyard.

  Scott dialed the Longview Police Department—having told his mother and friends he’d already done so. “I think you are the po-lice department that’s looking at tapes of her [Laci] at a grocery store,” Scott told the officer who took the call. He asked to speak to a detective or whoever was helping in the investigation. There was no indication that Scott had ever spoken with the department before.

  “What’s your name again?” the officer asked.

  “Scott Peterson.”

  Scott was placed on hold. While he waited, a call was coming in to his line and the call to Longview police was lost. It was Scott’s mom again.

  Scott claimed he’d just spoken to the Longview police “again,” and they had fifty or sixty hours of tape to view. “They seem really nice up there,” he said.

  “Well, you know, you’re the only one who can truly identify her,” Jackie said.

  “Yeah, I know, that’s what I told them. That I would be up there in a minute if there was even a possibility.”

  “Maybe she is in Canada by now,” Jackie said. “You might ask if the Canadians have tapes at their borders.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jackie said she was going to ask Rachel to “plaster the place with posters,” and suggested that Scott should give her a call.

  “Definitely,” Scott replied. He mentioned that he intended to pick up some “peanut butter slices” for the dog. Jackie told him he was welcome to come home anytime.

  While Scott and his mother talked, Rita Cosby was leaving him a message saying that it was important to get word of that sighting out to people. Scott deleted the call before it was finished. He also had a message from his former employee, Eric Olsen, and this call he re-turned. After some business talk, the conversation turned to the Washington sighting. Scott told Olsen he intended to “hang around the airport” in case he had to go up there.

  Just before noon, Jackie phoned back to ask Scott where he was. He said he was in San Juan Bautista—not waiting at the airport, as he had told Eric Olsen. Jackie asked her son if he’d read the local paper. He said he hadn’t.

  Jackie then mentioned Mark Geragos, “the high-priced lawyer, the one you pay a fortune to have him.” She’d apparently seen Geragos quoted in an article in the local pres
s, and his words were directed at Scott: “He would tell you that you have been caught up in something larger than you ever thought of and you have to weather the storm.”

  Scott chuckled.

  Jackie then admonished him not to talk to anyone.

  At four o’clock that afternoon, Jackie called her son once more. She had just heard on The Abrams Report that Laci wasn’t the one on the video. She was sorry.

  Scott erased her call, along with several others from the media, including one from a representative for Larry King Live.

  As January came to a close, investigators were focused on a single individual. “This is an ongoing investigation with only one known suspect at this time, that being Scott Peterson,” they concluded in an ongoing report filed at the end of the month.

  By this point, Detective Craig Grogan was in an odd and some-wha t uncomfortable position. The Rocha family was asking him to act as a go-between in the battle between them and Scott. Sharon was worried that Scott was going to throw away or sell items of sentimental value to the family, and she implored him to contact Scott and ask him to return her daughter’s belongings to her family.

  Grogan reported that Scott had already sold Laci’s Land Rover, but the news didn’t upset her. (Later, the dealer wh o purchased the car would return it to the family for the token sum of one dollar, to ensure that the donation could be listed as a gift on the family’s tax return.) Sharon wanted personal items, things that had a direct link to Laci. She was unwilling to speak with Scott directly, and wanted Grogan to mediate.

  “Hi Scott, it’s Craig Grogan,” the detective said in a phone message he left on January 31 . “I’m calling at the request of the Rocha family. Sharon would like to see if you have any photographs of Laci when she was a child or photos of her that you would part with. Ah, she’s also asking about some Tiffany lamps which apparently were Laci’s grandmother’s. I’m just asking for them and we’re not trying to make you do anything but if you’d be willing to do that, I’d be willing to be an intermediary for you guys.” Sharon had also asked for some other items from the nursery.