A Deadly Game

by Catherine Crier

  “No.”

  “No? Okay. Now?”

  “Prudent thing to do is, as soon as we got the information, we went there, we did a search of that area, a thorough search. We contacted people. We searched the bushes. Went to the area he described. . . . He said he couldn’t ID her. He said he couldn’t tell us if it was Laci or not. He saw a pregnant lady walking with a golden retriever. So going to where he was and showing him a picture would not—that would not have been prudent at the time.”

  After three days of cross-examination Geragos finally passed the witness, and on June 30 DiStaso began his redirect. Brocchini was again caught in a snafu when he was asked about the tip he received from Miguel Espidia, Scott’s former college classmate. According to Brocchini, Espidia had told police about a 1995 conversation in which Scott observed that if he wanted to “get rid of a body” he would bag the head, wrap it with duct tape, and then dump it in the bay. When Geragos got Brocchini to concede that Espidia had never actually mentioned duct tape, the detective was left looking like he’d intentionally embellished the story. Later he would explain that he had not reviewed the tip information in a long time when asked about it in court and was simply mistaken about the duct tape.

  After concluding his testimony, the detective made himself scarce throughout the remainder of the trial. Some reporters tried to suggest that Brocchini had lied about evidence to claim credit for solving the notorious murder. Every story needs a villain, and for a time this hard-working detective was unfairly cast in the role. A few ardent commentators even labeled him the “Mark Fuhrman of the case.” Yes, he made some mistakes along the way, errors in judgment and even questionable omissions in his reporting. But there was no falsification or suspected planting of evidence. Nothing he did wrong would have changed the outcome of the case. Nevertheless, the media portrayed him as a zealot focused entirely on one person, Scott Peterson.

  It wasn’t until Amber Frey took the stand on Day 34 of the trial that the pundits changed their tune about the progress of the trial. During six days of testimony, which included the recorded phone conversations, Amber introduced a very different Scott Peterson to the jury. Those conversations didn’t prove that he was a killer, but they offered motive, innumerable lies, and plenty of incriminating statements.

  To the surprise of many, Amber came across not as a wicked home-wrecker but as a naive, honest young woman who was truly in love with Scott Peterson. She was entirely credible. Critically, in the time she was working with the police she’d managed to get Scott to repeat several damning statements he first made long before the recordings began. In early December he told Amber that he had “lost” his wife and this would be his first holiday without her. Several times before Laci disappeared, he talked of a future with Amber and her daughter. He told her there would be a window of time when he would be absent, but that by the end of January he would be home and free to expand their relationship. He told her on several occasions that he did not want his own children. In fact, Scott wanted a vasectomy and told Amber that her daughter Ayiana would be the only child he needed. Amazingly, Amber was able to get Scott to repeat all of this information after she began taping him on December 31. It would have taken an ogre to shrug off the story of Scott attending the emotional candlelight vigil for his missing wife just after he’d been concocting stories about wild Parisian parties for his lover’s amusement.

  Later, it emerged that the jurors were particularly repulsed by this behavior. “That spoke [volumes],” juror Greg Beratlis later told journalists. “You know, here’s a guy [whose] wife was abducted . . . yet he’s romancing his lover or girlfriend, for lack of a better term, at her vigil,” jury foreman Steve Cardosi agreed. “You know, when you think about that his wife, pregnant with his baby, you know, he at some point in there had to have loved her, and for him to be romancing another woman while she’s missing was a pretty big topic for us.”

  “That’s part of the twisted mind of Scott Peterson,” added juror Mike Belmessieri, a former police officer. “His wife is missing and he’s on a love affair in Paris and Luxembourg or wherever . . . and the whole time he’s talking from Modesto, USA.”

  Testimony from Shawn Sibley and Scott’s employees Eric Olsen and David Fernandez had set the stage for Amber. Visibly nervous, Olsen told jurors about “inappropriate” conversations he’d witnessed between Sibley and Scott at a business dinner they attended in October 2002. David Fernandez, a fertilizer salesman, followed with more details, including Scott’s questions about “favorite sexual positions.”

  Sibley testified that Scott described himself as a “horny bastard” that night. He also told her he had “lost” his soul mate, and feared that he was destined to spend the rest of his life alone.

  Amber’s testimony began on August 10, 2004. Dressed in a dark suit, her long blond hair falling around her face, Amber rode the escalator to the second floor courtroom. Surprisingly, her own testimony was very brief. It was Scott’s own words on tape that had the real impact. Because she was one of the few people left who was still listening to Scott by mid-January, he couldn’t stop talking to her. Even though much of what she told him was accusatory and berating, he often stayed on the line for hours at a time. While he never confessed, he made countless remarks that would sound particularly incriminating at trial.

  During Amber’s three days under direct examination, the jurors heard hours of recorded conversations while Amber sat in the gallery with her attorney, Gloria Allred. Amber’s long-awaited appearance had been hyped in the press as the linchpin of the prosecution’s case, yet jurors later reported that her testimony, and the hours of recorded phone conversations, constituted only a small piece of the whole. “It was all too clear that Scott had been planning Laci’s murder even be-fore he met Amber Frey,” as juror Richelle Nice later reported.

  After several days’ worth of scheduling delays Amber’s cross-examination began on August 23, 2004.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Geragos,” Delucchi instructed.

  “No questions, your Honor,” Geragos responded.

  The courtroom gasped. “What?” a juror exclaimed.

  “Just kidding,” Geragos said with a smile. The room burst into laughter. “Trying to lighten it up a little.”

  Geragos may have gotten the laughs he was after, but Sharon Rocha later made it clear outside the courthouse that she found nothing amusing about the lawyer’s habitual, often joking asides. There was nothing funny about the murder of her daughter, she told reporters.

  Geragos began his questioning by asking about Amber’s first meeting with Scott, but his examination was interrupted by the lunch break. That afternoon, Geragos picked up where he had left off.

  “Prior to that [first meeting],” he asked, “you indicated to the jury that you had talked with Shawn Sibley, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. As you sit here today, do you remember if . . . before you met him the first time, if you knew whether he was e-mailing back and forth with your best friend, that he was labeling himself as ‘Horny Bastard’?”

  “I don’t recall exact conversations or I don’t know that.”

  “Okay. What about . . . did she tell you when she was down in Orange County, that they had a conversation about, how do you pick up girls, or something along those lines, or what should I write on my name tag to pick up girls?”

  “I don’t recall that.”

  “Shawn ever tell you that she suggested writing, ‘I’m rich’?”

  “I don’t recall that.”

  “But do you remember saying to Shawn, ‘Why do you want me to meet this guy if he calls himself “Horny Bastard”? Or why do you want me to meet this guy if he is trying to pick up girls?’ Do you re-member ever expressing that kind of concern to her?”

  “No. Because our conversations, or the conversation I had with Shawn, didn’t really entail those details that you are speaking of.”

  “So Shawn did or didn’t tell you about this stuff?”

/>   “I vaguely recall her talking about it. But as far as the content in the conversation, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  “Well, when you say the content, you know the ‘H. B.’ rings a bell, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The name tag with ‘I’m rich’ rings a bell, right?”

  “Vaguely, but ... ”

  “Did you ever ask her .. . I mean, Shawn is protective of you?”

  “Yes, uh-huh.”

  “She is protective of you because she knows you have been hurt in the past, correct?”

  “I would agree, yes,” Amber replied.

  “So she’s looking out for you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, did you ever go back to her, whether it was before you met Scott or after, and say, Why didn’t you tell me about this? or Why would you fix him up with me if this guy is using ‘H. B.,’ or How do I pick up girls, or anything like that?”

  “Because other conversations that they had one-on-one, [there] was something that stood out to her—that he was looking for a soul mate. And she said that in their conversation . . . again, I don’t know the great depth of their conversation. But to her it was very significant that she felt that this was somebody that she would like to introduce to me, and that I was looking for somebody to be with.”

  “Now, when you say in looking for a soul mate, and you . . . that didn’t cause you any pause, that here is a guy looking for a soul mate; but, did you say to yourself, Wait a second here, this guy doesn’t make a whole lot of sense?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  The “H. B.” or “Horny Bastard” comment really resonated with juror Richelle Nice. “Trying to nail down a motive was one of our toughest issues,” Nice later said of the jury deliberations. “In the end, I guess Scott just wanted to be free. He wanted to be that ‘H. B.’ that Amber’s friend Shawn Sibley called him.”

  Geragos next established that the two drank heavily on their first date.

  “So you have been drinking . . . basically within forty-five minutes of seeing . . . meeting this guy, and straight through at the restaurant, at the bar, then when you finish and leave the bar . . . close to closing, when you can’t buy alcohol any more?”

  “Correct.”

  “Okay. So you stop, you buy what a bottle of gin at the store with the . . . Food Maxx, whatever it was?”

  “I believe that’s what it was. Bombay Sapphire.”

  “Bombay gin and tonic. You back to the hotel . . . two of you start drinking some more?”

  Geragos continued to hammer Amber on the number of drinks she consumed that night on her first blind date with Scott. As he roamed the courtroom, his client, attired in a suit and tie, stared at the witness with no expression. The lawyer also got Amber to con-cede that within the first hour of the date, Scott disclosed his up-coming travel plans, explaining that he’d be away for much of the time. He was trying to paint a picture of Amber making more of the relationship than Scott did. After all, they had only a handful of dates; the rest of the relationship was on the phone.

  Amber also fielded questions about meeting Buehler and Brocchini at her home on December 30, 2002.

  “Do they tell you . . . how they believe he’s a big suspect in the case, right?”

  “They said at that point yes, and that there was—they were looking to eliminate as well.”

  “Okay. And they talked to you about the fact that they asked for, for instance, receipts or pictures, and you gave them the condoms, you had that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Amid questions about how serious their relationship was, Geragos won an admission from Amber that Scott had never formally professed his love for her—although she maintained he conveyed the same sentiments with other words. In the end, he may have solidified the impression that Amber was gullible and a bit desperate for a hus-band and father for her child. He might have convinced some jurors that Scott did not kill Laci to run off with Amber. However, he did not explain away his client’s incriminating statements, which littered the six weeks of taped phone calls.

  Next, the State called a string of lower-profile witnesses. District Attorney Investigator Steven Jacobson testified about the wiretaps placed on Scott’s phones. Jurors received thick copies of transcripts to follow along with the many calls played in court. Among them was the voicemail to Scott from Sharon Rocha on January 11, 2003, in which she happily reported that the sonar scan of the San Francisco Bay turned up a boat anchor and not Laci’s body. Scott could be heard letting out a quiet whistle in response to the news.

  Another revealing moment was the conversation with realtor Brian Argain in which Scott spoke of selling or renting the Covena Avenue home, claiming that, “There’s no way if Laci comes back that we’re gonna stay there.”

  “Yeah, I don’t blame you whatsoever, I’d be the same way,” Ar-gain responded.

  The many pages of transcripts also made it clear to jurors that Scott had lied to family and friends repeatedly about where he was calling from. The investigators’ work made it clear that Scott was often hundreds of miles away from his claimed locations when he placed the calls. Scott’s calls also made it clear that he wasn’t a grieving husband—he could be heard joking, hammering out business proposals, and planning evening’s out at local bars.

  “There were a lot of victims in this,” juror Bertalis, the youth football and baseball coach, said later. “A lot were deceived.”

  Checking cell phone logs, Jacobson found over 250 calls between Scott and Amber during a three-month period, from November 19, 2002, to February 19, 2003. He acknowledged that there could have been other calls placed from pay phones that were not counted. While Geragos tried to convince jurors that Amber was pursuing Scott, the prosecutors were able to show that Scott had placed a majority of those calls.

  During the trial, prosecutors also presented their theory of how Scott transported his wife’s body to the marina on Christmas Eve without detection. Over defense objections, DiStaso introduced a number of photographs of a pregnant woman named Kim Fulbright, an employee in the district attorney’s office in her thirty-eighth week of pregnancy who was almost identical in size to Laci Peterson. The photos showed Fulbright lying inside the large green plastic toolbox that Scott kept in the bed of his pickup, and concealed on the floor of the Gamefisher, to dispel the defense’s argument that it would be impossible to hide Laci’s body from view.

  Under cross-examination, Fulbright conceded that she could not fit inside the boat without bending her legs.

  Dog handler Eloise Anderson, whose trailing dog Trimble performed the search of the Berkeley Marina, testified about her findings. Anderson reported that Trimble had found a trace of Laci’s scent leading away from shore onto one of the Marina’s three boat ramps. Following Anderson’s testimony were more law enforcement officers, and then Scott’s father, Lee Peterson.

  “I’m proud to say Scott’s my son,” the elder Peterson told the court.

  Prosecutors asked Scott’s father about his two phone calls with Scott on December 24. At no time during those two calls, jurors learned, did Scott mention his new boat or the fishing trip he’d supposedly taken that day. During cross-examination, Lee sought to portray Laci as someone who had an easy time getting around, contrary to what others had told the court. He recalled the family’s trip to Carmel, testifying that his daughter-in-law had done a fair amount of walking—and shopping. She even managed a steep three-quarter-mile incline from the beach to the hotel, Lee reported.

  “At any point, did Laci complain?” defense counselor Pat Harris asked the ashen-haired Peterson.

  “I think we all complained a little bit . . . we stopped two or three times, and everybody got to the top of the hill all right.”

  Lee described Scott as an avid fisherman. “Scott’s the fisherman,” he claimed. “I’m more the golfer.” Jurors would hear more from the elder Peterson during the penalty phase of the trial.

  Sharon Rocha excused he
rself from the courtroom during the testimony of Dr. Brian Peterson, the pathologist who had performed the autopsies on Laci and Conner. Her departure was not lost on the jurors, several of whom were seen wincing as the gruesome photos were displayed in court. It was also widely reported that the other-wise stoic defendant shed tears when gruesome photos of his wife and unborn son were shown to jurors.

  Dr. Peterson told the court that it was his conclusion that Conner was not born through normal vaginal birth or Cesarean section. He maintained that the baby was still in utero when Laci died and her body dumped in the bay. Sometime afterward, as Laci’s body was de-composing, the uterus ruptured and expelled the fetus through the abdominal wall in what is known as a coffin birth.

  Dr. Peterson conceded that he could not determine Laci’s cause of death, but he did cite strangulation, smothering, and poisoning as three types of modus operandi that leave little or no clues.

  When it was his turn Geragos immediately jumped up, drawing the jury’s attention to Dr. Peterson’s original finding that Conner was a full-term baby. He also harped on the point that Dr. Peterson’s report stated that he couldn’t rule out the possibility that Conner had taken a breath.

  On Day 54, prosecutors called Detective Craig Grogan to the stand. Grogan knew the pressure was on, and he was determined not to fumble during Mark Geragos’s cross-examination. He had done his homework. Studying Geragos’s tactics with other witnesses, he noticed that the attorney deliberately sought to rattle witnesses by rap-idly firing questions at them. Grogan resolved to think through his responses slowly and methodically, and resist the temptation to snap back at the defense attorney. Grogan was also thoroughly prepped for his testimony by Deputy District Attorney Birgit Fladager, who joined the team mid-trial while Dave Harris battled the flu. Fladager garnered praise for her articulate, bright, and pointed examination of witnesses.

  Over the course of the trial, the police perceived a pattern with Geragos. He would drop a bombshell on Thursdays, and every Monday he would be in chambers fighting about something. Sources told me that it was Geragos who had wanted Fridays off, but the other side also found the extra day useful to prepare for the coming week.