American convicted of killing his wife and unborn son. His wife, Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant at the time, vanished between December 23 and Christmas Eve, 2002. At 6 PM on December 24, 2002, Peterson reported his wife missing and told police he had just returned from a fishing trip.
Peterson had taken out a $250,000 life insurance policy on his wife prior to her disappearance. Although he was their prime suspect, police could not arrest him without hard evidence. On January 24, 2003 Amber Frey went public with details of the affair she and Peterson had begun the previous November. He had assured her he wasn’t married. When a mutual friend discovered his marital status, Peterson told Frey that his wife had died.
Four months after her disappearance, Laci’s body and that of her unborn son washed up on the shore at Richmond, California. Scott was arrested and charged with murder of his wife and child the day the remains were identified, April 18, 2003. Scott pleaded not guilty and his parents stood by him, hiring a high-profile attorney, Mark Geragos, to defend their son.
Peterson is the youngest of seven children of a combined family but the only child born to his parents, Jackie and Lee, after they married each other in 1971. His parents doted on him and tried to give him a “normal” childhood. Jackie Peterson’s own father had been murdered when she was two, her mother died when she was 18, and she had put up for adoption her two oldest children, a fact that Scott learned while he was dating Laci. He seemed to take the news in stride.
Good looking and charming, Scott graduated from high school in 1990, a golf star twice named MVP. He was considered “a good kid,” quiet and unassuming, never in trouble. Throughout his years at college, he seems to have been a hard-working, serious and responsible young man. Laci and Scott met in 1995 while both were undergraduates at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, and they married on August 9, 1997. The couple opened and managed a casual eatery that was profitable when they sold the business in 2000. Scott landed a job as a fertilizer salesman and the Petersons bought their house in Modesto in 2000. They seemed a loving couple as they fixed up their home, with Laci teaching part-time and Scott joining the country club and the Rotary, a civic organization. They had been trying to have a baby and Laci finally became pregnant in the spring of 2002. After news of his wife’s disappearance was made public, some who knew him described him as a loner, capable of lying, while others calling him loving and caring.
Peterson’s trial began June 1, 2004 after three months of jury selection and deliberations. The tumultuous trial included a change of venue to Redwood City from Modesto, CA, hotly questioned evidence, attorney antics, an earthquake and the dismissal of two jurors. On November 12, 2004 at about 1:10 PM PST, after seven days of deliberations, the court clerk read the verdict pronouncing Peterson guilty of first-degree murder of his wife and second-degree murder of their unborn son. On December 13, 2004, the jury recommended the death penalty for his crimes. The judge is expected to pass down the formal sentence on February 25, 2005.
On March 16, 2005 he ws sentenced to die for his crimes.
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