Posted on 04/19/2003 6:06:03 AM PDT by TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!
MODESTO, Calif. - Authorities said genetic odds "in the billions" proved that two bodies that recently washed ashore were those of Laci Peterson and her baby, in an announcement that came hours after the missing woman's husband was arrested in their deaths.
Scott Peterson, 30, arrived at the Stanislaus County jail just before midnight after being driven there from San Diego, where he was arrested 12 hours earlier. Prosecutors said they planned on charging him with double murder, which would make him eligible for the death penalty.
The body of Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant, and her unborn child were found this week about three miles from where Scott Peterson said he was fishing when his wife disappeared Christmas Eve.
Plainclothes agents who had been tracking Scott Peterson's movements with phone taps and vehicle sensors made the arrest before the DNA test results on the bodies were known because Peterson was considered a flight risk, and because he had indicated he knew he was under surveillance, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.
Apart from the two badly decomposed bodies, Modesto Police Chief Roy Wasden declined to describe the state's evidence. But he said it suggested that Laci Peterson may have been killed on Dec. 23 because no "credible witness" saw or heard from her after that.
Officials wouldn't discuss Scott Peterson's possible motives.
Wasden said there were no other suspects in the case. The fact that a $50,000 reward for information leading to her body went unclaimed, he said, "continued to reinforce that one person knew what happened to Laci and where Laci was."
Scott Peterson's first court appearance will come on Monday or Tuesday. His attorney, Kirk McAllister, did not immediately return telephone messages Friday from The Associated Press.
The dramatic turn in the case came nearly a week after pedestrians found the bodies of Laci Peterson and the son she had already named Conner washed up about a mile apart on the shoreline.
The bodies were identified Friday evening through a comparison with DNA samples from Scott Peterson and Laci Peterson's parents.
"There is no question in our minds that the unidentified female is Laci Peterson. The unidentified fetus is the biological child of Laci and Scott Peterson," Lockyer said. "We're scientifically convinced the match is one in billions."
A spokeswoman for Laci Peterson's family said relatives were devastated by the confirmation of the deaths, but grateful they finally had an answer after months of uncertainty.
"Families in their circumstances will always tell you the worst thing is not knowing," said spokeswoman Kim Petersen, executive director of the Carole Sund-Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation. "I don't know if relief is the right word. ... The waiting this week has been horrific for them."
Virtually from the moment his wife was reported missing, Scott Peterson's moves and statements have been scrutinized by authorities.
Modesto police seized his boat, pickup truck and nearly 100 items from the couple's house but had not formally named him as a suspect in his wife's disappearance.
Peterson traded in his wife's Land Rover for a new pickup truck, considered selling their home and eventually admitted he'd had an extramarital affair with a massage therapist while his wife was pregnant with the couple's baby.
Peterson said he'd told his wife about the affair in the days before she vanished.
"It was not a positive, obviously ... but it was not something that we weren't dealing with," he told ABC's "Good Morning America." "It wasn't anything that would break us apart."
The affair turned Laci Peterson's family against the son-in-law they had earlier supported. They begged him to cooperate with Modesto police, who had labeled him "uncooperative."
Scott Peterson launched his own search effort, separate from the one organized by his wife's family and sanctioned by police. At one point, as searchers looked in the San Francisco Bay and around Modesto, Scott Peterson showed up in Los Angeles to distribute fliers to volunteers at a local hotel.
"We simply have to expand the geographical area," he said at the time.
In February, Scott Peterson told MSNBC he missed his wife and the child she was to bear.
"I can't drive. I can't sleep," he said then. "Sometimes I feel I just can't do it. I feel like I'm in a dark corner and I just can't function."
Monday, April 21, 2003 Posted: April 21, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Joel Miller
Scott Peterson, husband of Laci Peterson, is being arraigned today in a California court on two counts of murder: One for Laci, the other for their unborn child. Pro-choice organizations are understandably uncomfortable about the latter, exposing as it does the convenient lie that abortion isn't somehow murder. "There's something about this that bothers me a little bit," said Mavra Stark, president of the local NOW office in Morris County, N.J., about the second count. "Was it born, or was it unborn? If it was unborn, then I can't see charging [Peterson] with a double-murder." Her logic: "If this is murder, well, then any time a late-term fetus is aborted, they could call it murder." Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! We have a winner! For a straight-dealing answer with no BS, the first prize goes to Ms. Mavra Stark! The killer of little baby Peterson can't be held accountable for murder because then so would a slew of abortion doctors. It's a perfect example of politics being more important than justice. Justice for the child is irrelevant – the political agenda is all that matters. A year ago, a similar case arose in Utah. Roger Martin MacGuire was charged with murdering both his ex-wife and their in-utero child. According to a Jan. 8, 2002, Deseret News story, "2nd District Judge Michael Allphin determined that the Legislature intended the term 'unborn child' in a state's criminal homicide statute to refer to 'a viable and non-viable fetus.'" "As for the issue of whether the word 'person' in Utah's aggravated murder statute includes unborn children," Allphin decided, "the state correctly argues that unborn children are specifically included within the meaning of 'human being' for the purposes of criminal homicide statutes." By his "plain reading" of the state's law, Allphin said the court was led "to conclude that, at least in the narrow context of the Utah criminal homicide statutes, the Legislature intended to protect unborn children 'from the outset of the pregnancy.'" Obviously, California law and Utah law are not interchangeable, but both of these cases point to a puzzling question: What if the women were scheduled to have abortions the day following their murders? Let's say a woman is shot on Tuesday and lives, only her fetus dies from the wounds. In the most ultimate sense, isn't that the same outcome as if she had visited the scissors-and-vacuum man on Wednesday? So, why is the shooter liable for the baby's death but not the abortionist? And, if shooting a baby in-utero is murder, why doesn't showing up for the abortion procedure make one accomplice to the same crime? As far as the baby is concerned, the result is identical. Stark saw this clearly enough to sense a threat to her position if Peterson got hit with the second rap. Substantively, abortion and in-utero murder are the same thing. The only difference is the intent of the mother. If the mother deems the baby worthless, then – voila! – it is. To maintain this legal fiction, both abortionists and defense attorneys try to confine this justification to the womb. MacGuire's attorneys, for instance, argued that only one murder count applied because the "16-week-old fetus carried by Susan MacGuire was not a person under Utah law because it could not survive outside the womb." Maybe, but neither can infants without help. Getting nourishment through a breast instead of an umbilical cord is only a small question of space and time. So why shouldn't parents who deem their children worthless up to, say, 24 months be able to knock them off? Or maybe up to age 4? And then skip ahead 80 years or so – plenty of old folks have a hard time without constant care and assistance. Why not knock them off while we're at it also? The answer to the question should be the same one that eventually curbs abortion entirely. The legal protection of life is more than a dubious proposition if it hinges on the fancy of those to whom it is entrusted. It is an absurd proposition. I'm not certain about the guilt of Scott Peterson. That's for the court to decide. What I am certain about is the can of worms this opens for the abortion lobby. As tragic as the Peterson case may be, I find it sickeningly enjoyable to see abortionists thrust into the unenviable and highly deserved position of defending their actions side by side with suspected murders. |
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