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."
So he was probably blonde and then changed to a red head to further trick everyone LOL!!! As a poster on this thread stated, he was big time monitored with a GPS gadget on his vehicle so Scott could have turned into Saddam Hussein and still been cought.
Bumpity bump to that. She'd clock him.
Yeah, and I'm the bloody Queen of Prussia. What a laugher.
I have dark brown hair, and I was a W.S.I. and lifeguard for years at a local pool and at summer camp. I was in the sun and in and out of the pool all day. My hair bleached out at most to a reddish brown with light brown highlights by the end of the summer - not that fakey peroxide blond that Scrotty is sporting.
This guy is not only evil, he's an idiot. He might as well have had a sign around his neck from the very beginning of this, saying "ARREST ME"
Hope he burns (although I guess CA doesn't even gas 'em any more.) A simple peaceful death is too good for this monster. I'd drown him by tying him to a rock with concrete weights on his legs and letting him watch the tide come in. . . .
That sounds very "Baghdad Bob-ish". Hmmmmmm.
Was that Scott's *one call* he chose?
I hate it when they do that. Is this a test?
Guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt, and he cannot cop an insanity plea (as he had enough mental stability to know to try to change his appearance and try to flee to Mexico) so he will not get life-in prison he will get the double homicide death penalty. Not finding a non biased (non TV watching) jury, will be what gives this scum another break.
Scott Peterson arrives at the Stanislaus County Jail in Modesto, Calif., from San Diego late Friday, April 19, 2003 after he was arrested in the death of his wife, Laci, who was eight months pregnant when she vanished on Christmas Eve. The arrest came as authorities confirmed that two bodies that washed ashore this week were those of Laci and her baby. (AP Photos/Paul Sakuma)
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