Face to Face with Scott Peterson

- Most murder cases are circumstantial.

You don't get a smoking gun.

- You take one of the things, it's nothing.

Two or three, it's nothing.

But when you add them up, it's pretty darn strong.

- I never imagined that this thing

would still be percolating 20 years later.

- I have questions about the case.

It's always bugged me.

- I know people are really heavily

invested that Scott's guilty.

- There is no evidence of cause of death.

There is no evidence of a crime scene.

- Laci's already set the table for Christmas brunch.

You're gonna travel 90 miles away to test your boat?

I didn't buy it.

- There isn't any evidence that Scott Peterson

engaged in any violence involving his wife.

- If you open your mind a little bit,

really consider the investigation,

there are a lot of questions.

There have always been a lot of questions.

When you know that the jury

ultimately still convicted him,

you have to ask yourself, what's going on here?

- They gave us, in my opinion, no realistic alternate theory.

- The information we were given in that courtroom

only leads to the decision we came up with,

which is he's guilty.

- The police can't get it this wrong.

The DA can't get it this wrong.

A jury can't get it this wrong.

The appellate process can't get it this wrong.

The media can't get it this wrong.

- Is this the way criminal justice works in America?

Here I am two decades later,

still trying to solve this crime.

I'm still investigating.

I'm still looking at the evidence, asking questions.

- It's gonna be a fight for them to accept the truth.

December 13, 2004.

People of State of California

versus Scott Peterson.

We, the jury, fix the penalty at death.

- And in a case that became something of

a national TV obsession, a judge today

formally sentenced Scott Peterson.

- In spite of all the pain and passion

expressed in court today, one person showed no emotion--

Scott Peterson.

- During my trial, I was indignant.

I was so angry at the media, because the reports

just weren't factual.

I strived not to show any emotion in the courtroom

because I didn't wanna, you know, see them break me.

* *

- When Scott was moved to death row,

we made every effort to get up there and visit him.

For the first eight years,

we had someone there every week.

- Our family has really been the glue for Scott

and for each other through these--

these hard times.

And just fortunate that that's the case.

- He would repeatedly say he-- he was living visit to visit.

It was his lifeline.

* *

- Sitting through Scott's trial

and then spending years

combing over police reports, reading appellate documents,

talking with lawyers, our family had

kind of been tethered to the legal community

for 17 years.

My kids were grown.

Ultimately, I made the decision to go to law school.

I certainly never have felt like I needed to become

a lawyer to help Scott.

But I think now that I am a lawyer,

I certainly have a much better understanding

of the case and the issues.

If Scott is granted a new trial,

we'll be able to take more steps in the investigation.

We'll be able to call people to court to testify.

We have an incredible support system,

an incredible team of people who know this case

and help our family.

And without them, we wouldn't be where we're at.

And without Mike Gudgell,

I don't know that our investigation

would be where it's at.

- I thought that the trial was going to be

the arbiter of the truth.

And I don't think that's accurate.

Most of the journalists covered the story

from beginning to end, I think expected a hung jury.

I don't know anyone who isn't terribly

conflicted by the verdict.

It was troubling for those of us who really

knew the case intimately.

Scott was convicted, but there was no how, where,

when, even why.

Everyone involved in the case contributed in some way

to a sort of a conspiracy of circumstances

that led to the verdict.

- Anybody who disagrees with the verdict,

you have a right to disagree.

But if you weren't there, you don't know.

A lot of media coverage,

so I think the jury pool was partly biased.

- Why did he leave his wife alone, eight months pregnant,

on Christmas Eve to go fishing by himself?

- There was a tremendous pressure on the media

to report every day.

And as a consequence, particularly the tabloid press

would report rumors.

- Was Scott Peterson planning to hire hit men

to kill his wife, Laci?

- Every evening, I would sit and watch one of the shows

and I'd wanna throw my shoe at the TV.

Initially, I spent a year, year and a half

covering a case from beginning to end.

I went on to do other things, including covering the wars

in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it always bothered me.

I don't really even think the case was solved.

So when I got back from covering the two wars,

I devoted as much time as I could to digging more into

what might have happened to Laci.

This is 2015.

The first thing I had to do was get

the 50,000 pages of documents and police reports.

And then I had to go through those documents

and find what questions or clues

were buried in those pages.

There was dozens of different tips that came in,

and I spent years looking into those.

But it finally came down

to the burglary across the street.

- We have two people in custody.

We do not believe that, at this time,

that there's any connection with the missing of Laci.

- The police characterized the Medina burglary

as kind of a meth addict, and it was a crime of opportunity.

The Airport District was sort of a high crime area

not far from Laci and Scott's house.

And there was a larger effort

to burglarize houses in that neighborhood.

I would call it a criminal network.

I suspect that more people were involved

in the burglary than Steven Todd and Glenn Pearce.

This is just a working theory.

I haven't been able to prove it yet.

And that comes to the question of smoking gun.

But I think it's much more complicated

than what the police believe.

- Steven Todd and Glenn Pearce admitted their involvement

with the Medina burglary, telling the police

that the burglary happened on December 27th.

When the police pointed out to them that it couldn't have

happened on the 27th because the Medinas were already home,

they changed their story and said that the burglary

happened on the 26th.

It wasn't until much later that people began to question

whether this burglary really occurred on December 26.

We believe that Laci encountered the Medina

burglary on December 24th.

At 11:40 a.m., Diane Jackson saw three men

that were dark-skinned, not African American,

in front of the Medina home.

- So I think Steven Todd shared information

about the Medina home

with people in the Airport District.

It's their practice to share targets like that.

It's possible that three men in the van

were some of his friends or accomplices.

So what likely happened is,

other people showed up to help.

The police have never identified that van,

never identified the men associated with the van.

And that van was parked directly in front of the house

that was burglarized.

It's directly across the street from Scott and Laci's home.

So this confrontation with Laci could have involved

the people in the van, not necessarily

Steven Todd and Glenn Pearce.

- Steven Todd confessed almost immediately to the burglary.

And I think that says something.

I think he was told, you're gonna have to take the fall.

I mean, you know, there's a confidential informant

that turned him in, so he was gonna serve time regardless.

The burglary could have occurred about the same time

Laci went for a walk.

It's possible that Laci confronted the burglars

or saw the burglars, or the burglars saw her

and were worried about whether she would call the police.

- So if you didn't kill Laci, who killed Laci?

- We had a client who was innocent

but an entire world against him.

He's not capable of doing this.

And we truly believe that.