Case Against Peterson Laid Out

Seventeen months after his pregnant wife went missing, during which time he was transformed from small-town fertilizer salesman to celebrity crime suspect, accused murderer Scott Peterson finally faced a trial jury Tuesday.

Given the long media buildup to Peterson’s trial on charges of killing his wife, Laci, and their unborn son, it was difficult for the prosecution’s opening statement to be anything but anticlimactic. Much of the most sensational evidence was already out: the affair he was having with another woman; the haste with which he sold Laci’s Range Rover; and the varying stories he told about his whereabouts on Christmas Eve in 2002, when she disappeared.

But over nearly four hours, prosecutor Rick Distaso methodically detailed an hour-by-hour chronology of Laci and Scott Peterson’s last weeks together. He recited particulars about shopping trips, parties, a family outing to Carmel with as much detail as more pertinent evidence, such as the fact that Peterson bailed out of an event with Laci so he could attend a Christmas party with his girlfriend.

One image that drew audible gasps from a packed courtroom showed the former girlfriend, Amber Frey, sitting on Peterson’s lap as he wore a Santa cap.

The biggest emotional charge occurred near the end of Distaso’s opening statement, when pictures of the remains of Laci and her unborn son were projected onto a large screen. When the bodies washed up on the shore of San Francisco Bay in April 2003, they had been in the water nearly four months. Some jurors looked away. Peterson, dressed in a tan suit, averted his eyes, as he did when pictures of him and Frey were shown.

There was a purpose to the recitation of events in numbing detail. There are no smoking guns in the case. Nor are there any eyewitnesses who saw what happened to Laci nor anyone claiming to have heard Scott Peterson confess. The case is circumstantial, meaning the jury will be asked to put together all the times and dates and seemingly minor incidents into a story of two people’s lives together and the end of one of them.

Distaso intends that when the jury does that, they will reach a guilty verdict.

“This is a common-sense case,” Distaso said at the end of his presentation. “I’m going to ask you to find [Peterson] guilty of murdering Laci and his unborn baby.”

Peterson’s attorney, Mark Geragos, objected several times during the prosecution’s remarks. He is expected to make his opening statement today. Geragos will probably portray the prosecution’s case as nothing but a collection of unrelated suspicions woven together by a Modesto Police Department that rushed to focus on Peterson as the only suspect.

In the past, Geragos has raised the possibility that a satanic cult may have kidnapped Laci.

Whether he takes that tack or not, it is likely he will call witnesses who claim to have seen Laci with strange men in a variety of cities.

Trying to forestall that, Distaso told the jurors that police had collected 9,000 tips, some from foreign countries. Tips were still coming in, he said, despite conclusive proof that the bodies found near the Berkeley Marina were those of Laci and Conner.

“Are you going to hear that the Modesto Police Department completed a perfect investigation?” Distaso said. “No, you’re not.” But he maintained that if the jury looks at everything police found, they will conclude the right man is in jail.

Some court observers were unimpressed with the numbing prosecution recitation.

“The good points were lost in the detail,” said former Alameda prosecuting attorney Michael Cardoza. “They didn’t have the emotional punch.”

“It’s not the most fluid opening argument,” said Stan Goldman, an attorney at Loyola Law School and a TV analyst for Fox News.

From all appearances, the Petersons were a happy young couple as Christmas 2002 approached. They had bought a modest house in Modesto and were expecting their first child in February. Laci was elated, if frequently tired.

The couple perhaps lived a bit beyond their means, but nobody noticed anything unusual, unless it was Scott Peterson’s sudden interest in fishing. In December, he bought a small fishing boat for $1,400, then bought rods and lures -- which were later found in their original packaging. He also bought a fishing license.

As it turned out, said the prosecutor, Peterson had begun a relationship with Frey in late November. The two quickly became deeply involved. Peterson, said Distaso, told Frey he was single and looking for a serious relationship. When a friend told her that Peterson was married, his explanation was that his wife had recently died, according to the prosecutor.

Frey, who had a child, once brought up the possibility of having more, Distaso said. Peterson told her he didn’t want any children.

According to Distaso, within a couple of weeks of beginning the affair, Peterson was researching winds and tides on San Francisco Bay. On Dec. 9, he bought the boat. A week later, he and his wife took a family trip to Carmel. While there, he exchanged several calls with Frey, according to phone records.

On the day before Christmas, Peterson went fishing at the Berkeley Marina, despite the fact that there were as many as seven fishing spots closer to home. Distaso noted Peterson’s behavior when he returned to find his wife missing. He told a neighbor he’d been out playing golf all day, a well-known passion of his. He told police he had gone fishing.

Asked what he was fishing for, he didn’t answer, arousing the suspicion of investigators. Over the next weeks, police followed him as he repeatedly drove to the marina, sometimes in rented cars, and then drove back home.

After Amber Frey contacted police, they asked her to record phone calls with Peterson, which she did. Distaso played one of those calls for the jury.

While it contained no admissions, it conveyed the sense of two lovers cooing into the phone. The implication of all the Frey evidence was to provide a motive: that Peterson fell so hard for Frey that he was willing to kill his wife for her.

The prosecutor played one other phone call, this one from Peterson to a friend saying he wanted to sell his house. “There’s no way Laci’s coming back and we’re going to stay in that house,” Peterson said.

Times correspondent Donna Horowitz contributed to this report.