Witnesses Tell of Laci Peterson’s Last Hours

The last day anyone besides her husband reported seeing her alive, Laci Peterson went to a spa, made preparations for Christmas and visited a salon where her half sister worked, witnesses testified Thursday in Scott Peterson’s murder trial.

On the third day of the trial, prosecutor Rick Distaso focused on Laci’s actions during the last hours of her life -- an apparent attempt to set a time of death and expose a pattern of lies by her husband.

The defense attempted to portray the police as bunglers who focused almost exclusively on Peterson, missing opportunities to investigate other possible suspects.

Prosecutors believe that Peterson killed his wife, who was eight months pregnant, in their Modesto home on or around Christmas Eve morning 2002, then drove her body to San Francisco Bay and dumped it from his small boat.

Laci was wearing cream-colored pants the day she visited the salon, said Amy Rocha, her half sister. She was wearing light-colored pants when her body washed up on the San Francisco Bay shoreline four months later, authorities say. This differs from Scott Peterson’s assertion that his wife had on black pants when he last saw her before he went fishing at the Berkeley Marina on Dec. 24, 2002.

Peterson, 31, a former fertilizer salesman, could receive the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.