Appetite for Laci’s Story Endures

Most of the media gypsies had moved on Tuesday in search of the next story of the moment. On 11th Street adjacent to the courthouse -- which the day before was blocked by thickets of sound trucks, coils of electrical cable and rows of stand-up reporters made up like porcelain dolls -- only Ted Rowlands of KTVU-TV Channel 2 in the Bay Area was left behind.

Nothing much had happened. A bail hearing for Scott Peterson was scheduled, then put off again. Search warrants -- their contents coveted by the media -- remained under seal. The murder suspect stayed behind bars, silent to all but his lawyer and loved ones. But the appetite for the story of Laci Peterson, America’s newest celebrity victim, had not waned. There was Rowlands at his post, microphone in hand, ready to file his next report for an audience nationwide.

“I’ve gotten more response to this story than any other,” said Rowlands, a friendly, youthful-looking man whose feeds have been picked up by CNN. “People are contacting me from Texas and all over to leave tips and explain their theories” about the murder.

And with the Peterson case expected to drag on for two years, it’s likely the hubbub will not subside any time soon. That leaves people in this onetime cow town, now numbering some 200,000, with a few questions: Why Laci? And why here?

It can’t simply be the flashing brown eyes of the young mother-to-be or that winning smile, beamed into millions of cable households almost nonstop since her body washed up on the shore of San Francisco Bay last month.

Some say Laci’s case has taken on a life of its own because the public can’t resist the tale of the girl next door done wrong. Others say they see a cautionary story, one that crystallizes the vulnerability of all women. Still others have made of Laci’s life a fable of near biblical proportions: The victim vanishing just before Christmas and being discovered again on Good Friday.

All the explanations and speculation have worn thin for many more. They feel the emotional exhaustion of a city that has played host to three major crime stories in recent years -- the Yosemite killings, the missing Washington intern case, and now Laci Peterson.

“I wish the media would let Modesto get back to being Modesto,” said Rebekah Markiss, 21, a waitress at the Mediterranean Grill just outside the orbit of the courthouse news scrum. “I wish they would stop blocking off the streets, hold the trial, reach a verdict and go home.”

No Benefits

Each time the media horde sweeps into town, the new wave seems a little more unruly. There just hasn’t been enough new business for Modesto’s hotels, restaurants and shops to make it worth the hassle of all the visiting reporters, producers and TV personalities.

Sharlene Sliger can’t help wondering if all that energy and all those cameras couldn’t be redirected for just one day. What about her son? she asks. What about Darrell?

Sliger has been forced to stand by as reporters mostly ignore the story of the 17-year-old, who died last year after being hit by a drunk driver while he was roller-blading in the farm town of Turlock.

Sliger and her friends paraded outside the courthouse this week to protest the district attorney’s decision to allow the drunk driver to plead to a misdemeanor. But the media crowd never batted an eye -- so intent was their focus on each pronouncement by Scott Peterson’s new celebrity attorney, Mark Geragos.

“Why is she getting so much attention?” Sliger, 38, said of Laci Peterson. “We know who did it. And we can’t get any justice.”

Jeanne Schechter, the prosecutor who handled the Sliger case, said the drunk driving death was a sad one. But she said the absence of the media did not make any difference in the outcome. There was a simple factual problem with the case: The prosecutor couldn’t prove young Sliger wasn’t partly responsible for his own death, by wandering into the roadway.

That’s cold comfort to Sliger’s mother. “I could have done better,” she said, “representing myself.”

The ceaseless focus on Laci has been questioned outside Modesto as well.

Experts note that Laci Peterson is hardly the only woman suspected of being killed by her lover. Some 1,247 women were killed in the U.S. by intimate partners in 2000. Even the victim’s pregnancy does not make her unusual. Homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women.

“These cases happen all over, all the time,” said Juley Fulcher, public policy director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Some say the answer is that Laci has become a cultural symbol -- a stand-in for every woman threatened by a man or trapped in a bad marriage. Abuse can occur, the story seems to confirm, even in neighborhoods of backyard pools and barbecues.

A Draw for Women

Neal Gabler, author of “Life Is a Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality,” says the subtext of the story is “how women view men and relationships and their powerlessness in those relationships.” Following the Peterson case and discussing it with friends, Gabler said, is a way for women “to crystallize issues they are feeling and work through those issues.”

Indeed, women showed up in large numbers for Sunday’s public memorial service, some driving hundreds of miles because they felt a connection to Laci that they sometimes couldn’t explain. One who slept overnight in her truck to be first in line at the First Baptist Church said she “had to be in there.”

Gina Antior, 45, of nearby Oakdale, attended the memorial and cried throughout.

The mother of four said Laci’s story inspired her “to let my own kids know how much I love them.” She believed the story touched people because “she left us on Christmas and came back to us on Good Friday.”

“She definitely had to be an angel,” Antior said.

Why Modesto?

Some reporters have asked one more question: Why Modesto? In recent years, this town has been buffeted by the disappearance and subsequent murder of a mother and two teenage high school friends in Yosemite and the murder of Chandra Levy, a Modesto native and federal intern who had an affair in Washington with then-U.S. Rep. Gary Condit (D-Ceres).

Some have focused on the influx of Bay Area urbanites, which has helped turn a placid agricultural and canning center whose downtown arch reads “Water Wealth Contentment Health,” into a brasher city. But the outsiders have missed the point, according to Mayor Carmen Sabatino. “The real story is how [well] we react to tragedies,” said Sabatino, seated in his sixth-floor office.

In other words, the mayor says, it’s not just tragedies that drive stories here. It is the willpower of his citizens, who share a neighborly commitment unknown in many other places. Modestans are willing to accept the annoyances of a stampeding press corps because they know it can help solve troubling crimes, Sabatino said.

“Laci disappeared Christmas Eve. By New Year’s Eve there was a candlelight vigil at the park,” Sabatino said. “On a cold and rainy evening, 1,500 people showed up. There were thousands of volunteers that knocked on doors and went out to the fields looking for her.”

As the town rallied, an operations center was set up at the Red Lion Hotel, just as had happened with the Chandra Levy and Yosemite cases. The Bay Area media eventually took notice. By Christmas, they didn’t need maps to find their way to Modesto.

“I’ve been here every day since the arrest,” Rowlands confirmed.

Sabatino remembered that when Levy disappeared, he jabbed at Washington, D.C., police, saying that Chandra grew up “healthy and happy” in Modesto. Then they sent her to Washington, where she died.

Laci Peterson’s death has taught him not to revel in other people’s problems “because they can visit you,” Sabatino said. “The Laci Peterson case has visited all of us.”