Peterson Case Detective Concedes Report Is Lacking

In a blow to prosecutors, a police investigator conceded Thursday that he had deliberately failed to mention a witness who contradicts crucial elements of the capital murder case against Scott Peterson.

Det. Allen Brocchini said he had excluded from his reports any reference to a woman who recalled having seen Laci Peterson at the warehouse where her husband stored his small boat.

Prosecutors have contended that Peterson hid the recently purchased boat from his pregnant wife as part of his plan to kill her and dispose of her body in the San Francisco Bay.

The woman’s story provides an alternate explanation for why a strand of hair that DNA testing indicates might have come from Laci Peterson turned up on a pair of pliers in the boat. That hair is one of the few pieces of physical evidence prosecutors have presented in Scott Peterson’s trial.

Prosecutors allege that the hair fell from Laci while her body was in the boat after Peterson killed her in their Modesto home on or around Christmas Eve morning in 2002.

They charge that he then weighted down the body and tossed it into the bay, only to have the remains of Laci and the couple’s fetus wash ashore four months later.

The bodies were found two miles from where Peterson had said he was fishing alone the day his wife vanished.

Defense lawyers say that someone abducted Laci Peterson while she walked the dog, then acted on Scott Peterson’s widely publicized alibi to frame him.