Fitting End to a Morality Play

Who would have thought what’s being called the “trial of the century” would involve a bumbling fertilizer salesman accused of murdering his pregnant young wife in a small California town. Yet the Laci Peterson case has riveted millions across the country, with its made-for-TV characters, string of soap-opera revelations and crystal-clear clash of good and evil.

Women are killed by husbands and lovers every day in this country, more than 1,000 times each year. Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women. But the tragedy of Laci Peterson and her philandering husband, Scott, captivated strangers in a way no crime story has since O.J. Simpson’s murder trial in 1995.

Give the media much of the credit, or blame. In the months after Laci Peterson disappeared from her Modesto home on Christmas Eve 2002, the Peterson case garnered more airtime on the big three TV networks’ morning news shows than any other story except the war in Iraq. The tabloids and all-news cable stations were all Laci, all the time. The case was featured in a television movie, with its title -- “The Perfect Husband” -- dripping sarcasm. But if public fascination was stoked by the media, the story had legs all its own from the start. Within days after Laci Peterson’s disappearance, fliers had been posted as far south as Mexico and as far east as Salt Lake City, immortalizing her beatific smile. A week later, 1,500 strangers turned out -- some driving hours to Modesto -- for a candlelight vigil on a rainy night. The case took on biblical proportions: Laci was an “angel”; she disappeared on Christmas Eve; her body was delivered up from the sea on Good Friday.

Unlike the Simpson case, this trial resounded not because of intrigue, race or celebrity, but simplicity. Strangers looked at Laci Peterson and saw themselves, their daughters, sisters, friends ... every woman ever done wrong; her husband, meanwhile, represented every smooth-talking womanizer who tried to get away with murder.

The case is not over. The jury meets to consider Scott Peterson’s sentence next week, and there are certainly appeals to come. But the murder conviction, delivered to cheers last week, seems a fitting climax -- in the midst of our national obsession with values -- to this morality play.