Laci Peterson’s family says police disclosed affair, insurance policy

Friends of Laci Peterson, missing since Dec. 24, pray on Friday, January 10 outside of the Laci Peterson Volunteer Center. Police informed Laci's family Wednesday that they believe Scott Peterson, Laci's husband, is responsible for her disappearance.
Joan Barnett Lee/The Bee

Modesto police told Laci Peterson’s family that her husband was having an affair and recently took out a $250,000 life insurance policy on her, a family member said Thursday.

Detectives met with Laci Peterson’s side of the family Wednesday night to tell them why they believe Scott Peterson is responsible for the disappearance of his 27-year-old pregnant wife, the family member said.

Police refused to comment on the investigation Thursday, and Scott Peterson did not return calls Thursday night. “I don’t think she ever saw it coming,” said the family member, who asked not to be identified. “As to exactly what happened to her, I don’t really know.”

Peterson took out a $250,000 life insurance policy on his wife last summer, after she got pregnant. Peterson was having an affair with a woman in the Fresno area. Detectives showed family members pictures of Peterson and the woman posing together.

Laci Peterson was reported missing on Christmas Eve. Scott Peterson, 30, has told police he went fishing that morning in Berkeley and could not find his wife once he returned home that evening.

“We’re not going to confirm or deny anything,” Police Chief Roy Wasden said. “We’re not going to discuss this investigation.”

Wasden said Peterson had not been eliminated from the investigation. He said that about 200 registered sex offenders, parolees, and mentally ill homeless people — as well as many people close to Laci Peterson — had been ruled out in her disappearance.

“If he’s innocent, fine, then take a lie detector test,” the family member said. “At first, he told us he was willing to. But then he said he talked to his parents and they told him not to.”

Laci Peterson’s friends and family did not open the volunteer search center at the Red Lion Hotel Thursday for the first time since opening there about three weeks ago. It appeared that the center would not open again.

“Obviously, it was hard to close it down,” said a longtime friend of Laci Peterson’s, who asked not to be identified. “Everybody’s numb right now. It’s hard to hear that (Scott Peterson) is not the person we all thought he was.”

Since the case began, Peterson declined most interview requests, telling friends and family he wanted to keep the emphasis on his wife. On Thursday, he talked to a reporter from Sacramento-area TV station KCRA.

“I really don’t care what people think of me as long as it continues to keep Laci’s picture, description, tip line in the media,” Peterson said. “Make me the biggest villain if you want to as long as it keeps her picture in the press. … They can think anything they want of me. Let’s find Laci.”

The change was not lost on Laci Peterson’s family. “All of a sudden, Scott is talking to the media,” the family member said. “He is realizing people are finding out about the girlfriend, so he’d better go out there and do some damage control.”

Before Thursday’s interview, Peterson had issued only one public statement in the form of a message written in black marker that hung in the volunteer center:

As I see every person come through this door, or out searching, I tell Laci about them, looking for her. Early this morning, I felt she could hear me. She thanks you. Laci’s husband

Investigators met with the family Wednesday because they wanted to disclose information before it came out in the National Enquirer on Thursday, the family member said.

Scott Peterson loved his wife too much to harm her, his family and in-laws say. FAMILIES DEFEND MISSING WOMAN'S HUSBAND By Lori Aratani and John Woolfolk Mercury News

MODESTO - He shuns the daily press briefings, the cameras and the numerous requests for interviews. No Larry King. No Connie Chung. No ``Good Morning America.''

Instead, every morning Scott Peterson slips quietly through the double glass doors of the Red Lion Hotel and walks down the hallway, past the atrium with a pool and a gazebo, past the poster advertising a $500,000 award for the safe return of his wife, Laci Peterson. He enters a makeshift command center for volunteers and works quietly, answering e-mails, making phone calls, talking to volunteers.

He'll slip out silently, leaving to pass out fliers or walk with teams combing parks for clues. He'll do whatever he thinks he needs to do.

Since his wife vanished Dec. 24, Scott Peterson has lived life in the shadows. In the campaign to focus attention on the search, to keep 27-year-old Laci's image and name on front pages and television screens, it is his parents, his in-laws and his brothers and sister who do the talking.

And as questions persist about his whereabouts Dec. 24 -- on Saturday, officers again searched around the marina in Berkeley where Peterson says he went fishing that day, still trying to confirm his account, or find a body -- he has not spoken in his own defense.

It is his parents and in-laws, again, who fiercely defend him.

``He doesn't want to be out front because he wants the focus to be on Laci,'' his mother, Jackie Peterson, said at the volunteer center. ``But he's here. He comes here every day.''

Part of his elusiveness may be the shock of finding his seemingly happy life -- Laci was eight months pregnant with their first child -- turned upside down. But part of it may be of necessity. Well into the second week of the investigation, uncomfortable questions surround the 30-year-old father-to-be.

Under scrutiny

Investigators have seized Peterson's pickup truck and boat. They have combed the Peterson house and taken away two personal computers. They have examined a downtown Modesto warehouse he uses in his work as an agricultural salesman specializing in fertilizer.

But as of Saturday, Modesto police said they still have no substantive leads in Laci Peterson's disappearance, despite more than 1,600 tips and a search of fields and open spaces that is now expanding from Stanislaus County into five others.

Modesto police have not said that Peterson is a suspect, but they also have not been able to rule him out.

Investigators are still trying to corroborate his account of his activities Dec. 24: that he last saw his wife about 9:30 a.m. when he left on a fishing trip to the Berkeley Marina about 85 miles away, that he called her from his cell phone but she never responded, and that he returned home at 4:30 p.m. to find her car and her purse at the house but no sign of her.

Almost every day at a press briefing, the Modesto police are asked if Scott Peterson has a lawyer, if he has taken a lie detector test, and the answer is some form of ``he is generally cooperating.''

Investigators say it is not unusual for those close to a victim to be questioned. Police Chief Roy Wasden called it part of a ``logical process'' investigators undertake.

Families united

Both families say they firmly believe Peterson had nothing to do with his wife's disappearance.

Brent Rocha, Laci's brother, said Scott loved his sister too much to ever harm her. ``They never argued,'' he said. ``I remember one of her girlfriends said, when the girls would get together they'd complain about their husbands, but Laci never did.''

That tragedy could befall such a close couple as Scott and Laci Peterson haunts family and friends. They describe Scott as a driven, focused young man who is mature for his years, an old-fashioned gentleman who remembers to stand up when women leave the table and who insisted on calling his mother-in-law Mrs. Rocha instead of Mom until the day he and Laci married.

Peterson grew up in San Diego, the youngest of seven children in a close-knit family.

He inherited his love of fishing and hunting from his father, Lee Peterson. The family took fishing trips to the Sierra. It wasn't unusual for his parents to drop off Scott and his friends at the local marina, returning at the end of the day to pick up the boys and their catch, his father said.

It was Scott who eventually persuaded his father to buy a boat. And so, no, it didn't seem unusual to family members that Scott would try to squeeze a fishing outing into his packed schedule the day before Christmas.

Jackie Peterson described her son as mature and responsible, often pitching in to help others. She remembers twice getting letters from people who had been stranded on a highway when Scott stopped to help. When she asked about the incidents, she said, he brushed off her questions as if he were embarrassed to have been caught doing good deeds.

Lee Peterson also taught his children to golf, and Scott was especially gifted at the sport. By the time he was 14, he was beating his father regularly.

In an early sign of Scott's determination, his father told him he would buy him a car if he could shoot par, never thinking he could. By his sophomore year of high school, Scott was driving around in a Peugeot wagon.

At University of San Diego High School, a Catholic school, he played on the golf team, sharing the greens with the soon-to-be pro golfer Phil Mickelson, who was two years ahead of him.

When Scott graduated in 1990, he won a partial golf scholarship to Arizona State University, but for reasons not clear to his family, he came home after six months.

He enrolled at Cuesta College on the central California coast, near where his parents had relocated.

At 20, he told his parents he was moving out. He was determined to begin supporting himself, his mother recalled. He worked three jobs to help put himself through California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo and never once asked for money, she said.

Professors at Cal Poly remember Peterson as a rare combination of being humble without being self-effacing, confident without being cocky.

Marlin Vix, an agribusiness professor who taught both Scott and Laci, said Scott was a ``good communicator, a nice guy, pleasant, pretty sharp, fun to talk to.''

Jim Ahern, a professor of microeconomics, said, ``He didn't hold low scores against you, though he didn't get many.''

Starting life together

Scott met Laci Rocha at one of his jobs, at a restaurant called Pacific Cafe, when a mutual friend brought her in for a meal. Their first date was a deep-sea fishing trip. Laci got sick.

They dated for two years and married in 1997.

When he graduated, Scott was offered a job in Ohio, his mother said, but Laci didn't want to leave California, so they decided to put to work a business proposal Scott had submitted as a class project. They converted an old bakery into a restaurant called The Shack.

It was a good fit for Peterson, his professors said. ``He was entrepreneurial,'' Vix said. ``He was a guy who wanted to be his own boss.''

Peterson was so determined to make the restaurant a success, his mother said, that when a lack of local inspectors threatened to delay the opening indefinitely, he studied and became certified as an inspector.

The Shack was a success, but after two years, the couple sold it. Family members said they wanted to start a family and so they moved to Modesto to be closer to Laci's parents.

On the recommendation of an old professor, Scott took a job selling fertilizer for a company based in Spain. The couple bought a fixer-upper in a nice neighborhood near a park and walking trails, and spent their weekends on home improvement projects.

Even though Scott was an outsider, he fit right in with Laci's old friends, said Rene Tomlanson, a friend of hers since high school. They often invited friends over for parties to watch ``The Sopranos'' or barbecues around the backyard pool. And they made several trips a year to San Diego to see Scott's parents and siblings.

As police continue to investigate Laci's disappearance and Scott's account of that day, he remains hopeful that his wife will return, family members say. Each night he returns to their house on Covena Avenue, where the baby's room awaits its new occupant, where unopened Christmas presents sit under the tree, and where Laci Peterson, eight months pregnant, was last seen. And he will continue his routine until Laci is found, his family said.

At the Red Lion Hotel, a note from Scott Peterson hangs in the volunteer center:

``As I see every person come through this door, or out searching, I tell Laci about them looking for her. Early this morning I felt she could hear me. She thanks you.'' It is signed, ``Laci's husband.''

“….go read another thread.”

No, you post your drivel elsewhere. This thread has no relevance to the basic purpose of FreeRepublic. This type of thread simple polutes and dilutes the efforts of the few patriots still working to protect and expand our freedoms.

“….quit leering at our posts”

You should be far more concerned about the lurkers that look into FreeRepublic for information and guidance about political issues. Are you so naive as not to recognize how this thread is perceived by most normal people?

“….following and perhaps supporting investigative stories….”

You clearly are bored with life and have too much free time on you hands. Please join the fight to save our Republic so that you will have reason to feel proud at the end of your day.

“….First Amendment rights here….”

Not at all! The First Amendment does not apply within FreeRepublic, other businesses or within your own family. Jim Robinson is ALLOWING you the temporary freedom to make a fool of yourself in public with the hope that somehow it will promote freedom.

I am suggesting to you all that this, and similar threads, are not promoting freedom, but have instead the long term effect of degenerating the forum and turning it into an entertainment center for bored people

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.