Posted on 02/23/2004 5:41:21 AM PST by runningbear
PETERSON TRIAL
Modesto doesn't miss media frenzy It's business as usual now that Peterson trial has left town
Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, February 23, 2004
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Modesto -- Like artifacts from another age, the green lines on the street outside the Stanislaus County Courthouse are about the only visible trace of the media hoopla that suddenly landed in this city of 200,000 last year -- and just as suddenly decamped when the Scott Peterson case moved to Redwood City.
The green paint outlined the space where each news organization could pitch its tents for the round-the-clock national coverage by media stars who are now old hat around here. Cops and court officials talk familiarly about "Greta" (Van Susteren of Fox) and "Geraldo" (the famous one-word Fox industry), and for a while there, it was all pretty heady stuff.
The result of all this media madness was saturation coverage from the moment Laci Peterson went missing, on Dec. 24, 2002, through the arrest and arraignment of her husband, Scott, in April 2003, and all through the year until last month, when the Peterson case pulled up its tent stakes and left the exhausted city of Modesto on a change of venue to San Mateo County. Pretrial hearings, now entering into their fourth week, resume today in Redwood City.
Peterson, the 31-year-old former fertilizer salesman, has been charged with murdering his 27-year-old wife, who was eight months' pregnant, and the child she was carrying.
During that frenzied year, off and on but mostly on, downtown Modesto was filled with the nation's media stars, breathlessly chasing Peterson family members down the street for a quick televised interview, or intoning importantly during their stand-ups even when there were few developments to report. And it all centered in and around Tent City on 11th Street between H and I streets.
But now that Tent City has been dismantled -- hasta la vista Larry and Dan (Abrams) and Greta and the hundreds of technicians and the dozens of satellite trucks -- there is little regret among the people who live and work here. It's back to business as usual, and yes, it was exciting while it lasted, but let San Mateo County get a taste of the limelight for a change.
"No trucks. No (TV) lights at night," said Michael Tozzi, executive officer and jury commissioner for Stanislaus County Superior Court and, for the Peterson case, the man who kept the trains running on time and the media (this just in: known to be unruly at times) in line. "Do I miss it? No, it was really extra work for me. I don't miss the case. It was another death penalty case. That's all it was, as sad as the circumstances were."
Tozzi is the court official credited with corralling........
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Knapton's sister cites parallels to Peterson case
Posted online:
February 22, 2004 11:00 PM
Print publication date: February 23, 2004
Knapton's sister cites parallels to Peterson case
By Dustin Lemmon, Staff writer
A murdered woman soon may have justice in a case that has riveted the country; yet in a case with remarkable parallels, a local woman struggles to keep people from forgetting her sister while waiting for her killer to be captured.
The similarities between the deaths of Laci Peterson, 27, of Modesto, Calif., and Jone S. Knapton, 46, of East Moline became evident to Ms. Knapton's sister, Lisa Mickelson, recently as she watched the USA Network movie ``The Perfect Husband: The Laci Peterson Story.''
The movie tells of the pregnant Mrs. Peterson's disappearance in December 2002, and her husband's pending murder trial in California. Scott Peterson is charged with the double homicide of his wife and the couple's unborn son.
Unlike the Peterson case, no one has been charged in Ms. Knapton's death. She disappeared from her East Moline home July 4; her torso and limbs were found in the Green River, north of Geneseo, six days later.
Mrs. Mickelson, a New Windsor resident, said the Knapton and Peterson deaths are ``the exact same crime, regardless of who did it, detail by detail.''
Similarities include the fact that both women's bodies were found dismembered and discarded in bodies of water. Authorities have never found the women's heads, and both went missing for a short time.
In an ironic twist, both Mrs. Mickelson and Amy Rocha, Mrs. Peterson's sister, are hair stylists.
Mrs. Mickelson worries that her sister's death has been forgotten.
``People in Illinois know who Laci Peterson is,'' she said. ``Do people in California know who Jone Knapton is? No!
``I want the whole world to know what happened to her.''
Lt. Scott Cunningham of the East Moline Police Department said officers continue to investigate Ms. Knapton's death every day, but there are no suspects in the case.
``We're still plugging away on it,'' he said. ``The investigation is progressing, and we're continuing to work with the Illinois State Police.''
Mrs. Mickelson said she and her family want the relief of having whoever killed her sister in custody.
``It's hard in your subconscious not to feel nervous when they're walking ............
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Mother's homicide case still unsolved
Posted on Sun, Feb. 22, 2004
Mother's homicide case still unsolved
By John Simerman
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
RICHMOND - The crime seems achingly familiar, at first glance.
A lively young woman, all dark hair and sweet smile, goes missing in Northern California. The bloodhounds come out. The fliers go up. The fear sets in. Months later and many miles away, her corpse surfaces, ravaged by nature, time and deadly malice.
Police say murder. They focus on her man -- the one she met while in college, the one who gave her a son. There's another woman in his life, and seemingly odd behavior. Police repeatedly search the couple's home.
Echoes of Laci Peterson ring out, but Mimi Shum can only hear deafening silence. While a media horde bustles outside a Redwood City courthouse, the murder of Shum's close friend, Alice Sin, goes quietly unsolved four years later.
"It's very difficult that within a year, Scott Peterson is on trial, and we don't know anything. And we don't know if we will ever know, because so much time has passed," said Shum, 27. "All this stuff with Laci makes me think about it a lot."
Sin, a 21-year-old Diablo Valley College student and musician, had left UC Davis and was living in Pinole when she was reported missing on Nov. 21, 1999, two days before her son's first birthday. Her car was found three days later in the parking lot of a Pinole shopping center.
Off-roaders found her body on Jan. 24, 2000, near a dirt road in the high Nevada desert. She was shot four times. On the ground nearby, police found several 9 mm shell casings.
It's a familiar case of unsolved murder, say victims groups, one of thousands that spark brief public interest, then flare off. For loved ones, hopes for justice dim over time. Like police, they have learned that time is crucial. A federally funded, multi-state study in 1999 found that 93 percent of solved homicides were cleared within a year, and half within a week.
"Cold cases stay cold and eventually become frozen, with the exception of once in a while," said Howard Morton of the Colorado-based Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons. "This is endemic with cold cases, and that's what leads to the frustration and anger of these families."
About one-third of all female murder victims were killed by a spouse, ex-spouse or boyfriend, according to federal crime figures.
Pinole police Cmdr. John Miner said detectives continue to work the case, and Sin's boyfriend, Raymond Wong, remains a suspect. Police focused on Wong early in the case. They raided the couple's Pinole home two days after Sin's body was found. That day, Wong took a trip to Canada, where he married another girlfriend, according to court records.
In a search of Wong's computers, police turned up sexual images of "prepubescent children." Last fall, he began serving a 27-month federal sentence after pleading no contest to federal child pornography charges.
Miner declined to discuss details of the murder investigation, but blamed delays in the case on confusion over which jurisdiction would handle it: Pinole, or Churchill County, Nev., where Sin's body turned up.
"We assumed it was their case and we were helping them, and it just got confusing. It took us several months and years to figure out what they wanted to do, what they could do and what our DA was ultimately prepared to do," said Miner.
Churchill County District Attorney Arthur Mallory, however, said that he believed the jurisdiction issue was cleared up early.
"There was never any time they said to us, 'This is your case,'" said Mallory. "The only thing we had here was the body. All the planning, the possible forced abduction, the possible murder, all those things very easily happened in California. We were under the impression from the beginning that Contra Costa County was going to take the case."
Miner insists that the lapse, along with heavy turnover among detectives in the small department, has done no harm to the case, which he described as "on track.".,.........
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Article Last Updated: Monday, February 23, 2004 - 3:38:12 AM PST
Court focuses on wiretapped calls
Defense wants evidence barred from murder trial
By Jason Dearen, STAFF WRITER
REDWOOD CITY -- Judge Alfred Delucchi and attorneys in the Scott Peterson double-murder trial disappeared into a back room last week to listen to recordings of bugged phone calls that the defense wants thrown out as evidence. They never returned.
What was characterized Wednesday morning as a possible 40-minute closed session lasted almost two full days. The hearing is expected to resume this morning.
Defense attorney Mark Geragos, who has filed a motion to suppress evidence taken from taps on Peterson's phones, argues that investigators improperly recorded conversations between Peterson and his original attorney, Kirk McAllister, among others.
Geragos wants all wiretapped phone calls thrown out because, he argues, 76 out of more than 3,000 of them violated Peterson's attorney-client privilege.
Prosecutor Rick Distaso kicked off the wiretap hearing Wednesday by calling Steven Jacobson, a Modesto investigator who oversaw the bugging efforts, to the stand.
Jacobson testified that a judge granted the district attorney's wiretap requests in January 2003, less than three weeks after Peterson's wife Laci disappeared. He said the bugging continued through Peterson's arrest that April, after the bodies of Laci and the couple's unborn son were found.
At that time, a team of 10 to 15 monitors began listening in on Peterson's phones. Jacobson testified that they did not improperly record calls between Peterson, McCallister and a private investigator named Gary Ermoian.
"State law states that you minimize calls that have no pertinent info," said Jacobson.
Wiretappers "minimize" a call -- meaning they only spot-check calls to determine if the call can be legally bugged -- between a person and their attorney, clergyman, or any other party who is privacy-protected.
But Geragos contends that the eavesdroppers continued recording the protected calls, even after a Stanislaus County judge ordered investigators to stop even the spot-checking of calls.
Peterson's attorney also argues that prosecutors did not appropriately use wireptaps in this case, because at the time they started bugging Scott's phones, Laci's body had not been found.
"At the time of the initial wiretap, Laci Peterson had been missing for less than three weeks and, in fact, there was absolutely no physical evidence (let alone forensic evidence) that a crime had occurred," Geragos wrote.
At the hearing this morning, Geragos may cross-examine Jacobson.
Before jury selection begins -- which may be next week -- the judge will also decide if the jury should be sequestered, whether or not there will be a separate jury for the guilt and penalty phases, and whether a press interview given by Peterson will be .......
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The real thing is hard to resist
The real thing is hard to resist
By GARTH STAPLEY
BEE STAFF WRITER
Last Updated: February 22, 2004, 09:48:00 PM PST
REDWOOD CITY -- For 16-year-old Amie Barnes, part of the allure is seeing Scott Peterson in person.
"It seems like a big fictional story," the Cupertino teen said after sitting through three days of the double-murder trial.
"But then you realize that he's a real person, just 40 feet away. It's kind of creepy," she said.
Valerie Harris, 51, traveled from her Mountain View home, near San Jose, to Modesto to see parts of Peterson's preliminary hearing in October and November. Since the trial moved only 12 miles from her doorstep, she's been in the courtroom every day.
"I'm hooked," Harris said.
Kathleen McLoughlin, a 46-year-old Colorado housewife, insists she journeyed to California to visit her mother -- not just to see the Peterson trial. But why not take care of two things with one trip?
"Instead of shopping, we came to check it out," quipped McLoughlin's mother, Margaret Kelly of Saratoga.
The swarms of gadflies San Mateo County court officials predicted have not materialized, perhaps partly because of the trial's relatively slow start. Attorneys still are working through evidentiary motions, with Judge Alfred Delucchi laying ground rules for the upcoming legal battle.
But nonmedia, nonlegal, regular people have provided a small, steady stream of onlookers.
Though dozens of seats remain empty every day, court officials still require the public to go through a lottery selection for one-day passes, including forcing people to show up 2 1/2 hours before each session.
Amie, a home-schooled 10th-grader with aspirations in the legal field, catches a ride from Cupertino in the morning with her mother, who works in Redwood City. The teen rides home on nearby Caltrain.
"I've been following the case since Laci (Peterson) disappeared," Amie said. "When the trial moved here, I thought it would be interesting to see what it would be like.".......
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Modesto Bee's Peterson case webpage:
MODESTO,CA-- Scott Peterson, left, sits with attorney Mark Geragos during arraignment proceedings at the Stanislaus Superior court Dept.2, pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder , Wednesday morning, Dec.3, 2003. Judge Al Girolami presiding. Trail date set for Jan. 26, 2004.
PHOTO: Bart Ah You/The Bee
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Just a deck of cards and a jug of wine
And a woman's lies make a life like mine.
Oh, the day we met, I went astray,
I started rollin' down that lost highway.
I was just a lad, nearly twenty-two,
Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you,
And now I'm lost, too late to pray,
Lord, I've paid the cost on the lost highway.
Now, boys, don't start your ramblin' round,
On this road of sin or you're sorrow bound.
Take my advice or you'll curse the day
You started rollin' down that lost highway...
DITTOS!
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