Richard Alex Jacobs
Posted on 07/14/2004 5:35:38 AM PDT by runningbear
A BLOODY BAD DAY FOR SCOTT AT TRIAL
A BLOODY BAD DAY FOR SCOTT AT TRIAL
By HOWARD BREUER
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July 14, 2004 -- REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — A Modesto detective yesterday offered up the first pieces of physical evidence in Scott Peterson's slay trial — a single hair wrapped around needle-nosed pliers in his fishing boat and drops of blood in his truck. DNA analysis showed the hair was probably from Peterson's dead wife, Laci, who disappeared Dec. 24, 2002, the same day her husband says he went fishing.
Detective Henry Dodge Hendee, testifying on the 22nd day of the trial, said bloodstains were found on the steering wheel and driver-side door handle of Scott's truck. Sources later told The Post tests show some of the blood is Scott's.
Peterson is accused of killing Laci, who was eight months' pregnant, in the couple's Modesto home, weighing down her body with homemade concrete anchors and then dumping it in San Francisco Bay.
Her corpse and that of her fetus were found washed up on shore the following April.
In presenting what little physical evidence the cops have in the case, Hendee also testified about chips of cement found on the bottom of a trailer in Peterson's warehouse, hinting they could have been remnants of the anchors.
The detective described photos showing Peterson's boat trailer, shop-vacuum and a pair of Nike tennis shoes in the warehouse that were covered with a white, powdery residue. .........
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Focus on Concrete Evidence in Peterson Case
Focus on Concrete Evidence in Peterson Case
Scott Peterson is accused of killing his wife Laci and her unborn child.
Simon Perez
Watch the Video
The prosecution in the Scott Peterson trial focused on concrete evidence Tuesday.
The homemade cement weights were found inside Scott Peterson's warehouse, which prosecutors have suggested he used to hold Laci Peterson's body at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
Also discovered in the warehouse was a hair in a pair of pliers. Experts have said that the hair likely belonged to Laci Peterson, who disappeared on Christmas Eve two years ago. She was eight months pregnant with the couple's first child.
The prosecution went on and on Tuesday, asking questions of just how the detectives collected evidence. To lay observers it appeared tedious, but to the experts, the lengthy questioning had a purpose -- to ward off a potential attack from defense attorney Mark Geragos, who's expected to blame police for sloppy work all along the investigation.
"There's been so many attacks on the lack of professionalism of the police, that this gives a chance to show that the police went about things very methodically and very competently," said UCSF law professor Robert Talbot..........
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Cops found blood stains in Peterson's truck
No mention of whose it might have been, however
Cops found blood stains in Peterson's truck
No mention of whose it might have been, however
By Diana Walsh and Stacy Finz, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
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Police who searched Scott Peterson's pickup truck after his wife disappeared found several stains that they suspected were blood, a detective testified today at Peterson's double-murder trial.
Modesto police Detective Henry Dodge Hendee said investigators found the stains during an extensive forensic search of the truck three days after Peterson's wife, Laci Peterson, was reported missing Dec. 24, 2002. Hendee said the stains were located on the driver's side door, the steering wheel and the tool box.
Hendee, who was responsible for collecting evidence from the truck, testified that some of the stains tested positive for blood, but did not say which. He also did not say whose blood the stains may have matched......
Evidence given in Peterson case
Detective testifies hair was found
Evidence given in Peterson case
Detective testifies hair was found
By Brian Skoloff, Associated Press | July 14, 2004
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Prosecutors yesterday presented their first piece of physical evidence in Scott Peterson's murder trial -- a single strand of dark hair found on a pair of pliers and believed to be from his pregnant wife.
Detective Henry Hendee testified that he noticed the hair while collecting items from the warehouse where Peterson stored a 14-foot boat.
During Peterson's preliminary hearing, specialists testified that a DNA analysis indicated that the hair probably came from Laci Peterson, but the defense has not conceded that point.
Prosecutors say Peterson killed his wife in their Modesto home around Dec. 24, 2002, trucked the body to San Francisco Bay in a large tool box, and dropped it overboard from the boat.......
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Thief seen conning Peterson neighbors in days before Laci's disappearance
Richard Alex Jacobs
Thief seen conning Peterson neighbors in days before Laci's disappearance
(Court TV) — A petty career criminal was seen harassing neighbors of Laci and Scott Peterson around the time she disappeared, according to documents obtained by Court TV's Catherine Crier.
Richard Alex Jacobs — whose rap sheet for drugs, theft and fraud dates back to 1977 — was conning residents in the Petersons' Modesto, Calif., neighborhood on Dec. 23 and 24, 2002, the day Laci disappeared, according to police reports.
Jacobs allegedly knocked on the doors of two Peterson neighbors claiming he was stranded and in search of gas money.
The small-time con was one in a string of petty crimes that took place in the area of generally well-to-do families around the time of the 27-year-old's disappearance. Police discovered her remains and those of her unborn son, whom she planned to name Conner, in April 2003 in the San Francisco Bay..........
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Jury told of weights, hair, blood spots
Jury told of weights, hair, blood spots
By GARTH STAPLEY
and JOHN COTÉ
BEE STAFF WRITERS
Last Updated: July 14, 2004, 05:00:23 AM PDT
REDWOOD CITY -- Testimony in Scott Peterson's double-murder trial centered Tuesday on collection of crucial evidence: blood, hair and concrete.
The blood, jurors already had been told, came from the defendant and not his pregnant wife, murder victim Laci Peterson; the hair might have been hers; and authorities suggested her husband forgot to clean up after making concrete weights to sink her body in San Francisco Bay.
Today, Peterson's lead attorney, Mark Geragos, is expected to ask the judge to dismiss the charges against the 31-year-old Modesto man because of what the defense contends are prosecution errors. Jurors, unaware of the likely battle that will take place outside their presence, were told to show up after lunch.
Central to Modesto police Detective Dodge Hendee's testi- mony Tuesday was his account of collecting samples from dark spots in Peterson's Ford F-150 pickup soon after Laci Peterson was reported missing on Christmas Eve 2002. He thought the spots might be blood, he said.......
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20 disciplined for falsifying survey
20 disciplined for falsifying survey
By MELANIE TURNER
BEE STAFF WRITER
Last Updated: July 14, 2004, 05:00:23 AM PDT
Twenty students in a criminal justice course at California State Univers-ity, Stanislaus, cheated on a survey related to Scott Peterson's double-murder trial, school investigators have found.
All 20 have been disciplined. Five others hired lawyers and so far have refused to talk to Jim Klein, interim dean of the College of Arts, Letters and Sci-ences, said Stacey Morgan-Foster, vice president for student affairs.
In all, there were 58 students in the fall 2003 course taught by Professor Stephen Schoenthaler.
A survey conducted in Schoenthaler's class showed that bias against Peterson, accused of killing his wife and unborn son, was significantly higher around Modesto than in the Bay Area and Southern California. The survey was a factor in a judge's decision to move the trial to San Mateo County..........
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(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Nobody messes with our Devil!
Thanks, Rusty!! I appreciate it!
I just wish everyone who doesn't follow this case would believe that we are here not to "get" Scott. Why on earth would we have had it in for an obscure manure salesman whom none of us have ever met??? It's not our fault if following the evidence has kept us "close" to Scott all these months!
LOL!!!
Think of it this way. You're trying to analyze a complicated criminal novel based on the Hollywood cartoon version video release. The THs are useless entertainment, go to prelim and trial transcripts, evidence photos, archived articles and videos of conflicting statements by SP.
"Maybe he was somehow trying to make it look like Amy was implicated in Laci's murder."
I think he did imply that as a possibility which really made my skin crawl. Can you imagine losing your sister in such a horrific manner and then having some creepy defense attorney imply that you killed her for money? I know we need defense attorneys for our system to work but I'm sure glad I don't have to do it.
I was reading a discussion of calcification, over on that other site. About the little round stones the med examiner found attached to the threads of her pants.
They said if you take calcium carbonate (which is the main ingredient of limestone, if I read correctly), add to it some sort of bacteria, plus water, and then ionize it, you get mineral deposits--like the little stones.
I am extremely ignorant about stuff like ionization, but it's my understanding that sea water is a good place for this process to occur.
Limestone? Calcium carbonate? And where might such substances have come from, and why would they be on Laci's body? Ahem.
Suppose he laid Laci's body on a tarp or something, then sprinkled a lot of dry cement powder on it, with emphasis on the crotch area (can't have that area being free... the baby). Then suppose he wrapped her up really well. Then suppose he took the package out to Brooks island, as you said. He might have taken her out there during the night. Suppose he then submerged her (using the cement anchors to keep her down?) under that old pier, which is very big looking, but making some sort of provision to allow water to seep slowly into the "package"? Then suppose he came back the next day on his "fishing" trip, cut her loose from under the pier, towed her back into the Bay, and sank her?
After staying hours in the water under the pier, with cement powder covering her, the powder would have combined with the water to produce the hard, heavy cement. She would then have been very heavy--especially if the greater part of a 90-lb. bag of cement had been sealed up with her in the "package" (but not sealed so tightly that water couldn't seep in.) He could've used the missing life preserver to keep her just enough afloat to be towed.
Or would he have had to first pull her up from the hiding place under the pier and dry her out a little, to allow the cement to harden? Quick-drying cement wouldn't take that long to harden. I read somewhere it could take well under an hour.
Then Laci would've been at the bottom of the Bay wearing a cement overcoat. This, and the tarp or shrink-wrap she was wrapped in, would slowly have worn away, through being buffeted about by the powerful currents over the period of 4 months. There may have been less cement dried over the TOP of her pregnant belly b/c it didn't occur to him that the baby could escape out that end. He'd have concentrated on securing her crotch area.
Incidentally, I remember hearing that on Monday there was testimony that a length of rope was found during one of the dives. I can't recall the length--might've been 33 feet?
At least this gives an alternative explanation as to why he so "generously" and casually invited Amy over that evening. It sort of neutralizes the idea of "if he had this big murder plan, why would he want Amy around".
The other possibility I've considered is that maybe it was actually Laci who first came up with the idea of Amy joining them for pizza, and perhaps Scott (playing it cool) chimed in with, "Yeah, come on over!" Amy doesn't seem to have that great a memory, and Laci isn't here to speak for herself, so it could've happened that way.
Oh, and as a footnote to my post above: regarding her arms, legs, and head, perhaps those things which stick out didn't get encased the way her torso did. Or if those limbs and head did have cement on them, it would still have chipped away more quickly from the motion of the water. This would then leave her arms, legs, and head especially vulnerable to feeding by sea animals of all kinds.
criminal novel = crime novel. We don't allow no stinkin' illegal books here.
Well, your idea about Brooks Island fits in with the fact that he described the place well during, I think, one of his earlier interviews with police.
I hope they hurry up and stop "proving a negative" and get down to analysis results, as you said.
And that thing about the baby having meconium--to me and to many of us that was SO dispositive of Geragos' b.s. of her being "held hostage". It just blows it out of the water, and blows out of the water the idea that the baby lived outside the womb.
So, given that, I am anxious to see an expert from the state get up there and make that point about the MECONIUM!!!
Terri Schiavo and Laci Peterson have something in common. I realize that Scott hasn't been convicted in a court of law, but the circumstancial evidence and the lies cannot be ignored. He is of the same ilk as Michael Schiavo.
Most of the trolls here on FR come from DU type websites, however there is a different breed of troll out there, also. I can believe Felonious paid those particular ones.
Shrink wrap?! Wouldn't he want the body to decompose ASAP?
True. It's just that it seems to me that shrink wrap might keep that messy blood/fluids from getting on anything. And there is that persistent report that some substance, possibly a trace of plastic, was found on the hair in the pliers.
If, as I speculated, he wrapped her up and poured in dry cement powder on top of her, then whatever he wrapped her in, he'd have had to make some holes in it to let the water seep in and mix with the cement to form concrete.
She would then have been very heavy--especially if the greater part of a 90-lb. bag of cement had been sealed up with her in the "package" (but not sealed so tightly that water couldn't seep in.) He could've used the missing life preserver to keep her just enough afloat to be towed.
OMG OMG what an excellent theory devil....I have always believed in 2 trip theory
I can believe Felonious paid those particular ones.
Spooted owl you just solved the Laci murder..Felos did it and all he had to do was think about it and it happened..ROFLMAO
oops not spootedowl but spottedowl
You Know, I've been thinking about this, and all along, I've been one to think he did tow her with the vest, however...I can see, if she was wrapped tightly, there would be some leverage. With leverage, there come ease of lifting. Wouldn't it make sense for him to tip out the bow of the boat, counter balancing the weight of the motor? He would be seated, and basically sliding her over the bow, IF she was wrapped and not all lose as MG likes to have people suppose. Well, I go back to the chicken wire, wondering about that, and I also think about the shrink wrap he had in his warehouse. You wrap a body (anything) in that enough times and it become quite stiff.
Think about this: What if he actually placed her in the boat and positioned her in the warehouse, then duck-taped her for THAT reason...not to keep the baby from being born, but to keep her below the boat line so he could shrink-wrap her?
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