Posted on 08/17/2004 5:31:58 AM PDT by runningbear
August 17, 2004 -- REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Stunning new phone tapes from Scott Peterson's slay trial yesterday depicted his miffed mistress demanding to know if he slept with wife Laci the night before she vanished — and Peterson insisting he told Laci about their affair after their first date.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I see her as a Trophy Girl who didn't have the ruthless opportunism to be very good at it. She wasn't tough enough. Too needy, too sentimental to adjust to the fact that Trophy Girls will be bought and discarded by opportunistic men.
That is a very plausible scenario and no doubt exactly how the prosecution sees it. It's just a matter of proving it now to the jury in a sufficient way and at this point I'm not convinced they have, though there's still time to go yet.
There's a really comical place, in which Scott reads another poem to Amber. It is by some poet named Belloc, and it goes sort of like this, How was the party in Portland Square? I do not know, Juliet was not there; What of Lady [Somebody's] tea? Juliet stood by me, I did not see.
Well, what girl could fail to be moved?
Amber indicates that she doesn't see what he's driving at. So he says he's comparing her to the Juliet of the poem. So then he starts over, reciting, so she can hear it again. He says, "How was the party in Portland Square?" And Amber says, "Okay. Portland Square. Got it."
Scott pauses and says, "No, Amber, Portland Square's not important, it's that he can't be happy unless he is in Juliet's presence." (paraphrasing) Then, feeling that he needs to explain still further, he says something like, "Okay. Two guys are talking. Let's say John is talking to Jim. Now, John is in love with Juliet..."
Amber is still unmoved after the explanation.
So Scott decides to move on to something she knows. He starts talking about the book of Matthew, which she had quoted to him previously. He tells her he has been reading up on it. They end up talking about "the seed". At one point, Amber speaks of the seed which the sower drops on the rocky soil--it puts down roots which are shallow, and "it burns up." At this point I really thought Scott might interject a comment about some chicken he had burned...
Then he compares himself to the sower, and says he wants to get it right this time, that he wants to sow the seed in the fertile soil. HMMMM!!!! Does that mean he previously "sowed the seed" in the "wrong soil"?
In the 2nd Jan. 12 call, Scott says something weird on about pg. 30. He says, "I saw you in the mirror the other day." He tells Amber he saw her in the mirror, wearing a red sweater. Amber replies that in fact, on that very day, she had been standing in front of HER mirror, holding the red sweater up to see how it would look on her. Weird.
It is also revealed that one evening, Scott called Amber and couldn't reach her. So he called Shawn Sibley and asked her if there was anything wrong with Amber. Sounds to me like he's a little possessive of Amber.
And Scott again refers to the Covena house, and still does not claim ownership of it. He says, "I was at that house the other day, the house Laci disappeared from." Something like that. Amber replies, in essence, that she knows darn well that that house was the home of Scott and Laci Peterson. Yet Scott continues to refer to the house as "that house". He also refers to his warehouse as "the warehouse in Modesto".
Sounded like Scott was scared to death that Amber would show up at his door in Modesto. Right in the midst of all the uproar, and with the media standing by.
"I hope that you ... are not, um ... involved to any degree and ..."
This guy is pretty slick if he knew!
Scott wanted to totally detach, separate himself from Laci"the girl he was married to", the baby, "her" baby...his home with Laci"the house", " that house"..the business where he had only reached 23% of his sales quota.
He wanted his fantasy life..world traveller,bon vivant, multiple homes, holidays fishing in Alaska and hunting from Kennebunkport..
As to his vision of Amber..Recall his sign to the volunteers about telling Laci and he thought she heard about their efforts?..(He identified himself only as Laci's husband, not Scott Peterson.)..Weird indeed.
Yes! I thought of that sign, too!
But that sort of weakens my own interpretation of the sign. He phrased it a certain way, I thought, b/c he knew Laci was dead. But here we have him talking to/about Amber, the same way. But Amber's not dead. Yipes--did he have plans for Amber, too??
Translator's note: I think we can safely assume that when Scott says "everyone" or "everybody" he means "I". He talks about how "everyone who knows Amber" wants to be with her, not separated from her.
You mean Napolitano? Sometimes I find his conclusions a little odd. I think the tapes were already okayed, not that Geragos wouldn't try to get them thrown out again.
Never mind looking for affairs--this guy spent nearly every waking hour on the phone!
When I saw the title, I was expecting something about Scott Ritter. I see now that I was mistaken.
Napolitano does not know this case, has not kept up with the pretrial, motions or facts of this case...He should not even comment.My opinion and observations.
But did any of those men have their wives turn up dead a few yards from where they went "fishing"? That is the question that I'd ponder if I were sitting on the jury.
Well, I think during the discovery stage, Geragos had a chance then to protest the tapes. Evidentially, the judge kept them in.
Geragos has heard these tapes even before the trial started, I am sure.
"There are lots of scumbags that never kill. This is not nearly enough to get Peterson convicted."
Good thoughtful post & I think most of us agree that the tapes alone are not enough to justify a conviction (although they are definately important). It's the tapes PLUS other pieces of evidence that may be enough. That's the nature of a circumstantial case. Court watchers and commentators minimize each day's evidence in a similar way - "this piece of evidence is not enough to convict". It has to be added together (like the addition rule in probability theory). IMO the most damning piece is actually the location of the bodies. We have yet to hear from a wave & tide expert on this point. Another very strong piece is the timeline (they have his cell phone around his home at 10:08 and the dog was put back in the yard at around 10:18. Evidence of him moving on with his life before his wife was missing or dead (Amber is part of this) probably ranks #3 for me.
Oh, I love it. Now the Cardoza moron is saying that the prosecutors have played too many tapes, that they should have quit while they were ahead, b/c the tapes are starting to make Scott look like a "concerned, hopeful searcher".
Puh-leeze.
Of course, if the prosecution had stopped earlier, shill Cardoza would be pointing out how the tapes they didn't play absolutely prove Scott's innocence, but "the prosecution doesn't want the jury to hear THOSE."
I would hope that the jury knows about how such things as tapes are treated in these trials. It is standard operating procedure that, when one side wants to play something like a taped conversation or a taped statement, the other side will demand that if it's played, it must be played IN FULL.
I don't know that the jury would know this, though. I just hope that they would know that the prosecution would probably rather just play the zingers, and not drag them through every repetitive word.
Maybe that guy on the jury who has both an M.D. and a law degree might know about this custom. But then, who knows how much law (if any) he has practiced? Oh, well, he at least seems to take good notes. Heaven knows, he'd have learned to do THAT in all that schooling.
Right.
Laci and "her" baby stood in the way of his fantasy life of wealth and leisure and travel with his trophy blonde.
Would Amber have slept on the first date with a failed fertilizer salesman ?
I thought the whole "mirror" thing was very odd, and wondered if Scott was stalking or spying on Amber, and letting her know about it in an oblique way.
How many cell phones did Peterson have, three or four? He was probably burning up the internet too. It's a wonder the man had time to do any work.
Whoa! That's a thought.
If Scott's comment about the mirror was an indication of spying on Amber, if she didn't pick it up, I'll bet the police caught onto it!
The police feeding Frey questions to ask Peterson can be construed as an interogation. The police are on shaky ground here. It is going to be up to the judge, and eventually the SCOTUS, to sort through this one. The police have done this for years in trying to locate suspects, but I am unaware of any case where they tried to get evidence for prosecution in this manner. (This is different from a sting, in which the person on the other end is a sworn officer, not a private citizen.)
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