Alameda County personnel return from the search on San Francisco Bay near the Berkeley Marina on Thursday.
Posted on 01/10/2003 5:29:03 AM PST by runningbear
Alameda County personnel return from the search on San Francisco Bay near the Berkeley Marina on Thursday.
A Christmas tree lies discarded in front of the Peterson house in Modesto's La Loma area Thursday.
AL GOLUB/THE BEE
Object spied in bay
January 10, 2003 Posted: 04:55:08 AM PST
By PATRICK GIBLIN and JOHN COTÉ
The Laci Peterson investigation turned grim Thursday with the discovery of one body and possibly another in San Francisco Bay.
Authorities pulled only one body from the water, and it was not Peterson's, Modesto police quickly determined.
Then, at 6:30 p.m., police announced that a sonar device had detected what might be another body in the area of the Berkeley Marina.
Police said divers would attempt to retrieve the mystery object on Saturday, when better weather is forecast and after fatigued divers have had a chance to rest.
The sonar equipment is on loan from the San Mateo County Sheriff's Department.
"The guy from San Mateo said there's a 50-50 chance that it is a body," said Sgt. Ron Cloward, the Modesto officer who is in charge of the search. "The divers tried to get to it today, and they said the current was bad and the weather was bad."
Peterson, 27 and more than eight months pregnant, has been missing since Christmas Eve. Her husband, Scott, 30, reported that he last saw her at 9:30 a.m. that day as he left for a fishing trip out of the Berkeley Marina and she prepared to go for a walk with their dog.
Police extended their search to San Francisco Bay last Saturday, using specially trained dogs that can pick up scents off water. The search area stretched from the marina northwest to Brooks Island, where Peterson said he went fishing.
Cloward said officers pulled a tarp from the bay, and he said the tarp was "nothing significant." Two days later, police spokesman Doug Ridenour said searchers felt that the tarp "was suspicious enough to take and have a look at."
Ridenour added that Modesto detectives would evaluate the tarp.
Searchers returned to the marina Wednesday and Thursday after San Mateo County offered the use of its side scanner sonar device, Cloward said.
"The sonar puts a digital image on a viewing screen and allows us to see the shapes of objects," he said. "It can identify tires up to 300 feet underwater."
Authorities said they had not ruled out Scott Peterson as a suspect in his wife's disappearance, and have asked anyone who saw him in his truck or boat from Dec. 22 through Christmas Eve to call police.
A day filled with rumors
Police offered no information about the body pulled from the bay, except to say that the remains had nothing to do with the Peterson case.
Officials also spent part of Thursday discounting a connection between the Peterson case and a body discovered in Tuol-umne County.
Sheriff's deputies there said the body turned up in the rubble of a house fire, and authorities quickly identified the victim as a 46-year-old woman who lived in the home.
At 2:30 p.m., police opened what they called their last regular press conference on the Peterson case.
"We have run out of things to tell you," Detective Ridenour said. "We don't have any significant leads that would put us in one direction or another."
(Excerpt) Read more at modestobee.com ...
Any stories on whether the husband has taken a lie detector test?
Here is NBC, KCRA from Sacramento
KCRA
Acting concerned is easy, especially if things were planned. There's no way the husband can be ruled out, he was the last to see her.
At this moment, I doubt the body [if it IS one] in the Bay has anything to do with this case.
I believe there is a 28% chance that Scott killed his wife, inadvertently, in some kind of struggle at the home.
I now say THERE IS A 55% CHANCE that this crime was committed by someone that Laci knew, probably well enough to get into his car under her own power. It has not been my intention to try to impugn her moral character by suggesting she had a relationship with this person since her marriage; I was only trying to explain how she could have got into the car! Dog too probably got in! This would have taken place very soon after Scott left the house.
At this time I will assign only a 17% to a stranger perp, of whatever nature whether having to do with burglars or not. Stranger perps do not hide bodies this well as a rule...remember what we said on Condit/Levy, where IUWRC I was right all along...
for those interested in what the weather conditions were that week Laci became missing.
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