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Posted on Tue, Apr. 15, 2003
Woman, baby taken from Bay Investigators pursue Laci Peterson angle, a police source says
By Brian Anderson and Karl Fischer
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Hoping to solve a mystery that has gripped a San Joaquin Valley town and the nation, investigators looking into the disappearance of Laci Peterson began focusing Monday on the grisly discovery of a pregnant woman and a baby.
The findings of the badly decomposed bodies of a petite female Monday and a fully developed male infant Sunday along the muddy Contra Costa bayshore has reinvigorated an investigation stunted by months of dead ends.
Peterson, 27, has been missing for the better part of four months, vanishing Christmas Eve from her Modesto home while her husband was fishing the San Francisco Bay waters off Brooks Island, authorities said.
She was eight months pregnant then, expecting a son that she and her husband planned to name Connor.
Law enforcement sources told the Times that investigators are focusing on maternity undergarments found on the woman's headless, legless body.
Someone walking through Richmond's Point Isabel Park dialed 911 at 11:43 a.m. to report the discovery of the remains.
The woman, found front-side down at the water line had been in the Bay for longer than a few days, said Chief Norman Lapera of the East Bay Regional Park District police.
Some flesh was visible to investigators, but little more than human bone remained, Lapera said.
Contra Costa sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee disputed that maternity clothing was found on the body.
There was only a standard woman's bra, Lee said.
Investigators have not identified the remains but are pursuing the Peterson angle, a police source said. "We don't know for sure," the source said.
The find came just hours after storm-driven waves washed the infant ashore a mile northwest of the woman, officials said.
A Richmond Fire Department official said Monday that the umbilical cord was still attached. The body was that of a boy, the official said.
Richmond police and fire officials responded about 4:45 p.m. Sunday to a call from a dog-walker who found the tiny body along a trail near the Richmond marina.
"Right now we're just trying to determine what the cause of death is, how long the child has been in the water and how long it had been up on land," said Richmond police spokesman Sgt. Enos Johnson. "We've had some high tides recently with the stormy weather, and believe that it washed ashore."
It was not clear Monday if the woman's body or that of the baby were in different stages of decomposition.
Authorities have not linked the two. It is possible for a pregnant woman's baby to be found relatively intact and separated from the mother a few months after the woman's death, forensic scientists said.
A phenomenon known as "coffin birth" causes gas from the decomposing mother to expel the baby, said Dr. Patrick Besant-Matthews, a former coroner in Seattle; Anchorage, Alaska; New Orleans and Dallas.
"Babies generally are fairly sterilized when they're inside the mom, so very often babies don't decompose in the same way as an adult," he said.
Variations in San Francisco Bay could make it difficult to tell by a body's appearance if it had been underwater for one month or four, said Herb Hawley, administrator of the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office.
"It all depends on the water temperature, where they are, whether the marine life got to the person," Hawley said.
Local authorities found the discovery of the baby boy suspicious enough to notify Modesto investigators Sunday. A park district police helicopter whisked five Modesto investigators to the scene about 3:30 p.m. Monday after getting word of the woman's body.
The remains were taken to the coroner's office in Martinez, where officials said they were expediting the autopsy.
Modesto investigators witnessed Monday night's autopsy, Lee said. Positive identification of the bodies is not expected for several days. Genetic testing will be used in the process, Lee said.

"We're testing first to determine the identification of the body," he said. "But we're also testing to determine whether the two bodies, the one found today and the one found yesterday by the Richmond Police Department, are related."

Modesto police said they have not connected the body in Richmond with their search for Peterson and would not comment on the East Bay case.
"It's not our jurisdiction," Modesto police Detective Doug Ridenour said.
But a source involved in the local investigation said they were previously told about two possible connections Scott Peterson, 30, has to Brooks Island, a short distance from where the woman's body was discovered.
The source said that title information for property on the island was discovered on a home computer seized in a search of the couple's house. A judge has ordered search warrants related to the case to remain sealed.
Scott Peterson told detectives that he had been fishing the waters off Brooks Island the day he last saw his wife alive.
Authorities used sonar to comb the Bay floor in March but turned up nothing related to the investigation.
While public suspicions have focused on Scott Peterson, police have said they do not have evidence to arrest the man.
Much of the ire Peterson has drawn from the public has to do with an affair he had with Amber Frey of Fresno. Less than a month after Laci Peterson disappeared, her family withdrew their support of her husband after Frey disclosed her relationship with Scott Peterson.
Peterson could not be reached for comment.
He told ABC News in January that he did not kill his pregnant wife and that she knew about his relationship with Frey.
"I had absolutely nothing to do with her disappearance," Peterson said.
Police have not ruled him out as a suspect, they have said.

Scott Peterson's family has stood behind him, helping with his efforts to raise awareness of his missing wife.
News of the discoveries quickly spread after appearing on the Times' Web site.
Television news trucks loaded with reporters filled a Point Isabel parking lot that had been cleared of members of the public earlier in the day.

In Modesto, a sense of uncertainty carried through Peterson's working-class, tree-shaded neighborhood. "I just want the family to be able to put her to rest," said Shannon Barnes, 29, while walking her pit bull

answers some of yesterday's postings...

But a source involved in the local investigation said they were previously told about two possible connections Scott Peterson, 30, has to Brooks Island, a short distance from where the woman's body was discovered. The source said that title information for property on the island was discovered on a home computer seized in a search of the couple's house.

Probably the reason they were diving there so much.

But a source involved in the local investigation said they were previously told about two possible connections Scott Peterson, 30, has to Brooks Island, a short distance from where the woman's body was discovered. The source said that title information for property on the island was discovered on a home computer seized in a search of the couple's house

This is the first I have read of this.

Apparently Scott Peterson owns property on Brooks Island.