DENNIS ROCHA
"We'll never be the same."
Posted on 04/30/2003 2:29:30 AM PDT by runningbear
Attorney general's life in fast lane since marriage, TV appearances
Attorney general's life in fast lane since marriage, TV appearances
Tim Hearden
Record Searchlight
April 29, 2003 — 2:12 a.m. RED BLUFF — At one moment, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer was getting married before a small gathering in the San Francisco Bay area.
Three hours later, he was in front of a bevy of cameras and microphones talking about a major break in the high-profile Laci Peterson murder case.
Since April 18, Lockyer's life has been a seemingly continuous string of media interviews and appearances on TV shows such as CNN's "Larry King Live" and ABC's "Primetime Live."
While Lockyer has drawn some criticism for his high profile since the arrest of Modesto suspect Scott Peterson, Lockyer says he's just doing his job.
"I like to do that (talk to media) because it makes Department of Justice programs more visible," he said Monday during a visit to the north state to meet with top law enforcement officials.
Lockyer, 61, married Santa Ana civil rights attorney Nadia Maria Davis, 31. Lockyer was married twice before and had been divorced for more than 20 years.
Davis, who had never married, was a school board member from 1998-2002 who met Lockyer during Democratic Party activities. The couple is expecting a baby late this summer.
The couple's small family wedding began at 2:30 p.m. Three hours later, Lockyer got word that the Department of Justice's DNA lab had confirmed the deaths of Laci Peterson and her infant son.
Lockyer raised some eyebrows when he rushed from his wedding reception to a nationally televised press conference to discuss the findings. But he said Monday he had warned his wife the confirmation could come any day.
"My new bride is actually very political," Lockyer said. "She thought it was kind of fun to run off and go . . . to have our press conference."
The interviews have not been without controversy. Lockyer's reference to the case as "a slam dunk" drew bitter criticism from Peterson's mother, according to published reports.
The attorney general said he doesn't believe the media hype over the case will end up harming Scott Peterson's ability to get a fair trial.
"If you want somebody who didn't hear about it at all, you'd have to go to Mars or something," he said. "You just want to find people who are open-minded."
Reporter Tim Hearden can be reached at 225-8224 or at thearden@redding.com.
Petersons Hired Psychic
The family of Scott Peterson hired a psychic shortly after Laci was reported missing on Christmas Eve.
In an exclusive interview with Good Morning America, Noreen Renier spoke with Diane Sawyer about what she saw, "Immediately, I saw her in the house and I saw her hit over the head, then I saw her fall. I knew a rug, or some sort of wrap, was missing from the house. And also, the item that hit her over the head."
In response to skeptics, Renier said she sees pictures in her head. She said she saw a large bay or ocean that she couldn't locate, but claims to have accurately described the nearby park, bridge, and roads.
Renier said Scott Peterson supplied her with Laci's belongings, such as a sweatshirt, tennis shoe, and envelopes.
In phone conversations with Renier, she said Scott said very little and never asked any questions. Renier says she reported all of her psychic findings to the Modesto police.
A Good Catch?
Even as Scott Peterson sits in jail awaiting trial for the murder of his wife Laci and their unborn son, some women apparently still think he's a "good catch."
Newsweek reports Scott is getting letters from women who believe he's innocent.
Body Located Earlier?
Modesto police are disputing a claim made by a sonar expert that searchers located Laci's body weeks before it washed ashore.
The sergeant in charge of the search told the Modesto Bee he doesn't think the object they spotted was Laci's body.
Peterson Memorial
A special memorial service for Laci and her unborn son, Connor, will be held on Laci's birthday, Sunday, May 4th. It will take place at 3:00pm at the First Baptist Church at 1410 Twelfth Street in Modesto.
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
LACI'S DAD WEEPS EVERY DAY FOR HER
DENNIS ROCHA
"We'll never be the same."
LACI'S DAD WEEPS EVERY DAY FOR HER
By JEANE MacINTOSH
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 30, 2003 -- As the family of murdered mom-to-be Laci Peterson prepares to commemorate what would have been her 28th birthday Sunday with a public memorial service, her father says his days are filled with tears and the painful reality of her absence.
"We'll never be the same without Laci," grieving dad Dennis Rocha said yesterday. "It took a big chunk out of us. There is a big hole left there now."
In his first interview since the remains of his daughter and her unborn son were found washed off San Francisco Bay earlier this month, Rocha, a soft-spoken Modesto, Calif., rancher, told San Diego's NBC affiliate he cries three or four times a day.
The thought that Laci's husband, Scott Peterson, may have killed her, Rocha said, makes him angry and "sick to my stomach."
He is haunted by thoughts of his murdered, 8-months-pregnant daughter and his unborn grandson, who was to have been named Connor.
Laci, he said, was a daddy's girl with a sunny personality and bright smile who spent her earliest years growing up on his ranch.
"She was just the way she looked [in pictures]: nice, beautiful, perfect," Rocha recalled.
Laci's mother, Sharon, and stepfather, Ron Grantski, were to meet yesterday with officials at Modesto's First Baptist Church to plan the memorial. Paul Zeek, executive pastor at the church, said a video tribute would be part of the event.
Laci was reported missing by her husband last Christmas Eve. The bodies of her and her unborn son washed up on April 13 and 14. Less than a week after the bodies were discovered, Scott Peterson - who had admitted cheating on Laci - was charged with their murders.
Inmates are sometimes given permission to attend funerals or memorials. But officials said it wasn't known if Peterson had asked to be let out to attend Laci's.
Laci Peterson's unborn child becomes pawn in abortion debate
Posted 4/29/2003 6:17 PM
Laci Peterson's unborn child becomes pawn in abortion debate
By Susan Estrich
The Peterson case, as with many in the past, has nothing to do with abortion.
Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant when she disappeared on Christmas Eve. When her body and that of her unborn son washed ashore in San Francisco Bay recently, it ended the mystery of her disappearance and led to the arrest of her husband, Scott, who has pleaded innocent to the charges.
As outraged as we all are about the murders, in almost half of the states no law governs the killing of a fetus. If two bodies washed ashore in one of these states, the murderer might be prosecuted only for a single death. If a woman in the late stages of pregnancy were assaulted and only her child was killed, the attacker might not be prosecuted for murder at all.
Why don't more states support appropriate fetal homicide laws? One reason is that every time a fetus is killed, the debate over implementing such laws gets mired in the abortion issue. In this instance, that debate should be irrelevant — but, of course, forces on both sides of the abortion issue already are weighing in on the Peterson case.
Americans United for Life has said the case underscores the need for other states to enact laws that would clearly criminalize the killing of a fetus. On the other side, the president of a New Jersey chapter of the National Organization for Women said the case highlighted the dangers to abortion rights when the killing of a fetus is treated as murder.
But the Peterson case, as with many in the past, has nothing to do with abortion. For one thing, fetal homicide laws make clear exclusions for legal abortions.
The law in California, where Scott Peterson would be tried, is a good example. In 1970, a divided California Supreme Court held that a man who attacked his pregnant former wife — saying, "I hear you're pregnant. ... I'm going to stomp it out of you" — could not be prosecuted for murder after the baby was delivered stillborn. The court determined that even though the woman was eight months pregnant, and her former husband clearly intended to cause death, the fetus she carried could not be considered a "human being" within the legal provision defining murder as the "unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought."
Fortunately, the public outcry after that decision led to a state murder law that covers the killing of a fetus. The law also provides a specific exception for voluntary abortions.
Nor is viability of the fetus an issue in the Peterson case. In California, if a fetus is "beyond the embryonic state of seven to eight weeks," it is covered by the state's murder law. If, as the state has suggested, Scott Peterson killed his pregnant wife, he surely knew in doing so that he was taking two lives. In fact, what has made the death of Laci Peterson front-page news is precisely the fact that she was in the late stages of pregnancy when she disappeared. What makes her husband's actions, if true, particularly heinous is the idea that he would kill his own unborn baby.
States with fetal homicide laws, however, do have varying definitions of when their laws apply. Arguments over viability have led to the defeat of fetus homicide laws in 15 states in recent years, according to news reports. A related objection to these fetal murder laws is the claim that they are intended to undermine the right to abortion by establishing a legal concept that a fetus is a human being. This is a major reason why Congress has not passed a federal fetal homicide law.
Given that murder is in almost all cases a state crime, it is fair to ask why a federal feticide law is necessary at all, unless its purpose is to confuse the abortion issue. If the real goal is to protect unborn children, the easy compromise is enhanced penalties for attacks on pregnant women. That skirts the whole abortion debate that arises when defining when a fetus becomes a human being.
Conner Peterson didn't live long enough to be born, but he had a right to live, and his death should be punished. He doesn't deserve, however, to be used to score points in a debate that should have nothing to do with this case. The least we can do to honor Laci and Conner Peterson's memories is to not use them as pawns in a politicized debate over abortion.
Susan Estrich is a syndicated columnist and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
Another Amber Alert from Modesto PD yesterday.
Modesto PD Searching for Missing Girl
Posted: April 29, 2003 at 1:46 p.m.
MODESTO (AP) -- Modesto police are asking the public to help find a 13-year-old girl who may have been abducted from her aunt's house.
Sergeant Chris Fuzie says Maria Rodriguez disappeared between midnight and 4 a-m. Also missing from the home is Regino Bautista, a 40-year-old man who was staying at the home.
Maria and her sister were headed from Mexico to Seattle to visit other relatives when they stopped in Modesto.
The family says Bautista took the girl, but police say it's possible she went willingly. All of their belongings were gone.
SMARTS WILL SEE ‘AMBER' GO NATIONAL
By DEBORAH ORIN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 30, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - The family of Elizabeth Smart - the angelic kidnapped teen who stole America's heart - is coming to the White House today to see President Bush sign the new national "Amber Alert" bill to help find abducted kids.
Her dad, Ed Smart, passionately pleaded for Congress to pass the bill to help find other kids so they don't face what he's called "nine months of hell" for his daughter, now 15, before she was spotted with accused kidnappers Brian Mitchell and Wanda Barzee.
"All of the children out there deserve to come home to their parents the way - the way Elizabeth has come back to us," Smart said, fighting back tears right after his daughter's rescue in a Salt Lake City suburb not far from her home.
Snip it....
IIIITTTTT'SSS CCCCCCOOLLLDD INNNN HHEEERRREE!!!
Dang - Susan Ostrich gets it.
Wonder if the family of Amber Hagerman will be present? The communities in and around Arlington and Dallas, Texas should be singled out for praise, also, in devising this system.
The Origin of the Amber Plan
The AMBER Plan was created in 1996 as a powerful legacy to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, a bright little girl who was kidnapped and brutally murdered while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas. The tragedy shocked and outraged the entire community. Residents contacted radio stations in the Dallas area and suggested they broadcast special “alerts” over the airwaves so that they could help prevent such incidents in the future. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(I just changed the font color..learned it on the html cheatsheet)
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