Slaying theories involve devil, Nazis, art

MODESTO - Nazi Low Riders named Dirty and Skeeter, an old Satanic cult called the Order of Lion, and bizarre paintings of decapitated women and floating fetuses. These are the latest surreal elements in the Laci Peterson murder case.

Who could have guessed that the death of this pregnant homemaker who watched ``Martha Stewart Living'' each morning and had a wine-of-the-month club membership would be intertwined with such seamy images?

But no theory, it seems, is too far-fetched for a case that feeds tabloid headlines and talk show debates. Two especially macabre scenarios have arisen as the Oct. 20 preliminary hearing approaches.

One centers on a jailhouse informant who passed a lie-detector test after claiming two gang thugs were hired to kill Peterson's wife. The other resurrects a decade-old quadruple homicide outside Modesto by devil worshipers who believed the purest sacrifice is the killing of a newborn baby.

One scenario could send Peterson to the death chamber. The other could set him free. Could either be true? Or has a thirst for the sensational spawned titillating tales when the reality may be something far simpler: a cheating husband killing his wife to be with his mistress?

The prosecution is expected to push that more simple theory when it lays out its case for the first time at Peterson's preliminary hearing in Modesto. But until then the focus has shifted to bald, tattooed gangsters and robe-clad Satanists.

It was only two weeks ago that Cory Carroll, a Fresno jail inmate, issued a startling statement: Scott Peterson used him to set up a murder-for-hire.

According to Carroll's lawyer, Frank Muna, it started in early November last year at a Fresno strip club called City Lights. After seeing Carroll's prison identification card when he paid for a drink, Peterson struck up a conversation. They spent the next several hours together watching the dancers, shooting pool and bar hopping.

``Scott mentioned he would like to buy his wife a new car for Christmas,'' but if he sold the old one he didn't think he would get much money for it, said Muna, who grew up in East San Jose. ``He asked my client if he knew anyone willing to steal the car so he could claim it on his insurance.''

Peterson offered him $300 to make an introduction, Muna said. A couple of weeks later, on Nov. 29, Carroll brought Peterson together with Dirty and Skeeter, members of the Nazi Low Riders, a notorious prison gang known for murder, extortion and drug running.

The foursome gathered at Best Budget motel, where Carroll lived and worked as a maintenance man, Muna said. There, Peterson made a far more sinister proposal.

``He solicited the two guys, Dirty and Skeeter, to get rid of his wife -- first to kidnap his wife, then to get rid of her,'' Muna said. ``My client didn't want any part of that so he left. He ran into Dirty and Skeeter a half-hour later, and they told my client they were going to take care of what Scott wanted.''

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Scott Peterson and his lover exchanged at least 37 telephone calls in the four weeks after she revealed their relationship at a Jan. 24 televised news conference, according to partial phone records. Authorities secretly taped their conversations for 3 1/2 weeks. Amber Frey's calls to the married man would continue for 15 days after the wiretaps stopped on Feb. 4, according to the records.

Whether Frey knew about the wiretaps -- or knew when they ended -- is not clear.

But the records suggest that Frey, who first contacted Modesto police on Dec. 30, cooperated with authorities. She appears to have regularly called Modesto police Detective Jon Buehler upon hanging up with Peterson, even after authorities stopped bugging his phones.

Peterson, 30, is charged with killing his wife, Laci, and their unborn son. Prosecutors believe Peterson pretended to know nothing about their deaths as thousands searched for the pregnant woman after she was reported missing Dec. 24. The bodies of mother and son were found in mid-April.

Though he had steadfastly denied Bee reports of the affair, Peterson reversed course in a half-dozen media interviews starting four days after Frey's Jan. 24 news conference. He admitted lying about his relationship with the 28-year-old massage therapist from Fresno, and said he had discussed it with his wife in early December. Frey has said she didn't know Peterson was married when they met Nov. 20.

The phone records show Peterson and Frey exchanged at least 76 calls over nine turbulent weeks that started nine days before Laci Peterson's disappearance. The calls stretched through the holidays, emotional news conferences, her birthday and the due date for Peterson's son before apparently ending Feb. 19.

On Feb. 10, Frey dialed Peterson's numbers four times -- and didn't call Buehler at all. The night before, the former lovers spoke for 34 minutes. Feb. 10 held significant events for both:

Friends and family of Laci Peterson prayed in East La Loma Park, which volunteers had searched many times. Peterson was at home that evening, a short walk from the park.

Nude photos of Frey taken four years earlier first hit some National Enquirer newsstands.

Frey has spoken privately about receiving seven calls from Peterson on Valentine's Day. Phone records show she called Peterson once that day as well, and again at 2:42 a.m. the following day. Frey didn't immediately report either call to Buehler.

Frey called Buehler's office phone, cell phone and home phone 191 times in a three-month stretch ending March 14, totaling more than 19 hours of conversation. Many of the calls came immediately after Frey's conversations with Peterson.

Frey and Buehler averaged nearly 16 calls and 1 1/2 hours of phone time per week.

Frey didn't call Peterson on Jan. 24. That evening, she stunned observers by going public with their relationship. The next day, they exchanged at least three calls.

The two spoke at least once on Jan. 27, the day Peterson taped his mea culpa for ABC's "Good Morning America." After the show aired the first segment of a two-part interview with Diane Sawyer the next day, Frey called Peterson's cell phone for a call that lasted 23 minutes.

Frey also phoned Sawyer's office on Feb. 22. An assistant to Sawyer said the show has been trying for months to book an interview with Frey, without success.

Though police reported no new developments Feb. 1, records show a flurry of calls that day between Frey and Peterson, and Frey and Buehler.

Frey called Peterson's number nine times on two of his cell phones and spoke for almost 90 minutes. She called Buehler 19 times the same day, with the calls lasting a total of 61 minutes.

She also placed two calls that morning to Melvin King, a former Fresno police lieutenant who operates a polygraph and private investigation service. King refused Friday to say why Frey called.

King popped onto the Peterson media scene two weeks ago in connection with another aspect of the case. At a lawyer's request, he gave a lie-detector test earlier in the month to a jail inmate who claims that before his arrest he heard Scott Peterson discussing a plot to kidnap Laci Peterson with two members of a vicious neo-Nazi gang.

In the nine weeks reflected in the partial phone records, Frey and Peterson totaled more than 8 1/2 hours in phone conversations -- an average of nearly one hour per week of phone time.

Frey, who has shunned interviews, had at least some contact with several media companies from mid-January through mid-March.

Records show that in addition to phoning ABC's Sawyer, she called CNN's Connie Chung, a Fox News affiliate in Santa Monica and Fortune magazine. She also placed five calls to People magazine.

Frey last called Peterson on Feb. 19 at 7:36 a.m., the second day of a two-day search by police of Peterson's home. Investigators carried out dozens of bags of items.

The day before, police drove Peterson's white Dodge pickup away and returned it several hours later. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer would later say that police used global positioning satellite devices in the case and were tracking Peterson's truck.

Prosecutors might have put out information in an attempt to induce Peterson into making damaging statements that the wiretaps would pick up, Assistant San Francisco District Attorney James Hammer has said.

A week after a judge approved wiretaps on two of Peterson's cell phones, The Bee reported Peterson was having an affair with an unknown woman. That day, Frey dialed Peterson's phones twice -- and called Bueh- ler seven times.

At some point in January, prosecutors also confronted Peterson with a rare pre-arrest plea offer: They would take a possible death penalty off the table if Peterson would lead investigators to the body.

"It's called tickling," Hammer said. "They are going to dangle the death penalty and see if he gets scared enough to say stupid things."

But information from the wiretaps appears to have been of limited value to prosecutors.

According to court documents, the district attorney's office had asked a judge to cut off the first wiretap early, saying "further progress in the investigation would not be gained through additional interception."

State law allows a wiretap to run for up to 30 days, but a judge can grant an extension.

Court documents show the first wiretap was approved on Jan. 10 and ran to Feb. 4, the day a car dealer gave Laci Peterson's Land Rover to her family. Scott Peterson had traded the vehicle in toward the purchase of the Dodge truck.

Also Feb. 4, Frey phoned Peterson at 9:20 p.m. and again at 10:02 p.m.; the second call lasted 15 minutes. She then phoned Bueh- ler and spoke for 23 minutes -- the last of four calls to the detective that day. At 11:19 p.m., she called Peterson back and spoke for two minutes........

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By John Coté and Garth Stapley
The Modesto Bee
(Published Sunday, October 5, 2003, 5:29 AM)

A Fresno attorney has been making the interview rounds with a story that his client has crucial information linking Scott Peterson to the murder of his wife and unborn son.

During the last two weeks Frank Muna has appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" and Fox News' "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren and been interviewed by the press about his version of the Laci and Conner Peterson deaths -- that they were victims of one of several contract kidnap and killing scenarios.

Little information has surfaced to corroborate his accounts, and questions about his motivation have been raised.

Muna repeatedly has said his client, Fresno jail inmate Cory Lee Carroll, is not asking for anything in return for the information.

But Muna was in contact with tabloid news outlets to sell Carroll's story, two sources said. Muna called that untrue.

According to the sources, Muna sought more than $75,000 for the story from The National Enquirer.

Enquirer Senior Editor Charlie Montgomery confirmed his publication pays for stories, but he would not comment on whether Muna had contacted them or sought payment.

Muna said Wednesday he had not shopped the story. He said tabloids contacted him after The Bee reported the story Sept. 20.

"The National Enquirer made the offer, and we turned it down," Muna said. "This sounds more like there is some law enforcement -- some third party -- trying to influence credibility. We don't have anything to sell. All the information we have has been released."

Muna's information has come in distinct batches. He first said his client arranged a meeting between Peterson and two neo-Nazi gang members to discuss stealing Laci Peterson's vehicle for insurance money, but the talk soon turned to kidnapping.

The next week, Muna added to that account, saying Carroll heard Scott Peterson arranging to pay the gang members, identified as "Dirty" and "Skeeter," $22,000 to abduct and murder his pregnant wife. To this date, "Dirty" and "Skeeter" have not been publicly identified.

Muna suggested Scott Peterson failed to pay the money after he came under intense police scrutiny, and Laci Peterson died while being held. The disgruntled kidnappers could have dumped the bodies where Peterson said he went fishing to implicate him, Muna said.

Credibility was lent to the original car theft story because Carroll passed a lie-detector test administered by a veteran Fresno investigator.

But polygraph tests are not admissible in court because they are unreliable, and other parts of the story remain uncorroborated.

The identities and whereabouts of people named as key players in the scenarios remain elusive.

Authorities are refusing to comment on Muna's information, citing a sweeping gag order imposed in the case...........

Just think Dev. The Michael Peterson case IMO was a lot harder to prove than the Scott Peterson case will be. Unless you get a much more Conservative type of jury in NC than in CA. However, I hope that CA will NEVER want to set another wife killer free again. The Simpson Jury and verdict was simply pathetic. They could have saved the State a heck of a lot of money by just letting the guy go. THAT Jury, from day one, was never going to convict Simpson. It obviously didn't matter what or how much evidence was presented.

Oh, believe me, CO, generally speaking, you would definitely get a more conservative jury in NC than in CA!

You know, OJ was a football pro who, at one point, said he was "chipping golf balls" as some sort of alibi for some time period, can't remember what it was. Scott was an almost-pro golfer; why didn't he say he was out tossing the football to pregnant Laci, and she tragically fell into the bay? (That would be about as believable as anything else he's said.)

Only Snott knows why he did and said the things which are so abnormal. Even his Defense Team is abnormal. When other Defense Lawyers start saying on national televison that a Lawyer is throwing his case, you know they are in trouble. Other than Pixley and Weintraub, I didn't hear too many Defense Lawyers backing Geragos. McAllister is just sort of there. He hardly ever says a word.

Preliminary may be delayed.Title,"NEWS:Peterson's Court Date?"
link
http://www.modbee.com/front/inbeetomorrow/story/7572427p-8481689c.htm
Scott Peterson’s defense team is expected to ask a judge to postpone his much-anticipated preliminary hearing on double-murder charges. The hearing is currently scheduled Oct. 20, but that might change.

Oh, NO!!!

NO!!!

If they postpone it again, we must all shave our heads like the Manson women did, and sit on the corner by Geragos' office, chanting!

There's only one person who will be even MORE disappointed than we will... (cackle, cackle, cackle!)

That's all bull. So that's the first known lie he's told...

Yep. This whole episode has a Matt Dalton stench to it. I was wondering how this Carroll guy could benefit the defense. Then I read the following.

It is also interesting that Dalton and Geragos parted ways at about the same time this story got launched.

I wouldn't put anything past Dalton, RG, so I agree, that's quite possible. But that concoction wouldn't get Scott off scot-free--not by a long, long, lonnnng, shot. In any scenario in which Scott hired someone to do something (even kidnap rather than kill) to his wife, he would still be looking at very serious consequences, and possiblelong jail time, IMO.

I believe that if some story were floated that Scott "only wanted it to be a kidnap plot, and didn't intend for her to be killed", Scott could still be held accountable for her murder.

And in any scenario where it's proved Scott hired someone to kill his wife, Scott would still be on the line for first-degree murder.

I can't really see Scott agreeing to any made-up fix that wouldn't paint him as being as pure as the driven snow, and wouldn't get him off FREE, period. And I don't think even Dalton cares as much about Scott as Scott does, so such things would only be done with Scott's approval.

Oh, well! Scott will be even more disappointed than we will! He still thinks they're going to show who the real killer is at the prelim, and that he'll be out in time to go back and see his relatives in Maine, and do more Tradecorp business in Europe, at Christmas!

(gack... retch...) Boy, they'd BETTER win this trial. Do you realize that if the prosecution loses this trial, we'll have to be subjected to seeing Scott on A&E or something, being interviewed by Bill Curtis, talking about "how devastating it is to be falsely accused"?

Rita Cosby said last Sunday 10-5,that she was going to discuss who gagged King. She never discussed it and in addition nothing more has been breathed about Cory Carroll or Frank Muna. Do you think the gag order now aplies to all aspects of this story?

Do you think the gag order now applies to all aspects of this story?

LOL, Maggie, well, we can only hope...

King's under the gag order b/c he's been subpoenaed as a witness, regarding those calls made to him by Amber in February--at least, that's my understanding of it.

The rest? No, I don't think it would come under the gag order... why should it, if the people talking haven't become actual witnesses in Laci's murder?

I was so disappointed Rita, did not follow up on that discussion of who gagged King and why. Oh well,disapointment seems to be the order of the day,looks like another delay in the preliminary,darn.:)

What happens if you convince folks that it was a kidnap/murder plot concocted by SP and then he comes up with solid alibis for the supposed plotting meetings? SP removes himself from the equation and the two imaginary bozos are left standing there having kidnapped and murdered Laci, if only in theory. Much time and effort went into developing the story but why?

It could be that this whole Carroll/Muna thing is/was a con where the "mark" is the general public and the media. Somebody was counting on a media frenzy because of the lie detector test and the seemingly "Good Samaritan" testimony of Carroll. A good con relies on the mark doing all the work. The plan was for the media to develop the story into "truth". SP would then spring his solid alibi and leave the other two out there to establish the reasonable doubt. It is a screwy idea, it could have got Dalton fired.

Agree...based on what we've heard it's hard to imagine that Scott would agree to a delay. The only consolation is that he is sitting in jail. I would be outraged if they kept delaying while he is out on bail.

If they fail to convict him we will all be sick (assuming evidence doesn't emerge to exonerate him). I (kind of) followed the M.Peterson trial. The guilty verdict came back yesterday. I was really worried with the high powered defense, experts, etc. that MP hired. In the end I think the jury just used "common sense" and cut through alot of "bull**". I hope this jury can do the same.

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