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By JOHN COTÉ

and GARTH STAPLEY

Last Updated: November 23, 2003, 09:07:05 AM PST

Scott Peterson's preliminary hearing on double-murder charges ended with almost as many questions as when it began.

Prosecutors didn't answer how, where or why they believe Laci Peterson was killed.

They didn't show how or when her body found its way to the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay.

The witness who could provide a motive -- Peterson's girlfriend at the time his wife disappeared -- didn't take the stand.

With a low threshold of proof at preliminary hearings, there was little chance Peterson would not be bound over for trial on charges he murdered his wife, Laci, and their unborn son.

"I like to jokingly say it's, 'Is my client breathing?'" defense attorney Mark Geragos said of the standard prosecutors had to meet.

They demonstrated more than that, pummeling Peterson's credibility, raising questions about his alibi and introducing a range of circumstantial evidence that could tie him to the crimes.

But proving the case at trial -- with the death penalty as the announced goal -- is another matter, legal observers said.

Although the bodies were found less than two miles from where Peterson said he went fishing Dec. 24, physical evidence against him seemingly was in short supply.

A single hair found attached to pliers in the bottom of Peterson's fishing boat might have been his wife's. Cement powder spilled on a flat-bed trailer had five bare patches that could indicate Peterson made concrete anchors. A detective found a loaded .22-caliber handgun in Peterson's truck but didn't know the results of a residue test to show whether Peterson fired it.

"This case is a collision of common sense and the law," said Bernie Grimm, a prominent Washington, D.C., defense attorney.

"Common sense will tell you he did it, by the way he acted and the fact that Geragos can't supply who really did it," Grimm said. "But when you apply the law and realize it's a possible lethal injection, are you going to do that based on a hair in a pair of pliers? There's just not enough information -- unless they're holding back some bombshell."

Chief Deputy District Attorney John Goold said prosecutors had put on "some of the evidence, but not all of it."

The defense has filed motions to try to exclude evidence from wiretaps on Peterson's phones, information from vehicle tracking devices and tracking dogs.

Just one call revealed.........

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Mystery persists in Peterson case
NO WEAPON, WITNESSES PUT FORWARD; FULL AIRING OF

Posted on Sun, Nov. 23, 2003

Mystery persists in Peterson case
NO WEAPON, WITNESSES PUT FORWARD; FULL AIRING OF EVIDENCE AWAITS TRIAL

By Julia Prodis Sulek
Mercury News

MODESTO - Is that all there is?

After 12 days of testimony ended last week and piles of police reports were submitted into evidence to try to prove that Scott Peterson killed his pregnant wife and unborn son, that's the lingering question.

A hair, an affair and a fishing trip seemed about all that were needed to persuade a Stanislaus County judge to make Peterson stand trial sometime next year. But do prosecutors have enough evidence to convince a jury that Peterson killed his wife and dumped her body into San Francisco Bay last Christmas Eve?

The full evidence won't be made clear until the trial, expected next spring at the earliest. Last summer, though, Stanislaus County District Attorney James Brazelton promised that the evidence presented at the preliminary hearing would ``open some eyes.''

But Stanislaus County prosecutors produced no smoking gun. No weapon at all, actually. No eyewitness. No blood. And with so little left of Laci Peterson's body after 4 1/2 months in the water, they don't even know how she died.

The best evidence they presented is what most people knew before the hearing began: The 31-year-old fertilizer salesman was having an affair with a Fresno massage therapist and the bodies of his wife and unborn son both washed up within three miles of the Berkeley Marina, where he told police he had been fishing the day his wife disappeared.

It's no coincidence that Peterson was a free man for 4 1/2 months after his wife disappeared before being arrested.

``The reason was the police just didn't have enough of a case to bring him up on charges,'' said Loyola University law Professor Stan Goldman, who attended the preliminary hearing nearly every day as the legal editor for Fox News. ``What changed that is some extremely important evidence -- the bodies washed up right where he had given as his alibi. That is the key to the case for the prosecution.''

If prosecutors do have anything stronger, they're not telling. For a preliminary hearing, they didn't have to.

Hearing Set In Frey's Nude Photos Case
Photographer Tried To Sell Photos To Larry Flynt

POSTED: 7:37 a.m. PST November 24, 2003
UPDATED: 9:11 a.m. PST November 24, 2003

LOS ANGELES -- A hearing is set Monday on a request by the woman who admitted having an affair with accused killer Scott Peterson to stop attempts to sell nude photos of her.

Amber Frey said in her federal lawsuit that she posed nude and partially clothed for a Clovis modeling agency in 1999. Though she decided not to continue with the agency, she didn't pick up the photos, the suit states.

Frey claimed that after she made a public statement about her romantic relationship with Peterson, David Hans Schmidt tried to sell the photographs of her on the World Wide Web.

Peterson was ordered last week to stand trial on charges he murdered his pregnant wife, Laci, who he said disappeared from the couple's Modesto, Calif., home.

Frey contends Schmidt, an Arizona resident, got the photos illegally. She also alleges he "attempted to sell the photographs to third parties, including Larry Flynt for publication in Hustler."

In addition to seeking an injunction, Frey is asking that Schmidt .....