The Double Life of Scott Peterson: Justice For Laci and Conner — Ep. 5 | MK Confidential

The jury in the Scott Peterson case has been deliberating for four days and they want to see the boat. On Monday, November 8, 2004, a bailiff knocks on the deliberation room door and leads 12 jurors down a passageway into an underground garage beneath the Redwood City Courthouse. Scott's 14-foot aluminum fishing boat, which was introduced as evidence, has been stored down there for the length of the trial. Judge Alfred Diluki comes to, in a suit instead of his robes, Scott Peterson walks down in his suit, unshackled. Juror number 1 asks the judge for permission to come aboard the boat. Diluki says yes, but reminds the juror, the boat is on a trailer and not on a cruise in San Francisco Bay. The foreman climbs in behind Juror number 1, and the two of them start shifting their weight from side to side, seeing how much it would take to tip it. Scott's attorney, Mark Garagos, objects that they're running an out-of-court experiment and Judge Diluki puts a stop to it. Garagos moves for a mistrial, which the judge denies. Juror number 1 is Greg Beratlus, an engineer for the power company who coaches youth football on weekends. Five months of testimony have told him Scott Peterson is a man who puts coasters under everything. He is meticulous with his equipment. What Greg notices sitting in the boat is a pair of pliers going rusty and standing water in the boat. Greg thinks this does not fit. It's as if the boat was never going to be a long-term hobby, but only purchased for one purpose. Four days later, 12 jurors convict Scott Peterson of two murders. But they are not the same 12 people who went down to that underground garage. Two of the jurors standing around that boat leave the case, including the foreman who climbed in behind Beratlus. The two alternate jurors who replace them never see the boat. Their arrival forces the jury to wipe away its work and start deliberations over, twice in two days. Within hours of the second restart, they take their first vote and it is unanimous, guilty. I'm Megan Kelly and this is MK Confidential. Everyone's talking about weight loss injections because the results can be so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. But what if you're looking to lose weight but are not interested in painful weekly injections, especially when you hear about some of those intense side effects? This is why doctors created a weight loss supplement called lean and the results could be remarkable. Lean says the studied ingredients in their product have been shown to lower your blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy and to curb your appetite and cravings so that you are not as hungry. But listen, lean is not for the casual diet or with only a few pounds to lose. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created lean for frustrated dieters with 10 or more pounds to lose. You could get started with 20% off and free rush shipping, adding lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit TakeLean.com and enter Kelly for your discount. That's promo code Kelly at TakeLean.com. On November 1st, 2004, Prosecutor Rick Dostasso stands up to deliver to the jury his closing argument. He starts with the part of the case the prosecution cannot answer. He cannot tell the jury exactly how Lacy Peterson died. He cannot tell them exactly when. But he says they do know where Scott Peterson was on Christmas Eve and where Lacy and Connor were found four months later. Dostasso puts an aerial photograph of San Francisco Bay in front of the jury and starts pointing, quote, "The defendant went fishing right here off of Brooks Island," or he said he went fishing. That's where he took his boat that day. Four months later, Lacy Peterson washed ashore right here at Point Isabel near Brooks Island. Connor Peterson washed ashore right here at the Richmond Shoreline in that marshy area. The only man he continued or only person that we know without any doubt that was in the exact location where Lacy and Connor's bodies washed ashore at the exact time that they went missing is sitting right there. The connection was devastating. Garagos predicted it would be early on before he was even hired. Jurors writing about the verdict later cited it as absolutely critical to their decision. Scott was there and so were the bodies. Dostasso tells the jury that strangling or smothering can leave very little physical evidence behind, but the state does not have to prove the precise manner of death to prove that Lacy was murdered and that Scott killed her. Dostasso tells them the affair with Amber Fry is not the motive. The motive, he says, is what was about to change Scott Peterson's life, his son. Dostasso continues the reason that he killed Lacy Peterson was Connor Peterson was on the way. Then Dostasso puts another photograph on the screen. It's Lacy. Seven months pregnant, smiling, beautiful, radiant, sitting by herself on a wicker chair in a red pantsuit at a Christmas party. That photograph was taken the same night her husband and father of her baby was 96 miles away at another Christmas party with his girlfriend Amber Fry. Lacy had no idea what was coming, Dostasso says. The next day, Garagos begins his closing remarks by having Scott face the jury and then asking, do you all hate him? Because apparently that's what the sum total of what we heard yesterday was. He continues, we heard four hours of this guy's the biggest jerk that ever walked the face of the earth. This guy's the biggest liar. Whoever walked the face of the earth, you should hate him. You should hate him. You should hate him. Garagos tells the jury that the Modesto police settled on Scott within an hour of pulling up to his house and then went looking for evidence to fit. He says he's not asking anybody to make his client husband of the year. At one point, Garagos calls his own client a 14-karat gold asshole for cheating on his wife. "But being a terrible husband," Garagos argues, "is not proof of murder." He says the state still cannot tell you the jury exactly how Lacy was killed when she was killed or even where, which he says undercuts their entire case. On November 3, the lawyers are finished. The case goes to the jury, 12 people walk into the deliberation room and close the door. Two will leave and be replaced before the verdict. The first is Francis Gorman, juror number seven, an auditor for the local gas and electric company who lives in Foster City. During the five-month trial, Judge Duluki had repeatedly warned the jurors not to investigate the case on their own. Gorman did, anyway. She went home, got on her computer and looked up something she had heard about in court. Francis explained what happened. "I did check something that I had a knee-jerk reaction about and it confirmed my, you know, my thinking about whether something that I heard was correct or not." Another juror reports Gorman to the court. She is called into the judge's chambers, comes back out, and then it is called in again. The second time, she does not return to the jury room. A bailiff comes for her notebooks. Downstairs, the alternates have been sitting, waiting for five months with laptops and stacks of DVDs, knowing they may never be called. Alternate number two is a single mother of four from Palo Alto. Her hair is dyed such a vivid red that reporters have been calling her strawberry shortcake. She has not spent a single minute in the deliberation room. Judge Diluki brings her upstairs and makes her the new juror number seven. Her name is Rochelle Nice. Press write-ups about her at the time speculate that she will be friendly to the defense based on her smiling at Garagos and sitting on the edge of her seat during his questioning. They could not be more wrong. Years later, juror number one, Beratlus, described the moment Rochelle joined the jury to A&E. Rochelle came in the room and Rochelle was just like piss and vinegar. She comes in and she's like, "Hey, he killed the little man. He's guilty. Let's just get this done with." And I was like, "Whoa, time out. We kind of started a process here of discussing this." Her arrival means the other 11 jurors have to throw out four days of deliberations and begin again. So they erase the whiteboard and they pull all their notes off the walls. The next morning, the foreman Gregory Jackson is gone too. Mark Garagos told us what happened. Diluki told me that on day seven of deliberations because the foreman of that jury came into the chambers and said he didn't feel like he could go on in deliberations. He felt threatened. He felt like the verdict he wanted to render would not fit the community's expectations. That's on the record. And instead of the judge, this is one of the angriest I've ever gotten with a superior court judge, instead of bringing in the juror who was threatening the four person who was both a doctor and a lawyer, which is why I wanted the guy. I wanted somebody who was both analytical and smart. I wanted smart people. And instead of doing that, the judge removed the four person, removed it from the deliberations. After seven days, there was a verdict within eight hours. What the jurors actually told Judge Duluki was placed under seal. However, Jackson's statements to the judge were later unsealed in court records. The transcript reveals that he told the judge he had lost his ability to remain fair and impartial, quote, "My individual ability to do that has been compromised to a degree that I would never know personally whether or not I was giving the community's verdict, the popular verdict, or the expected verdict." He told the judge, as Garagos said, that hostile remarks made to him by other jurors made him feel unsafe. Alternate juror number three is brought in to replace the foreman. His name is Dennis Lear, a retired United Airlines mechanic. For the second time in two days, the jury wipes away its work and starts over. Friday, November 12, 2004. A few hours into the new deliberations, the jurors choose a new foreman, Steve Cardosi, a firefighter, and then he asks whether they are ready to vote to see where they are. He passes out blank pieces of paper. Three questions, Cardosi says. Did Scott Peterson kill Lacey? What degree of murder for Lacey? What degree for Connor? The papers come back. All three votes are unanimous. Around 11 that morning, word goes out throughout the courthouse. There's a verdict, and it will be read after lunch. The trial has been running Monday through Thursday, with Fridays off, and the lawyers are not expecting a verdict that morning. Mark Garagos is in another courtroom in Southern California. Scott's father, Lee Peterson, has gone home to San Diego, which is far too. So it is Pat Harris, Garagos' co-counsel, who will sit besides Scott when the verdict is read. Outside, the plaza begins to fill. San Mateo County deputies stretch a single strand of yellow tape across the courthouse steps, a police helicopter circles overhead. When Garagos says this case was decided in the Court of Public Opinion long before the verdict came in, this is the moment to which he points. When Scott was found guilty, that courthouse was ringged by over 1,500 people, and there was a front page photo of a woman holding an infant child, saying in the headline on whatever it was, San Mateo news. This is better than the birth of my son when he was convicted with the giant guilty. So it was an enormous pre-judgment rate that we just could not get over. Before the verdict is read, Greg Beratlus takes a moment, steps outside, and looks across the courthouse plaza. He estimates it's more than 1,000 people there. Inside, Scott Peterson takes his seat at the defense table. He has lost so much weight since the trial began that his suit hangs loosely on him. At 1 o'clock California time, the clerk stands to read the verdict. Absolutely. Sharon Rocha begins to sob. Her son Brent puts an arm around her. Scott Peterson does not move. Two jurors would later say they watched his face as the verdict was read, waiting for some reaction. They see nothing. They see a man with no emotion. Outside, the plaza erupts. When the hearing is over, the Peterson family leaves through a side entrance, and they are booed by throngs of people gathered outside. Sharon Rocha leaves through the main entrance. Once in the car with Ron Gransky, she looks back through the window at the people in the crowd and smiles. The jurors are taken to a room at street level where they can see what is happening outside. At first, juror Dennis Lear thinks the noise is anger, then he realizes people are celebrating. I really thought that was sick, he says later, though he spares no contempt for Scott Peterson. Quote, he got what he deserved. On November 30th, the same jury returns to decide whether Scott Peterson will spend the rest of his life in prison or die by lethal injection. Prosecutor Dave Harris calls Sharon Rocha to the witness stand. He puts a photograph on the screen. It was taken on Mother's Day 2002 at the Peterson House on Kavina Avenue. It's Sharon, her mother, and Lacey, all together and smiling. Harris asks Sharon about the Mother's Day that has just passed. How was it? Sharon tells the jury she spent much of it on the floor crying. That Lacey should have been there. Lacey should have been celebrating her first Mother's Day. Then Sharon turns toward the man she once called, her son-in-law, who once called her mom. "She wanted to be a mother," she tells him. Scott does not look up. A moment later, Sharon rises from the witness chair. Divorce is always an option, not murder. She would later say those words were not planned. She did not even realize she was shouting until people told her afterward. Then Sharon tells the jury about going to the funeral home and saying goodbye to her daughter and grandson. Garth Stapley, who covered the trial for the Modesto B, later reacted to Sharon's testimony for ANEs, the murder of Lacey Peterson. Well, Sharon Rocha's testimony in court made a big impression on all of us. I don't know how you could sit there and, you know, observe this woman sobbing and screaming at Scott and not be affected. Every juror is crying, so are many of the reporters in the room. On December 9th, Mark Garagot stands up and tries to save his client's life. He tells the jury he has barely been sleeping and that when he does, he has nightmares about the case. He says he feels like he has let Scott down and admits he never even prepared for the possibility of a penalty phase. Then he simply begs the jury to spare Scott Peterson's life. After eight hours and 23 minutes of sentencing deliberations spread across three days, the jurors return to the courtroom with their decision. Once again, the clerk reads it out loud. "People as data Californian versus Scott Peterson, we the jury and the bobbin title caused fixed the penalty at doubt." Scott does not cry. His family sits silently behind him. Across the courtroom, Sharon Rocha weeps. Journalist and former judge, Catherine Crier, is watching from the press seats. As the courtroom begins to empty, she sees Lacey's stepfather Ron Gransky turn towards Scott's father, Lee Peterson, and mouth two words. I'm sorry. Lee looks back at him and mouths two words of his own. Fuck you. Outside the courthouse, the jurors face the cameras. One of the reporters asks them to describe some of Scott's reactions. Juror number seven responds, "He is a jerk and I have one comment for Scott. You look somebody in the face when they're talking to you." And Rochelle Nese is not finished. Juror number four, Mike Belmissieri, joins her at the microphones. "And it's illegal to kill your wife and child in California." But the mistake that would eventually take Scott Peterson off of death row had been made months earlier. Did you know that a bag of cat food labeled "natural" has zero legal definition behind it? In fact, natural is largely unregulated in the pet food industry. 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In the spring of 2004 during jury selection, a woman known only as perspective jury, her 4841 came to the San Mateo County Courthouse and filled out a questionnaire. Question 109 asked about her views on the death penalty. She checked strongly opposed. A few weeks later, Question 115 asked a different follow-up question. Whether those beliefs were so strong that she could never vote for death, regardless of the evidence or the judge's instructions. To that, she answered no. In other words, she was telling the court that she opposed the death penalty personally, but that she could still follow the law and impose it in a case where the evidence called for it. That answer should have led to more questions in court, but it didn't. Judge Duluki excused her without asking a single follow-up question. And the judge did essentially the same thing with more than a dozen other prospective jurors. 16 years later, Judge Duluki's handling of those prospective jurors would wind up sparing Scott Peterson's life. On August 24, 2020, the California Supreme Court leaves both murder convictions intact, but overturns the death sentence. The court says Duluki improperly dismissed prospective jurors who opposed the death penalty personally without first asking whether they could set those beliefs aside on behalf of the court. Duluki was required by law to do so. Here's Garagos on the error. You can't bounce people just because they say they can't follow the death penalty or they're against the death penalty. You have to ask them, "Can you follow the law?" And he didn't do that second thing, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed, and actually tried the prosecution for sitting idling by as I was screaming about it. Peterson's lawyers then tried to go further. If the jury was selected improperly, they argue, then the murder convictions should fall right alongside the death sentence. They lose that argument, which they appeal all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2022 declines to hear the case. At the same time, Peterson's appellateeem makes a separate attack on his conviction. This one is not about what happened during the trial itself. These lawyers present 19 different claims involving things the jury never heard about, including alleged new information and questions about the jurors themselves. In October 2020, the California Supreme Court rejects 18 of the 19 grounds for appeal. The 19th concerns one of the 12 people who voted to convict Scott Peterson, Rachelle Nees, and results in Scott Peterson getting a trial court hearing to see if he was unfairly prejudiced by this juror. We asked Garagos about Rachelle whom he remembered well. He compared her to the prospective juror who said she "pulled one over on that dumb shit defense lawyer. That woman was excused." This woman's strawberry shortcake is that woman on steroids. She got passed and she was an alternate. Once again, nobody knew that she had a restraining order and had been pregnant. And to just show you the kind of psychosis is the word of the week, as you know. She was writing letters to Scott, like a pen pal, after the conviction. If you, for your special, you should play some of the video of her after the conviction. It was wild to watch her reaction after the conviction. She was like a crazed person who was celebrating in kind of a medieval fashion and was wild. At the courthouse after the death verdict, Rachelle says she will "forever feel a connection with Lacey and with both families." Six months after voting to send Scott Peterson to death row, Rachelle niece begins writing to him at San Quentin. She is struggling with the aftermath of the trial. Her therapist suggests she writes Scott a letter and tell him what the case has done to her. At first, Rachelle plans to send the letter without giving Scott a return address, but she sends it anyway, never expecting him to answer. Scott Peterson writes back, "Rachel asks him point blank, 'What happened that night, Scott?' What pushed you to the limit, where you felt like you had to kill someone who not only loved you so much, but was carrying a part of you inside of her?" Scott tells her he did not kill Lacey or Connor. He says the Modesto Police mishandled the investigation and he begins asking niece questions of his own. But it was like to be a juror and why she convicted him. In December 2005, a year after she voted to send Scott Peterson to death row, Rachelle has a mental breakdown in a school parking lot while picking up one of her children. Rachelle writes about what happened later, quote, "I couldn't get out of my truck. All I knew is that I was done with my life. It was over." She is hospitalized in a locked psychiatric unit. And there she writes to Scott again, "I never knew how much this trial had an impact on me. Plus I never had a great life. All the pressure just hit me. I think it has been the time of year, our verdict, Lacey and Connor." In total, she writes 17 letters to Scott Peterson. Years later, a lawyer asks Rachelle on the witness stand, "How long the correspondence continued, she gives a short answer." I don't know, too long. Ben a reporter for People Magazine learns about the jailhouse letters. And once Scott Peterson's lawyers obtained them, they go back to the questionnaire where she'll niece filled out on March 9, 2004, before she was ever seated as a juror for Scott's murder trial. It asked whether she had ever been involved in a lawsuit, whether she had ever been a party or a witness in a court case, and whether she or anyone close to her had ever been the victim of a crime. Nice answered no to all three. This was not true. Four years earlier, on November 27, 2000, Rachelle niece had gone to the San Mateo County courthouse and asked a judge for an order of protection from her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend. She wrote that the woman had kicked in Rachelle's front door. She also wrote that she feared for her unborn child. At the time, Rachelle was four-and-a-half months pregnant, a judge granted the restraining order. Four years later, she is sitting on a jury deciding whether Scott Peterson has murdered his pregnant wife and their unborn son. Nice later explained her thinking to A&E. When I was filling out this questionnaire, that case of mine never came into my thoughts, because it was a dropped case, it never went anywhere, and it was nothing, so I never thought about that case. In 2022, Rachelle returns to a Redwood City courtroom for the court ordered hearing on her juror questionnaire. For five days under a grant of immunity, she answers questions about the form she failed out 18 years earlier. She cries on the stand, and her lawyer tells the court she regrets ever writing the letters to Scott. In December 20th, the judge rules that some of Nese's answers on the questionnaire were false, but finds that Rachelle had misunderstood the questions, not that she lied out of bias against Scott Peterson. Peterson's request for a new trial is denied. Prosecutors could have empanelled a new jury to retry the penalty phase of the trial if they wanted to seek the death penalty again. They chose not to do so, explaining that, quote, "Lacy's family has decided the process is simply too painful to endure once again." In December of 2021, Scott is resentenced to life without parole. The following year, he has transferred off of death row to Mule Creek State Prison in Ioni, California. He still maintains he did not kill Lacy or Connor. And now there is yet another possible path to a new trial for Scott, allegedly new evidence. In 2024, the Los Angeles Innocence Project takes Scott's case and asks the court for two things. The first is more testing. Scott's legal team wants to retest material from the mattress found inside the van that was discovered burning in a Modesto alley the morning after Lacy disappeared. The state lab tested material from that mattress at the time and found no blood. In 2019, a private lab examined some of the fabric and reported trace amounts of what might be male DNA, undermining unsupported claims that the mattress might be stained with Lacy Peterson's blood. The judge grants part of this request and denies part of it too. She does not allow the defense to retest the mattress, finding this van, which was orange by the way, has no link to this crime. She does permit the defense access to certain reports about the van, like the 911 call reporting the van fire and any fingerprints recovered, because a convicted felon has the right to review materials they would have been entitled to see at the time of their trial. She also allows some new DNA testing on a bit of duct tape found on Lacy's clothing. The defense is hoping for DNA that will match that of the burglars, arguing that touched DNA analysis has advanced considerably since 2004. Because the tape was found on Lacey's pants and appears to be in testable condition, the judge will allow another bite at this apple. The Innocence Project also wants the court to consider 14 different arguments, mostly involving evidence they say prosecutors destroyed or never gave to the defense. In April of this year, a San Mateo County judge rejects all of those arguments and declines to hold a hearing on any of them. The Innocence Project says it will appeal that ruling, along with the judges earlier refusal to grant Scott a new trial over juror number 7, aka Rochelle Nice and her juror questionnaire. Though he's not Scott Peterson's appellate lawyer, Mark Garagos fully supports a new trial. There's just too much here and the idea at this point that there was such willful kind of suppression of evidence. I always say the same thing if you're beyond what you referenced as the prosecutorial duty. If you truly believed in your conviction as a prosecutor, which also is your duty, you have to have an abiding conviction in that, which mirrors the jury. So why are you fighting so hard against, you know, just putting these things to rest makes no sense to me. Scott Peterson has been in custody since April of 2003. More than 20 years later, both of his murder convictions still stand. Sharon Rocha has devoted much of the past 20 years to helping crime victims. She wrote a book about her daughter, Four Lacey, which became a bestseller. Her view of the case has never changed. This past July, she told People magazine, he is guilty, and that's it. Scott's mom Jackie Peterson died of cancer in 2013. His dad Lee died in 2024, both went to their graves maintaining that their son was innocent. Amber Frye wrote a book called Witness for the Prosecution of Scott Peterson, then largely withdrew from public life. She still lives in the Fresno area and is the mother of two children now, Ayanna born in 2001 and Justin born in 2004. She married a police officer, Robert Hernandez in 2006, he had nothing to do with his case before divorcing him two years later. After the court ruling this spring, she said she was relieved she would not have to testify again, although she would if she had to. She told NBC a decade after the verdict that Scott made no attempts to contact her since his conviction. Lacey and Connor were buried on August 29, 2003. At the funeral home weeks earlier, an employee named Ronnie showed Sharon albums of flowers, then photographs of caskets. When Ronnie began explaining the pillows inside of them, Sharon remembers thinking, Lacey doesn't need a pillow. She chose a white casket with gold trim. On August 21, Lacey and Connor were returned to Modesto and Connor was placed in the casket with his mother. There was still the house on Kavina Avenue and upstairs the room that had been prepared for a new baby. Lee Peterson described one piece of it to A&E in 2017. As Scott had said, we're having a nautical theme in the baby's room. We bought a big, you know, the all-round life for the surface. She was just so excited. I got extra hugs for that. The nursery had been finished before Lacey disappeared. Everything was there, waiting for a baby who would never come home. After Lacey and Connor died, Sharon asked for the chance to go back into that room. She wanted to sit in Lacey's rocking chair. In the nursery, Lacey had prepared for her son and feel close to her only daughter. The crib was empty, the room silent. And on the wall, the life preserver Lacey had been so excited to receive. Welcome aboard. (gentle music)