The Prosecutor's Case .. continued

Let's talk about the defendant and his fishing. This defendant rarely goes fishing, contrary to what I suppose Mr. Peterson would want you to believe. The fishing licenses that were found, a couple of two-day, I think there's three two-day licenses, including the one that he bought for this particular trip, as well as a year-long license from 1994. So what was that, eight years prior. The equipment that he had, when he does go fishing, it's freshwater fishing. You saw the last time he had been prior to this, August 2002, you saw him fishing in a lake with his dad. He goes maybe once or twice a year.

He has owned four boats during his life. That implies some interest in boating and fishing.

Remember Ron Grantski testified he asked him, I can't remember exactly how many times, but he asked him numerous times to go, and he said that he, he said that he went one time with him in 2001. He said he turned him down every other time. He never asked Ron to go fishing with him even though Ron is, like, that's his main thing. He carries a fishing pole with him wherever he goes.

After that one trip in 2001, remember what Ron Grantski testified to? He testified that Scott Peterson left his fishing pole, which is a very nice, expensive fishing pole in his garage where it sat there for 18 months, and never wanted it back. If I was an avid fisherman and had an expensive pole and went fishing with somebody, I think I'd want it back. There's no evidence the defendant had ever recently gone saltwater fishing, which is what is at issue here. The best that the defense could come up with is that Lee Peterson testified, I think the quote is that it appeared that he enjoyed it. That's what he said.

If you get that section of testimony read back where he's talking about the defendant going out on, as a boy on, I call them party boats, but I think he called them cattle boats, on the Bay, where you go out for a day of fishing, he did that as a boy. We're not talking about 2002 here.

Once again Distaso is relying on his ‘Any imperfection = evidence of guilt’ theory. Applying this theory would make almost every human guilty of anything.

We go back to the defendant's story on 12/24. He leaves his warehouse sometime, sometime after 11:00 a.m., drives to the Berkeley Marina. Which is about 86 miles away. He gets there at 12:54 p.m. Almost 1:00 o'clock. You have to buy this ticket, you have to back your boat down and launch it, and put your, put your truck away. You got to go do what you're doing, come back. We know he's back on his phone checking his voice mail at 2:12. So he drove an hour and a half, minimum, probably closer to, probably left right around 11:00, probably took him about until right when he got there, because he's driving with a boat on the back, and you can bet anything on the fact that he didn't exceed the speed limit that day.

Scott is a very law abiding citizen who has never received a traffic ticket. This is proof of guilt?

He didn't want anybody to stop him on that day.

He is a very law abiding man who has never committed a crime – has never even had a parking ticket. He does not get stopped ANY day.

So he gets to the Berkeley Marina. He, it took him longer to drive to the Berkeley Marina than he actually spent fishing. He goes, on Christmas Eve, all the way out to the Bay to fish for, what, 35, 40 minutes, alone. Nobody does that.

Once again a totally evidence free statement. Where is the proof? This is all invented by Distaso.

That just did not happen here. Now, he does that, he decides to go fishing, even though he has told Amy Rocha that he can pick up that gift basket at Vella Farms. Remember that? So he knows he's got to be back, but he's still going to leave to go fishing on Christmas Eve, when he has to be back, number one, to pick up that gift basket, and number two, get to dinner at Ron and Sharon's house, six p.m.

Which is a more than compelling argument that Scott never had the slightest intention of harming Laci – on that day or any other.

When he comes back, you know, we heard what happened. He makes a phone call, he looks around, he talks to the neighbors. And the first people he contacts are Amie Krigbaum and Terra Venable across the street. Remember that? They have no stake in this either. They just live across the street. They probably kind of wish they didn't live across the street.

Slander in place of evidence?

But the defendant goes up to their house and, you know, he's kind of frantic, or as I prefer to put it, pretending to be frantic, because this guy can turn it on and off in an instant.

Where is the evidence of this? None was offered.

And we will see some examples of that. But he goes up there, he says: Hey, have you seen Laci? No, I haven't seen her. Okay, he turns around to go. They ask him: Where have you been all day? Oh, I've been out golfing.

EVERY police officer without exception testified that Scott said he was at the bay, fishing/boating. What a couple of people may have misheard is evidence of nothing.

Nobody, I don't care how upset you are, nobody forgets that they just got home from fishing at the Berkeley Marina. That didn't happen. So why did he tell them golfing?

He didn’t. They misheard him, possibly because they knew him as a golfer. However it was much later when they came up with this statement. Why would he tell them one thing, and tell all of the police officers the truth? For what purpose?

That's a much more important question, because that's where the defendant was originally going to go. He was going to get out there, dump Laci, get back, go hang out at the club, maybe have a drink at the bar, you know, screw around a little bit. It just took him longer than he planned. He was going to say: Yeah, I was at work checking my computer; yeah, I was there, see?

Where is the evidence? This is all supposition, without a shred of evidence to back it up.

And I went to the club and, you know, you'll have some people that saw him, and that was it. He just screwed up. He screwed up his alibi. That's all that was.

Where is the evidence? This is all supposition, without a shred of evidence to back it up.

Now, why did he change his alibi? That's a good question, because I know a lot of you are sitting here thinking Well, shoot, if I had just dumped my wife in the San Francisco Bay, that's the last place I'm going to tell the police I was.

Precisely. What other person has ever done this?

It's a legitimate question. And, you know why he did that? He tells us on, on tape.

He said nothing of the sort. Everything he said checked out, all down the line.

Go watch Brocchini's interview again, or read the transcript. You can have that back there. He told Detective Mansfield this also. He said he bumped, when he was picking up the boat, coming home, so he's got the boat down there, tied up to the dock, Laci's long gone, she's under the waters of the San Francisco Bay, he says he bumped his boat up against, up against a piling, or something. He said there was a maintenance man there who saw him who was laughing. He said a couple guys saw him there at the marina.

Once that happened he knew: I got to go with fishing; I have to go with fishing, because if I say anything other than I was here at the Berkeley Marina, and people saw me and can recognize me, I'm toast. It's a big bay. You saw those pictures. The Bay is huge. He thought he got her into deep water. You heard what the experts say, you get her into the deep water channel, she's going out under the Golden Gate. You heard how difficult it was to search the Bay.

Where is the evidence? This is all supposition, without a shred of evidence to back it up.

We're going to talk about that. It's no big deal to tell them: I was out fishing in the San Francisco Bay; how are they ever going to find her.

And they never did – even after spending $1 million trying. They never found the slightest trace of evidence. However dog walkers found the bodies within hours of them being dumped, months later.

... To be continued.

The Prosecutor's Case .. continued

Going back to the defendant's fishing story. You know, we talked about the, the umbrellas being in the back of his truck at the end of the day. Remember he took those umbrellas to the shop, according to him, so he could keep them in the shop there and get them out of the rain. Of course, they're under a patio cover, so I don't know why you would do that to begin with.

But besides that fact, let's say he did that. Why didn't he leave them in the shop? Well, I forgot. That's what he told Detective Brocchini on the tape: I forgot. Okay, so let me get this straight here. You've got a whole stack of umbrellas in the back of your pickup truck. You have to back your pickup truck up to hook the boat up. How are you not going see those, number one. You then drive all the way out to the Berkeley Marina with them in the back of your truck. You have to back the truck down to put the boat in the water. Of course, you don't see them then, I guess. You then drive all the way home and you have to put your boat away. They're still there in the truck. If your reason for taking them there that morning is to put them in the shop, then put them in the shop. But, of course, he doesn't do that, because that was never his reason for putting those umbrellas in the truck.

Distaso never forgets anything it seems – except to come up with some actual evidence of guilt. However ordinary people forget things all the time.

Once they served their purpose of covering Laci's body, he didn't care about those umbrellas anymore. He only cared been Detective Brocchini started asking him about it. Because it is, it's suspicious: What do you got those in your truck for, you know; but he's a good liar. He comes up with a story quick.

Much quicker than me. You can tell if I'm lying. It's all over my face. Not this guy. He can look Diane Sawyer straight in the eye and tell her a bald-faced lie.

He says he leaves at 9:30. The evidence strongly supports he left much later than that. You know, remember the Martha Stewart thing and the meringue. You know what? I'm going to tell you straight up, that was an embarrassment to me personally because I told, because I stood up here in opening statement and told you something that wasn't correct. I told you there was no mention of meringue in that Martha Stewart tape. And you know what? We were wrong.

You know what, though, the truth is a good thing. The truth about that Martha Stewart reference to meringue is one of the best facts for the prosecution in this case. The defendant says: I saw a segment of Martha Stewart where she was making some cookies of some sort, something to do with meringue. That segment did air on December 24th. Do you know when that segment aired? What was the testimony? 9:48 in the morning. If this guy saw it, and it appears he did from the description he gave, he was in his house at 9:48. Now, nobody at ten minutes to 10:00 or twelve minutes to 10:00 says they're leaving at 9:30, so he's lying about that.

No, Distaso is lying about this. Apparently he has never heard anyone say, “Good heavens, look at the time. I didn’t realise how late it was”.

Let's talk about that cell phone call. Pull up the, that cell phone chart, John, if you could. Let's talk about the cell phone call. Remember the cell phone call that he made at 10:08? We had a lot of testimony about the cell towers, and got really back and forth. Voice mail, incoming voice mails when someone calls you, outgoing voice mails when you're checking your voice mails.

Remember that?

Well, it all boils down to this: The main cell tower for 523 Covena is 1250 Brighton. If you leave, and it's overlapped coverage with 10th and D. If you leave Covena and you're driving towards where the shop is, you fall into the 10th and D coverage area. Remember what the expert said? How do we know that the cell tower information for this particular day and this particular call at 10:08 is accurate?

We don’t. These are billing records, not standard time transmissions from the NIST.

Well, here's, this is 203 G. This is a cell phone, I mean, yeah, a cell site chart that Investigator Jacobson did. It's in Eastern Standard Time.

Remember what you heard? The cell site stuff comes in Eastern Standard Time.

Invoice calls comes whatever time you're in. Here Pacific Standard Time.

That 10:08 call voice mail retrieval, it's right here in the records. I'm not making any of this up. This is 203 A 1. You guys can go back there and check this all yourself.

Voice mail retrieval, that call starts at 1250 Brighton, it ends at 10th and D.

At 2:12 there's another voice mail retrieval, and remember Investigator Jacobson wrote VMRT, voice mail retrieval whenever it is, puts him in Berkeley. Well, we know for a fact, by his own statement and by the receipt he was in Berkeley at that time. So that's accurate.

The rest of these are in the invoices. These are calls tracking his movements.

He's in Berkeley. Berkeley. He's in Oakland. He's driving home. At 2:34 he's in Oakland. At 2:40 when he calls his father, Lee Peterson, he's in Castro line Valley. Driving back to Modesto. At 2:45 when he calls his father again, he's in Grassland Avenue in Castro Valley, driving home.

There's an incoming voice mail. 3:44. That one is not in the invoice records.

You can't track people through cell sites for incoming voice mails. Remember what the lady said? You got to use the records together.

Here he's in Livermore, makes a call to his home. And then at 5:44, when all this is reported, we know he's in front of his house, 1250 Brighton. Those calls that became an issue that were a problem, remember we had all that discussion about, those are all incoming voice mails. They're not in these invoice records.

The next call that is in the invoice records, another voice mail retrieval where he's calling, checking his voice mail. Guess what? Puts him right at 1250 Brighton at 6:29 when he know he's standing in front of his house. This cell site information for that 10:08 call is completely accurate, and it's backed up by the records themselves.

Now, Karen Servas, put that clock back up, John. Karen Servas finds the dog no later than 10:18.

Karen Servas is perhaps one of the most unreliable witnesses ever. She changed her testimony three times, and based it on her ‘expert’ reconstruction of her shopping trip times on the day before Christmas, and based that on the receipts from the store – a store whose registers were shown to be as much as a day off. However Vivian Mitchell is a much more reliable witness. She saw Laci walking the dog between 10:00am and 10:30am and this does support Servas’ testimony. Of course it also eliminates Scott as the abductor of Laci.

How do we know that that's true? Let's talk about Karen Servas for a minute. Karen Servas has no stake in this case at all. She's just a neighbor. She's not an agent of the prosecution. In fact, if anything, before this all started, she was a friend of the defendant's; remember? She had been over to his house a couple of times, or numerous times, really. Her kid had even swam in his pool. He would help her with stuff if she needed it. They had no ill will between them whatsoever.

She originally tells the police, because they call and ask her, who found the dog. She tells the police: I found it exactly at 10:30. That's a fact. That's what she originally told them. She didn't deny anything here, like: No, I never said that, or, you know, I tried to back out, or anything else. She said: Yeah, that's what I told him. I originally told him it was right around 10:30.

But then you remember what she said? A day or two later she found that Austin's receipt. Austin's Christmas Store, 12/24, 2002, 10:34 a.m. She said: I found that receipt and I realized, you know, my time, I might be off on my time a little bit.

Then clearly she is wrong and has impeached herself.

And she said: I wanted to make sure for him, not for the prosecution, not for the Modesto police, not for any other reason but for this guy, for Scott Peterson, I wanted to make sure that my time when I found that dog is exactly accurate, because maybe that's going to have something to do with what happened to Laci.

Now, the fact that it turned out really badly for Scott Peterson doesn't mean anything as to why she did it. She did it because she was trying to help him out. So she went and back-tracked everything she did. Remember what she said she did initially? Here's the chart. She finds the dog in front of her house, looking down the street. She, she walked back over where she did to the gate, she walked back around, she then went back to her house, remember she made the motion of putting the dog away, put him in the gate, left the a leash on him.

She went back to her house, pretended to wash her hands, got in her car, drove downtown, drove twice around the bank parking lot. That's what she said she did. She didn't go into the bank at that time. Drove twice around the bank parking lot. She couldn't find a place to park. She went down to Austin's, went in, pretended to buy an ornament, came out, and from that point on that's when she stopped her time.

And then she just back-tracked how long that took from 10:34 and back-tracked, and she said she found that dog no later than 10:18. How do we know that 10:54 receipt is accurate? Because remember what she told you? She said: After I left Austin's, I made a phone call. Her cell phone records says she made that phone call at 10:37 in the morning, exactly as, as she said. Buy an ornament at 10:34, make a phone call when I go outside on my cell phone. It's right here in the records, 10:37.

These are billing records, not standard time transmissions from the NIST. The cash register record is not accurate either.

She then said she went to Starbucks, got some coffee, or whatever she said she did there; I don't remember. Then she said she went back to the bank and made her transaction.

If you remember at the end of the trial the defense asked Investigator Bertalotto about that additional record that she just got, which was at 10:53, completely supporting exactly everything that she said. Karen Servas is not lying here. Karen Servas is not doing anything here except being completely accurate to you all. And that's what we want. That dog was found no later than 10:18. And if that's the case, then this is what had to have happened in ten minutes, in a ten minute time. Laci would have had to get up, put on all her jewelry, because the defendant tells the police and some other folks, the dog tracking people and stuff, that they had on diamond earrings, the diamond changes, but the general description was diamond earrings, a diamond ring, a diamond watch.

So she puts on all of her jewelry to then, I guess, go mop the floor. Because he says, when he says he leaves, she's mopping the floor, she's got on a white shirt and black pants, and she's barefoot. So she has to have put her jewelry on, finish mopping the floor, put on her shoes and socks, changed her clothes, because remember, when she's found, Laci Peterson is not bearing black pants.

Because she changed them AFTER she got back from walking the dog. That’s why the black pants were found in the house with grass clippings on them – from Laci’s walk to the park with the dog.

Laci Peterson is wearing a pair of pants just like these. No one confuses these pants with black. Except for maybe him. Because that man confused Modesto with Paris, Brussels, Normandy, France, and everywhere else.

Cheap sarcasm. The mark of a great litigator? His OWN witness says they were NOT the pants she wore to the salon. There is no reason for Scott to say she was wearing black pants – except that it is the truth.

But nobody would do that. So she changes out of these nice pair of capri pants, I mean she changes out of her black pants she was wearing when she was mopping, into these nice pair of capri pants so she can go walk the dog.

No evidence of this was ever offered.

She has to then get abducted by these mysterious, homeless, 290 registrants, you know, we're going to go through all these crazy theories that have been proposed to you. But she gets abducted by somebody. This is all in ten minutes.

Nonsense. She could have been abducted up to, say, 5 minutes before Scott returned home.

The dog then has to, of course, nobody sees or hears, even though that dog barks like crazy. The dog then has to be able to come home in the ten minutes time, because she's now done all these things, been abducted, the dog comes home and has to be found by Karen Servas, all in ten minutes, all in a ten minute window, because at 10:08 the defendant is just now driving away from his house.

This whole time theory is based on utterly false assumptions.

One thing I forgot to tell you about that 10:08 call. Another reason why you know it's accurate, Investigator Jacobson tested it. He got a cell phone in the exact same network, he did it three times. He made a phone call, he drove for a minute and twenty-one seconds, the length of time for that call, and every single time, 1250 Brighton it started, 10th and D it ended.

He even went to the shop, because remember that's where Scott Peterson is supposed to be, he's supposed to be at the shop. He even went to the shop and he made phone calls. Every time 929 Woodland. Never 1250 Brighton, never 10th and D. Actually, I want to make sure I'm completely accurate. I know that that, that those cell phone calls from the shop started at 929 Woodland. I can't remember off the top of my head exactly where they ended, because those coverage areas are very clear. So I don't want to tell you anything that's not accurate.

Too late. That ship has left the dock – and exploded in flames!

So regarding those Jacobson calls at the shop, use your own memory for those because I can't remember up here off the top of my head exactly where were those.

Before I leave Karen Servas and the timing, I want to talk about the only defense attack that they made on, on the timing was this: A couple receipts that were introduced by, by Bill Austin, kind of, and you really need to go back, if you're at all wondering about these, go back and get his entire testimony read back. It's very enlightening about these, this particular exhibit. But two receipts from two different days in January of 2004.

From purchases made ten minutes apart. This is a deliberate lie and a fraud on the court.

From testimony: However, the next Christmas season, Mark Geragos sent a private investigator to Austin's Christmas store to test the accuracy of the cash register. In front of Bill Austin, the owner, Jensen had two no-sales receipts rung up ten minutes apart. The receipts, however, showed a discrepancy of 49 minutes (Austin) and recorded two different dates (Austin). The two no-sales receipts are Defense H. In his testimony, Austin said he could not remember the details of when the two receipts were made.

Somehow we're supposed to believe that this document makes Karen Servas's time line inaccurate.

No other conclusion is reasonable. Cash registers are not precision chronometers, and those who set them are not always careful.

... To be continued.

The Prosecutor's Case .. continued

Except for maybe him. Go ahead John, play that clip. The GMA clip.

(Video played)

Well, yeah, I expect people to believe that. I'm Scott Peterson.

I expect people to believe anything I say. That's what this guy wants you to believe here. You think, there's no arguing? No, not at all; I can't even say, well, I can't say she was okay with it; but it was not any big deal with us.

A woman's seven and a half months pregnant, her husband's out having an affair and she doesn't care at all? Does that appear to be anything that you heard about Laci Peterson in this case? Of course not. That's ridiculous.

No, it isn’t. Women have put up with much, much worse. Laci’s mother was divorced and has never married her partner, Ron Grantski. Why? There is no one-size-fits-all for relationships. Many are far, far stranger than this.

On December 20th Scott Peterson buys the only saltwater fishing pole that he has. It's right here. It's a lightweight saltwater fishing pole. And I'm going to talk about it. It's not at all set up for any of the things he was supposedly fishing for that day. But this is it. So the avid fisherman will run out to the Berkeley Marina from Modesto, 90 miles away on Christmas Eve, buys a fish, doesn't even own a fishing pole to fish there until December 20th. And he bought it as a prop. He didn't buy it to go fish for sturgeon that day, I can tell you that.

True. He was trying out the boat, not fishing. Even if he dragged out a line it was just for test purposes.

He also bought a two-day license and two lures. Here are the lures that he bought. Not even opened. I don't know anyone who's ever caught a fish with a lure that's still in the package. He bought this two-day license.

The only license you can buy in December – a fact which was in the testimony but which, once again, Distaso ignores. He is a very law abiding man and wouldn’t even go through the motions of fishing without a licence.

He told us and he told Detective Brocchini that it was a morning decision to go fishing.

Do you remember that? It was either go to play golf at the club or go fishing.

It was that morning he decided to go. If that's true, why is this license filled out for December 23rd and December 24th? Why would you fill out a license on the 24th for the day before?

He wasn’t going out on the 25^th. He may well have anticipated going on the 23^rd but something came up. How many people have put the wrong date on a check or misfiled some other form. What proof of homicide is this? Why does Scott Peterson have to behave more perfectly than any human who has ever walked the earth, and why is it that any deviation from utter perfection may be taken as evidence of homicide? What strange theory of Distaso’s is this?

John, pull that concrete picture.

Around the same time he talks about, he tells Detective Grogan and Brent Rocha that he makes one anchor at the shop. You know, there was a lot of talk about this picture and, you know, remember the defense made a number of jokes about it, oh, you know, the Rorschach test, I think, or hieroglyphs. I can't remember what words they used. You cannot tell me that someone makes, number one, this much mess on the trailer to make one eight pound anchor. You cannot tell me that.

Apparently you can’t tell Distaso much. Go to any building site and look at the concrete shuttering there. You can find anything you want. Look at the mess when people bake cookies or cakes. What does that prove? A mess is just a mess – and he had used that flat bed before to make other cement items.

That did not happen. Especially you put this thing in one paint bucket, right? How do you get concrete everywhere?

You add too much water.

The other thing, too, is, you know, when you go back there, we've been putting these pictures on the screen and they're kind of hard to see. Take a look at this particular picture. You've got concrete right here and right here in a circular pattern. You have concrete right here in a circular pattern. You have concrete right here in a circular pattern. You have concrete right over there in a circular pattern.

I'm not making this up. I'm not telling you to see something that's not there.

That’s exactly what he is trying to do. If he made the weights one at a time, why were they all spaced out separately? Why didn’t the supposed circles overlap? Why not use the same spot each time? Why not use a drop-cloth, or plastic bags, or even newspaper and dispose of it? Why make weights at all? No one else has ever done this, and it’s a lot of trouble. Two cement blocks would weigh more than six of the supposed weights they never could produce and would raise no suspicions. They are easy to obtain and no effort is needed to make them.

You go back and judge it for yourself. Don't take what I say about it and don't take what they say about it as, as what it is. Go back and look at it. And I'm telling you, though, when you do, you're going to see exactly what we've been describing to you. The defendant says he bought the concrete at Home Depot. He says that, remember, remember the video we saw of Grogan and him, you know, they put up their hands, something like a 60 or 90 pound bag?

Well, where is the rest of it? Where did it go? There's no left-over concrete there at the shop. It's certainly not in the driveway.

Evidence was given that it was, indeed, in the driveway. Why would he make separate weights? Why not push a piece of heavy wire through the bag from front to back, pour water in the rest of the bag and use the whole thing as one weight? By the way, even 90 lb would not have held a 153 lb body down (350 lb is the recommended weight) so the whole thing is moot.

It doesn't matter which of the experts you believe. It's not, you know, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and call it a 60 pound bag, okay? That's an eight pound anchor.

Let's say he uses too much. Two pounds more, so ten pounds. Where's the other 50 pounds of concrete?

The defense expert said they pretty much picked up everything that was there and they, what, got 22 pounds maybe? I'm going to talk about that later, whether that's even correct or not, but let's just assume for the sake of argument that it is. Where's the rest of it? There's no empty bag of concrete found in his shop. I'll tell you where the rest of it is. It's in those anchors at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay.

There were no anchors. The $1 million search proved that.

The defense tried to make an issue with the concrete. Remember Mr. Geragos dragged in that, that bag of fence post concrete. You know, it was kind of funny, everybody kind of laughed. I even chuckled a little bit, you know. I don't blame anybody for laughing at that. But you want to know something else? Where is it? It's not in evidence.

Nobody testified to it.

Nobody testified that Scott made any weights other than the one he still had. Nobody testified that 30, or 40, or 80 lb would hold a body down in six feet of sea water.

You're going to go back there and you're going to go, look, I brought a whole bunch of evidence out here. You're going to go back into that back room and they're going to cart in that evidence. You know what?

You're not going to see that bag of concrete they brought in here.

It was used up and the bag was discarded.

Their expert never even spoke about it. In fact, their expert agreed with everything our expert said, except for the one thing, of course, well, the thing in the concrete. Never heard a word about this fence post concrete, or anything like that. You've got to ask yourselves why that is.

Going back to, you know, he said, he told Grogan he bought that concrete at Home Depot. The defense presented this, this as evidence, a receipt from Lowe's in November where he's returning some concrete. Not that he bought the concrete in December to make these anchors. Or the one anchor, I guess, but this is returning it.

What does this have to do with anything? So he returned some cement in November. Does that show that he made anchors somehow? I'm missing it.

And it still doesn’t matter. There is NO evidence that he made more than the one anchor. All the rest is imagination and guesswork with no evidence. No weights were found, no person saw the supposed weights, they never existed.

... To be continued.

The Prosecutor's Case .. continued

Continued . . .

The fantasy life with her continues. All the things that I just told you about.

All of that keeps going on. He also tells her something that's very important.

He says, you know: I'm going to be going on this, you know, great European trip, and I'm going to be with my family over the holidays in Maine, Kennebunkport, and then I'm going on this trip to Europe and I'll return at the end of January, and then we can resume our relationship, you know, maybe more intact then. Why do you think that's important? Why do you think he told her that?

Translation: “Thanks for the sex but it’s over and I won’t be seeing you after this (since I’ll have a new baby to help care for)”.

Because he knew what he was going to do. He knew what he was going to do all the way back in November.

Where is the evidence for any of this? Only in Distaso’s mind?

I'm going to talk about Amber and the motive in a minute, but did Amber, am I standing up here telling you that Scott Peterson killed his wife to go off and marry Amber Frey? You know he was very obsessed with her and lusted after her, and I'm going to show you a number of examples of that.

As Scott said, she was ‘down and dirty’ sex and nothing more. So much for being “very obsessed with her and lusting after her”.

I don't think he killed Laci Peterson to go marry Amber Frey, though. Amber Frey represented to him freedom. Freedom is what he wanted.

No evidence of this was ever offered. Once again Distaso is creating this from whole cloth.

The end-of-January comments is important because he knows what he's going to do and he figures, you know, he's not a stupid man. We've seen that. He knows there's going to be some uproar, some hoopla, over Laci going missing. He has no idea it's going to snowball into this huge mass that it became. He had no idea that was going to happen.

His parents loved their daughter in law and were looking forward to their new grandson with great anticipation. There was no way that Laci’s abduction would not have utterly shattered them, not to mention Laci’s family and their many friends. This would have been a body blow to both families. This is Distaso at his most ridiculous.

No one did. He thought: Yeah, everyone's going to, you know, a couple weeks will go by, everyone is going to be worried, looking for her, the police will do their standard thing, fill out a missing persons report, nothing will happen and that will be the end of it. How many times have we heard that?

How many times? Would never be the correct number?

I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know. You hear it all the time: So and so went missing. You never hear about it again.

IF it’s a pretty, pregnant Hispanic woman like Evelyn Hernandez in Modesto, maybe. But white women in peril get the media very excited, and Laci was much loved by family and friends.

For some reason, and much to this man's detriment, this case blew up. It snowballed. It didn't go away. But he didn't know that back in November when he was setting this plan in action. He tells Amber throughout the month of December, you know, he doesn't want any children, her child's going to be enough for him.

Because they had no future.

It's a perfect relationship, of course, because her child doesn't mean anything to him. He has no connection to it, he has no responsibility to it, he can do whatever he wants. He can leave and show back up whenever he wants. He tells her he's talked about, he talks about getting a vasectomy, and he asks her at one point if she trusts him enough to make decisions for her in the future. They go out and pick out a Christmas tree together. Remember they go to Shawn's birthday party. The Christmas party where we've seen the pictures. The same day, of course, that Laci was alone at her Christmas party.

Men lie for sex.

Now, in December some other things happen that are very important that causes the defendant, if he wasn't going to actually, he's thinking about the plan, but if he wasn't actually going to carry it out, there's some things that solidified it in his mind and he had to do it. One of which is Shawn Sibley calls him and says Hey, what's the deal, on December 6th: Are you married or not? He says No, denies it completely the first time. Says No, I'm not married at all. He then, he then calls her back and tells her, sobbing hysterically, was what the testimony was, or on the answering machine. Says I lied to you; I used to be married, but actually I lost my wife. That's what he tells her.

Men lie for sex.

To show you how twisted this guy's sense of reality is, I mean if that's not clear in this trial already, there's nothing I can do to convince you of it now.

But let me show you a little example of that. To show you how twisted Scott Peterson's sense of reality is, he actually tells Amber in January, on January 12th, she asks him: You told me that, that Shawn Sibley called you; what did you tell her? He says: Well, I told her I lost my wife. No, before that. He says: Well, you're right; you're right; I initially lied to her and denied that I was married. That's what he said: I initially lied to her and denied that I was married; then I called her back and told her the truth, that I lost my wife.

This is on December 6th: I told her the truth that I lost my wife.

Men lie for sex.

Of course, he hadn't lost his wife until he actually killed her, but in his mind, you know what? Maybe that was the truth. She was dead to him a long time before he killed her. Go ahead and play that clip for me, John. It's January 12th, 1804.

(Tape played)***

Recently dead. That's what he said. Those are his words. On December 7th he researches boats, waterways in Northern California, both freshwater and salt water. On December 8th he looks up Bay charts and fishing information.

Because he wants to try out his boat, he does what a prudent and experienced boater would do. Where is the research on how to kill without evidence? On how much weight it takes to sink a body?

This short period of time in December is the only fishing and boating information on his computer. So the avid fisherman apparently never needs to look up any information at all about fishing. And we're going to talk about his fishing abilities in a minute.

He is trying out his boat, not fishing.

So December 9th he buys a boat.

The fourth he has owned in his life.

On that same day he goes down to Amber's home crying, tells her that he's sorry, he's lied to her, he actually had been married and he lost his wife.

He is trying to dump her.

In marked contrast to that, to the defendant's actions in putting this plan into place to kill Laci, the two lives going on here.

Remember what Laci went out and did on December 9th? Remember what the testimony was for that? She went out and bought his Christmas present. That's what Laci Peterson was doing on December 9th. She spent 534 dollars on looks like a ten-inch professional table saw.

Now, Scott Peterson told the news media, and I think he might have told the police, I don't remember, but he told the news media for sure that he told Laci about his affair with Amber in early December. He says she knew all about it. I don't think there's a single person in this courtroom who believes that.

Why? What proof was offered? Laci knew he had cheated before.

... To be continued

The Prosecutor's Case .. continued

Continued . . .

We're going to talk about that more at length. He backs his boat down in the trailer. He's got the cover on. He goes and puts the truck away.

Taking several minutes and leaving the boat tied up to the dock with the body inside and him away up in the parking lot. This at a dock which has many other boats tied up to it and where people can walk by at any time.

And then how hard is this? He takes the cover off the boat and stuffs it around her body.

Once again, no evidence was offered that the boat could be towed with the cover attached, in fact the opposite was true.

So he uses the cover to cover up. Who is going to see that? Who is even going to suspect it? Who cares if somebody is driving out in the Bay with the cover stuffed in the boat? People do that probably all the time.

Probably? Based on what? Distaso’s wish that it be true?

He drives out to Brooks Island. He dumps Laci out. It takes him all of, what? He gets there at 12:54. We know from his cell phone records he's back at the marina at 2:12. So it takes him less than an hour. Probably 30, 40 minutes at the most.

How did he dump the body without overturning the boat? The prosecution refused to test this because they were extremely apprehensive that they would fail. When the defence tested it and overturned the boat doing it the prosecution had their tame judge prevent the video being shown, on the grounds that the conditions weren’t exactly the same as they were on the 24^th. Yet when the jurors ‘tested’ the boat on the trailer in a garage (conditions clearly different from in the water) the judge still refused to allow the video to be shown.

He drives home and reports her missing. Nothing mysterious or out of the ordinary or even anything about this case. It's simple. It's a simple case where a man murdered his wife.

Without leaving the slightest evidence anywhere. That is far from simple. Even policemen, doctors and forensic technicians have failed to manage this.

Now, let's talk about who is going to suspect him. Everybody thinks he's the perfect husband, right? That's what they think. Go ahead and click on that.

They think, you know, the perfect couple. They're living the American Dream.

They're madly in love. We heard all of this stuff. Remember he's the perfect gentleman. The perfect husband. Well, you know what? Show me something that's perfect and I'll show you something that's not. And it's not perfect here. Go ahead and click on that picture. This is what people thought of them. This is what his family thought. This is what Laci's family thought. Two lives going on here with Scott Peterson. Two lives. The one in the public perception, and, you know what, that's a theme that goes through this whole case. And I'm going to show you a bunch of examples. Two lives.

This assumes that Laci was not aware of that Scott had cheated. No evidence of this was shown, in fact evidence showed that she had known he had done this before.

All the facts of Scott’s life show that he adored Laci. All of it shows that he was the person who loved Laci more than anyone else. There is not the slightest hint that he would ever harm her. Idle comments to an acquaintance at a party hardly comprise a heartfelt confession of his innermost secrets. There is no evidence offered that he had the slightest thoughts of a separate life from Laci – all of the evidence shows the reverse.

Click out.

Now, let's go to how, the defendant's reality. Go to that, John.

Here's how well the defendant in his mind was perceiving himself. Not his fantasy world, because we're going to talk about that, but this is how he felt about his reality. He thinks he's facing midlife. The guy is turning 30, but he thinks he's facing midlife. But that's what he tells Amber in one of the calls.

I'm old, he said.

He said: I kept hoping for infertility. I looked at the quote last night.

It's actually: Kind of hoping for infertility. That's what he tells Rose Rocha when Laci announces her pregnancy:

Distaso is postulating all of this on a Jay Leno quip? What if he had said, “Take my wife – please”?

Darn, she got pregnant; I wasn't, I didn't want that to happen.

Really? He ran home to have sex with her every time she was at a fertility peak. He was prepared to pay for her fertility treatments out of his own pocket. THIS is a man who DIDN’T want it to happen?

He tells Brent Rocha: You know, I'm doing bad at my job, I'm turning 30 and becoming a father all in the same year. Boy, life really stinks for Scott Peterson. You know, most people would be overjoyed to have this. Maybe not the lousy salesman part, but the rest of it for sure. But not this guy.

Once again no evidence of this was offered. It is all Distaso’s fantasy.

Click out.

The two lives of Scott Peterson. Click on that. Scott Peterson created a fantasy life for himself. Scott Peterson, in his fantasy world he was rich, he was successful, he had a beautiful girlfriend, he was a jet setter. Remember, vacations in Kennebunkport, fishing in Alaska, jetting off to Europe.

A man lies for sex. Good thing that’s never happened before!

And you know what? He liked that life. That was a fun life. Who wouldn't like it, right? So in Scott Peterson's mind the only way to continue that life, he had to have a plan: Don't want that dull, boring married life with kids that's coming; I need to have a plan. In October he starts making a plan.

No evidence of any ‘plan’ was offered.

Go ahead and click on that.

In October he's looking for another relationship. That's obvious.

What is obvious is that he wanted to know if he still has ‘it’. Once he had a phone number of a willing woman (‘pulled a bird’ as the English say) he made no effort to follow up on it until prompted three times.

He talks to Shawn Sibley. He tells her a bunch of things. Remember, the whole fantasy life thing. The rich, the successful, the jet setter. He tells her it all. He says he owns the company. He actually says he owns TradeCorp. He says one of my name tags attracts women. I'm rich. Horny bastard. Remember that that was his nickname, HB, in every one of his e-mails. And this I think is the most important thing, though, of all those things I just told you. First off he tells her he's looking for another relationship. Okay, we got that. Then he tells her this. In October, I don't remember if it was the first meeting. I line don't remember the exact time he tells Shawn Sibley this. He says, she's talking to him about his, her fiancé, and saying Oh, he's my soul mate, you know, and whatnot. And Scott Peterson tells her this, he says: You know what, I once was with a woman who was my soul mate.

Many men like to BS women. Most women will confirm this. Amber Frey is surely the poster child for this. Where is the evidence of a crime? This is evidence of a guy who likes to impress women – and he is not alone in this.

This is in October. We're going to talk about the December ones in a minute, but it is in October: I was once with a woman who was my soul mate, but I lost her. That's what he says. He's talking about Laci then in October. Laci Peterson was dead to Scott Peterson a long time before he actually killed her.

Now, November the plan continues. He starts a relationship with Amber Frey.

THIS is the ‘plan’? A plan that includes starting a relationship with Amber Frey? Is this the stupidest plan in history? Who would be so incredibly foolish as to start a relationship like this while contemplating murder? What possible benefit to the ‘plan’ could she have provided? As it is, she was the main (or only) reason he was convicted, something any adult would anticipate. Surely starting a relationship such as this is rock solid evidence of the absence of any such plan or intent.

. . . To be continued