Let us not forget Laci
Peterson who died on this date, December 24, 2002. Let us support her family
members by not forgetting her. We will remember her on her birthday on May 4
every year.
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Laci Denise Peterson
(May 4, 1975 to December 24, 2002)
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Laci
Peterson
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Born
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Laci
Denise Rocha
May 4, 1975 Modesto, California, U.S. |
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Died
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c.
December 24, 2002 (aged 27)
Modesto, California, U.S. (presumably) |
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Occupation
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Substitute
teacher
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Spouse(s)
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Scott
Peterson (1997–2002) (her death)
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Children
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Conner
Peterson (fetal death)
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Parent(s)
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Dennis
Rocha and Sharon Rocha
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Laci Denise Peterson (née Rocha; May 4,
1975 – c. December 24, 2002) was an American woman who was the subject of
a highly publicized murder case after she went missing while eight months
pregnant with her first child. She was reportedly last seen alive on December
24, 2002. Her husband, Scott Peterson, was later convicted of murder in the
first degree for her death, and in the second degree for the death of their prenatal son, Conner. Scott is on death row
at San Quentin State Prison.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Laci_Peterson
Early life
and marriage
Laci Denise
Rocha was born in Modesto, California. Her parents, Dennis Robert
Rocha and Sharon Ruth Anderson, met in high school and married shortly after
graduation. Their first child, Brent Rocha, was born in 1971. Laci was their
second child, born in 1975. Her parents separated after her first birthday.
Dennis later remarried and had another daughter, Amy. Laci grew up visiting her
father's dairy
farm in Escalon, California, and she was a cheerleader
in junior
high and high school. After graduating from Thomas Downey High School, she attended California Polytechnic State
University. At Cal Poly, she majored
in ornamental horticulture. While at Cal Poly, she met Scott
Peterson at a small restaurant called Pacific Café in Morro Bay.
In December
1996, Scott and Laci became engaged. They later married on August 9, 1997, a
few months before Laci's graduation. For the first two years or so of their
marriage, they delayed trying to have children, but Laci began to express an
interest in starting a family. In December 2000, Laci became serious about
trying for a pregnancy.
Becoming pregnant took longer than expected, and on the verge of scheduling fertility tests, Scott and Laci
conceived naturally in May 2002.
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Laci Denise Peterson
(May 4, 1975 to December 24, 2002)
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Disappearance
and discovery of the bodies
Apart from
Scott, the last two people known to have spoken to Laci before she disappeared
were her half-sister, Amy Rocha, and her mother, Sharon Rocha. On the evening
of December 23, 2002, Amy had cut Scott's hair, with Laci present. Later that
evening, Sharon spoke with Laci on the telephone around 8:30 pm. Shortly after
10:15 am the following morning, a neighbor found the family dog, a golden
retriever named McKenzie, running loose in the neighborhood, wearing a collar
and a muddy leash. The neighbor then returned him to the yard. Laci's 1996 Land Rover Discovery SE sport utility vehicle was in the driveway.
Her purse, containing her keys and wallet, was on the table inside the house.
When Scott
returned home from fishing that evening, he reportedly discovered Laci was not
there. Some reports state he washed his clothes, ate some cold pizza, cleaned
up the kitchen, and took a shower. Then, at roughly 5:20 pm, he called Sharon
Rocha to ask if Laci was with her. When Sharon replied that she was not there,
he said, "Laci's missing." Scott stated that when he left that
morning, Laci was planning to buy groceries for their Christmas get-together
and walk McKenzie in nearby East La Loma Park. Another report had Scott saying
he last saw Laci mopping, and he had also told Sharon Rocha that Laci was
curling her hair before he left for his fishing trip.
Laci's
parents called the police at 6 pm. A search of the park and surrounding areas
immediately ensued. Police, family members, friends, and neighbors searched
widely on foot, in all-terrain vehicles, patrol cars, and sport utility vehicles, helicopters equipped
with search lights and heat sensors, water rescue units, search
dogs, and horseback teams. Law enforcement agencies from several counties
became involved. Police suspected foul play, doubting that she would vanish on
Christmas Eve without contacting anyone. At a press
conference, detective Al Brocchini said, "That is completely out of
character for her."
A $25,000
reward was offered, later increased to $250,000, and finally to $500,000 for
any information leading to her safe return. Posters, blue
and yellow
ribbons and fliers were circulated, and the original, basic version of LaciPeterson.com
website was launched by a husband of one of her friends. Friends, family, and
volunteers set up a command center at a nearby Red Lion Hotel to record developments
and circulate information. Over 1,500 volunteers signed up to distribute
information and to help search for her. Critics alleged that this was another
example of missing white woman syndrome, and that
similar cases (primarily that of Evelyn Hernandez) were being ignored by the
media and the community. However, it was the immediate family and friends of
her and the Rochas who organized the initial search and vigil for her, all
1,500 of them; in the first two days, up to 900 people were involved in looking
for her, before community officials or police directly participated in the
search and prior to significant media coverage.
On April 13,
2003, a couple walking their dog discovered the decomposing
but well-preserved body of a late-term male fetus on the San
Francisco Bay shore in Richmond's Point Isabel Regional Shoreline
park, north of Berkeley. Although a judge sealed autopsy results, an anonymous Associated
Press source revealed that 1.5 loops of nylon tape were found around the
fetus' neck and a significant cut was on the fetus' body. One day later, the
body of a recently pregnant woman, wearing cream-colored maternity pants and a
maternity bra, washed to shore one mile away from where the baby's body was
found. The exact cause of her death was impossible to determine as a result of
decomposition; the body was decapitated, both forearms were missing, the right foot
was severed, and the left leg from the knee down was missing. Tape was found
around the outside of her clothing on her lower torso as well. Later reports
from the medical examiner revealed that there were
injuries, two cracked ribs, that happened at or near the time of death. DNA tests verified that
they were the bodies of Laci and her son, Conner. Mother and fetus had not been
separated by coffin birth, as had been speculated. Rather, Laci's
upper torso had been emptied of internal organs and that allowed the fetus to
pass through a perforation in the top of the decomposing uterus. It is
thought that the 1.5 loops of nylon tape became tangled around the fetus' neck
after it came out of Laci's decomposing body. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Alison
Galloway was brought in to examine the remains of Laci and Conner Peterson
and was an expert witness at the trial.
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Laci Denise Peterson grave
(May 4, 1975 to December 24, 2002)
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Investigation
and trial
From the start,
Scott was reluctant to talk to the press. At one point, he stormed out of a
family press conference when reporters asked if the police considered him a suspect. Laci's
brother, Brent Rocha, initially defended him, claiming that he was too
distraught to make public statements about her, and added that did not mean he
was involved in her disappearance. "No way," Rocha said.
"Absolutely not." Although later, Rocha would recall Scott's use of
the word "missing" seemed very frequent. Rocha says, looking back, he
felt uneasy that Scott started using that word so soon. Laci's family
maintained Scott's innocence, and volunteers said that he joined their efforts
at the command center every day. Police delivered a major blow to the family
when they uncovered pictures showing Scott with another woman. They also found
that he was with her during a time that Laci thought he was on a business trip.
(The dates on the pictures revealed this.) After this information came out,
Laci's family called for him to be more forthright with them.
It was later
revealed that Scott had numerous extramarital affairs, one of
which Laci knew about. The most recent was with a massage
therapist named Amber Frey, a single mother from nearby Fresno. The affair
began after he met a woman, Shawn Sibley, on October 24, 2002 at a trade
convention where he represented his company, TradeCorp. He told her he was
single and "looking". He joked that he should put "Horny Bastard"
on his name tag to help him meet women. Though Sibley was attached, she thought
he would be a good match for Amber Frey, a friend of hers. Sibley gave Frey's
contact information to Scott and he called her on November 19 and met her the
next day. After a month-long, whirlwind romance, she informed police of their
relationship shortly after discovering he was a person of interest in Laci's
disappearance on the local news, and agreed to phone him while police recorded
their conversation. She informed police he told her on December 9, two weeks
before Laci's disappearance, he was a widower and it would
be the first Christmas without his wife.
Scott was
arrested on April 18, 2003, in La Jolla, California.
He was arrested in the parking lot of a golf course, where he claimed to be meeting
his father and brother for a game of golf. At the time of his arrest, he was
carrying $15,000 in cash, had four cell phones, camping equipment, a gun, a map
to Frey's work place that had been printed the day before, the driver's license
for John Edward Peterson (his brother), 12 tablets of Viagra, and many
other "odd" items. His hair and goatee had been bleached blonde. The
police took this as an indication that he had planned to flee, possibly to
Mexico.
After a trial
that ran from June 2004 through March 2005, on March 16, 2005, Judge Alfred
A. Delucchi sentenced Scott to death, calling the murder of Laci
"cruel, uncaring, heartless, and callous".
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Sharon Rocha, the
mother of Laci Peterson, spoke out Thursday in Modesto, Calif., on the state
death penalty propositions – 62 and 66. Laci Peterson, and her unborn son,
Conner, were killed by Scott Peterson, who sits on San Quentin's Death Row.
Rocha, Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson and Laura Krieg, Tuolumne
County District Attorney, urged voters to vote No on 62 and Yes on 66.
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Aftermath
The death of
Laci and her fetal
son led to the United States Congress passing the Unborn Victims of Violence Act,
which is widely known as Laci and Conner's Law. On April 1, 2004, Sharon
Rocha and her boyfriend, Ron Grantski, were in attendance at the White
House when President George W. Bush, signed the bill into law. The law
recognizes unborn children as legal victims if injured or killed upon a listed
crime of violence.
Late in 2005,
a Stanislaus County, California judge
ruled that Scott was not entitled to collect on Laci's $250,000 life insurance
policy, having been convicted of her murder. Under California state law,
criminals may not profit from insurance policies. On December 19, 2005, the
money was given to Sharon as the executor of her estate. The California Court of Appeal (Fifth
District) later affirmed the trial court's decision on October 31, 2007.
In 2006,
Sharon wrote For Laci: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Justice, a
biography and memoir about the life and death of Laci. All proceeds are used to
fund the Laci and Conner Search and Rescue Fund, which she had founded. On
January 29, 2006 it was listed at #1 on The New York
Times Non-Fiction Best Seller list.[32]
OTHER LINKS:
JUSTICE FOR LACI PETERSON’S FAMILY: VOTE NO ON PROP 62 & VOTE YES ON
PROP 66
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