February 21, 2024 • 53 mins
In 2004, in one of the most high-profile trials of the past two decades, Scott Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife, Laci Peterson, 27, and their unborn son, Conner, with whom Laci was eight months pregnant. Laci disappeared from their home in Modesto, California, on Christmas Eve in 2002.
Laura Ingle is an investigative reporter who has covered the Peterson case from the beginning. She reports for Fox News and NewsNation. Ingle received an Edward R. Murrow award in 2005 for her 2004 Scott Peterson trial coverage and was awarded four Golden Mikes from the Southern California Association of Television and Radio News Directors. Listeners can learn more about Laura on X @lauraingle and IG @lauraingletv
Resources:
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, sits down with investigative reporter Laura Ingle to re-examine the Scott Peterson case 20 years later. They discuss details like Peterson's suspicious behavior, the discovery of Laci’s body, and new evidence from the LA Innocence Project questioning his guilt. Laura provides an on-the-ground perspective from visiting the crime scene recently. They also analyze Peterson's odd actions, new claims about a burned-out van containing possible blood evidence, and re-evaluate eyewitness testimony.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum.
- [1:20] Background of The Scott Peterson case
- [2:00] Sheryl introduces Laura Ingle to the listeners
- [4:00] Investigating the burnt-out orange van
- [11:30] Peterson's lack of urgent response raises huge suspicion
- [17:00] Sheryl gives her opinion on the Peterson case
- [21:40] The infamous picture of Laci is discussed
- [28:35] Question: What do you see today unfolding with the Innocence Project and with the families?
- [30:30] Blood evidence found in a van should be retested
- [34:30] The amount of gasoline indicates intentional arson of the van to hide evidence
- [37:50] “Every test, on every case, every time.”
- [40:00] Police declined to collect key pieces of physical evidence from the crime scene
- [43:45] “I have always been bothered by the lack of investigation of the burglary of our home and the possible connection to Laci’s disappearance and murder.” -S.M
- [49:50] Laura describes Sharon Rocha's raw visible grief
- [51:00] Question: Will you describe the Christmas Eve photo comparison of Laci Peterson for us?
- [52:39] “I would have liked to personally have prosecuted Scott Peterson.” -N.G
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you love the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review!
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
You can connect and learn more about Sheryl’s work by visiting the CCIRI website https://coldcasecrimes.org
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Back in the day when I was at the Crime Commission,
I was assigned to Operation Weeding Seed. We had a
homicide where the only witness was a little boy eight
years old. The victim that was shot and killed dropped
literally twenty feet from his back porch where he was standing.
He was the only eye witness that could identify the shooter.
(00:32):
In his testimony in court, he said the shooter was
up on the hill and then he said he was
about a mile from me. The prosecutor, being brilliant on redirect,
asked him how far is a mile and he said
about from me to the back door, the back door
(00:53):
of the courtroom, probably not even fifty feet. When you're
talking about eyewitnesses and you're just gribing a scene and
you're describing a perpetrator, what's a mile to him versus
what is an actual mile? Oftentimes we need more information
from eyewitnesses to clarify what they did or didn't see.
(01:16):
Scott Peterson was found guilty of killing his wife Lacy
and unborn son Connor. Peterson has had two felled appeals
and a habeas corpus that failed. Decades later, the Innocent
Project of la has taken up his case, and we're
all sitting here, what is the new evidence? Is there
any true new evidence? There's a burned out van, there's
(01:39):
allegedly blood in the van. Who does the blood belong to?
They're bringing up these eyewitnesses again, what did they see?
Who did they see? When did they see this? But
we have somebody with us that's going to be able
to help us like no other. We have an investigative
reporter that has literally been on this case from day one.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Y'all.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Laura Engel is one of those folks boots on the ground.
She and I agree one hundred percent that you gotta go.
You gotta go to the scene, you gotta walk it,
you got to understand it. You just got to breathe
it in. You can't sit in a studio three thousand
miles away and tell about a case with any real authority.
(02:25):
Seventy two hours ago, she was standing in the quote
alley where the burned out van was, and she's with
us tonight. Now, let me tell you a little bit
about her. She ain't just an investigative reporter. She ain't
just covered this thing for five minutes. She's been on
it from day one. She's produced stories about it. She's
(02:46):
been on documentaries about this case. She even won an
Edward R. Murra Award for it. Now, that's one of
the top things there is the Pulletzer and the Edward R. Murra.
That's about it. That's the gold standard. Laura started out
in radio, she matriculated into TV, she's done documentaries. But
(03:07):
when I tell you she has been on this case,
she's going to be able to share with you some
things you had no idea.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Laura Ingle, thank you for joining us tonight.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
And I just want to say I appreciate you not
only coming on Zone seven, but being a part of mine.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Hi, Cheryl, thank you so much. That's a very nice
and warm introduction.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Well it's heartfelt because you and I have had conversations
off air, texting each other what does this look like?
Speaker 2 (03:36):
What do you think this is?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
And I mean one of the first videos you sent
me as your boots on the ground where the van
was found burned out, it changed everything for me because
again for me, what I'm looking at is not what
I personally would identify as an ALLI.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, I mean when orange van, the burnt out Orange
Van story broke or you know, we're learning about it
through the documents of the La Innocence Project. When I
heard about that, and as you mentioned, you know, I've
been covering the story for a really long time, I
hadn't heard about this. And I kept looking at that
photo that was shared through the documents of the burnt
(04:21):
out orange van had a structure next to it, and
I kept looking at it, thinking okay, and at first
it appeared to me that that is where the alley was,
and I said, all right, I want to go see it.
And that's when I actually texted you and I called you.
I said, I'm going to go to Modesto because I'm
going to be in California and I'm just too close
(04:41):
to Modesto to not go check it out. I've been
up and down those streets in front of that courthouse
in Modesto, remember he was he had his preliminary hearing
in Modesto. Then it was his trial was moved to
Redwood City, so there was a lot of activity and
news coverage and radio reporting. I did in Modesto and
I kept looking at the map, going I don't I
(05:03):
haven't seen this. I need to go see it. So
that's exactly what we did, and got down to Modesto,
rented a car, and drove from the Kovina House, the
former home of the Peterson's, over to this alley, which
to my surprise, when I got there, I said, oh,
there's no blue structure that this van is against. I
(05:24):
later learned that that van when that picture was taken,
was actually at a tow yard up against a wall
of some kind. But this alley was dirt, with a
big eucalyptus tree and chain link fence and dilapidated wood
and a mattress, gang, graffiti, garbage, and it is in
(05:45):
a bad part of town that everybody would describe as
a bad part of town, no offence to the people
that live there, but it's known as the airport district,
and it actually is within eyesight of I was taking
pictures of planes going over my head when I was
standing in the alley, and I could hear children behind
one of the fences. There were, you know, some people
that I wouldn't wanted to be alone in the alley
(06:06):
with that were walking by. I'm glad that we brought
security with us, but in fact, you know it is
it is just a tad over one mile from Lacy
and Scott's former home to this area. And it's interesting,
you know, there's somebody set a van on fire, charted.
It wasn't just arson, it was cans of gasoline, canisters
(06:30):
of gasoline, a rag hanging out of the fuel tank,
and then you know, just set a blaze on this
dirt road. And I actually texted with somebody who had
helped make that report, that fire incident report, and I
sent him a picture and I said, tell me exactly
where the van was. Was it on this side of Empire,
(06:51):
was it on the other? You know, the just the
it's a long it's a long quote alley, it's a
long dirt road, and he circled it and I stood there,
and that's where I filmed my stand up for News Nation,
and I just wanted to stand in the spot where
the van was found. It could have nothing to do
with the case, it could have everything to do with
the case, and we needed to see it.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
The very first thing I saw when you sent me
a photograph was what looked like a dirt road to me.
A alley is between two tall buildings and the back
doors face the alley where workers come out to take
a smoke break or put trash in the dumpsters. To me,
that's an alley. What I saw was a cut through
(07:35):
in a neighborhood completely different, completely different to me, where
the van was dropped would be known to the folks
that dump the van, but would also be within walking
or quickly running distance from a place they could hide,
meaning a family member's home or their own home. Everybody
(07:56):
in that airport district would know this cut through. To me,
an alleyway could be somewhere you could dump something and
you have no association with it. I believe whoever dumped
that van had association to that cut through.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
And that's a really good observation and point because when
you look at the map, and it is contained within
the court document that was filed by the La Innocence Project,
and you see the map in that document, and where
the van was located is a hair down the block
(08:33):
from where one of the burglary suspects had a family member.
So we know that two of the burglary suspects who
confessed right they confessed, they were cleared, they were polygraphed.
And these are words from the detectives who worked the case.
And one of the it was an ant that lived
in this area, So one of those burglars had knowledge. Look,
(08:57):
anybody that lives in Modesto knows this area. So you
can't just say it was Stephen Todd or Glenn Pearris.
It was you know, it was everybody who is maybe
in a criminal activity. Because this area is known for
gang activity, for auto theft, for arson, for drug dealing.
This is when we say it's a quote bad neighborhood.
(09:18):
It's because that's where a lot of the people who
arrested for those types of crimes either reside or do
their business, maybe even in that dirt road cut through.
So so when you look at the map and you
you take a look at okay, so it's close to
But then there's the question if somebody who has committed
(09:38):
this heinous crime, the alleged heinous crime, are they burning
out a van in back of their aunt's house. Essentially,
you know, it's a little it's a little close if
you're going to do something like that, or is it
somebody else that's connected Because remember the two burglars that
were busted, we never heard about an Orange man. We
always heard about another van that you know, there were
(10:00):
a lot of vans that were reported in this neighborhood
at the time. I'm from California. I'm from Sacramento. This
is why this case is so, was so and still
remains important to me, is Yeah, I'm from California. There's
a whole lot of vans. There's a lot of vans,
you know, So okay, let's talk about it. There was
a van that was spotted in the neighborhood across the
(10:21):
street from Scott and Lacy's house around the time that
this burglary occurred. At first, it was described as white,
brown tan. There was a van that was discovered and
there was tracked down by detectives that was in a
reservoir area where people were camping. Those people seemed suspicious,
they were investigated, checked out that van, went to the
(10:44):
Department of Justice and was combed through head to toe
and there was no evidence of that van. But was
that the white tan or brown van, We still don't
really know. And then we've got this orange van. Now
we've learned that or you know, maybe it was in
the archives twenty years ago. But with all the sightings
that happened around Christmas time in two thousand and two,
(11:08):
there was a guy in the park down the street
from Scott and Lacy's house, who reported seeing what he
thought was a cowtrans van. Cowtrans vans, I can tell
you as a California is they're Orange vans. So did
he see something that he thought was a cow trans
van and it was really this van? Was this van close?
These are some of the questions that the La Innocence
(11:29):
Project wants looked at, investigated and checked out, just to make.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Sure nobody wants an innocent person to go to prison. Nobody,
but this van, to me is coming up out of nowhere.
This was never part of the larger conversation at the
time of searching for Lacey. It never came up during
(11:56):
trial that I remember. I have a hard time thinking
that one or more people kidnapped Lacey, put her in
this van, killed her, drove over to the water, somehow
dumped her unseen.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
They don't have a boat. They got a van.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Then pack up in that same van with blood all
over it, drive back pass near the kidnap and saying
and then dump it in a known area where you
know police anytime you've got something stolen or whatever. They're
going to go through that cut through looking for the
car and that's where they dump it.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
That seems off to me.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
You're right. I mean, there's two narratives here. There's the
narrative that we learned and lived through with the and
the search, the investigation, the discovery, the trial, the sentencing,
and you know, Scott is guilty, he's in prison. And
then we've got this other narrative of this group of people,
(12:58):
not just the La Innocence Pribably. I did a documentary
last year about the case of trying to you know,
the family that is still twenty years later, working to
try and get him a new trial, trying to get
the courts to look at some of the evidence that
they had claimed. This is last year before The Innocence
Project La Innocence Project put out this document. But last
(13:21):
year I stood in Janie Peterson's quote war room that
she has down in the San Diego area. Her family
owns this owns and operates a create building business, and
that is one of the offices in that building down
in southern California. They've built this room mostly Jane, but
it's every wall is covered with huge corkboards and timelines
(13:44):
and quotes and pictures and they have been building this
and talking about it. They have meetings with people who
believe that Scott is innocent, going over all the things
that we're talking about in others. You know, the witnesses
who say that they saw Lacy Peterson after Scott Peterson
had gone to go fishing that day, evidence that was recovered,
(14:06):
evidence that wasn't you know, the things that were stolen
out of the Medina House that still today haven't been found.
So they've got and they've got bank boxes of discovery,
They've got bank boxes of testimony that's been printed out,
binders and flyers and just the whole lot. This has
been going on behind the scenes for years. You know.
People think about the Scott Peterson case and they think, well,
(14:27):
you know, he's guilty, he's in prison. Sure, fine, But
in the background, there's been this effort. There's a website,
there's you know, and look you go online and you've
got a lot of people that say, you know, look
he's guilty. Come on the tapes. Amber agreed. All of
it is bad. And I'm not saying one way or
the other. I'm just I just continue to report straight
down the middle and straight down the line because it's
(14:50):
my twenty year story of what's going on with this case?
And this is a big development. This document contains a
lot of information like the orange van, which I think
is kind of the headliner, but there's a lot of
other stuff in here, witness testimony that they want to
go back and I had. I was going through the
documents when I got to Modesto. So I drive to Modesto.
(15:12):
I was in California seeing friends and family go down
to Modesto, and I'm going through the document, which I
thought I had comed through pretty well. And I was
in my hotel room, page after page going through it
on my computer, and I saw my name and I
was like, what you know? And it was buried way
way down deep, and I said, okay, all right, let
(15:33):
me just settle my eyes on this. My name is
in here, and my name was in the La Innocence
Project because it was they want Modesto police records of
something that Detective now retired Detective al Rokini told me
in the interview that they had checked out other witness
sightings of women in the neighborhood walking dogs. He said,
(15:54):
we already checked those women out. You know, it wasn't
Lacy that these witnesses saw they saw these other women. Well,
I guess the LA Innocence Project and others have gone through.
They said, there's no police record of these other women,
so we want to see. Okay, you say that you've
checked out other women and it wasn't Lacy. Where are
the police records about that? And that is what is
(16:17):
another thing that they say is missing that they want
documents on.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Two things.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
One that proves the Innocence Project of LA has done
their homework because they've watched everything they can find, right,
and they've pinpointed you and you had an interview.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
And now they need this cleared up. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I mean that tells you they're not just looking at
the front cover.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Sheet, right, That's right exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And then the other thing is you have maintained I mean,
you're just Switzerland, right. You don't ever come out and
say I think this, or I think that you report
as steady down the road as you can so that
people have all the information and to make up their
own opinion. I, on the other hand, will gladly give
(17:08):
you my opinion. And here it is, how Lucky is
the real killer? That Scott Peterson was Lacey's husband, and
this guy is not only having an affair. He chooses
to not call nine one one when he realizes she's missing.
(17:28):
He does not report her missing. He don't look for her.
He says the night before to his sister in law
and wife, I'm gonna go golfing tomorrow. And he doesn't
go golfing. He goes fishing, and he's at the exact
place fishing where his wife an unborn son surface after
(17:49):
being murdered. While vigil's going on. He's not participating in
the vigil. He ain't crying, he ain't sorry, he's not
sadd He's on the phone with Amber, the person he's
having the affair with. There are things that occurred during
the investigation, like Lacey's hair on a pair of flyers.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Inside a toolbox inside his boat. That's bad.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
The fact that he was making homemade anchors and she
was weighed down, that's bad. The fact that he gets
fifteen thousand dollars cash and dyes his hair and grabs
his brother's ID. That's a bad look to me, All
of these things. When your best friend turns on you,
your mother in law turns on you, there is nobody,
(18:41):
not anybody you worked with, went to church with, went
to school with, lived next door to. Nobody is coming
forward saying there is no way Scott could do this
other than his sister in law.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
I understand, and a lot of people agree with you obviously,
you know, like we've been we've been covering this for
so long, and when all of the stuff happened with
the La Innocence Project, I called up Detective Bueller, who
was on the case and he was one of the
first first to get there when this happened, and it
was he was he and BROKINI were assigned to basically
(19:15):
clear Scott, you know, that was their job was let's
just let's just clear Scott Peterson and so we can
move on. And I think that's pretty standard, right that
they've got to make sure the husband didn't do it
so they can focus. But he said, I just we
just couldn't clear them. Just one thing after another kept happening,
and we needed to stay on that. Now, as you know,
(19:37):
I went back and was listening to I even went
back and was listening to some of my coverage and
the coverage of the stations I was working for at
the time about what was happening. While BROKINI and Bueller
were focusing on Scott. There was this whole other thing
with the detective Cloward, and he led the charge. I
(19:57):
mean they had helicopters in the air, they had people
in the park, they had bloodhounds. I mean they were looking.
So I know that there's a narrative of they focused
on Scott and they didn't pay attention to any of
the You know, you can go back and watch all
of the things that happened back in late two thousand
and two, early two thousand and three that there was
a obviously, I mean if just to remind people of
(20:20):
how thorough and that's why everybody paid attention to the story,
like the world descended upon Modesto. Where is she? Everybody
myself included. I mean that was how I came to
the story in the first place. Because I saw her picture,
I knew how close it was to my hometown. And
because if you have a microphone or a camera, you know,
you wear it like a badge, like I can help,
(20:41):
let me help, let me get the story out there.
Is there somebody that saw something that is what I
that is the greatest gift of this job is to
try and help people. I can talk about it. I
can tell you what's happening. But like, if there is
somebody missing, if that's somebody that I you know, I
just I put myself in the shoes of a Sharon
Roach of the girlfriends, the best friends from high school
(21:03):
who I have that same type of group in Sacramento,
and I if some one of us went missing, I
know that every single one of us is going to
be on the case.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
And that's and that's where I was, That's where all
the reporters were. That's where the world was, it seemed,
I mean, there was there was stuff going on internationally.
People were watching this in you know, our troops were
watching this case unfold. Where is Lacy Peterson? Everybody wanted
to know, and everybody who could wanted to help, and did.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Let's talk about that picture. She's sitting in a little
burgundy jumpsuit, smiling. She looks so happy, and she is
so pregnant. She's just adorable. And at the time, one
of your best friends was pregnant. And so this story
not just geographically but emotionally.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
It did and to that point of just you know,
imagine one of your own imagine one of your own friends.
I saw that picture and I said, oh my gosh,
that reminds me so much of my friend, Like, what
would we do? What would we do if my friend
Amy went missing? There would probably be no meals in
those first forty eight Like you are not taking a nap.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
And she wasn't just a little pregnant, Like you could
not see her walking down the street and not know
she was pregnant.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
There's no way.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
So that also tells you this kidnapper, this stranger, how
many kidnappers kidnapped somebody eight and a half months pregnant.
So now we get down to math. I mean, if
it is so minuscule that it just doesn't even seem possible. Again,
your focus is going to go back on the husband,
(22:50):
And here's where it gets to what he did versus
what he did not do, And in this case, what
he did not do just slaps you in the face.
I mean, he calls her mama, Lacey over there. Now
Lacey's cars at the house, so that means somebody would
have had to come and pick her up. He already
knows that he found the dog wearing the leash allegedly,
(23:13):
so he should know immediately something is wrong and it's
Christmas Eve. And see that's another thing. Everybody's marriage is
not the same. I know that, But I would think
most people on Christmas Eve with a wife that is
eight and a half months pregnant and y'all got a
family party planned, you don't go golfing or fishing. I
(23:36):
would think I would think you would want to be
with her, You would want to be with the family.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
It is such an exciting time. But he's already making plans.
He's telling them the night before. I ain't going to
be around.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
And let me just say this too. When I was
back there on Covina in Modesto, I was you know,
I just sat in my rental car and I sat
there just kind of in the quiet, being there when
things were so hectic. And back in the day when
I was a radio reporter, I got away with a lot.
And that's because I didn't have a camera putting it
(24:09):
in somebody's face. Nobody, you know, a lot of people
didn't want to talk. A lot of people did, but
as a radio reporter you can walk up and say, look,
there's no camera and just tell me what'd you see
that day?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And I remember going across the street. You know, I
banged on all the doors and a couple of doors,
just two doors down to the left. If you're standing
in front of the Peterson's home, and the Peterson's home
is to your back, Medina's across the street. I go
to the left and I talked to somebody and they
came to the to their screen door, and I said,
(24:42):
you know what's going on? Like, what did you see
that day? What happened? And they said, well, Scott came
over and knocked on my door and said, had I
seen Lacey? And I said to Scott, well, no, I haven't,
But you know, where were you? It's Christmas Eve? Like
where were you?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
He said?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I was playing golf. Now this is Christmas Eve. She's
been reported missing. The searches begin. We know that the
story changed. I just always found that interesting that that
was another furtherance of that tale. Was he stressed out, sure,
but I'll never forget it.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
But he misspoke a lot and he said things that
were weird, right like when he's talking, I think it's
Diane Sawyer and he refers to her in past tense.
Was he misspeaking then or was that subconscious? Because he
knew she was dead. And here's the other thing. You
and I are both married. I will tell you Walt
(25:38):
McCollum is a lucky man.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yes he is.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
I'm so easy to get along with, you.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Know, never a cross word. I don't need anything at all.
I'm just a joy constantly. Any man that refers to
his marriage as glorious, could there be anything more creepy,
more ill advised to say?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
More odd?
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I mean, I'll joking aside. I think we have a
great marriage. We've got two fantastic children. I think we've
done right by each other. I would never use the
word glorious.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
When he said that.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I don't know anybody that just didn't get a uh feeling.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Well, I'll tell you what stock out to me during
those interviews. He only granted a few interviews, but it
was the interview with Gloria Gomez, who was a local
reporter in Sacramento, and she's been a part of a
couple of documentaries because she got one of the interviews
during this time before he was, before the bodies were found,
before the arrest happened. And I think one of the
(26:43):
biggest questions in that interview that people have pointed out
is She's sitting down similar in the in the living
room in Scott's house and they're talking and the phone,
his phone is ringing, and he doesn't get up to
pick up the phone, and she goes, do you want
to get that and he goes, no, that's okay.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
One h oh, my gosh, it could be the call.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
And that was a big problem for a lot of people,
Like when we watched that and rewound it and watched
it again, and you know, let me play Devil's advocate
for a minute, because that's what I do. I play
it down the middle. Maybe maybe he said he handed
his phone to somebody and said, if my phone rings,
you know, pick up the call for me. But it
was his phone. It rang. She's missing. Somebody could have
(27:30):
called and said we've got to leave.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Well, let's talk about the other horrendous action. He sold
her car and tried to sell their house. So let's
just say she had a medical event hit her head,
had some amnesia.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
When she gets better, she's going to walk up to
the front door and hey, don't live.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
There, right right. Yeah. It's a lot of people have
looked at that and just pointed to guild, I don't
recall I'm trying to think of what the reasoning was
of just needing the money.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, the sister in law, I think, said he needs
money to pay bills. But again, he didn't sell his
own car. He sold hers. He didn't sell the boat,
he didn't sell the golf clubs. He sold her car.
That's a move that anyone should question. So here's the deal.
You show up day one, you're in front of the home.
(28:30):
For the next twenty years, you go back to the home,
you talk to family members, you talk to witnesses, you
talked to law enforcement. I know you're middle of the road,
but what do you see today unfolding with the Innocence
project with the families. Because I can't help but think
(28:51):
of Sharon Roacha that she is once again having to
deal with this devil. He just will not go away.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
And I think about that. I mean, there's there's a
couple of things that have come you know, obviously this
I was working on. I was working on Rex Huerman
in the Long Island serial killer case in the office
in New York when this story broke and somebody came
banging on the door and they said, lor something happened
with Scott Peterson, do you want to come out here? Said,
(29:20):
And I immediately think of Sharon Roacha because I read
her book, which is the most devastating book of you know,
it's a it's a loving tribute to her daughter, but
her heartbreak is so tangible and has been from the
beginning that I can't help but think of her and
Brent and Amy and the rest of the family. Her partner,
(29:40):
Ron Gransky has since passed away, and I just I
just remember seeing the grief, then seeing it in the
interviews after and they've, you know, they they have not
to me. I mean, I've I've reached out, and they've
I think they're done talking about it. And they they
chose not to go through another trial when his death
(30:02):
penalty was overturned, and you know, and that tells you something.
They just they can't do it. They don't want to
do it again. It's too hard. I mean, Connor Peterson
would be going to college, he would be tall, he
would be handsome, he'd have his own car, he might
have a girlfriend, you know, And that's what I think
about when I that's like kind of the first wave
(30:25):
that hits me when something comes up about Scott Peterson,
and my heart breaks, and I keep the victims' families
in my heart, and that includes the Petersons. I think
about his parents, his aging parents, and his mother passed away.
Lee is still around his dad, the family that still
believes in him.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I know.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
I know what you're going to say to those listening,
I know, but I'm just saying that they loved Lacey too, Okay.
And then you've got the girlfriends, the best friends from
high school, and so you've got that first wave. Everybody
has to live through this again. Then you dig into
the document and you go, all right, what are we
dealing with here? And when I heard about the van,
(31:07):
and there's just a couple of things I want to
point out. These pictures that we talked about, the picture
of the orange van up against the blue wall that's
in a tow yard. When you look in the back
of the van. My husband actually pointed this out. There
are cinder blocks in the back of the burned out van.
There are these gas canisters in the back of the
burned out van. And then when I scrolled through the
(31:30):
document of the declaration of the fire investigator and what
he wrote down in the reporter, the producer who ended
up going and finding this guy. He opened the door
and he said to the producer, I've been waiting ten
years for somebody to come and ask me this, or
maybe more, he said, I've been I've always wondered why
(31:51):
this wasn't checked out. And everybody initially heard this report
and said, where was this guy? Where's this guy been? Well,
if you go through the La Innocence Project and you
read his declaration, he was right there. He describes going
with a police detective to the yard where this van
(32:13):
had originated from. It belonged to a rigging company and
a guy named Terry Bowden that's who it was registered to.
They did go and interview him. He said, I think
the van was stolen and all of my employees had
access to that van. Talked about Bobby Riggs, the last
guy that had access to the van. Checked out Bobby Riggs.
Bobby Riggs said, yeap, I borrowed the van and I
put it back on December twenty seventh. Well, the van
(32:37):
was found burning in flames on Christmas morning, so there
was an investigation done, there was evidence taken, and in
this declaration it describes Brian Spotowski as the fire investigator
and he describes, you know, going to the yard and
talking to the van owner, going back, and it was
(32:58):
towed to a tow yard and then somebody realized along
the way this could be evidence. They take it to
the Medesto Police Department warehouse. They and they actually had
the sense to cover it because all of us were there.
Now we learn that they covered this with a tarp,
put it on a flatbed and towed it to the
Modesto Police Department out of our prying eyes to see
(33:20):
what's what. And they do test it, and they do
realize that there is blood after they remove a gas
canister that's in the middle of the mattress. They pull
up the gas canister and there's the stain and everybody goes,
oh my god. And they test it and so there's
just more there's just more information, and it's just still
(33:44):
a question. It was tested, it seemed, you know, came back.
They put it in a tube. You would know more
than that than me that they put something in a tube.
It turned blue and that showed it was human blood.
And then it went to the Department of Justice. But
then what happened Now we could find out that they
did the Department of Justice tested it and it wasn't
Lacey's and that's it? Or did they did they test it?
(34:07):
Is DNA technology today so advanced that we could learn
something more from that piece of mattress cloth that was cut, preserved, logged.
Let's test, that's the idea. Let's test it and find out.
And then when I talked to the detective now retired
Al Borkini, I said, he goes, Look, it's not going
to be Lacy's blood. He goes, and if it's somebody's blood,
(34:30):
whose blood is it? Maybe there's another crime we need
to be talking about here.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Here's the reality. For me, Arson most often is to
cover up another crime. So whatever happened inside that van
should be paramount to law enforcement. And you can take
Lacy Peterson completely out of that equation and it should
still be paramount.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
With that amount of blood.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Most people do not have five cans of gasoline in
the back of their van. This means to me somebody
had to go get cans, go get gasoline, come back,
and then do the arson. So they went to great
links to try to cover up whatever was inside that van.
The photograph you sent me, there's a clear pattern on
(35:18):
that cloth and it looks rectangle. It looks like the
blade of a knife laying flat being cleaned off, is
what it looks like to me. I need somebody to
clarify what we're seeing. And there's a second thing, Laura,
let's talk about the Virgin Mary statue.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Well, in this La Innocence Project document, there are a
lot of sworn declarations, and I found it really interesting
that the declaration from Susan Medina. Remember she's the wife
that lived across the street at the Medinas. They actually
found out this week when I was in Modesto that
they do still live in the neighborhood. They just don't
live in that house. But neighbors I spoke to said
(36:01):
they're still here. They just live, you know, down the
road they stayed. They just moved out of that house.
And the declaration of Susan Medina talks about the when
the police came over. Obviously the world is, you know,
right there on Covina, and she talks about being in
the house and looking around at all the things that
are out of place, and she said that there was
a Virgin Mary statue that had been moved during the
(36:24):
burglary of her home. And she says that she pointed
it out to investigator, said, you know, they clearly touched that,
and she said, they didn't touch it, they didn't fingerprint it.
She offered them to take the French doors that had
been kicked in in the back of her house because
there was a footprint, and she said, take the doors.
You just go take a screwdriver, unhinge the hinge and
(36:46):
just take it. And she says they didn't. Now it'll
be interesting, Cheryl to find out if we can get
the records, you know, what is the police version of that.
Did they take something else that we don't know about
that wasn't recorded. You know, I don't want to you know,
you don't want to say, well, the Modesto Police Department
did absolutely nothing, but they obviously they Bueller. Detective Bueller
(37:08):
told me. He said, this was the most well investigated
home burglary in the history of Modesta or California. Like,
we went up and down and we test, you know,
we checked out everything.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
We got the guys.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
But when you hear it from Susan Medina, who was
the eyewitness who opened her doors after coming home from
Christmas and said, oh my gosh, somebody has ripped through
my house, stolen our safe, took out you know, there's
a hammer that somebody took out of my my husband's
shop and they used it for something. Can you take
(37:40):
the hammer and can you Can you fingerprint that? She
says they didn't.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
You know, I have a mantra and it's every test
on every case, every time. And the reason is if
you fingerprint the doorknob and get a decent print off
a perpetrator, that's great. But if you have more than
one perpetrator and you don't fingerprint the Virgin Mary statue,
(38:06):
you may not get the second person inside that house.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Do all of it. There's no excuse not to do
all of it.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
It's thirty seconds at the most to fingerprint that little statue.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
And the question is if if true? What's the reason
I want to read you a couple of just a
quick passage. Well, I'll read you the end of this
declaration of Susan Medina. What's interesting about Susan Medina. She
talks about how the neighborhood was very close knit. Our
neighbors all looked out for one another and would take
notice when something was amiss in the neighborhood. I recall
(38:41):
instances of seeing Lacey interacting with people out on the street.
In one instance, I was inside my home and recall
Lacey yelling at some teenagers who were in her yard
and telling them to get out of her yard. I
also recall having a conversation with one of our neighbors,
Lil Erkind, about an incident she witnessed involved Lacey. Lil
told me she witnessed Lacey confronting and yelling at some
(39:04):
people who were fighting in the street on Covina. I
believe that conversation occurred after Lacey's disappearance, doesn't make sense.
We both commented on how Lacey was feisty and protective
in that way. Lil, who was herself Portuguese, commented that
it must be the Portuguese and Lacey. I recall another
occasion when I was outside my home pruning some of
(39:25):
my plants. Lacey spotted me and came up to me
because she saw I was doing a terrible job of pruning.
She told me, in a polite way, I wasn't pruning
my plants correctly and there was a better way to
do it if I wanted to help them grow better.
I recall that while thinking Lacey was very polite. It
was also very bold of her to come and tell
me how to do my pruning. Talking about the presence
of homeless and transient people increasing when the Modesto Gospel
(39:47):
mission opened at the corner of Yosemite and Rafino Avenue,
I recall that every morning, around six am, the shelter
would close and the occupants would have to leave for
the day, many of them traveling on foot through our neighborhood.
With the increase in foot traffic, we also started to
have more people digging through our trash and recycling on
a regular basis. We started taking added precautions when we
noticed an increase in foot and bicycle traffic on our street.
(40:09):
On December twenty fourth, two thousand and two, we were
in the final stages of constructing a covered patio in
our backyard. The covered patio was on the south and
east side of the house, as depicted by the shading below.
I've got the diagram, it's in the document. They saw somebody.
I don't know if you've ever heard this part, Cheryl.
They left their home at ten thirty am on December
twenty fourth to go out of town to visit relatives
(40:30):
over the Christmas holiday. We locked the gate to our
backyard before leaving. As we were driving down Covina, Rudy
pointed a man out to me that looked suspicious. The
man was wearing a flannel shirt and was slowly riding
past our house on a bike while heading north on
the east side of Covina. He was not actively peddling
when we passed him, but was kind of slowly walking
his bike. He was a white man and the look
(40:52):
of him made me feel uncomfortable. He looked out of place,
and something about him made me nervous. So we circled
the block by turning right on Encina, on Santa Barbara,
right on Highland, right on Edgebrook, and right on Covena.
It would have only taken us less than a minute
to circle the block. I did not see the man
when we drove back by our home on Cavena. With
the way Covena is situated, he had taken the path
(41:13):
into the park. We would have seen him by the
time we circled back, but we did not see where
he went. When we returned from our trip from La
December twenty sixth, we were shocked by the presence of
so many media on Covina. After showing urds to Covena,
we approached our house. I remember Rudy noticing our Dolly
in the front yard as we pulled in. Rudy entered
the back doors of our house, which had been kicked in,
(41:34):
and had me wait outside. Rudy then came running out
of the house and announced that we had been robbed. Immediately,
the police, which were focused on the Peterson's home, started
coming over to us and our residence and we reported
the burglary. The detectives were going back and forth between
the Peterson residence and our house. I remember being concerned
that with all the media there, that the reporters were
going to think that we were suspects in whatever had
(41:56):
happened at the Peterson home since the police were now
looking at our house. I was also concerned because they
were not wearing shoe coverings when going back and forth
between the houses, and I was concerned about cross contamination
of evidence. At some point, I remember Doug Lavelle coming
over to our residence. He was working with the Modesto
Police department. I knew Doug's wife, Peggy through work. I
recalled Doug coming into our house to look at evidence.
(42:18):
I walked him and the detectives through the house, pointing
out things that were out of place. I had just
cleaned the house ahead of our trips, so I could
tell what had been touched by the burglars. I recall
offering to the police that they could take the French
doors if they needed them as evidence. I remember they
had been kicked in and there was a footprint on
the doors. They declined to take the doors. I remember
(42:40):
when we entered our master bedroom, Rudy's hammer from his
shed and one of his work gloves were on our bed.
The head of the hammer was wrapped in the glove
in such a way that made me think it was
being used to suppress the noise of using the hammer
to hit something. I do not believe the police collected
either the hammer or the glove. I cannot recall whether
(43:00):
they swabbed or checked them for fingerprints. Also on the
bed was a statue of the Virgin Mary, which had
been on top of the safe. Again I recall pointing
out to the police so they would know that the
burglars touched that. Next to the statue was an envelope
that I kept our monthly allowance of cash in I
recall there being about four hundred dollars in the envelope
when we left. When we returned, the envelope was missing
(43:22):
the majority of the cash. When I suggested the police
fingerprint items in our home that had been touched or disturbed,
the detective told me that I quote watched too much CSI.
So that's you know, that's where the La Innocence Project
is concerned and wants to know what happened with some
of these items. And she ends this in her last
(43:43):
statement sworn declaration July twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, just
last year, ending with I have always been bothered by
the lack of investigation of the burglary of our home
and the possible connection to Lacy's disappearance and murder, Signed
Susan Medina.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
When you have an opportunity to take five more minutes,
do it. Take the statue, take the doors, throw fingerprint
powder all over that place, measure everything, make the victim
feel like that you are doing everything possible. And let
(44:20):
me address the TV comment for one moment. That is
what people know, that's where they get their information. So
when you say to somebody, why can't fingerprint a brick
and you want to move on. Take the brick. You
can get DNA from it. Don't tell them what you
can't do. Take five more minutes, not even to pick
(44:44):
the brick up, Put it in a bag, tag it
and take it with you and see if you can
run some test to make them feel like you have
literally done all that you can do, because you did.
I do believe your job is so important. And I
(45:08):
tell people this all the time. In small towns, your
police department may not have a drone, but your TV
station does. And if you've got a child or an
elderly person missing, ask for their help.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Get that drone in the air.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
If they cover it, fine, but use the tools that
are available to you. I agree with you one hundred percent.
There was nobody better to get on this thing quicker
to search for her than the media.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
And the media that gathered at the Redline Hotel and
that you know, got the flyers record, you know, and
we see the we see the desperate panic and grief
on the faces of Sharon Roache. I mean, if you
just if you just go back and you look at
the difference of actions of just even just the look
(46:04):
on their face, and everybody handles things differently, and we
have to keep saying that over and over again, especially
with this case. But that desperate grief, that is that
guttural feeling that you experience when you listen to Sharon
Roache at the microphone, Please please, if you have her,
bring her back, and you hear Lacy's biological father break down,
(46:29):
and then you know, you see And then people would say,
but look at Scott Peterson. He's walking his dog, he's going,
you know, he's handing out a few flyers and he's leaving.
That was what was so suspicious in the beginning as
well to many people, and people wanted to know, why
aren't you driving down the street. I recall having somebody
in my life missing for a few hours, and I
(46:52):
got in my car and I rolled down both windows
and I went up and down the streets screaming that
person's name. And I knew I looked like a maniac,
but I was so desperate that that person was injured,
had fallen, might be unconscious. I remember that fear, and
(47:13):
it is real when it happens, and we saw it
unfold in real time in front of our cameras and microphones.
During that time and when you watch you know, just
the different side of that. It's hard to wrap your
head around it. We just have to listen to his
explanation on that he's in prison. Jerry found him guilty.
(47:39):
But that's something that always stuck out to me.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
You know, you've been on this case twenty years, and
I worked Natalie Holloway for seventeen eighteen and I've watched
her mom and most recently with your hand taken a
play when I sat with her mama years ago in
front of a chapel in Aruba. It was me, Beth
(48:04):
and Nancy Grace and it had been all that time,
seventeen years, and we were just sitting in silence, letting
Beth just take it all in at the chapel where
she first felt any piece at all. And she turned
to the two of us and she said, I know
you think I'm crazy, but I brought Natalie's passport just
(48:28):
in case, And I know you feel this way. There's
a time where you stop being a reporter and you
stop being a crime saye investigator and you're a mama.
And I know with Sharon Rocha and with Beth Holloway,
you and I have both had that experience where after
(48:50):
you have that baby, something happens to you where you
can't hear about a missing child or a murdered child,
or where you're not affected so deeply and so differently
that yes, you can still, you know, do your job professionally,
but there's part of you that now just kind of
(49:11):
has this overlay and it's different.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
It's more personal to you.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
And when you're involved in a story like this one,
or Natalie Holloway, or the use so many murders which
I covered, or the Connecticut home invasion story that I
did every day of that trial too, you just you
have to compartmentalize while you're doing your job. But at night,
when the lights go out, I see their faces. I
(49:40):
want to help bring answers, and I know that victim's
family members, and I don't blame anybody who doesn't want
a camera in their face asking them how. You know.
That's the thing, Cheryl. When I covered the trial of
Scott Peterson, and I was outside of that courthouse every
day waiting for my press pass and getting a seat
(50:00):
in the courtroom, and I watched the family members come in.
There was something about Sharon Roache that reminded me of
my own mom, and I didn't I didn't want to
chase her. I didn't want to put a microphone in
her face, and I didn't need to ask her how
she felt because I could see it. I could see it,
(50:24):
and I could describe it. And as a radio reporter,
I felt comfortable in my reporting abilities that I could
talk about watching her go up, go up, and go
out into that courthouse, and I just never I never
felt the need to do that. I didn't want to
do that to her because she was already just being
(50:44):
annihilated with media.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Laura, will you.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Describe for us Lacy in the jumpsuit photograph and what
the prosecutor did During the trial.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
We had a lot of exhibits in court, and one
of the most powerful exis amples of a double life
that Scott Peterson was living was when Lacy Peterson would
to a Christmas party by herself and she was dressed
up in this kind of ruby colored beautiful jumpsuit with
(51:15):
jewelry and a big broad smile, sitting in a chair
because she was pregnant and her doctor had told her to,
you know, stay off of her feet. According to testimony,
we heard about that. So there she is sitting at
a Christmas party by herself, and they put up on
the other side of the screen a picture of Scott
Peterson and Amber Fry the same night, and that's what
(51:38):
he was doing. And it was, oh, it was hard.
It was hard to see that and look over at
the family and think about what that felt like for them.
Chances are they've already seen the photos, but now we're
seeing it publicly in trial, and it just made you
want to start crying. It was it was so hard.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
To see that.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
How could you let her go to that party? How
could you let her look that beautiful and pregnant and
hopeful while driving down ninety nine to go to Fresno
and go to another Christmas party with somebody else. Happens
all the time, though this we know adultery affairs, but
to see it in vivid color on a huge screen
(52:30):
inside of a courthouse courtroom is painful.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do, with a quote I would have liked to
personally have prosecuted Scott Peterson, Nancy Grece. I'm Cheryl McCollum,
and this is Zone seven
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Nine
Back in the day when I was at the Crime Commission,
I was assigned to Operation Weeding Seed. We had a
homicide where the only witness was a little boy eight
years old. The victim that was shot and killed dropped
literally twenty feet from his back porch where he was standing.
He was the only eye witness that could identify the shooter.
(00:32):
In his testimony in court, he said the shooter was
up on the hill and then he said he was
about a mile from me. The prosecutor, being brilliant on redirect,
asked him how far is a mile and he said
about from me to the back door, the back door
(00:53):
of the courtroom, probably not even fifty feet. When you're
talking about eyewitnesses and you're just gribing a scene and
you're describing a perpetrator, what's a mile to him versus
what is an actual mile? Oftentimes we need more information
from eyewitnesses to clarify what they did or didn't see.
(01:16):
Scott Peterson was found guilty of killing his wife Lacy
and unborn son Connor. Peterson has had two felled appeals
and a habeas corpus that failed. Decades later, the Innocent
Project of la has taken up his case, and we're
all sitting here, what is the new evidence? Is there
any true new evidence? There's a burned out van, there's
(01:39):
allegedly blood in the van. Who does the blood belong to?
They're bringing up these eyewitnesses again, what did they see?
Who did they see? When did they see this? But
we have somebody with us that's going to be able
to help us like no other. We have an investigative
reporter that has literally been on this case from day one.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Y'all.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Laura Engel is one of those folks boots on the ground.
She and I agree one hundred percent that you gotta go.
You gotta go to the scene, you gotta walk it,
you got to understand it. You just got to breathe
it in. You can't sit in a studio three thousand
miles away and tell about a case with any real authority.
(02:25):
Seventy two hours ago, she was standing in the quote
alley where the burned out van was, and she's with
us tonight. Now, let me tell you a little bit
about her. She ain't just an investigative reporter. She ain't
just covered this thing for five minutes. She's been on
it from day one. She's produced stories about it. She's
(02:46):
been on documentaries about this case. She even won an
Edward R. Murra Award for it. Now, that's one of
the top things there is the Pulletzer and the Edward R. Murra.
That's about it. That's the gold standard. Laura started out
in radio, she matriculated into TV, she's done documentaries. But
(03:07):
when I tell you she has been on this case,
she's going to be able to share with you some
things you had no idea.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Laura Ingle, thank you for joining us tonight.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
And I just want to say I appreciate you not
only coming on Zone seven, but being a part of mine.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Hi, Cheryl, thank you so much. That's a very nice
and warm introduction.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Well it's heartfelt because you and I have had conversations
off air, texting each other what does this look like?
Speaker 2 (03:36):
What do you think this is?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
And I mean one of the first videos you sent
me as your boots on the ground where the van
was found burned out, it changed everything for me because
again for me, what I'm looking at is not what
I personally would identify as an ALLI.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, I mean when orange van, the burnt out Orange
Van story broke or you know, we're learning about it
through the documents of the La Innocence Project. When I
heard about that, and as you mentioned, you know, I've
been covering the story for a really long time, I
hadn't heard about this. And I kept looking at that
photo that was shared through the documents of the burnt
(04:21):
out orange van had a structure next to it, and
I kept looking at it, thinking okay, and at first
it appeared to me that that is where the alley was,
and I said, all right, I want to go see it.
And that's when I actually texted you and I called you.
I said, I'm going to go to Modesto because I'm
going to be in California and I'm just too close
(04:41):
to Modesto to not go check it out. I've been
up and down those streets in front of that courthouse
in Modesto, remember he was he had his preliminary hearing
in Modesto. Then it was his trial was moved to
Redwood City, so there was a lot of activity and
news coverage and radio reporting. I did in Modesto and
I kept looking at the map, going I don't I
(05:03):
haven't seen this. I need to go see it. So
that's exactly what we did, and got down to Modesto,
rented a car, and drove from the Kovina House, the
former home of the Peterson's, over to this alley, which
to my surprise, when I got there, I said, oh,
there's no blue structure that this van is against. I
(05:24):
later learned that that van when that picture was taken,
was actually at a tow yard up against a wall
of some kind. But this alley was dirt, with a
big eucalyptus tree and chain link fence and dilapidated wood
and a mattress, gang, graffiti, garbage, and it is in
(05:45):
a bad part of town that everybody would describe as
a bad part of town, no offence to the people
that live there, but it's known as the airport district,
and it actually is within eyesight of I was taking
pictures of planes going over my head when I was
standing in the alley, and I could hear children behind
one of the fences. There were, you know, some people
that I wouldn't wanted to be alone in the alley
(06:06):
with that were walking by. I'm glad that we brought
security with us, but in fact, you know it is
it is just a tad over one mile from Lacy
and Scott's former home to this area. And it's interesting,
you know, there's somebody set a van on fire, charted.
It wasn't just arson, it was cans of gasoline, canisters
(06:30):
of gasoline, a rag hanging out of the fuel tank,
and then you know, just set a blaze on this
dirt road. And I actually texted with somebody who had
helped make that report, that fire incident report, and I
sent him a picture and I said, tell me exactly
where the van was. Was it on this side of Empire,
(06:51):
was it on the other? You know, the just the
it's a long it's a long quote alley, it's a
long dirt road, and he circled it and I stood there,
and that's where I filmed my stand up for News Nation,
and I just wanted to stand in the spot where
the van was found. It could have nothing to do
with the case, it could have everything to do with
the case, and we needed to see it.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
The very first thing I saw when you sent me
a photograph was what looked like a dirt road to me.
A alley is between two tall buildings and the back
doors face the alley where workers come out to take
a smoke break or put trash in the dumpsters. To me,
that's an alley. What I saw was a cut through
(07:35):
in a neighborhood completely different, completely different to me, where
the van was dropped would be known to the folks
that dump the van, but would also be within walking
or quickly running distance from a place they could hide,
meaning a family member's home or their own home. Everybody
(07:56):
in that airport district would know this cut through. To me,
an alleyway could be somewhere you could dump something and
you have no association with it. I believe whoever dumped
that van had association to that cut through.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
And that's a really good observation and point because when
you look at the map, and it is contained within
the court document that was filed by the La Innocence Project,
and you see the map in that document, and where
the van was located is a hair down the block
(08:33):
from where one of the burglary suspects had a family member.
So we know that two of the burglary suspects who
confessed right they confessed, they were cleared, they were polygraphed.
And these are words from the detectives who worked the case.
And one of the it was an ant that lived
in this area, So one of those burglars had knowledge. Look,
(08:57):
anybody that lives in Modesto knows this area. So you
can't just say it was Stephen Todd or Glenn Pearris.
It was you know, it was everybody who is maybe
in a criminal activity. Because this area is known for
gang activity, for auto theft, for arson, for drug dealing.
This is when we say it's a quote bad neighborhood.
(09:18):
It's because that's where a lot of the people who
arrested for those types of crimes either reside or do
their business, maybe even in that dirt road cut through.
So so when you look at the map and you
you take a look at okay, so it's close to
But then there's the question if somebody who has committed
(09:38):
this heinous crime, the alleged heinous crime, are they burning
out a van in back of their aunt's house. Essentially,
you know, it's a little it's a little close if
you're going to do something like that, or is it
somebody else that's connected Because remember the two burglars that
were busted, we never heard about an Orange man. We
always heard about another van that you know, there were
(10:00):
a lot of vans that were reported in this neighborhood
at the time. I'm from California. I'm from Sacramento. This
is why this case is so, was so and still
remains important to me, is Yeah, I'm from California. There's
a whole lot of vans. There's a lot of vans,
you know, So okay, let's talk about it. There was
a van that was spotted in the neighborhood across the
(10:21):
street from Scott and Lacy's house around the time that
this burglary occurred. At first, it was described as white,
brown tan. There was a van that was discovered and
there was tracked down by detectives that was in a
reservoir area where people were camping. Those people seemed suspicious,
they were investigated, checked out that van, went to the
(10:44):
Department of Justice and was combed through head to toe
and there was no evidence of that van. But was
that the white tan or brown van, We still don't
really know. And then we've got this orange van. Now
we've learned that or you know, maybe it was in
the archives twenty years ago. But with all the sightings
that happened around Christmas time in two thousand and two,
(11:08):
there was a guy in the park down the street
from Scott and Lacy's house, who reported seeing what he
thought was a cowtrans van. Cowtrans vans, I can tell
you as a California is they're Orange vans. So did
he see something that he thought was a cow trans
van and it was really this van? Was this van close?
These are some of the questions that the La Innocence
(11:29):
Project wants looked at, investigated and checked out, just to make.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Sure nobody wants an innocent person to go to prison. Nobody,
but this van, to me is coming up out of nowhere.
This was never part of the larger conversation at the
time of searching for Lacey. It never came up during
(11:56):
trial that I remember. I have a hard time thinking
that one or more people kidnapped Lacey, put her in
this van, killed her, drove over to the water, somehow
dumped her unseen.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
They don't have a boat. They got a van.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Then pack up in that same van with blood all
over it, drive back pass near the kidnap and saying
and then dump it in a known area where you
know police anytime you've got something stolen or whatever. They're
going to go through that cut through looking for the
car and that's where they dump it.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
That seems off to me.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
You're right. I mean, there's two narratives here. There's the
narrative that we learned and lived through with the and
the search, the investigation, the discovery, the trial, the sentencing,
and you know, Scott is guilty, he's in prison. And
then we've got this other narrative of this group of people,
(12:58):
not just the La Innocence Pribably. I did a documentary
last year about the case of trying to you know,
the family that is still twenty years later, working to
try and get him a new trial, trying to get
the courts to look at some of the evidence that
they had claimed. This is last year before The Innocence
Project La Innocence Project put out this document. But last
(13:21):
year I stood in Janie Peterson's quote war room that
she has down in the San Diego area. Her family
owns this owns and operates a create building business, and
that is one of the offices in that building down
in southern California. They've built this room mostly Jane, but
it's every wall is covered with huge corkboards and timelines
(13:44):
and quotes and pictures and they have been building this
and talking about it. They have meetings with people who
believe that Scott is innocent, going over all the things
that we're talking about in others. You know, the witnesses
who say that they saw Lacy Peterson after Scott Peterson
had gone to go fishing that day, evidence that was recovered,
(14:06):
evidence that wasn't you know, the things that were stolen
out of the Medina House that still today haven't been found.
So they've got and they've got bank boxes of discovery,
They've got bank boxes of testimony that's been printed out,
binders and flyers and just the whole lot. This has
been going on behind the scenes for years. You know.
People think about the Scott Peterson case and they think, well,
(14:27):
you know, he's guilty, he's in prison. Sure, fine, But
in the background, there's been this effort. There's a website,
there's you know, and look you go online and you've
got a lot of people that say, you know, look
he's guilty. Come on the tapes. Amber agreed. All of
it is bad. And I'm not saying one way or
the other. I'm just I just continue to report straight
down the middle and straight down the line because it's
(14:50):
my twenty year story of what's going on with this case?
And this is a big development. This document contains a
lot of information like the orange van, which I think
is kind of the headliner, but there's a lot of
other stuff in here, witness testimony that they want to
go back and I had. I was going through the
documents when I got to Modesto. So I drive to Modesto.
(15:12):
I was in California seeing friends and family go down
to Modesto, and I'm going through the document, which I
thought I had comed through pretty well. And I was
in my hotel room, page after page going through it
on my computer, and I saw my name and I
was like, what you know? And it was buried way
way down deep, and I said, okay, all right, let
(15:33):
me just settle my eyes on this. My name is
in here, and my name was in the La Innocence
Project because it was they want Modesto police records of
something that Detective now retired Detective al Rokini told me
in the interview that they had checked out other witness
sightings of women in the neighborhood walking dogs. He said,
(15:54):
we already checked those women out. You know, it wasn't
Lacy that these witnesses saw they saw these other women. Well,
I guess the LA Innocence Project and others have gone through.
They said, there's no police record of these other women,
so we want to see. Okay, you say that you've
checked out other women and it wasn't Lacy. Where are
the police records about that? And that is what is
(16:17):
another thing that they say is missing that they want
documents on.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Two things.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
One that proves the Innocence Project of LA has done
their homework because they've watched everything they can find, right,
and they've pinpointed you and you had an interview.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
And now they need this cleared up. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I mean that tells you they're not just looking at
the front cover.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Sheet, right, That's right exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And then the other thing is you have maintained I mean,
you're just Switzerland, right. You don't ever come out and
say I think this, or I think that you report
as steady down the road as you can so that
people have all the information and to make up their
own opinion. I, on the other hand, will gladly give
(17:08):
you my opinion. And here it is, how Lucky is
the real killer? That Scott Peterson was Lacey's husband, and
this guy is not only having an affair. He chooses
to not call nine one one when he realizes she's missing.
(17:28):
He does not report her missing. He don't look for her.
He says the night before to his sister in law
and wife, I'm gonna go golfing tomorrow. And he doesn't
go golfing. He goes fishing, and he's at the exact
place fishing where his wife an unborn son surface after
(17:49):
being murdered. While vigil's going on. He's not participating in
the vigil. He ain't crying, he ain't sorry, he's not
sadd He's on the phone with Amber, the person he's
having the affair with. There are things that occurred during
the investigation, like Lacey's hair on a pair of flyers.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Inside a toolbox inside his boat. That's bad.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
The fact that he was making homemade anchors and she
was weighed down, that's bad. The fact that he gets
fifteen thousand dollars cash and dyes his hair and grabs
his brother's ID. That's a bad look to me, All
of these things. When your best friend turns on you,
your mother in law turns on you, there is nobody,
(18:41):
not anybody you worked with, went to church with, went
to school with, lived next door to. Nobody is coming
forward saying there is no way Scott could do this
other than his sister in law.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
I understand, and a lot of people agree with you obviously,
you know, like we've been we've been covering this for
so long, and when all of the stuff happened with
the La Innocence Project, I called up Detective Bueller, who
was on the case and he was one of the
first first to get there when this happened, and it
was he was he and BROKINI were assigned to basically
(19:15):
clear Scott, you know, that was their job was let's
just let's just clear Scott Peterson and so we can
move on. And I think that's pretty standard, right that
they've got to make sure the husband didn't do it
so they can focus. But he said, I just we
just couldn't clear them. Just one thing after another kept happening,
and we needed to stay on that. Now, as you know,
(19:37):
I went back and was listening to I even went
back and was listening to some of my coverage and
the coverage of the stations I was working for at
the time about what was happening. While BROKINI and Bueller
were focusing on Scott. There was this whole other thing
with the detective Cloward, and he led the charge. I
(19:57):
mean they had helicopters in the air, they had people
in the park, they had bloodhounds. I mean they were looking.
So I know that there's a narrative of they focused
on Scott and they didn't pay attention to any of
the You know, you can go back and watch all
of the things that happened back in late two thousand
and two, early two thousand and three that there was
a obviously, I mean if just to remind people of
(20:20):
how thorough and that's why everybody paid attention to the story,
like the world descended upon Modesto. Where is she? Everybody
myself included. I mean that was how I came to
the story in the first place. Because I saw her picture,
I knew how close it was to my hometown. And
because if you have a microphone or a camera, you know,
you wear it like a badge, like I can help,
(20:41):
let me help, let me get the story out there.
Is there somebody that saw something that is what I
that is the greatest gift of this job is to
try and help people. I can talk about it. I
can tell you what's happening. But like, if there is
somebody missing, if that's somebody that I you know, I
just I put myself in the shoes of a Sharon
Roach of the girlfriends, the best friends from high school
(21:03):
who I have that same type of group in Sacramento,
and I if some one of us went missing, I
know that every single one of us is going to
be on the case.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
And that's and that's where I was, That's where all
the reporters were. That's where the world was, it seemed,
I mean, there was there was stuff going on internationally.
People were watching this in you know, our troops were
watching this case unfold. Where is Lacy Peterson? Everybody wanted
to know, and everybody who could wanted to help, and did.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Let's talk about that picture. She's sitting in a little
burgundy jumpsuit, smiling. She looks so happy, and she is
so pregnant. She's just adorable. And at the time, one
of your best friends was pregnant. And so this story
not just geographically but emotionally.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
It did and to that point of just you know,
imagine one of your own imagine one of your own friends.
I saw that picture and I said, oh my gosh,
that reminds me so much of my friend, Like, what
would we do? What would we do if my friend
Amy went missing? There would probably be no meals in
those first forty eight Like you are not taking a nap.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
And she wasn't just a little pregnant, Like you could
not see her walking down the street and not know
she was pregnant.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
There's no way.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
So that also tells you this kidnapper, this stranger, how
many kidnappers kidnapped somebody eight and a half months pregnant.
So now we get down to math. I mean, if
it is so minuscule that it just doesn't even seem possible. Again,
your focus is going to go back on the husband,
(22:50):
And here's where it gets to what he did versus
what he did not do, And in this case, what
he did not do just slaps you in the face.
I mean, he calls her mama, Lacey over there. Now
Lacey's cars at the house, so that means somebody would
have had to come and pick her up. He already
knows that he found the dog wearing the leash allegedly,
(23:13):
so he should know immediately something is wrong and it's
Christmas Eve. And see that's another thing. Everybody's marriage is
not the same. I know that, But I would think
most people on Christmas Eve with a wife that is
eight and a half months pregnant and y'all got a
family party planned, you don't go golfing or fishing. I
(23:36):
would think I would think you would want to be
with her, You would want to be with the family.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
It is such an exciting time. But he's already making plans.
He's telling them the night before. I ain't going to
be around.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
And let me just say this too. When I was
back there on Covina in Modesto, I was you know,
I just sat in my rental car and I sat
there just kind of in the quiet, being there when
things were so hectic. And back in the day when
I was a radio reporter, I got away with a lot.
And that's because I didn't have a camera putting it
(24:09):
in somebody's face. Nobody, you know, a lot of people
didn't want to talk. A lot of people did, but
as a radio reporter you can walk up and say, look,
there's no camera and just tell me what'd you see
that day?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And I remember going across the street. You know, I
banged on all the doors and a couple of doors,
just two doors down to the left. If you're standing
in front of the Peterson's home, and the Peterson's home
is to your back, Medina's across the street. I go
to the left and I talked to somebody and they
came to the to their screen door, and I said,
(24:42):
you know what's going on? Like, what did you see
that day? What happened? And they said, well, Scott came
over and knocked on my door and said, had I
seen Lacey? And I said to Scott, well, no, I haven't,
But you know, where were you? It's Christmas Eve? Like
where were you?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
He said?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I was playing golf. Now this is Christmas Eve. She's
been reported missing. The searches begin. We know that the
story changed. I just always found that interesting that that
was another furtherance of that tale. Was he stressed out, sure,
but I'll never forget it.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
But he misspoke a lot and he said things that
were weird, right like when he's talking, I think it's
Diane Sawyer and he refers to her in past tense.
Was he misspeaking then or was that subconscious? Because he
knew she was dead. And here's the other thing. You
and I are both married. I will tell you Walt
(25:38):
McCollum is a lucky man.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yes he is.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
I'm so easy to get along with, you.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Know, never a cross word. I don't need anything at all.
I'm just a joy constantly. Any man that refers to
his marriage as glorious, could there be anything more creepy,
more ill advised to say?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
More odd?
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I mean, I'll joking aside. I think we have a
great marriage. We've got two fantastic children. I think we've
done right by each other. I would never use the
word glorious.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
When he said that.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I don't know anybody that just didn't get a uh feeling.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Well, I'll tell you what stock out to me during
those interviews. He only granted a few interviews, but it
was the interview with Gloria Gomez, who was a local
reporter in Sacramento, and she's been a part of a
couple of documentaries because she got one of the interviews
during this time before he was, before the bodies were found,
before the arrest happened. And I think one of the
(26:43):
biggest questions in that interview that people have pointed out
is She's sitting down similar in the in the living
room in Scott's house and they're talking and the phone,
his phone is ringing, and he doesn't get up to
pick up the phone, and she goes, do you want
to get that and he goes, no, that's okay.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
One h oh, my gosh, it could be the call.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
And that was a big problem for a lot of people,
Like when we watched that and rewound it and watched
it again, and you know, let me play Devil's advocate
for a minute, because that's what I do. I play
it down the middle. Maybe maybe he said he handed
his phone to somebody and said, if my phone rings,
you know, pick up the call for me. But it
was his phone. It rang. She's missing. Somebody could have
(27:30):
called and said we've got to leave.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Well, let's talk about the other horrendous action. He sold
her car and tried to sell their house. So let's
just say she had a medical event hit her head,
had some amnesia.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
When she gets better, she's going to walk up to
the front door and hey, don't live.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
There, right right. Yeah. It's a lot of people have
looked at that and just pointed to guild, I don't
recall I'm trying to think of what the reasoning was
of just needing the money.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, the sister in law, I think, said he needs
money to pay bills. But again, he didn't sell his
own car. He sold hers. He didn't sell the boat,
he didn't sell the golf clubs. He sold her car.
That's a move that anyone should question. So here's the deal.
You show up day one, you're in front of the home.
(28:30):
For the next twenty years, you go back to the home,
you talk to family members, you talk to witnesses, you
talked to law enforcement. I know you're middle of the road,
but what do you see today unfolding with the Innocence
project with the families. Because I can't help but think
(28:51):
of Sharon Roacha that she is once again having to
deal with this devil. He just will not go away.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
And I think about that. I mean, there's there's a
couple of things that have come you know, obviously this
I was working on. I was working on Rex Huerman
in the Long Island serial killer case in the office
in New York when this story broke and somebody came
banging on the door and they said, lor something happened
with Scott Peterson, do you want to come out here? Said,
(29:20):
And I immediately think of Sharon Roacha because I read
her book, which is the most devastating book of you know,
it's a it's a loving tribute to her daughter, but
her heartbreak is so tangible and has been from the
beginning that I can't help but think of her and
Brent and Amy and the rest of the family. Her partner,
(29:40):
Ron Gransky has since passed away, and I just I
just remember seeing the grief, then seeing it in the
interviews after and they've, you know, they they have not
to me. I mean, I've I've reached out, and they've
I think they're done talking about it. And they they
chose not to go through another trial when his death
(30:02):
penalty was overturned, and you know, and that tells you something.
They just they can't do it. They don't want to
do it again. It's too hard. I mean, Connor Peterson
would be going to college, he would be tall, he
would be handsome, he'd have his own car, he might
have a girlfriend, you know, And that's what I think
about when I that's like kind of the first wave
(30:25):
that hits me when something comes up about Scott Peterson,
and my heart breaks, and I keep the victims' families
in my heart, and that includes the Petersons. I think
about his parents, his aging parents, and his mother passed away.
Lee is still around his dad, the family that still
believes in him.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I know.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
I know what you're going to say to those listening,
I know, but I'm just saying that they loved Lacey too, Okay.
And then you've got the girlfriends, the best friends from
high school, and so you've got that first wave. Everybody
has to live through this again. Then you dig into
the document and you go, all right, what are we
dealing with here? And when I heard about the van,
(31:07):
and there's just a couple of things I want to
point out. These pictures that we talked about, the picture
of the orange van up against the blue wall that's
in a tow yard. When you look in the back
of the van. My husband actually pointed this out. There
are cinder blocks in the back of the burned out van.
There are these gas canisters in the back of the
burned out van. And then when I scrolled through the
(31:30):
document of the declaration of the fire investigator and what
he wrote down in the reporter, the producer who ended
up going and finding this guy. He opened the door
and he said to the producer, I've been waiting ten
years for somebody to come and ask me this, or
maybe more, he said, I've been I've always wondered why
(31:51):
this wasn't checked out. And everybody initially heard this report
and said, where was this guy? Where's this guy been? Well,
if you go through the La Innocence Project and you
read his declaration, he was right there. He describes going
with a police detective to the yard where this van
(32:13):
had originated from. It belonged to a rigging company and
a guy named Terry Bowden that's who it was registered to.
They did go and interview him. He said, I think
the van was stolen and all of my employees had
access to that van. Talked about Bobby Riggs, the last
guy that had access to the van. Checked out Bobby Riggs.
Bobby Riggs said, yeap, I borrowed the van and I
put it back on December twenty seventh. Well, the van
(32:37):
was found burning in flames on Christmas morning, so there
was an investigation done, there was evidence taken, and in
this declaration it describes Brian Spotowski as the fire investigator
and he describes, you know, going to the yard and
talking to the van owner, going back, and it was
(32:58):
towed to a tow yard and then somebody realized along
the way this could be evidence. They take it to
the Medesto Police Department warehouse. They and they actually had
the sense to cover it because all of us were there.
Now we learn that they covered this with a tarp,
put it on a flatbed and towed it to the
Modesto Police Department out of our prying eyes to see
(33:20):
what's what. And they do test it, and they do
realize that there is blood after they remove a gas
canister that's in the middle of the mattress. They pull
up the gas canister and there's the stain and everybody goes,
oh my god. And they test it and so there's
just more there's just more information, and it's just still
(33:44):
a question. It was tested, it seemed, you know, came back.
They put it in a tube. You would know more
than that than me that they put something in a tube.
It turned blue and that showed it was human blood.
And then it went to the Department of Justice. But
then what happened Now we could find out that they
did the Department of Justice tested it and it wasn't
Lacey's and that's it? Or did they did they test it?
(34:07):
Is DNA technology today so advanced that we could learn
something more from that piece of mattress cloth that was cut, preserved, logged.
Let's test, that's the idea. Let's test it and find out.
And then when I talked to the detective now retired
Al Borkini, I said, he goes, Look, it's not going
to be Lacy's blood. He goes, and if it's somebody's blood,
(34:30):
whose blood is it? Maybe there's another crime we need
to be talking about here.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Here's the reality. For me, Arson most often is to
cover up another crime. So whatever happened inside that van
should be paramount to law enforcement. And you can take
Lacy Peterson completely out of that equation and it should
still be paramount.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
With that amount of blood.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Most people do not have five cans of gasoline in
the back of their van. This means to me somebody
had to go get cans, go get gasoline, come back,
and then do the arson. So they went to great
links to try to cover up whatever was inside that van.
The photograph you sent me, there's a clear pattern on
(35:18):
that cloth and it looks rectangle. It looks like the
blade of a knife laying flat being cleaned off, is
what it looks like to me. I need somebody to
clarify what we're seeing. And there's a second thing, Laura,
let's talk about the Virgin Mary statue.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Well, in this La Innocence Project document, there are a
lot of sworn declarations, and I found it really interesting
that the declaration from Susan Medina. Remember she's the wife
that lived across the street at the Medinas. They actually
found out this week when I was in Modesto that
they do still live in the neighborhood. They just don't
live in that house. But neighbors I spoke to said
(36:01):
they're still here. They just live, you know, down the
road they stayed. They just moved out of that house.
And the declaration of Susan Medina talks about the when
the police came over. Obviously the world is, you know,
right there on Covina, and she talks about being in
the house and looking around at all the things that
are out of place, and she said that there was
a Virgin Mary statue that had been moved during the
(36:24):
burglary of her home. And she says that she pointed
it out to investigator, said, you know, they clearly touched that,
and she said, they didn't touch it, they didn't fingerprint it.
She offered them to take the French doors that had
been kicked in in the back of her house because
there was a footprint, and she said, take the doors.
You just go take a screwdriver, unhinge the hinge and
(36:46):
just take it. And she says they didn't. Now it'll
be interesting, Cheryl to find out if we can get
the records, you know, what is the police version of that.
Did they take something else that we don't know about
that wasn't recorded. You know, I don't want to you know,
you don't want to say, well, the Modesto Police Department
did absolutely nothing, but they obviously they Bueller. Detective Bueller
(37:08):
told me. He said, this was the most well investigated
home burglary in the history of Modesta or California. Like,
we went up and down and we test, you know,
we checked out everything.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
We got the guys.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
But when you hear it from Susan Medina, who was
the eyewitness who opened her doors after coming home from
Christmas and said, oh my gosh, somebody has ripped through
my house, stolen our safe, took out you know, there's
a hammer that somebody took out of my my husband's
shop and they used it for something. Can you take
(37:40):
the hammer and can you Can you fingerprint that? She
says they didn't.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
You know, I have a mantra and it's every test
on every case, every time. And the reason is if
you fingerprint the doorknob and get a decent print off
a perpetrator, that's great. But if you have more than
one perpetrator and you don't fingerprint the Virgin Mary statue,
(38:06):
you may not get the second person inside that house.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Do all of it. There's no excuse not to do
all of it.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
It's thirty seconds at the most to fingerprint that little statue.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
And the question is if if true? What's the reason
I want to read you a couple of just a
quick passage. Well, I'll read you the end of this
declaration of Susan Medina. What's interesting about Susan Medina. She
talks about how the neighborhood was very close knit. Our
neighbors all looked out for one another and would take
notice when something was amiss in the neighborhood. I recall
(38:41):
instances of seeing Lacey interacting with people out on the street.
In one instance, I was inside my home and recall
Lacey yelling at some teenagers who were in her yard
and telling them to get out of her yard. I
also recall having a conversation with one of our neighbors,
Lil Erkind, about an incident she witnessed involved Lacey. Lil
told me she witnessed Lacey confronting and yelling at some
(39:04):
people who were fighting in the street on Covina. I
believe that conversation occurred after Lacey's disappearance, doesn't make sense.
We both commented on how Lacey was feisty and protective
in that way. Lil, who was herself Portuguese, commented that
it must be the Portuguese and Lacey. I recall another
occasion when I was outside my home pruning some of
(39:25):
my plants. Lacey spotted me and came up to me
because she saw I was doing a terrible job of pruning.
She told me, in a polite way, I wasn't pruning
my plants correctly and there was a better way to
do it if I wanted to help them grow better.
I recall that while thinking Lacey was very polite. It
was also very bold of her to come and tell
me how to do my pruning. Talking about the presence
of homeless and transient people increasing when the Modesto Gospel
(39:47):
mission opened at the corner of Yosemite and Rafino Avenue,
I recall that every morning, around six am, the shelter
would close and the occupants would have to leave for
the day, many of them traveling on foot through our neighborhood.
With the increase in foot traffic, we also started to
have more people digging through our trash and recycling on
a regular basis. We started taking added precautions when we
noticed an increase in foot and bicycle traffic on our street.
(40:09):
On December twenty fourth, two thousand and two, we were
in the final stages of constructing a covered patio in
our backyard. The covered patio was on the south and
east side of the house, as depicted by the shading below.
I've got the diagram, it's in the document. They saw somebody.
I don't know if you've ever heard this part, Cheryl.
They left their home at ten thirty am on December
twenty fourth to go out of town to visit relatives
(40:30):
over the Christmas holiday. We locked the gate to our
backyard before leaving. As we were driving down Covina, Rudy
pointed a man out to me that looked suspicious. The
man was wearing a flannel shirt and was slowly riding
past our house on a bike while heading north on
the east side of Covina. He was not actively peddling
when we passed him, but was kind of slowly walking
his bike. He was a white man and the look
(40:52):
of him made me feel uncomfortable. He looked out of place,
and something about him made me nervous. So we circled
the block by turning right on Encina, on Santa Barbara,
right on Highland, right on Edgebrook, and right on Covena.
It would have only taken us less than a minute
to circle the block. I did not see the man
when we drove back by our home on Cavena. With
the way Covena is situated, he had taken the path
(41:13):
into the park. We would have seen him by the
time we circled back, but we did not see where
he went. When we returned from our trip from La
December twenty sixth, we were shocked by the presence of
so many media on Covina. After showing urds to Covena,
we approached our house. I remember Rudy noticing our Dolly
in the front yard as we pulled in. Rudy entered
the back doors of our house, which had been kicked in,
(41:34):
and had me wait outside. Rudy then came running out
of the house and announced that we had been robbed. Immediately,
the police, which were focused on the Peterson's home, started
coming over to us and our residence and we reported
the burglary. The detectives were going back and forth between
the Peterson residence and our house. I remember being concerned
that with all the media there, that the reporters were
going to think that we were suspects in whatever had
(41:56):
happened at the Peterson home since the police were now
looking at our house. I was also concerned because they
were not wearing shoe coverings when going back and forth
between the houses, and I was concerned about cross contamination
of evidence. At some point, I remember Doug Lavelle coming
over to our residence. He was working with the Modesto
Police department. I knew Doug's wife, Peggy through work. I
recalled Doug coming into our house to look at evidence.
(42:18):
I walked him and the detectives through the house, pointing
out things that were out of place. I had just
cleaned the house ahead of our trips, so I could
tell what had been touched by the burglars. I recall
offering to the police that they could take the French
doors if they needed them as evidence. I remember they
had been kicked in and there was a footprint on
the doors. They declined to take the doors. I remember
(42:40):
when we entered our master bedroom, Rudy's hammer from his
shed and one of his work gloves were on our bed.
The head of the hammer was wrapped in the glove
in such a way that made me think it was
being used to suppress the noise of using the hammer
to hit something. I do not believe the police collected
either the hammer or the glove. I cannot recall whether
(43:00):
they swabbed or checked them for fingerprints. Also on the
bed was a statue of the Virgin Mary, which had
been on top of the safe. Again I recall pointing
out to the police so they would know that the
burglars touched that. Next to the statue was an envelope
that I kept our monthly allowance of cash in I
recall there being about four hundred dollars in the envelope
when we left. When we returned, the envelope was missing
(43:22):
the majority of the cash. When I suggested the police
fingerprint items in our home that had been touched or disturbed,
the detective told me that I quote watched too much CSI.
So that's you know, that's where the La Innocence Project
is concerned and wants to know what happened with some
of these items. And she ends this in her last
(43:43):
statement sworn declaration July twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, just
last year, ending with I have always been bothered by
the lack of investigation of the burglary of our home
and the possible connection to Lacy's disappearance and murder, Signed
Susan Medina.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
When you have an opportunity to take five more minutes,
do it. Take the statue, take the doors, throw fingerprint
powder all over that place, measure everything, make the victim
feel like that you are doing everything possible. And let
(44:20):
me address the TV comment for one moment. That is
what people know, that's where they get their information. So
when you say to somebody, why can't fingerprint a brick
and you want to move on. Take the brick. You
can get DNA from it. Don't tell them what you
can't do. Take five more minutes, not even to pick
(44:44):
the brick up, Put it in a bag, tag it
and take it with you and see if you can
run some test to make them feel like you have
literally done all that you can do, because you did.
I do believe your job is so important. And I
(45:08):
tell people this all the time. In small towns, your
police department may not have a drone, but your TV
station does. And if you've got a child or an
elderly person missing, ask for their help.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Get that drone in the air.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
If they cover it, fine, but use the tools that
are available to you. I agree with you one hundred percent.
There was nobody better to get on this thing quicker
to search for her than the media.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
And the media that gathered at the Redline Hotel and
that you know, got the flyers record, you know, and
we see the we see the desperate panic and grief
on the faces of Sharon Roache. I mean, if you
just if you just go back and you look at
the difference of actions of just even just the look
(46:04):
on their face, and everybody handles things differently, and we
have to keep saying that over and over again, especially
with this case. But that desperate grief, that is that
guttural feeling that you experience when you listen to Sharon
Roache at the microphone, Please please, if you have her,
bring her back, and you hear Lacy's biological father break down,
(46:29):
and then you know, you see And then people would say,
but look at Scott Peterson. He's walking his dog, he's going,
you know, he's handing out a few flyers and he's leaving.
That was what was so suspicious in the beginning as
well to many people, and people wanted to know, why
aren't you driving down the street. I recall having somebody
in my life missing for a few hours, and I
(46:52):
got in my car and I rolled down both windows
and I went up and down the streets screaming that
person's name. And I knew I looked like a maniac,
but I was so desperate that that person was injured,
had fallen, might be unconscious. I remember that fear, and
(47:13):
it is real when it happens, and we saw it
unfold in real time in front of our cameras and microphones.
During that time and when you watch you know, just
the different side of that. It's hard to wrap your
head around it. We just have to listen to his
explanation on that he's in prison. Jerry found him guilty.
(47:39):
But that's something that always stuck out to me.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
You know, you've been on this case twenty years, and
I worked Natalie Holloway for seventeen eighteen and I've watched
her mom and most recently with your hand taken a
play when I sat with her mama years ago in
front of a chapel in Aruba. It was me, Beth
(48:04):
and Nancy Grace and it had been all that time,
seventeen years, and we were just sitting in silence, letting
Beth just take it all in at the chapel where
she first felt any piece at all. And she turned
to the two of us and she said, I know
you think I'm crazy, but I brought Natalie's passport just
(48:28):
in case, And I know you feel this way. There's
a time where you stop being a reporter and you
stop being a crime saye investigator and you're a mama.
And I know with Sharon Rocha and with Beth Holloway,
you and I have both had that experience where after
(48:50):
you have that baby, something happens to you where you
can't hear about a missing child or a murdered child,
or where you're not affected so deeply and so differently
that yes, you can still, you know, do your job professionally,
but there's part of you that now just kind of
(49:11):
has this overlay and it's different.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
It's more personal to you.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
And when you're involved in a story like this one,
or Natalie Holloway, or the use so many murders which
I covered, or the Connecticut home invasion story that I
did every day of that trial too, you just you
have to compartmentalize while you're doing your job. But at night,
when the lights go out, I see their faces. I
(49:40):
want to help bring answers, and I know that victim's
family members, and I don't blame anybody who doesn't want
a camera in their face asking them how. You know.
That's the thing, Cheryl. When I covered the trial of
Scott Peterson, and I was outside of that courthouse every
day waiting for my press pass and getting a seat
(50:00):
in the courtroom, and I watched the family members come in.
There was something about Sharon Roache that reminded me of
my own mom, and I didn't I didn't want to
chase her. I didn't want to put a microphone in
her face, and I didn't need to ask her how
she felt because I could see it. I could see it,
(50:24):
and I could describe it. And as a radio reporter,
I felt comfortable in my reporting abilities that I could
talk about watching her go up, go up, and go
out into that courthouse, and I just never I never
felt the need to do that. I didn't want to
do that to her because she was already just being
(50:44):
annihilated with media.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Laura, will you.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Describe for us Lacy in the jumpsuit photograph and what
the prosecutor did During the trial.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
We had a lot of exhibits in court, and one
of the most powerful exis amples of a double life
that Scott Peterson was living was when Lacy Peterson would
to a Christmas party by herself and she was dressed
up in this kind of ruby colored beautiful jumpsuit with
(51:15):
jewelry and a big broad smile, sitting in a chair
because she was pregnant and her doctor had told her to,
you know, stay off of her feet. According to testimony,
we heard about that. So there she is sitting at
a Christmas party by herself, and they put up on
the other side of the screen a picture of Scott
Peterson and Amber Fry the same night, and that's what
(51:38):
he was doing. And it was, oh, it was hard.
It was hard to see that and look over at
the family and think about what that felt like for them.
Chances are they've already seen the photos, but now we're
seeing it publicly in trial, and it just made you
want to start crying. It was it was so hard.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
To see that.
Speaker 3 (52:03):
How could you let her go to that party? How
could you let her look that beautiful and pregnant and
hopeful while driving down ninety nine to go to Fresno
and go to another Christmas party with somebody else. Happens
all the time, though this we know adultery affairs, but
to see it in vivid color on a huge screen
(52:30):
inside of a courthouse courtroom is painful.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do, with a quote I would have liked to
personally have prosecuted Scott Peterson, Nancy Grece. I'm Cheryl McCollum,
and this is Zone seven
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Nine
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