A little after 5:15 on the afternoon of December 24, 2002, Scott Peterson called his mother-in-law from the house on Covena Avenue in Modesto, California. He had been fishing, he said, and had come home to an empty house. His wife, Laci, 27 and about seven and a half months pregnant, was gone. Her purse and car were still there. The family’s golden retriever, McKenzie, had been found wandering the neighborhood that morning, leash still attached. Before 6 p.m., Modesto police had a missing-person report for a woman most of the country had never heard of. By New Year’s Day, everyone had.

A Modesto Couple, a New Boat, and Christmas Eve

Laci Denise Rocha was born on May 4, 1975, and grew up around Modesto. She met Scott Lee Peterson in 1994 while both were students in San Luis Obispo, and they married in 1997. In October 2000 they bought a house in Modesto for $177,000. In 2002 Laci became pregnant with a boy they named Conner, due February 10, 2003. That November, Scott began an affair with Amber Frey, a massage therapist in Fresno. On December 9 he told Frey he had “lost” his wife. That same day, prosecutors said, he bought a 14-foot aluminum boat for $1,400.

Scott’s account of December 24 never changed: he left late in the morning, drove about 90 miles to the Berkeley Marina, and took the boat into San Francisco Bay to fish for sturgeon. Neighbors found McKenzie loose between roughly 10:18 and 10:45 a.m. The search that followed was one of the largest in Modesto’s history, and a reward that began at $25,000 grew to $500,000. Detectives wondered why a man would fish alone on Christmas Eve, and why his wife had not known he owned a boat.

The Phone Calls From Amber Frey

On December 30, Amber Frey contacted Modesto police. She had seen the news and realized the “widower” she was dating was the missing woman’s husband. Detectives asked her to keep talking to him and record the calls. She did, for weeks. On the tapes, Scott claimed to be in Paris on New Year’s Eve while he was in fact near the candlelight vigil in Modesto. On January 24, 2003, Laci’s family publicly withdrew their support for Scott.

Searches of the house and Scott’s warehouse turned up no blood evidence and no witness to a killing. What police had was a man who had sold his wife’s car and been caught in a string of lies.

The Bay Gives Up Its Dead

On April 13, 2003, a couple walking their dog at Point Isabel Regional Shoreline in Richmond found the body of a late-term male fetus on the rocks. The next day, a woman’s torso washed up about a mile away, a few miles from where Scott said he had fished near Brooks Island. On April 18, DNA confirmed the remains were Laci and Conner.

That afternoon, police arrested Scott at the Torrey Pines Golf Course in La Jolla, where he had gone to meet his father and brother. His hair and goatee were dyed blond, and the car held nearly $15,000 in cash, camping gear, four cell phones, and his brother’s driver’s license. Prosecutors said he was preparing to flee; Scott said he was avoiding the press. On April 21 he pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder.

A Five-Month Trial and a Death Sentence

The trial was moved to Redwood City in San Mateo County and opened on June 1, 2004. Defense attorney Mark Geragos argued that Laci had been abducted after Scott left, pointing to a burglary across the street at the Medina home and reports of a suspicious van. Prosecutors said Scott killed her the night of December 23 or the next morning and dumped her from the boat. Frey’s tapes played for days.

On November 12, 2004, after two jurors were replaced during deliberations, the panel found Scott guilty of first-degree murder for Laci and second-degree murder for Conner. On December 13 the jurors recommended death. Judge Alfred Delucchi imposed the sentence on March 16, 2005, and Scott went to San Quentin’s death row. Like Chris Watts fourteen years later, he became the defining image of a husband who killed the family he was expected to protect.

The Sentence Falls, the Conviction Holds

On August 24, 2020, fifteen years after sentencing, the seven justices unanimously threw out the death sentence, ruling that the trial judge had improperly excused prospective jurors who objected to capital punishment without asking whether they could still follow the law. The conviction stood. Prosecutors did not retry the penalty phase, and on December 8, 2021, Judge Anne-Christine Massullo resentenced Scott to life without parole, plus a concurrent 15-years-to-life term for Conner.

A second challenge centered on juror Richelle Nice, who had not disclosed that she once sought a restraining order while pregnant. On December 20, 2022, Massullo ruled it a good-faith mistake and denied a new trial. Scott now lives at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione.

The Innocence Project, the Documentaries, and the 2026 Ruling

On January 18, 2024, the Los Angeles Innocence Project took the case. In May 2024, Judge Elizabeth Hill of San Mateo County allowed DNA testing on one item, a 15.5-inch strip of duct tape found on Laci’s pants. That August, two documentaries arrived within a week: Netflix’s American Murder: Laci Peterson on August 14, with Sharon Rocha and Amber Frey, and Peacock’s Face to Face with Scott Peterson on August 20, in which Scott said, “I didn’t kill my family.”

In April 2025 the Innocence Project filed a petition of nearly 400 pages arguing that the Medina burglary happened on December 24, not December 26, that a van was set on fire nearby on Christmas morning, that neighbors saw Laci walking the dog after Scott left, and that newer fetal-growth science put Conner’s death outside the prosecution’s window. A 14-claim habeas petition followed in San Mateo County on August 4, 2025. On April 27, 2026, Judge Hill denied all of it in a 116-page order, calling the claims “neither new, admissible nor material.” Stanislaus County District Attorney Jeff Laugero called the petition “the same recycled claims.” The Innocence Project says it will appeal; A&E aired Scott Peterson: The New Evidence on July 16 and 17, 2026. As in the McStay family disappearance, the evidence is old; the fight is over what it means.

Why This Case Still Matters

The Peterson case rewrote how Americans watch a murder investigation. It was argued nightly on cable television, and that template has shaped coverage of every family case since, from the Pike County massacre to the Watts murders. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act, signed April 1, 2004, is known as Laci and Conner’s Law. And it remains the clearest test of what a circumstantial conviction can bear: no physical evidence has ever placed Scott at a killing, and no court has found that any is needed. Laci and Conner are buried together at Burwood Cemetery in Escalon, under the name Rocha.

The duct tape from Laci’s pants was tested on the court’s order, and neither side has said publicly what the lab found.

Related Cases

• The Watts family murders — a Colorado husband, a pregnant wife, and a confession on camera
• The McStay family disappearance — a family of four vanished from their California home
• The Pike County massacre — eight Rhoden family members killed in one Ohio night

Sources

• ABC News — Judge denies Scott Peterson’s attempt to present new evidence
• Stanislaus County District Attorney — Press release on the habeas ruling (May 12, 2026)
• ABC7 San Francisco — Timeline: How the Laci Peterson murder case unfolded
• NBC News — Laci Peterson murder revisited in Peacock and Netflix docuseries
• Court TV — Petition: New evidence ‘eviscerates’ case against Scott Peterson
• Wikipedia — Murder of Laci Peterson

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