A Deadly Game (43 page)
In mid-February, police received a strange tip from an American Airlines employee claiming that Laci Peterson had called the reservation line almost two months earlier, on December 22 or 23, to book tickets to San Diego for Christmas Day. The agent, who wanted to remain anonymous, told police that Scott could be heard yelling in the background. Apparently, he wanted to use frequent flyer miles rather than pay for the $98 round trip tickets.
It's unclear what finally prompted the ticket agent to call in February after being silent for so long. However, one thing is certain-the agent provided plenty of detail. "Susan said I could use her miles," Scott reportedly shouted when Laci tried to explain to him that it would be better to save the free miles for a more expensive ticket.
Laci had booked two seats for a flight from San Francisco to Orange County, returning the following day. The reservation was such that she and Scott could pay at the counter on the day of departure. The agent remembered that Scott wanted to fly to San Diego, but settled on Orange County because the fare was lower. The agent couldn't understand why Scott would want his pregnant wife to ride in a car for three hours after a one-hour flight, just to save a few dollars. Laci also asked about flights to Mexico in early February, but the agent advised that she would need her doctor's permission to fly that late in her pregnancy. Scott sounded relieved when it became apparent that Laci wouldn't be able to accompany him, indicating that it would save him money, the agent recalled. Laci explained that Scott's company was paying for his ticket.
Police subsequently subpoenaed the American Airlines accounts for Scott, Laci, and Scott's sister, Susan Caudillo. What those subpoenas produced, if anything, is not known. The conversation would have been inadmissible in court in any event because there was no real proof that the caller was actually Laci or that it was indeed Scott yelling in the background. Even if this was established, the exchange only demonstrates that Scott could lose his temper. Nothing about the call incriminated him in the murder of his family, but it certainly suggested that there may have been much more going on in those closing hours before Christmas Eve than has yet been established.
A number of these intriguing ancillary stories developed as February drew to a close. Several checks addressed to Laci and Scott Peterson were discovered in the possession of a convicted forger named Sarah Taberna. The checks were cash advance drafts from a credit card company. When first questioned, Scott explained that he hadn't been regularly checking the mail delivered to his warehouse, and perhaps the material was stolen from there. Then Scott said that he often took his mail home, and thought that the checks could have been stolen from there. He suggested that whoever had taken the checks could be linked to Laci's disappearance, and that the person might have stolen the checks during her abduction. Grogan noted Scott's concerns, and promised to follow up. Scott insisted that he wanted the thief prosecuted. Taberna, who had brought the checks to the police in the first place and admitted that she'd stolen them, was cleared of any connection with Laci's murder.
Another story involving a check arose from a search of Scott's truck. Police found a draft for $450 made out to a Gainesville, Florida, psychic named Noreen Renier and signed by Jackie Peterson. There was a note attached, requesting that Scott mail it to Renier. Apparently Scott stuck it in the glove compartment and forgot about it.
In a phone conversation with Renier, Grogan learned that Jackie had hired the psychic to assist in the search for Laci. Jackie sent her one of Laci's T-shirts, but Renier claimed that the garment was of no value to her, and asked for something more personal, such as a toothbrush, hairbrush, or a shoe, to complete a psychic connection. When Craig Grogan contacted her, Renier asked him to mail her a shoe or something else she could use in trying to help find Laci. Grogan said he would consider her request and call her back.
In early March, the detective received a second call from Renier. She had performed her first session, she reported, and determined that Laci was the victim of an assault and was most likely deceased. Renier said she had not yet established Laci's whereabouts and could not point to an exact location where a search should be conducted. Grogan later received a report on Renier's psychic session in which she claimed to be speaking to Laci. She claimed that Laci had been struck in the head with a baseball bat or some similar object as she was walking through a doorway. Renier reported experiencing the trip to the San Francisco Bay, and described the scenery and railroad tracks she passed before ending at a large body of water. Renier also talked about cement weights being tied around the body. Police read the report, but determined that it contained no new information.
Police also recovered from Scott's Dodge truck a bag full of Laci Peterson missing person posters with the original reward of $25,000, rather than the half million dollars now offered, along with a second sack of Laci Peterson buttons. Volunteers had run short of these materials. Now they would learn why.
Another interesting storyline revolved around a man from a small town in Missouri. In mid-February, the man left four messages on Sharon Rocha's answering machine. "Just give me the word, and I'll take care of Scott," the messages said. The caller left a return phone number.
Believing that the caller might be a hit man, Sharon notified Detective Grogan. He learned that the man lived at home with his mother, and had a criminal record for theft by use of a computer. During their conversation, the man told Grogan he had been following the Laci Peterson case. When Amber emerged, he became convinced that Scott was involved in Laci's disappearance. In an attempt to assist police, the caller had located Scott's phone number and in late January left him a message, saying, "I'm your girlfriend's psychiatrist, she told me everything. I'm going to turn you in."
The man from Missouri believed the message would "put pressure" on Scott and "force" him to confess. He told Grogan the key to the case was in the child's nursery. He suggested police locate a teddy bear in the room and check it for dust. If it were dusty, it would mean that Scott did kill Laci. Any person who is actually grieving for the loss of their wife and unborn child would go into the nursery and hold the child's toys, he said.
When asked about the messages he left for Laci's mother, the man said he was simply trying to offer his assistance in the investigation. After a subsequent background check on the man, police decided he was harmless.
By early March, forensic testing produced some meaningful new information. The single hair recovered from a pair of pliers found in Scott's boat at the warehouse was consistent with a hair from Laci's hairbrush. Because there was no root affixed to the recovered piece, only mitochondrial comparisons could be made. Statistically, the hair might belong to roughly one in six hundred women in the Modesto area.
Unwittingly, the officer who retrieved the hair, Dodge Hendee, became the center of a major controversy that played out over several days during Scott's preliminary hearing. When the evidence envelope was opened for testing, the single hair had become two. Mark Geragos insinuated that the hairs might have been planted, recalling allegations about O. J. Simpson's glove. But the judge refused to suppress the evidence, finding it more likely that the hair found clamped between the serrated pliers was broken and simply came apart in the bag. Ultimately, the report concluded that "the ends of those hairs looked like they had been mashed and torn between two hard objects, not inconsistent with needle nose pliers." Some plant material, fibers, and a substance with adhesive qualities had adhered to one of the hairs, but an attempt to match the adhesive to Scott's duct tape was unsuccessful. When compared with Laci's known hair, however, the evidence "appeared to be in the same range of variation."
In March, the police publicly reclassified the Laci Peterson case as a homicide.
"As the investigation has progressed, we have increasingly come to believe that Laci Peterson is the victim of a violent crime," detectives announced at a press conference. "This investigation began as a missing persons case, and we all were hopeful that Laci would return safely. However, we have come to consider this a homicide case."
Police also announced a change in the criteria for the $500,000 reward being offered for information leading to Laci's safe return. "Based on this belief, an additional reward is now being offered for information that leads to her location and recovery," investigators said. Police also delivered two binders with information related to the investigation to the Stanislaus district attorney's office, officially involving them in the case for the first time.
At headquarters, Grogan continued to work the evidence. In early March, he reviewed a report from John Yarborough of the Institute of Analytical Interview in Parker, Arizona. Police had mailed Yarborough several videotaped interviews of Scott Peterson for micro-expression analysis. A micro-expression is a very short facial expression of an intense, concealed emotion. Yarborough and his colleagues at the Institute were trained to read and interpret those involuntary messages for emotion.
Yarborough pointed to two occasions where he saw "significant micro expressions." The first was when Scott was asked about blood in the truck during an interview with KTBU Channel 2. He said Scott "micro-expressed" fear when asked a follow-up question if Laci's blood was in the truck. The second "micro-expression," this one of anger, came when Scott was questioned about the shades being closed at his home on December 24, during a time when Laci would normally have opened them.
Yarborough indicated these two occasions were "hot spots," though he did concede that he didn't know exactly what Scott had been thinking at the time he made those expressions. However, he did note that Scott referred to Laci in the past tense on more than one occasion.
Grogan also reviewed a Voice Stress Analysis that had been commissioned by a local television station. Expert Al Starewich had performed the test, using videotape interviews of Scott Peterson with members of the media.
Starewich found that Scott was lying when he said he had nothing to do with Laci's disappearance. He was telling the truth about some other matters-injuring his knuckle, for example-but he was nervous another blood stain was found in his truck. He showed abnormal stress when speaking about saltwater on his clothing, Starewich added, and he lied about telling Laci about Amber. The report concluded that, "Scott knows that Laci is never coming home." None of this information would ever be made public, but it may have helped officers tailor their future interactions with Scott.
At headquarters, police took a closer look at the phone book found on Scott's kitchen counter on Christmas Eve. It had been open to an advertisement for a criminal defense attorney when police entered the kitchen. While examining the directory, detectives noticed that the page with the attorney's ad was thicker than others in the book, and that the book naturally opened to that ad. The discovery left police uncertain whether Scott opened the book to that page on purpose or the already open book flipped to the advertisement on its own. Police later learned that the attorney, Richmond Herman, paid extra for the special feature.
Police also spoke with the criminologist who examined the needle-nosed pliers and a pair of wire cutters that had been found in Scott's warehouse to determine if either had been used to cut chicken wire found in the back of Scott's truck. Dean De Young of the California Department of Justice determined that neither pair had been used to cut the wire. He saw that the needle nosed pliers were rusted, and asked police if they had been in contact with water or salt water. Police confirmed that they had been in salt water when found in the bottom of Scott's boat.
Grogan continued his search for Laci's gold-and-diamond Croton watch. He learned that on December 31, 2002, a woman named Deanna Marie Renfro had pawned a gold Croton watch for twenty dollars. The name Renfro was familiar to police. In late December, police had interviewed Marie and Donnie Renfro about a woman who claimed to be the victim of a rape followed by a Satanic ritual perpetrated by several people traveling in a brown van. The victim claimed that after the assault she heard the group discuss a Christmas Day death, which they promised she would read about in the newspapers. The police were interested in the Renfros because they had been traveling in a brown Chevrolet van and were camping in the park. Yet detectives ultimately decided the cases were not linked. Although Mark Geragos would introduce the pawn slip at trial, implying that it was evidence that someone had robbed Laci for the watch, the description of the pawned item didn't reference the diamond bezel on Laci's watch, and it seemed unlikely that they were one and the same pieces. The police and jury never bought the argument by defense counsel, and Laci's Croton watch was never recovered.
Most of the other information police gathered through the eight thousand tips that were received led nowhere. The recovery of Elizabeth Smart in mid-March prompted a number of calls about whether the course of the investigation would change. Several tipsters claimed that Laci was having an affair with a trainer at her gym, but they could find no proof of such a relationship.
Other tips were a bit far-fetched. A woman named Penny Gagnon called to report that she'd been propositioned by Scott Peterson in a California bar in October 2002. Gagnon claimed she had been fighting with her husband of three years and had gone to a bar one afternoon to cool off. During her alleged encounter with Scott, Gagnon claimed that he spoke of killing his wife and disposing of her body by weighting it down and sinking it in a body of water.
