A Deadly Game (56 page)

"Yes, we did it all the time. I begged for whoever had her to bring her home, to let her go, tell us where she was." Sharon looked straight at Scott. "And there was somebody who knew all along and you wouldn't tell us! Instead you just let us go through this every day!"

"When you finally found Laci and Conner . . . ?"

"The day they were found I wasn't feeling well. I was at home. I heard footsteps coming up to my door, and I didn't answer the door because I knew.

"I hadn't heard anything, but I just knew, and then when they went to the backyard to the back door I knew I had to answer the door. And I knew in my soul, I knew they had been found. Then later, when I was told it would be several days before they were identified, and I asked why, because they could use dental charts, I was told she didn't have a head, and I didn't believe it.

"I just dropped to the floor. It never occurred to me what condition she might be in."

At times, it seemed the entire courtroom was crying along with Sharon Rocha. In the jury box, jurors and alternates clutched tissues and dabbed at their tears. Yet Scott's face was empty. He seemed unmoved by his mother-in-law's powerful words.

"When you were told Laci and Conner been recovered from the bay, was there something about that that upset you because of Laci?"

the prosecutor asked.

Staring back at Scott, Sharon gasped. "Laci always got motion sickness, and you knew that, and that's the place you took her. . . . You put her in the bay, and you knew she'd be sick for eternity, and you did that to her anyway!"

"Did it take the authorities several days before they finally notified you that the body was Laci?"

"Yes, she was found on Monday," Sharon recounted. "They identified her on Friday, but I knew it was her, I knew it was her from the beginning.

"I knew that I needed to spend some time with her and to have the opportunity to say goodbye to her alone and I knew she was in the casket and I knew the baby was there and I knew she didn't have arms to hold him either." Tears streamed from Sharon's eyes. "She should have had her arms and her head, her entire body! It just haunts me all the time, but I just hope she didn't know what was happening."

Sharon's testimony left many in the courtroom in stunned silence.

"A short time after that, was there a memorial service?

"On her twenty-eighth birthday. She would have been astounded to see there were so many people interested in her, concerned about her. We were told there were over three thousand people there."

"How are you doing? How has this affected you . . .?"

"Every morning when I get up I cry. It takes me a long time just to be able to get out of the house. I keep thinking, 'Why did this happen?' I miss her. I wanted to know my grandson. I wanted Laci to be a mother. I wanted to hear her be called 'Mom.'

"When I go to buy birthday cards, Mother's Day cards, I just can't stand it. I always look at the ones from daughter to mother or mother to daughter.

"I don't sleep well. I think about her all the time." On several occasions, she said, she had even managed to forget that Laci was no longer alive. "I remember the first time it happened, I was outside, locked the door, heard the phone ring, thinking it was Laci. I hadn't heard from her in a long time. It should be her, and then I realized it wasn't. It would never be her . . .

"I remember walking into the house. I walked into the entryway, [and] I just stopped because she turned around and said 'Hi, Mom.' It was as though she was right there. I saw her a lot of times.. . .

"When I have a question about something that's been going on," Sharon said, "I think, 'Well, I'll just ask her and she'll tell me.' But I can't. . . .

"Laci didn't deserve to die."

Just before 3:30 P.M., court was adjourned for the day. As the jurors filed quietly out of the courtroom, some thought back to the autopsy photos they had seen earlier of Laci and Conner; others later reported that they were unable to escape the thought of Laci in her coffin, with no arms to hold her baby.

When the jurors returned the following morning, they heard not from Mark Geragos, but his partner, Pat Harris. "For the past four or five months, we've sat here and we've basically gone through a man's life, in very minute detail," he said. "We know what would seem to be practically every detail of this man's life. . . . What I'm here to tell you is that the next week will prove that wrong. We don't know who Scott Peterson is.

"It will be our job to show you. When we show you the thirty years before this, I think you'll agree that this is a life worth saving. . . .

"One of the things we are going to do is go into a lot of depth about his parents' background. Why is that relevant? The answer is, we're all products of our parents, none more so than Scott Peterson. . . . The way Scott acted is not the way they acted. They are emotional people."

Scott's father spoke first. Lee told the court that he was with family in San Diego on the day of the verdict, and together they watched as it was read on TV. "As soon as they read the verdict, they all burst into tears."

Asked to describe his relationship with Scott, he said, "I have great respect for him. I just love him very much." The elder Peterson told jurors about his life, coming to America as a young boy and his hardworking parents. Scott, he said, followed in those footsteps. During college he had moved out, telling his parents, "You guys have done enough for me, and I want to support myself. I'm going to be totally on my own." Lee contended that Scott "did it [himself], every inch of the way ... he always had at least two and sometimes three jobs."

"What effect would having your son get the death penalty have?" Pat Harris asked.

Lee reported that he was "frightened, depressed," over the jury's verdict. "Losing someone you loved and now having you son in this kind of jeopardy, it's not something I ever thought I'd have to go through. ... I just can't imagine anything worse."

Of course, the Rochas could.

"I can't describe exactly how we would go on," Scott's half sister Susan Caudillo sobbed on the stand to the thought of her brother being handed the death penalty. "I know it would kill my parents. ... I see the pain in their faces every day, [and] it keeps getting worse. . . .

"We've gone through so much as a family, but we're sticking by [Scott] one hundred percent. But I don't think my parents will make it if he goes."

Scott's older half brother John, who was six when Scott was born, recalled their childhood. "My first memory is of Scott in the hospital: he was sick so I was not allowed to see him," he said. "When we got older, we lived in a nice area, with a lot of hills and bushes and boulders. We'd build forts back there. ... I'd make Scott the lieutenant and I'd be the president. And if he told on me, I'd demote him to private. ..."

"Should your brother be sentenced to death?" Harris posed.

"I can't even imagine; I'd be wrecked. He's my little brother. I love him."

In addition to Scott's siblings, a number of aunts, uncles and cousins spoke on Scott's behalf. One who did not appear was Anne Bird. "Don't you want to save your brother's life?" Jackie Peterson reportedly asked Anne when she learned that her newfound daughter would not take the stand at the Penalty hearing.

Anne had been ready to testify if called by the prosecution in the guilt-innocence phase of the trial. One of the things the state considered offering was her information about Scott's use of her house, and his strange admission that he borrowed a shovel from the Lake Arrowhead cabin and never returned it. Early on, Bird had counted herself among Scott's supporters, but as she learned more about the case, and hosted Scott as a houseguest, she changed her mind. Anne told me that she was concerned about testifying against her brother. She claimed that Jackie Peterson carried an old Colt .45 in the glove box of her car, and once almost shot her husband, Lee, in a hotel room when she mistook him for an intruder.

According to Anne, Jackie once asked her, "What is your problem with Scott?"

"All the lies," Anne replied, referring in part to the Amber tapes in which he claimed to be in Europe while still in California.

"Well, he's been all those places," Jackie told her.

However, the prosecution considered Anne a high-risk witness for both sides, and she was never called to testify.

In addition to Scott's family members, myriad individuals offered anecdotes about Scott: his high school coach, a Cal Poly professor, his former boss at the restaurant where he worked in San Luis Obispo. Not one of them could imagine Scott committing these crimes.

"I can't reconcile the accusations with the person I've known," one said. "The Scott Peterson I know is the kind of person you respect and admire," said another. "He is the absolutely last person I would ever think would be suspected for something like this," offered a third. Such sentiments were heard over and over, as thirty-nine people took the stand. Yet no one seemed to have a deep connection with Scott. They could talk about what he did, but none of them was able to convey what he thought, how he saw the world, or who he really was. None of them knew about Amber and the others, and none of them had seen this coming.

The final witness was Scott's mother. Jackie Peterson began, "We all lost Laci. We all loved her."

She told jurors how her father was murdered when she was two, and how she and her brothers had lived in a Catholic orphanage because her mother was too ill to care for them. She said her life changed completely when she married Lee Peterson.

"He gave me the family I always wanted. We called ourselves 'The Brady Bunch,' there were so many of us." Then Scott was born. "I would always say he was a joy from the moment he was born, he was always a good student, all through school, I had teachers tell me, 'I wish I had a whole room of students like Scott.'

"I beg you to consider how he helps people," she said, "and he can do a lot of good things with his life. All his world has been taken away ... he was stalked by the media, harassed by the police, and painted as a devil in public. He's not that; he's always been nurturing and kind. . . .

"I really feel that if you were to take Scott away from us ... they were like a family-Scott, Laci, and Conner. It would be a whole family wiped off the face of the earth. It would be like Laci never existed. Both Sharon and I would lose a whole family . . . such a waste. It's irreversible."

On the eighth day of the penalty phase, the attorneys had their last chance to speak to the jurors set to decide Scott's fate. Dave Harris quickly said the obvious. "These thirty-nine witnesses . . . didn't really know what they are talking about." He described the lies, the manipulation, and betrayal that Scott imposed on them all. "Laci was an anchor around his neck ... so he put one around hers. This is someone who had everything, and he threw it away. He had a plan, and he executed it.

"Leaving his wife's body to rot on the bottom of the ocean .. . leaving his own son's body to be treated as trash ... someone who shows no mercy, so heartless, so cruel deserves death."

Pat Harris stepped up first for the defense. He had taken the lead in this stage of the case and would begin the plea for Scott's life. He had to address the apparent Jekyll and Hyde that had been portrayed throughout the trial.

"Every single [defense witness] says 'respectful, generous.' You're going to have to make the decision: Was it phony? Was it made up? As a twelve-year-old, a fourteen-year-old, he was fooling all these people? Or are these character traits that he truly does have?"

"This is a person who's continually helped people," he told the jury. "This is an opportunity to salvage something positive out of a life that's virtually gone now.

"I wish there was a phrase I could give you that would turn this around, make you believe that there is good in this person . . . this is not a monster. I don't have that phrase; I don't have the ability to do it... that's up to you."

Maybe Mark Geragos had the magic to sway the panel. Could he find that phrase that would turn things around? He began with an apology. "I have nightmares about this case. I feel like I let my client down, feel like I let the family down, feel like I let you down, for not being able to convince you. ... I say that as kind of a confession to start off with, because I'll also . . . tell you the truth. I did not prepare a penalty phase. I did not do it. The day the verdict came down, I was in another courtroom, and I did not expect that you guys were coming back that day. I apologize for that; I want you to know that was not meant as any sign of disrespect. I also want you to know that part of the reason you were cooling your heels for two weeks was so I could go out and find mitigating witnesses."

I listened, somewhat shocked. Was Geragos trying to inject an appellate point on ineffective assistance of counsel? Was he setting himself up as the fall guy to win Scott a new trial? I knew that Judge Delucchi had given him ample time to prepare during that two-week break, but this "admission" was astounding. Geragos also chose phrasing that was unflattering to Scott, stressing that he had to "go out and find mitigating witnesses." After all, they certainly had not rallied behind Scott throughout the trial. Anne Bird later told me that several family members who testified had been pressured to do so. And while childhood and college friends, an old principal and a golf coach joined the chorus, where were the people Scott seemed close to when all of this occurred? Where were Heather and Mike Richardson, the couple he called and visited repeatedly during the search for Laci? Where was his good friend Guy Miligi, or his fishing buddy, Greg Reed?