Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives (40 page)

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Modesto and said that she feared Laci would talk Scott into moving

there. After a trip to Carmel with Scott and Laci, Jackie mocked Laci

to Anne as looking ‘‘like Minnie Mouse’’ when she wore white gloves

and a white scarf with a black coat.

That trip, a week before Laci disappeared, was the last time Jackie

would ever see her daughter-in-law alive.

Anne was stunned by Jackie’s harshness toward Laci. She con-cluded that in Jackie’s eyes no one would ever be good enough for

her Golden Boy.

Q

Shortly after Scott and Laci moved to Modesto, Sharon Rocha

got another tearful late-night call from her daughter. The couple

had hosted a party that evening at which Laci’s brother revealed that

his wife, Rose, was pregnant with their first child. Laci desperately

wanted her own children to grow up with Brent’s, to have the kind

of bond she and her brother shared.

Scott had been telling Laci for some time that he was not yet ready

for kids. After the guests went home that night, he confessed that he

didn’t think he wanted to have children at all. Laci was devastated.

Just a month later, however, she claimed that Scott had reversed

himself, saying he was now ready to start a family. In December 2002,

she stopped taking birth control pills.

Had Scott really changed his mind so quickly on such an

life-altering issue, or was he just appeasing his wife, pretending

to go along with what she wanted but hoping it would never come

to pass? After Laci went missing, Rose Rocha recalled a startling

comment Scott made during her own pregnancy, when she asked

him if he was ready for kids.

‘‘I was kind of hoping for infertility,’’ Scott responded. At the time,

she thought he must be joking, but looking back she remembered

that he wasn’t laughing or even smiling when he said it.

Scott had reason to believe his wife might have trouble getting or

staying pregnant. In addition to the fact that she had only one ovary,

the year that they got married Laci had surgery to remove abnormal

tissue from her cervix, the narrow opening to the womb that dilates

during labor, allowing the baby to pass into the birth canal. Laci had

been diagnosed as suffering from cervical dysplasia, precancerous

cell changes that can develop into cancer if left untreated. These

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changes were severe enough in Laci’s case that doctors opted for an

aggressive form of treatment, cutting away the affected tissue around

the cervical opening.

This procedure can weaken the cervix and cause it to dilate pre-maturely during pregnancy, resulting in miscarriage. A quarter of

all miscarriages after the first trimester are the result of a weakened

cervix. Laci was concerned enough that when she began to feel pres-sure internally from her growing fetus during her second trimester,

she told her doctor she was worried that her cervix might not be

strong enough to carry her baby to term.

Laci’s belief that Scott had undergone a change of heart about

wanting children was not merely wishful thinking on her part. He

was with her when she announced to family and friends at a holiday

party that she was going to start trying to get pregnant, and he nodded

approvingly. He was certainly up for whatever it took sexually to try

to get her pregnant. But there were other indications that he was

deeply ambivalent about becoming a father.

There was the ‘‘hoping for infertility’’ comment in 2001, and the

irritation Scott showed when Laci woke him up on the morning of

June 9, 2002, to tell him that her home pregnancy test was positive.

When they visited her mother the evening after taking the test,

Laci could not stop talking about how excited she was. Scott said

nothing about the pregnancy and looked decidedly unhappy. It was

so awkward between the three of them that Laci felt the need to offer

an explanation.

‘‘Scott’s having a midlife crisis,’’ Laci opined, ‘‘because he’s turning

thirty and becoming a father all in the same year.’’ Scott himself said

something very similar to Laci’s brother one day that summer as

they lounged in the Peterson’s new pool. As Brent recalled, Scott

expressed a sense of both failure and dread about where his life was

heading, stating that ‘‘he wasn’t doing good at his job and that he

had a lot going on—he’s turning thirty, going to be a father.’’

Scott also appeared to be worried about the impact a baby would

have on his sex life. He asked one of the fathers in their circle if

couples ever had much sex again after they’ve had a child.

Laci was so happy finally to be pregnant that she began wearing

maternity clothes before she needed them. When she did begin show-ing, she proudly pointed out her growing waistline. She chronicled

each milestone of the pregnancy in a journal, noting the first time

she felt the baby kick, the first time she heard its heartbeat, the

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‘‘excitement and relief’’ she felt at seeing her child moving inside her

during a sonogram.

At Laci’s twenty-week sonogram, on September 24, 2002, she

found out the baby’s sex. Laci immediately called her friend Renee

Garza, who had a kindergarten-age son. ‘‘Guess what I’m having?’’

she crowed, then immediately began discussing her plans for the

nursery. She was pleased that the spare bedroom they had been

planning to convert to a nursery was already a lovely cerulean blue.

It seemed like a sign that everything was as it was meant to be.

Scott continued to send mixed signals. From the earliest days of

the pregnancy, he seemed to be looking for a way out of his situation.

Laci told a friend that Scott urged her to get a more extensive than

usual sonogram and tried to get her to agree to an abortion if any

birth defects were discovered.

It seemed as if he could not envision ever having a warm moment

with his child. When Laci’s aunt, Gwen Kemple, asked Scott one day

if he was looking forward to playing catch with his son, he oddly

replied, ‘‘I’ve got friends who can do that.’’

All summer long, as they sat out by the pool, Laci and her

girlfriends had bantered about baby names. ‘‘Scott has to like it, too,’’

she always reminded them. One day that fall, as Laci discussed names

with her family, Scott suggested Ripley.

If it was a joke, it was in poor taste. There are three famous figures

associated with that name: the man with the ‘‘Believe It or Not!’’

collection of freaks and oddities; Tom Ripley, the protagonist of a

series of mystery novels and movies, a charming young man who

turns out to be an utterly amoral killer (appropriating the attributes

and identity of those around him to make his way in the world);

and the eponymous heroine played by Sigourney Weaver in a series

of science fiction movies, who first battles aliens, then becomes

unwitting host to an alien baby, which she ends up killing in an act

of murder-suicide.

According to Laci’s baby journal, Scott did not feel the baby move

until late October, when she was more than six months pregnant.

She noted that he didn’t show much excitement on that momentous

occasion, but then tried to convince herself otherwise. ‘‘I know he

really was,’’ she wrote.

In fact, by that time, Scott and Laci were on very different

trajectories. Laci was consumed with her role as wife and mother.

She had recently inherited a large cache of jewelry from her late

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grandmother, and was in the process of fashioning a new wedding

ring for herself. She instructed the jeweler to make sure and use all

the gold and diamonds from the one Scott had given her so she

would not hurt his feelings. She made one other demand: please have

it ready by Christmas Eve.

Despite her growing pregnancy, she also wanted to throw an

elaborate dinner party for seven couples to celebrate her husband’s

thirtieth birthday on October 24. But she had a hard time getting

Scott to commit to a date. The last person with whom he wanted to

commemorate that milestone was, it seems, his pregnant wife.

Q

That very week, Scott began taking concerted steps away from his

wife and unborn child. Three days before his birthday, while attending

a trade show at the Disneyland Hotel, Scott met Shawn Sibley,

a pretty blonde lab worker from Fresno. Despite the fact that she

announced right away that she was engaged to be married, Scott flirted

outrageously, continually pressing Shawn about how committed she

was to her relationship. On their way to dinner, Scott asked her

what moniker he could add to his nametag to attract women. Over

dinner with a few other colleagues, the conversation Scott initiated

turned so blue—discussing his favorite sexual positions and asking

Shawn about hers—that the others eventually excused themselves in

embarrassment.

When Shawn described her fiancé as her soul mate, Scott turned

serious. ‘‘He said that at one point he had found a woman he thought

to be his soul mate, but then he lost her,’’ Shawn recalled at trial.

Then Scott asked her, ‘‘Do you think there is only one person you are

meant to be with forever?’’

Shawn told him no, that she believed there were potentially

thousands of potential soul mates for everyone. Scott went on, telling

Shawn that he had had a lot of ‘‘one-night stands,’’ that he was sick

and tired of women who seemed to be ‘‘bimbos with no brains,’’ and

that he was looking for someone with intelligence for a long-term

meaningful relationship. Did she have any single friends she could

hook him up with? Scott continued to press Shawn about this after

dinner over drinks in the hotel bar, and then in the hallway outside

Shawn’s room where they sat talking until the wee hours of the

morning.

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Her friend Amber came to mind. But Shawn told Scott she was

reluctant to introduce them because Amber had been hurt before.

Her last boyfriend had left her shortly after she became pregnant.

(Her daughter, Ayiana, was now a year and a half.) After Scott assured

Shawn that he was looking for a serious relationship, she gave him

Amber’s phone number.

The curious thing about all this is how directed Scott was. He did

not fall into an affair or turn to someone he already knew for attention

he wasn’t getting from a distracted wife, as many men do when their

wives are pregnant. Scott went out looking for someone to fall in love

with— and not just a girlfriend, a soul mate! He solicited a long-term

serious relationship. He was married, about to become a parent. Even

if he might have been entertaining the idea of merely divorcing his

wife, there is no longer-term relationship than parenthood.

How serious or truthful Scott was being, to Shawn or with

himself, is unclear. He lied to Shawn about almost everything else.

He pretended to be single, and claimed, among other things, that

he lived in Sacramento, owned two homes, had a lot of money,

and owned Tradecorp. How he ever hoped to establish any kind

of ongoing relationship, to climb his way out of the hole he had

already dug with such easy mendacity, seems incomprehensible.

Nevertheless, he followed through and called Amber, setting up a

date for November 20.

Q

While Laci got together with her girlfriends to watch the reality

dating show
The Bachelor
, Scott acted out the part in real life with

an unsuspecting Amber. They met at a Fresno bar, where Scott got

Amber to leave her car and come with him to his hotel, saying he

needed to shower and change before going to dinner. He had come

prepared for an evening of seduction. Out of his luggage he pulled a

bottle of champagne and fresh strawberries to add to the glasses—a

romantic gesture, however well practiced it might have been, that

dazzled his date.

Over dinner at a Japanese restaurant, where Scott finagled a private

room, he continued his litany of lies, embroidered here and there

with bits and pieces of truth. He told her about his 1940s-era house

but claimed to live in Sacramento, not Modesto, alone. He bragged

about his great kitchen and how he loved to cook (although Laci was

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the gourmet chef in his household). He claimed to own a condo in

San Diego (a complete lie), which he said he was thinking of selling

furnished in a package deal with a Land Rover he had stored in the

garage (actually the Land Rover was Laci’s, which she was still driving

in Modesto). He denied even having pets, saying he traveled too

much to take care of them. (In addition to their dog, he and Laci had

also taken in two stray cats.)

He said he was going on a weeklong fishing trip to Alaska with his

father, brother, and uncle over the Thanksgiving holiday. That was

a trip he had taken many years before when he was younger, to his

uncle’s hunting lodge. But he wasn’t going this year. He would be

spending Thanksgiving with his wife in San Diego, where his family

was going to throw Laci a baby shower.

He also said he planned to spend Christmas with his family in

Kennebunkport, Maine, which he claimed to be a traditional Peterson

gathering place, then jet off on December 28 to celebrate New Year’s

with friends in Paris, followed by a month of business in Europe. The

only truth there was that he was scheduled to go to Europe in January

for meetings with Tradecorp executives—a trip Laci wasn’t happy

about because it was getting close to her February 10 due date. He

was supposed to be spending Christmas and New Year’s in Modesto

with his wife. They had already made plans for New Year’s Eve with

friends. The strangest thing about Scott’s lies was their specificity, the

gratuitous detail. Kennebunkport? Did he pull that location from a

news story about the Bush clan?

Amber couldn’t help but be impressed by Scott’s tall tales. Just

as he had appeared to Laci, he seemed like a real catch: ambitious,

impressive, and romantic to boot. He told her that he was eager to

settle down but just hadn’t found the right woman. They spent the

night together at his hotel, and he assured her the next day that he

did not consider what they did a one-night stand.

Q

He called a few times before their next date, at one point pretending

to be at the airport on his way to Alaska. Instead, Scott was traveling

to San Diego and to Disneyland with Laci, his parents, and some of

his siblings. Anne Bird recalls Scott as withdrawn and moody both

on the excursion to Disneyland and when he came to collect Laci and

her gifts from the baby shower.

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