The Megyn Kelly Show - September 05, 2026


The Double Life of Scott Peterson： Justice For Laci and Conner — Ep. 5 ｜ MK Confidential


Episode Stats


Length

36 minutes

Words per minute

148.85

Word count

5,484

Sentence count

387


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:56.560 The jury in the Scott Peterson case has been deliberating for four days and they want to see
00:01:02.680 the boat. On Monday, November 8th, 2004, a bailiff knocks on the deliberation room door and leads
00:01:10.020 12 jurors down a passageway into an underground garage beneath the Redwood City Courthouse.
00:01:17.080 Scott's 14-foot aluminum fishing boat, which was introduced as evidence, has been stored down there
00:01:23.180 for the length of the trial.
00:01:25.000 Judge Alfred DeLucchi comes to
00:01:26.840 in a suit instead of his robes.
00:01:29.640 Scott Peterson walks down in his suit, unshackled.
00:01:33.880 Juror number one asks the judge for permission
00:01:36.180 to come aboard the boat.
00:01:38.240 DeLucchi says yes, but reminds the juror
00:01:40.600 the boat is on a trailer
00:01:42.180 and not on a cruise in San Francisco Bay.
00:01:45.160 The foreman climbs in behind juror number one
00:01:47.780 and the two of them start shifting their weight
00:01:50.200 from side to side,
00:01:51.660 seeing how much it would take to tip it.
00:01:53.860 Scott's attorney, Mark Garagos, objects that they're running an out-of-court experiment,
00:01:59.020 and Judge DeLuke puts a stop to it.
00:02:01.580 Garagos moves for a mistrial, which the judge denies.
00:02:05.620 Juror number one is Greg Beratlas, an engineer for the power company who coaches youth football
00:02:11.840 on weekends.
00:02:13.260 Five months of testimony have told him Scott Peterson is a man who puts coasters under
00:02:18.420 everything.
00:02:18.900 He is meticulous with his equipment.
00:02:21.940 What Greg notices sitting in the boat is a pair of pliers going rusty and standing water in the boat.
00:02:30.060 Greg thinks this does not fit.
00:02:33.260 It's as if the boat was never going to be a long-term hobby, but only purchased for one purpose.
00:02:40.780 Four days later, 12 jurors convict Scott Peterson of two murders.
00:02:45.620 But they are not the same 12 people who went down to that underground garage.
00:02:50.500 Two of the jurors standing around that boat leave the case,
00:02:54.260 including the foreman who climbed in behind Baratlas.
00:02:57.280 The two alternate jurors who replaced them never see the boat.
00:03:01.360 Their arrival forces the jury to wipe away its work
00:03:03.860 and start deliberations over, twice in two days.
00:03:08.220 Within hours of the second restart,
00:03:09.860 they take their first vote, and it is unanimous.
00:03:14.840 Guilty.
00:03:16.480 I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK Confidential.
00:03:19.680 We'll be right back.
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00:04:28.680 prosecutor Rick Distasso stands up to deliver to the jury his closing argument. He starts with the
00:04:34.140 part of the case the prosecution cannot answer. He cannot tell the jury exactly how Lacey Peterson
00:04:39.960 died. He cannot tell them exactly when, but he says they do know where Scott Peterson was on
00:04:46.560 Christmas Eve and where Lacey and Connor were found four months later. DeStasso puts an aerial
00:04:53.280 photograph of San Francisco Bay in front of the jury and starts pointing, quote, the defendant
00:04:59.060 went fishing right here off of Brooks Island, or he said he went fishing. That's where he took his
00:05:05.480 boat that day. Four months later, Lacey Peterson washed ashore right here at Point Isabel near
00:05:12.200 Brooks Island. Connor Peterson washed ashore right here at the Richmond shoreline in that marshy
00:05:18.480 area. The only man, he continued, or only person that we know without any doubt that was in the
00:05:24.620 exact location where Lacey and Connor's bodies washed ashore at the exact time that they went
00:05:30.960 missing is sitting right there. The connection was devastating. Garagos predicted it would be
00:05:38.460 early on before he was even hired. Jurors writing about the verdict later cited it as absolutely
00:05:44.320 critical to their decision. Scott was there and so were the bodies. Distasso tells the jury that
00:05:51.660 strangling or smothering can leave very little physical evidence behind, but the state does not
00:05:57.600 have to prove the precise manner of death to prove that Lacey was murdered and that Scott
00:06:02.340 killed her. DeStasso tells them the affair with Amber Fry is not the motive. The motive, he says,
00:06:10.960 is what was about to change Scott Peterson's life, his son. DeStasso continues, the reason
00:06:18.940 that he killed Lacey Peterson was Connor Peterson was on the way. Then DeStasso puts another
00:06:25.640 photograph on the screen. It's Lacey. Seven months pregnant, smiling, beautiful, radiant,
00:06:35.660 sitting by herself on a wicker chair in a red pantsuit at a Christmas party. That photograph
00:06:41.880 was taken the same night her husband and father of her baby was 96 miles away at another Christmas
00:06:50.360 party with his girlfriend, Amber Fry. Lacey had no idea what was coming, Distasso says.
00:06:59.460 The next day, Garagos begins his closing remarks by having Scott face the jury and then asking,
00:07:06.500 do you all hate him? Because apparently that's what the sum total of what we heard yesterday was.
00:07:11.840 He continues, we heard four hours of this guy's the biggest jerk that ever walked the face of
00:07:17.600 the earth. This guy's the biggest liar who ever walked the face of the earth. You should hate him.
00:07:23.020 You should hate him. You should hate him. Garagos tells the jury that the Modesto police settled on
00:07:29.840 Scott within an hour of pulling up to his house and then went looking for evidence to fit. He says
00:07:36.760 he's not asking anybody to make his client husband of the year. At one point, Garagos calls his own
00:07:42.080 client a 14-karat gold asshole for cheating on his wife. But being a terrible husband,
00:07:49.160 Garagos argues, is not proof of murder. He says the state still cannot tell you, the jury,
00:07:55.740 exactly how Lacey was killed, when she was killed, or even where, which he says undercuts their
00:08:01.820 entire case. On November 3rd, the lawyers are finished. The case goes to the jury. 12 people
00:08:10.400 walk into the deliberation room and close the door. Two will leave and be replaced before the
00:08:16.320 verdict. The first is Frances Gorman, juror number seven, an auditor for the local gas and electric
00:08:22.680 company who lives in Foster City. During the five-month trial, Judge DeLuki had repeatedly
00:08:28.600 warned the jurors not to investigate the case on their own. Gorman did anyway. She went home,
00:08:36.120 got on her computer and looked up something she had heard about in court.
00:08:39.900 Frances explained what happened.
00:08:41.300 I did check something that I had a knee-jerk reaction about,
00:08:45.500 and it confirmed my thinking about whether something that I heard was correct or not.
00:08:52.000 Another juror reports Gorman to the court.
00:08:55.200 She is called into the judge's chambers, comes back out, and then is called in again.
00:09:00.500 The second time, she does not return to the jury room.
00:09:04.120 A bailiff comes for her notebooks.
00:09:06.840 Downstairs, the alternates have been sitting, waiting for five months with laptops and stacks
00:09:12.640 of DVDs, knowing they may never be called. Alternate number two is a single mother of four
00:09:19.300 from Palo Alto. Her hair is dyed such a vivid red that reporters have been calling her
00:09:24.780 strawberry shortcake. She has not spent a single minute in the deliberation room.
00:09:30.680 Judge DeLuke brings her upstairs and makes her the new juror number seven.
00:09:36.560 Her name is Rochelle Neese.
00:09:39.420 Press write-ups about her at the time speculate that she will be friendly to the defense,
00:09:44.640 based on her smiling at Garagos and sitting on the edge of her seat during his questioning.
00:09:49.980 They could not be more wrong.
00:09:52.980 Years later, juror number one, Baratlas, described the moment Rochelle joined the jury to A&E.
00:09:59.640 Rochelle came in the room and Rochelle was just like piss and vinegar.
00:10:04.100 She comes in and she's like, hey, he killed the little man.
00:10:08.280 He's guilty. Let's just get this done with.
00:10:11.020 And I was like, whoa, time out.
00:10:12.840 We kind of started a process here of discussing this.
00:10:17.100 Her arrival means the other 11 jurors have to throw out four days of deliberations and begin again.
00:10:23.440 So they erase the whiteboard and they pull all their notes off the walls.
00:10:28.300 The next morning, the foreman, Gregory Jackson, is gone too.
00:10:32.300 Mark Garagos told us what happened.
00:10:34.840 DeLuki told me that on day seven of deliberations
00:10:38.660 because the foreman of that jury came into the chambers
00:10:45.620 and said he didn't feel like he could go on in deliberations.
00:10:49.980 He felt threatened.
00:10:50.960 He felt like the verdict he wanted to render would not fit the community's expectation.
00:11:00.140 That's on the record.
00:11:01.680 And instead of the judge, this is one of the angriest I've ever gotten with a Superior Court judge.
00:11:08.900 Instead of bringing in the juror who was threatening the foreperson, who was both a doctor and a lawyer, which is why I wanted the guy.
00:11:17.580 I wanted somebody who was both analytical and smart.
00:11:20.640 I wanted smart people. And instead of doing that, the judge removed the foreperson, removed
00:11:28.620 him from the deliberations. After seven days, there was a verdict within eight hours.
00:11:34.760 What the jurors actually told Judge DeLuke was placed under seal. However, Jackson's
00:11:40.400 statements to the judge were later unsealed in court records. The transcript reveals that
00:11:46.200 he told the judge he had lost his ability to remain fair and impartial, quote,
00:11:51.720 my individual ability to do that has been compromised to a degree that I would never
00:11:56.360 know personally whether or not I was giving the community's verdict, the popular verdict,
00:12:01.420 or the expected verdict. He told the judge, as Garagos said, that hostile remarks made to him
00:12:08.020 by other jurors made him feel unsafe. Alternate juror number three is brought in to replace the
00:12:14.500 foreman. His name is Dennis Lear, a retired United Airlines mechanic. For the second time in two days,
00:12:21.440 the jury wipes away its work and starts over. Friday, November 12th, 2004. A few hours into
00:12:29.260 the new deliberations, the jurors choose a new foreman, Steve Cardosi, a firefighter, and then
00:12:35.060 he asks whether they are ready to vote to see where they are. He passes out blank pieces of
00:12:41.280 paper. Three questions, Cardosi says. Did Scott Peterson kill Lacey? What degree of murder for
00:12:48.680 Lacey? What degree for Connor? The papers come back. All three votes are unanimous. Around 11
00:12:57.700 that morning, word goes out throughout the courthouse, there's a verdict and it will be
00:13:03.200 read after lunch. The trial has been running Monday through Thursday with Fridays off and
00:13:09.180 lawyers are not expecting a verdict that morning. Mark Garagos is in another courtroom in Southern
00:13:14.680 California. Scott's father, Lee Peterson, has gone home to San Diego, which is far too. So it is Pat
00:13:21.560 Harris, Garagos's co-counsel, who will sit beside Scott when the verdict is read. Outside, the plaza
00:13:29.260 begins to fill. San Mateo County deputies stretch a single strand of yellow tape across the courthouse
00:13:35.180 steps, a police helicopter circles overhead. When Garagos says this case was decided in the
00:13:42.200 court of public opinion long before the verdict came in, this is the moment to which he points.
00:13:47.840 When Scott was found guilty, that courthouse was ringed by over 1,500 people. And there was a
00:13:55.780 front page photo of a woman holding an infant child saying in the headline on whatever it was,
00:14:03.880 san mateo news this is better than the birth of my son when he was convicted with the giant guilty
00:14:09.640 so it was an enormous prejudgment rate that we just could not get over before the verdict is read
00:14:17.040 greg baratlas takes a moment steps outside and looks across the courthouse plaza he estimates
00:14:24.140 it's more than a thousand people there inside scott peterson takes his seat at the defense table
00:14:30.840 He has lost so much weight since the trial began that his suit hangs loosely on him.
00:14:37.400 At one o'clock California time, the clerk stands to read the verdict.
00:14:58.140 Sharon Rocha begins to sob.
00:15:00.840 Her son Brent puts an arm around her. Scott Peterson does not move. Two jurors would later
00:15:07.520 say they watched his face as the verdict was read, waiting for some reaction. They see nothing.
00:15:13.980 They see a man with no emotion. Outside, the plaza erupts. When the hearing is over,
00:15:21.360 the Peterson family leaves through a side entrance, and they are booed by throngs of
00:15:26.760 people gathered outside. Sharon Rocha leaves through the main entrance. Once in the car with
00:15:32.220 Ron Gransky, she looks back through the window at the people in the crowd and smiles. The jurors
00:15:39.440 are taken to a room at street level where they can see what is happening outside. At first,
00:15:44.720 juror Dennis Lear thinks the noise is anger. Then he realizes people are celebrating.
00:15:50.600 I really thought that was sick, he says later, though he spares no contempt for Scott Peterson.
00:15:56.360 Quote, he got what he deserved. On November 30th, the same jury returns to decide whether Scott
00:16:03.540 Peterson will spend the rest of his life in prison or die by lethal injection. Prosecutor Dave Harris
00:16:10.200 calls Sharon Rocha to the witness stand. He puts a photograph on the screen. It was taken on Mother's
00:16:17.540 Day 2002 at the Peterson house on Covina Avenue. It's Sharon, her mother, and Lacey all together
00:16:25.780 and smiling. Harris asks Sharon about the Mother's Day that has just passed. How was it?
00:16:33.600 Sharon tells the jury she spent much of it on the floor, crying that Lacey should have been there.
00:16:39.500 Lacey should have been celebrating her first Mother's Day. Then Sharon turns toward the man
00:16:44.900 she once called her son-in-law, who once called her mom. She wanted to be a mother, she tells him.
00:16:53.780 Scott does not look up.
00:16:56.360 A moment later, Sharon rises from the witness chair.
00:16:59.600 Divorce is always an option, not murder.
00:17:04.540 She would later say those words were not planned.
00:17:07.780 She did not even realize she was shouting until people told her afterward.
00:17:11.840 Then Sharon tells the jury about going to the funeral home and saying goodbye to her daughter and grandson.
00:17:18.100 Garth Stapley, who covered the trial for the Modesto Bee
00:17:22.380 later reacted to Sharon's testimony for A&E's
00:17:25.460 the murder of Lacey Peterson
00:17:27.460 Sharon Roach's testimony in court
00:17:30.840 made a big impression on all of us
00:17:33.040 I don't know how you could sit there and
00:17:35.560 observe this woman sobbing
00:17:39.600 and then screaming at Scott
00:17:42.720 and not be affected
00:17:44.600 Every juror is crying
00:17:47.240 so are many of the reporters in the room. On December 9th, Mark Garrago stands up and tries
00:17:53.840 to save his client's life. He tells the jury he has barely been sleeping and that when he does,
00:17:59.380 he has nightmares about the case. He says he feels like he has let Scott down and admits he never
00:18:05.500 even prepared for the possibility of a penalty phase. Then he simply begs the jury to spare
00:18:10.960 Scott Peterson's life. After eight hours and 23 minutes of sentencing deliberations spread across
00:18:18.260 three days, the jurors return to the courtroom with their decision. Once again, the clerk reads
00:18:24.260 it out loud. People of the state of California versus Scott Peterson. We, the jury, and the
00:18:29.100 above-entitled cause fix the penalty at death. Scott does not cry. His family sits silently
00:18:35.760 behind him. Across the courtroom, Sharon Rocha weeps. Journalist and former judge, Catherine
00:18:42.700 Cryer, is watching from the press seats. As the courtroom begins to empty, she sees Lacey's
00:18:47.620 stepfather, Ron Gransky, turn towards Scott's father, Lee Peterson, and mouth two words.
00:18:54.280 I'm sorry. Lee looks back at him and mouths two words of his own. Fuck you.
00:19:00.800 outside the courthouse the jurors face the cameras one of the reporters asks them to
00:19:07.360 describe some of scott's reactions juror number seven responds he is a jerk and i have one comment
00:19:15.200 for scott you look somebody in the face when they're talking to you and rachelle niece is not
00:19:20.760 finished juror number four mike belmissieri joins her at the microphones van quentin's your new home
00:19:27.220 and it's illegal to kill your wife and child in California.
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00:21:21.440 In the spring of 2004, during jury selection, a woman known only as prospective juror 4841
00:21:28.060 came to the San Mateo County Courthouse and filled out a questionnaire.
00:21:33.140 Question 109 asked about her views on the death penalty.
00:21:36.700 She checked, strongly oppose.
00:21:39.440 A few weeks later, question 115 asked a different follow-up question, whether those beliefs were so
00:21:46.580 strong that she could never vote for death, regardless of the evidence or the judge's
00:21:51.260 instructions. To that, she answered no. In other words, she was telling the court that she opposed
00:21:56.800 the death penalty personally, but that she could still follow the law and impose it in a case where
00:22:02.160 the evidence called for it. That answer should have led to more questions in court, but it didn't.
00:22:08.040 Judge DeLucchi excused her without asking a single follow-up question.
00:22:13.860 And the judge did essentially the same thing with more than a dozen other prospective jurors.
00:22:19.140 16 years later, Judge DeLucchi's handling of those prospective jurors would wind up sparing Scott Peterson's life.
00:22:27.060 On August 24, 2020, the California Supreme Court leaves both murder convictions intact, but overturns the death sentence.
00:22:36.940 The court says DeLuki improperly dismissed prospective jurors
00:22:40.120 who opposed the death penalty personally
00:22:42.480 without first asking whether they could set those beliefs aside on behalf of the court.
00:22:48.220 DeLuki was required by law to do so.
00:22:51.360 Here's Garagos on the error.
00:22:53.400 You can't bounce people just because they say they can't follow the death penalty
00:22:57.980 or they're against the death penalty.
00:22:59.700 You have to ask them, can you follow the law?
00:23:02.560 And he didn't do that second thing.
00:23:04.260 the Supreme Court unanimously reversed and actually chided the prosecution for sitting
00:23:10.980 idly by as I was screaming about it. Peterson's lawyers then tried to go further. If the jury was
00:23:17.660 selected improperly, they argue, then the murder convictions should fall right alongside the death
00:23:22.960 sentence. They lose that argument, which they appeal all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court,
00:23:28.060 which in 2022 declines to hear the case.
00:23:32.260 At the same time, Peterson's appellate team makes a separate attack on his conviction.
00:23:38.800 This one is not about what happened during the trial itself.
00:23:42.160 His lawyers present 19 different claims involving things the jury never heard about,
00:23:47.540 including alleged new information and questions about the jurors themselves.
00:23:51.620 In October 2020, the California Supreme Court rejects 18 of the 19 grounds for appeal.
00:23:59.880 The 19th concerns one of the 12 people who voted to convict Scott Peterson,
00:24:05.440 Rochelle Neese, and results in Scott Peterson getting a trial court hearing
00:24:10.060 to see if he was unfairly prejudiced by this juror.
00:24:15.080 We asked Garagos about Rochelle, whom he remembered well.
00:24:19.660 He compared her to the prospective juror who said she, quote, pulled one over on that dumb shit defense lawyer.
00:24:26.240 That woman was excused.
00:24:28.760 This woman, Strawberry Shortcake, is that woman on steroids.
00:24:33.520 She got past it. She was an alternate.
00:24:36.240 Once again, nobody knew that she had a restraining order and had been pregnant.
00:24:41.560 And to just show you the kind of, psychosis is the word of the week, as you know, she was writing letters to Scott like a pen pal after the conviction.
00:24:56.640 And if you're special, you should play some of the video of her after the conviction.
00:25:04.420 It was wild to watch her reaction after the conviction.
00:25:09.040 She was like a, she was like a crazed person who was celebrating in kind of a medieval fashion.
00:25:19.420 It was wild.
00:25:20.720 At the courthouse after the death verdict, Rochelle says she will, quote,
00:25:25.280 forever feel a connection with Lacey and with both families.
00:25:29.280 Six months after voting to send Scott Peterson to death row,
00:25:33.000 Rochelle Neese begins writing to him at San Quentin.
00:25:36.940 She is struggling with the aftermath of the trial.
00:25:40.140 Her therapist suggests she writes Scott a letter
00:25:42.900 and tell him what the case has done to her.
00:25:46.080 At first, Rochelle plans to send the letter
00:25:47.900 without giving Scott a return address,
00:25:49.960 but she sends it anyway, never expecting him to answer.
00:25:54.780 Scott Peterson writes back.
00:25:57.420 Rochelle asks him point blank,
00:25:59.120 what happened that night, Scott?
00:26:01.240 What pushed you to the limit
00:26:02.720 where you felt like you had to kill someone
00:26:05.120 who not only loved you so much,
00:26:07.120 but was carrying a part of you inside of her.
00:26:11.440 Scott tells her he did not kill Lacey or Connor.
00:26:14.960 He says the Modesto police mishandled the investigation,
00:26:18.020 and he begins asking niece questions of his own,
00:26:21.260 what it was like to be a juror,
00:26:22.880 and why she convicted him.
00:26:24.820 In December 2005,
00:26:27.340 a year after she voted to send Scott Peterson to death row,
00:26:31.060 Rochelle has a mental breakdown in a school parking lot
00:26:33.960 while picking up one of her children.
00:26:36.680 Rochelle writes about what happened later.
00:26:38.860 Quote, I couldn't get out of my truck.
00:26:41.400 All I knew is that I was done with my life.
00:26:44.220 It was over.
00:26:45.980 She is hospitalized in a locked psychiatric unit.
00:26:49.440 From there, she writes to Scott again.
00:26:52.780 I never knew how much this trial had an impact on me.
00:26:56.200 Plus, I never had a great life.
00:26:58.220 All the pressure just hit me.
00:26:59.820 I think it has been the time of year.
00:27:02.060 are Verdict, Lacey, and Connor.
00:27:06.380 In total, she writes 17 letters to Scott Peterson.
00:27:10.440 Years later, a lawyer asks Rochelle on the witness stand
00:27:13.380 how long the correspondence continued.
00:27:16.120 She gives a short answer.
00:27:17.980 I don't know. Too long.
00:27:20.800 Then a reporter for People magazine
00:27:22.680 learns about the jailhouse letters.
00:27:25.720 And once Scott Peterson's lawyers obtain them,
00:27:28.460 they go back to the questionnaire Rochelle Niece filled out on March 9, 2004,
00:27:35.140 before she was ever seated as a juror for Scott's murder trial.
00:27:39.580 It asked whether she had ever been involved in a lawsuit,
00:27:42.800 whether she had ever been a party or a witness in a court case,
00:27:46.020 and whether she or anyone close to her had ever been the victim of a crime.
00:27:51.180 Niece answered no to all three.
00:27:53.900 This was not true.
00:27:56.080 Four years earlier, on November 27, 2000,
00:27:59.400 Rochelle Neese had gone to the San Mateo County Courthouse
00:28:02.080 and asked a judge for an order of protection from her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend.
00:28:07.740 She wrote that the woman had kicked in Rochelle's front door.
00:28:11.160 She also wrote that she feared for her unborn child.
00:28:14.920 At the time, Rochelle was four and a half months pregnant.
00:28:18.280 A judge granted the restraining order.
00:28:20.680 Four years later, she is sitting on a jury deciding
00:28:23.420 whether Scott Peterson has murdered his pregnant wife
00:28:26.680 and their unborn son.
00:28:28.660 Neese later explained her thinking to A&E.
00:28:32.080 When I was filling out this questionnaire,
00:28:34.240 that case of mine never came into my thoughts
00:28:38.040 because it was a dropped case.
00:28:40.220 It never went anywhere and it was nothing.
00:28:44.520 So I never thought about that case.
00:28:47.140 In 2022, Rochelle returns to a Redwood City courtroom
00:28:50.600 for the court-ordered hearing on her juror questionnaire.
00:28:54.140 For five days, under a grant of immunity,
00:28:57.200 she answers questions about the form she filled out 18 years earlier.
00:29:01.280 She cries on the stand, and her lawyer tells the court
00:29:04.120 she regrets ever writing the letters to Scott.
00:29:07.500 On December 20th, the judge rules that some of Nisa's answers
00:29:11.500 on the questionnaire were false,
00:29:14.040 but finds that Rochelle had misunderstood the questions,
00:29:16.640 not that she lied out of bias against Scott Peterson.
00:29:21.400 Peterson's request for a new trial is denied.
00:29:25.260 Prosecutors could have impaneled a new jury to retry the penalty phase of the trial
00:29:29.900 if they wanted to seek the death penalty again.
00:29:33.220 They chose not to do so, explaining that, quote,
00:29:36.620 Lacey's family has decided the process is simply too painful to endure once again.
00:29:41.620 In December of 2021, Scott is resentenced to life without parole.
00:29:48.080 The following year, he is transferred off of death row to Mule Creek State Prison in
00:29:53.180 Ione, California.
00:29:54.920 He still maintains he did not kill Lacey or Connor.
00:29:58.960 And now, there is yet another possible path to a new trial for Scott, allegedly new evidence.
00:30:06.260 In 2024, the Los Angeles Innocence Project takes Scott's case and asks the court for
00:30:13.840 two things.
00:30:15.000 The first is more testing.
00:30:17.200 Scott's legal team wants to retest material from the mattress found inside the van that
00:30:23.380 was discovered burning in a Modesto alley the morning after Lacey disappeared.
00:30:28.160 The state lab tested material from that mattress at the time and found no blood.
00:30:34.380 In 2019, a private lab examined some of the fabric and reported trace amounts of what
00:30:40.800 might be male DNA, undermining unsupported claims that the mattress might be stained
00:30:45.960 with Lacey Peterson's blood. The judge grants part of this request and denies part of it too.
00:30:52.960 She does not allow the defense to retest the mattress. Finding this van, which was orange,
00:30:58.600 by the way, has no link to this crime. She does permit the defense access to certain reports
00:31:04.720 about the van, like the 911 call reporting the van fire and any fingerprints recovered,
00:31:10.560 because a convicted felon has the right to review materials they would have been entitled
00:31:15.420 to see at the time of their trial. She also allows some new DNA testing on a bit of duct tape
00:31:22.020 found on Lacey's clothing. The defense is hoping for DNA that will match that of the burglars,
00:31:28.900 arguing that touch DNA analysis has advanced considerably since 2004. Because the tape was
00:31:35.300 found on Lacey's pants and appears to be in testable condition, the judge will allow another
00:31:41.400 bite at this apple. The Innocence Project also wants the court to consider 14 different arguments,
00:31:49.140 mostly involving evidence they say prosecutors destroyed or never gave to the defense.
00:31:54.580 In April of this year, a San Mateo County judge rejects all of those arguments and declines to
00:32:00.840 hold a hearing on any of them. The Innocence Project says it will appeal that ruling along
00:32:06.340 with the judge's earlier refusal, to grant Scott a new trial over juror number seven,
00:32:11.340 aka Rochelle Neese, and her juror questionnaire. Though he's not Scott Peterson's appellate lawyer,
00:32:18.580 Mark Garagos fully supports a new trial. There's just too much here. And the idea
00:32:24.520 at this point that there was such willful kind of suppression of evidence, I always say the same
00:32:31.600 thing. If you're beyond what you referenced as the prosecutorial duty, if you truly believed in
00:32:38.340 your conviction as a prosecutor, which also is your duty, you have to have an abiding conviction
00:32:43.840 of that, which mirrors the jury. So why are you fighting so hard against, you know, just
00:32:49.780 putting these things to rest? Makes no sense to me. Scott Peterson has been in custody since April
00:32:55.920 of 2003. More than 20 years later, both of his murder convictions still stand. Sharon Rocha has
00:33:03.340 devoted much of the past 20 years to helping crime victims. She wrote a book about her daughter,
00:33:09.540 Four Lacey, which became a bestseller. Her view of the case has never changed. This past July,
00:33:16.420 she told People Magazine, he is guilty, and that's it. Scott's mom, Jackie Peterson, died of cancer
00:33:23.320 in 2013, his dad Lee died in 2024. Both went to their graves maintaining that their son was
00:33:29.960 innocent. Amber Fry wrote a book called Witness for the Prosecution of Scott Peterson, then largely
00:33:36.980 withdrew from public life. She still lives in the Fresno area and is the mother of two children now,
00:33:43.260 Ayanna, born in 2001, and Justin, born in 2004. She married a police officer, Robert Hernandez,
00:33:50.940 in 2006. He had nothing to do with his case before divorcing him two years later. After the court
00:33:57.320 ruling this spring, she said she was relieved she would not have to testify again, although she would
00:34:03.080 if she had to. She told NBC a decade after the verdict that Scott made no attempts to contact
00:34:09.780 her since his conviction. Lacey and Connor were buried on August 29, 2003. At the funeral home
00:34:17.960 weeks earlier, an employee named Ronnie showed Sharon albums of flowers, then photographs of
00:34:24.280 caskets. When Ronnie began explaining the pillows inside of them, Sharon remembers thinking,
00:34:30.960 Lacey doesn't need a pillow. She chose a white casket with gold trim. On August 21st, Lacey and
00:34:38.560 Connor were returned to Modesto, and Connor was placed in the casket with his mother.
00:34:44.200 There was still the house on Covina Avenue
00:34:46.780 and upstairs the room that had been prepared for a new baby.
00:34:51.440 Lee Peterson described one piece of it to A&E in 2017.
00:34:56.160 As Scott had said, we're having a nautical theme in the baby's room.
00:35:01.000 We bought a big, you know, the old round life preservers.
00:35:04.260 She was just so excited.
00:35:06.800 I got extra hugs for that.
00:35:09.240 The nursery had been finished before Lacey disappeared.
00:35:13.200 Everything was there, waiting for a baby who would never come home.
00:35:18.100 After Lacey and Connor died, Sharon asked for the chance to go back into that room.
00:35:23.580 She wanted to sit in Lacey's rocking chair.
00:35:26.500 In the nursery, Lacey had prepared for her son and feel close to her only daughter.
00:35:31.840 The crib was empty, the room silent,
00:35:36.120 and on the wall, the life preserver Lacey had been so excited to receive.
00:35:41.840 Welcome aboard.
00:35:43.200 I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK Confidential.
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