114: New Evidence for Scott Peterson? Could He Be Innocent?
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fluffy irresistible King's Hawaiian rolls and slider buns and enjoy. - Are you afraid police will arrest you? - No, I know there's no basis. I mean, I had nothing to do with their disappearance. So there's no possible evidence or anything like that. - Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly.

Hey everybody, welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. Now boy, oh boy, do we have another motherload of a case to talk about today. Now, this is one that is coming directly from you guys and one that you are requesting I talk about

Now, here's what I want to just say. I don't want to just like revisit this case because it's in the news again and there has been some speculation as to this person's guilt or innocence. But the reason I'm revisiting it is because as we researched it, as we dug into like, could this person really be innocent? There are a lot of things that even I didn't know about this case, which honestly kind of make me step back for a minute.

question, is there reasonable doubt? I'm just being honest here. So we're going to talk about everything. And I guarantee you, if you already are familiar with this case, you are still going to hear new information today because that is how new

Deep we are going. We are going into the depths of hell to talk about Scott Peterson today. Now, as you may have heard, the LA Innocence Project recently took on his case, and this has kind of just exploded all over the internet because everybody's like, what are you even talking about? Of course he's not innocent. He's so guilty. All of these things.

But it begs the question, why are they taking up his case? And it also then opens a slew of other questions because there is a pretty big percentage of people out there who are not convinced that Scott Peterson is guilty. And that's what we're going to talk about today, the reasons behind that. And once we go through this entire thing, I want you to tell me whether it's through the comment section on YouTube...

the review section on Apple, or even the poll section on Spotify. After this episode, what do you believe? Do you believe that he is guilty? Do you believe that he is innocent? Or are you just unsure, which is totally okay. You know what, as a matter of fact, let's do what we did with the Casey Anthony video and the Nicole Kessinger video. If you're watching this on YouTube, comment right now at the start of this. Tell me, do you think Scott Peterson is guilty?

And then when we're done with this, I want to know what you think because it is a wild ride we're going to go through today, guys. And we're going to talk about this LA Innocence Project, what this means, all of the reasons why people think he's innocent. I mean, we're going to go through everything. Some of the information that is sourced in today's episode comes from a YouTube channel called Behind Criminal Minds. They're a really great channel. We love their work. So I will leave a link in the show notes below.

So on Christmas Eve in 2002, a woman who lived on Covena Avenue was running some last minute errands before the holiday.

As she was backing out of her driveway, she saw a golden retriever. This golden retriever was wandering by itself in the middle of the street with a leash still on. So she quickly parked her car and she grabbed this dog's leash. She recognized this dog too. It was one of her neighbors, the Petersons. It was their golden retriever named Mackenzie. The woman walked Mackenzie across over to the Petersons' front lawn and to the gate, which she noticed was partially open.

So she let Mackenzie back into the yard, and she made sure that the gate was shut tight behind her, and then she just went about her day. Well, later on that day, around 6 p.m., a 911 call came into police dispatch in Modesto, California, and this call was from a very distressed man. Yes, my fellow law calls.

The man was Ron Gransky, Lacey Peterson's stepdad. Now, Lacey Peterson was eight months pregnant with her and her husband Scott Peterson's first child, a little baby boy that they planned on naming Connor.

Lacey and Scott met back in college in 1994 and then later got married in 1997. They bought a beautiful home and they moved to Modesto just a year prior to this in 2001.

Lacey worked part-time as a substitute teacher and Scott worked for a fertilizer company, which I have to just say that's kind of funny and the irony and all of that with him being full of shit, but allegedly, allegedly, right? So they had a good life. I mean, Scott was making decent money and Lacey was truly the picture-perfect housewife.

So the day before Christmas Eve, Lacey and Scott had visited her sister Amy at the salon where she worked. This was around 5.45 p.m. Then later that night, Lacey talked to her mom Sharon on the phone. So Scott told the police that he had last seen Lacey at around 9.30 a.m. on Christmas Eve before he then left to go fishing, and on his way back from the fishing trip, he called Lacey.

So when Scott got back home from his fishing trip, the golden retriever Mackenzie was in the backyard, covered in mud. Lacey's car was also in the driveway, but the house was completely empty.

So after showering and changing his clothes, he knocked on a neighbor's door and asked if they had seen Lacey. Hey, have you seen my wife? But they hadn't. However, many neighbors did say that they saw that golden retriever Mackenzie outside, and they specifically said that they saw her wandering between 10.15 and 10.45 a.m. This included the neighbor that brought Mackenzie back and put her in the gate behind in the yard and latched it when she left.

So nobody had seen Lacey. So Scott decided to call Lacey's mom around 5.15 p.m., asking if Lacey was with her, because he figured that maybe her mom just ended up picking her up and then taking Lacey over to her house, which is why Lacey's car would still be at the house.

But Lacey wasn't with her mom. So it was during this phone call when Lacey's stepdad, Ron, decided to call 911. So he calls 911 and he reports Lacey is missing. Now at the time, nobody knew what this case would actually blow up to be and that it would be in the national news. It would eventually make worldwide headlines. I mean, it was a media sensation through and through.

A California man is anxiously waiting to hear word on the mysterious Christmas Eve disappearance of his pregnant wife. Lacey Denise Peterson is eight months pregnant. She's considered a high-risk missing person under suspicious circumstances. I love my daughter so much.

I miss her every minute of every day. He saw her at 9:30 in the morning before he went fishing and shortly thereafter she went on her walk. No one has seen her since. Lacey went missing Christmas Eve. She's 27 years old and she is over eight months pregnant. So what exactly happened on the tragic Christmas Eve day that Lacey seemingly just up and vanished?

Well, according to Scott, he was getting ready to go on that fishing trip while Lacey was in the kitchen earlier that morning. He says she was in the kitchen, she was watching Martha Stewart, and she was making a meringue. Then, later that morning, Scott drove to the warehouse, he got the boat, and then he headed to Berkeley Marina.

Before he left, he asked Lacey what her plans were for the day, and she said that she was just going to bake cookies, she was going to mop the floors, she was going to take their dog, Mackenzie, out for a walk to a nearby park. I mean, nothing really out of the ordinary, right?

So after calling Lacey's mom and then the subsequent call to 911, the police responded to the Petersons' home. And that's where they found Lacey's wallet, her sunglasses, her purse, and her keys. The jewelry that she wore every single day, which was a diamond necklace, a sapphire ring, and also a wedding band, were still also at the house.

So this made Lacey's family, of course, very suspicious. The family and the police didn't think that she left the home willingly at this point. But then, that also didn't explain why the dog was found wandering around that day on a leash, also covered in mud. If she hadn't left the home with Mackenzie, how did Mackenzie get out?

So no one had seen Lacey at all that day, except for Scott that morning. So nobody had any idea where she was or where she could possibly be. And so a search quickly ensued. We'd like to thank all of you for being here and helping us trying to find our daughter. And we'd just like to send a message out there that...

Whoever has her, please, please, please let her go. Bring her back to us. We love her so much. We want her back. Please, let us have her back. We want her and our grandson home safely and immediately. So please bring her back to us.

Now, at the beginning of this, Lacey's family didn't think that Scott had anything to do with Lacey's disappearance. They thought that Scott was an absolute great man and that Scott and Lacey were the perfect couple. They were excited to welcome little baby Connor into their lives. They had this beautiful home. I mean, they were young. They were at the peak of their lives. I think Lacey was what? She was 27 years old at the time. So, I mean, they didn't suspect anything about Scott.

But that didn't last long, because then certain things that Scott was saying and things that were in Scott's story weren't really adding up, and police had their eye on Scott from the very beginning. Not only because he was the husband, and we know that they always look to the husband and the spouse first, but also because he was the last one to see Lacey.

So now I want to go through the timeline of the day, from not only what Scott had said and what he said his whereabouts were, but also what the investigators began to put together. The day before this all went down, on the 23rd, when Scott and Lacey went to Lacey's sister Amy's salon, Scott got a haircut, and Amy helped Lacey learn how to curl her hair.

Scott said that he was planning to go golfing the next morning, and Lacey's sister Amy said that the last thing that she saw Lacey wearing was tan pants and a black shirt with flowers.

Scott said that that night, Lacey wore blue pajamas to bed. Scott told investigators that Lacey woke up around 7 a.m., took off the blue pajama pants that she was wearing, and put them in the hamper, and then she took a shower. From around 8 a.m. to 8.45 a.m., a forensic investigator determined that within that time frame, Lacey was online shopping, specifically at the store The Gap, and she was looking at a red scarf. She also purchased a sunflower umbrella stand.

The internet searches of Gap and the Sunflower Umbrella were each one internet file, which back in 2002, when internet was basically a dinosaur era to the prosecution, they didn't know that a true search for something on Gap or an umbrella would have really meant a shitload of more files than just one. And also back in 2002, if you were around for the internet era, you know how pop-ups were back then. So it could have been internet pop-ups from Scott looking at the computer.

So Scott also said that Lacey told him that morning that she planned to make French toast for a family dinner that was set to take place that night. Scott told the police that Lacey had curled her hair that morning, she had been practicing the method that her sister Amy had taught her the day before, and that there was still a curling iron plugged in in their bathroom.

Then Scott said that around 9 to 9.40 a.m., Lacey was in the kitchen watching that Martha Stewart show where it mentioned making a meringue, which it turned out that, in fact, at 9.48 exactly during that segment, a meringue was in fact mentioned. So according to Scott, Lacey asked him to fill up a bucket so she could then mop the house. Then around 9.50 a.m., Scott drove to his warehouse to get his boat so that he could take it out to the water for the very first time.

From 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., Scott said that he spent about an hour at the warehouse. He was answering emails, he was looking things up online, things like that. More like admin little type things, I guess you could call it. Then at 11.15, Scott drove to the Berkeley Marina. It's a one hour and 37 minute trip. Scott's boat ticket showed him arriving at the marina at 12.54 p.m. So that is definitely in line with that timeline, right?

Then at 2.15 p.m., Scott left a voicemail for Lacey about picking up a fruit basket for Lacey's grandfather. Fast forward a little over an hour later at 3.25 p.m., and Scott stopped to get gas for the car. Then at 3.52 p.m., Scott called Lacey again, but this time he didn't leave a voicemail. And this was about an hour and a half after he had previously called her and left her that first voicemail.

Then around 4.30 to 4.45 p.m., Scott says that he arrived home. This was the window that he got home, noticed that nobody was home, McKenzie was covered in mud, and Lacey's car was there. And it's during this time that he says Lacey was gone.

So at 5.17 p.m., Scott calls Lacey's mom and her stepdad, and then that's when he asks if Lacey was with them. And at 5.47 p.m., her stepdad Ron called the police to report Lacey missing. It only took 13 minutes for police to respond, which I have to say is pretty incredible given what we see these days. But at 6 p.m., the police arrived.

So Scott starts knocking on neighbors' doors during this, asking if they've seen Lacey as well. And as police continued their investigation, they gave Scott many opportunities to be forthcoming with information. However, police believed that he was failing most of these, quote, tests that they were giving him. For example, when he was first interviewed when Lacey went missing, he declined to take a polygraph test. And then he continued to refuse to take a polygraph test going forward. Now,

Now, I will say this is something that personally for me, I always have a struggle dealing with. I feel like if you're not guilty, you should take a poly test. But also that's not very smart because...

poly results are unpredictable that's why they're inadmissible in court and they can be used against you so if a lawyer is talking to you they're probably going to tell you not to take a poly but for me and I think a lot of us listening it's like oh if they're refusing the poly it looks shady it looks like they're guilty but it also could just be a way to truly protect themselves because again they're not the most reliable source of testing. An official message from Medicare.

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So in the following days, the police said that Scott really didn't ask them many questions about the whereabouts of Lacey, if they were making any headway, what was going on, and that overall he just seemed pretty unconcerned about the process of the investigation. Also, Scott apparently called detectives and asked if they used cadaver dogs to search, and they were just kind of like, uh, no, why do you think Lacey is dead? And Scott didn't have a response.

Police were also suspicious of some of Scott's behaviors, like how he couldn't remember the kind of bait that he had used when he supposedly went fishing that morning.

Why he told Lacey's family that he planned to go golfing at the golf club, and then he later changed his mind and went fishing instead, or what he prioritized during the investigation. When Lacey was missing, other than those two phone calls that Scott made to her, he never once tried to call her again. Just that phone call to her mom, and then the stepdad called 911. He literally never even dialed her number again. Scott also had asked detectives for a grief counselor.

And my question for that is, if you just thought that your wife was missing, why would you expect to need a grief counselor? I mean, at what point would that tell you that she was never coming back? Why would you need the grief counselor if you thought she was just missing?

One detective said, and I quote, Detectives also gave Scott another test on the day after Christmas, and that is when they executed a search warrant at the house.

Once again, Scott was hesitant to cooperate with the police.

And while people may have had their reasons for not wanting police to search their home, when your eight-month pregnant wife is missing and you are not bending over backwards to help the police, I mean, it certainly doesn't make the situation any better, especially if you have nothing to hide, right? And we went in and he was reading the newspaper at the dining room table. So we give him this form and it says, I give consent for us to search all that stuff. And all he has to do is sign it and we could search.

and he picks it up he reads it and he's like you don't expect me to sign this without a lawyer do you well we weren't sure but we have a search warrant he's like he looks at right means al where's the trust i mean that's what he says to me where's the trust scott peterson wanted to give off the impression that he was being completely forthcoming

and helpful to the police. But there were lines that he drew. Scott was always in the background. He was adamant that his photo not be put on posters, that pictures of him not be taken. He didn't want their picture up at all. Everything of her and him had to come down off the wall. It only could be pictures of her. But the way he took it down, he goes, oh.

We had this wall in there. When you first walk in, there was this wall and we had pictures of her everywhere. And he would make sure every picture of him was down off the wall. Daily? Daily. We would put more up, they would come down.

Now, police also learned that Lacey was exhausted all the time due to her pregnancy. Lacey was a very, very petite and small woman, and as she got bigger and bigger, she started complaining to her doctors about feeling lightheaded, about getting dizzy, and feeling like she was about to pass out, which was really frustrating for her because she liked to go to the park that was near their home and walk their dog Mackenzie.

Doctors told her that she needed to rest, though, and to not do any physical activity, and especially no activity in the early mornings. So Scott's story with that of Lacey going on a walk and taking the dog for a walk that morning didn't really make a whole lot of sense. It wasn't really computing. And not only that, and this is kind of stating the obvious, but at the time, police felt like what kind of man would leave his eight-month pregnant wife to go golfing or fishing on Christmas Eve,

when she was trying to get stuff done to go to her mom's house to celebrate the holiday. Like, what kind of piece of shit are you? Why aren't you helping your pregnant wife? Why are you more concerned with hitting the golf club or hitting the open waters to go fishing? Like, figure it out, my guy. Christmas Eve, you have a very pregnant wife, and you decide to go fishing? Mm-hmm. What did that say about the two of you? Well, we had plans that evening with Mom, Lacey's mom, over at her house.

Frankly, Christmas preparations were done. What did you got her for Christmas? Oh, a Louis Vuitton wallet. But preparations were made. Her plan for the day was to prepare gingerbread cookies. My day was open to either play golf or go fishing. I chose fishing that day, which is a choice I made and I obviously regret now if I could

just decided to stay home. That's what would have happened. A lot of people argue that the way that Scott acted on TV was a little bit off or even wrong of what you might expect a spouse to look like if his pregnant wife had gone missing because a lot of people were saying that it looked like he just completely lacked any empathy whatsoever. So with all of this,

Scott, I mean, obviously became their number one suspect. And when news outlets heard about this, they started spreading the story like absolute wildfire. I mean, it was everywhere. Shortly after the news about Lacey missing was released, on December 30th, 2002, a woman came to the Modesto Police Department and she told them that she was in a romantic relationship with Scott.

When they met, Scott claimed that he was single, and not only that, but Scott claimed that he was a widower. The woman's name was Amber Fry, and she told police that she met Scott through a mutual friend, and that the first time that she and Scott met in person, it was on November 20th. It was at the Elephant Bar in Fresno. They stayed there until it closed, then they went back to Scott's hotel, and they spent the night together.

So this was just like a month before Lacey disappeared. A lot of people thought that they had had this very long, even like not very, very long, but even months long affair going on. It really wasn't that. It was a little over 30 days, actually. On December 2nd, Scott showed up at Amber's house and they picked up her daughter from daycare together. They then packed a lunch and they went and had a picnic.

Later that day, Scott spent the night at Amber's house, and on December 3rd, Amber asked Scott to pick up her daughter from daycare, and she even gave him a key to her house. So although it was a new relationship, I mean, it was definitely escalating pretty quickly, and it was getting serious pretty quickly. No judgment on Amber or anybody else out there, but I don't know that if I just started dating somebody today...

next week or even the week following I would give them a key to my home and like put them on the daycare pickup list that seems a little bit irresponsible again not to shame her but maybe they were that's just how quickly and fast they were falling for each other and she just trusted him completely Scott also helped Amber pick up a Christmas tree and he talked to her about how he couldn't wait to meet her parents their plan to get married all of these things

Well then, three days later, that friend who introduced Amber to Scott found out that Scott was in fact married. And the friend told Scott, hey, you either tell Amber or I will. So a few days later is when Scott told Amber that story that he was a widower, that he had been married but now he was a widower, and that this Christmas was actually going to be the first Christmas without his wife. He was inconsolably crying because he hadn't told her the whole truth.

Scott also told Amber that he had no interest in having children. Now, since Amber was already a single mom and had one child herself, Scott said that this child would be more than enough for him. He would love to play the role of stepdad, but that he didn't want to have any more children.

Well, fast forward a few weeks to Christmas Day, when the news about Lacey being missing was literally everywhere. So mutual friends between Amber and Scott started calling Scott and saying like, hey man, you need to call Amber. This is absolutely crazy. And on December 26th, Amber called Scott 14 times and there was no answer. Just like a little coward hiding from it, right?

Then on December 28th, Amber was actually supposed to leave for vacation to Hawaii, but she didn't. And instead, her and a friend searched the internet trying to find information about Scott. Then it all started coming to a head, because as she's searching for information on him, she's trying to figure out what's the truth, what's really going on, she can't even get in touch with Scott at this point.

On December 30th, around 1.40 a.m., a mutual friend called Amber and told her that her boyfriend Scott is not only married, but he's a person of interest in the disappearance of Lacey Peterson.

So then Amber called the Modesto Police Department three minutes later so that she could report their relationship to them because she's obviously smart and she's realizing there is a motive here. I don't this doesn't feel right. Something smells fishy leaps and bounds ahead of what Nicole Kessinger did in the Chris Watts case, in my opinion.

So from there, after calling the police, they set up a time for Amber to come to the station. So after speaking with her, they wanted to investigate things a little bit more. They wanted to see if Scott would spill something, if he would say something to Amber now that she had caught on. So the detectives came to Amber's house, and then they took her to Radio Shack, and they bought recording equipment so that Amber could start recording her conversations with Scott.

Now, this was so beyond damning, and I cannot stress it enough, but on December 31st, New Year's Eve, at 4.12, this is literally 18 minutes before Lacey's vigil started, Scott and Amber were talking, and he says that he was standing near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, and that it was so beautiful and that he was thinking about her. I'm a three-year-old girl, you know that?

I mean, this is absolutely bananas. And although it doesn't directly prove somebody's guilt, it certainly doesn't look good. You're lying saying you're in France when you're about to start your pregnant wife who's missing's vigil. I mean, not a good look, bro. Not a good look. And there were many other recordings, and we're going to get into those later on.

So on January 5th, 2003, Modesto police had a private meeting with Lacey Peterson's parents. They told them that Scott had been having an affair with Amber. And just like you would suspect, suddenly the parents who had so far supported Scott and thought he was a great man, a great husband, they now had reason to suspect him. And some members of Lacey's family even said so publicly.

When law enforcement first confronted Scott with the affair and showed him a picture of him and Amber together, he asked, is that supposed to be me? So the news that Scott had a girlfriend was now setting the media into an absolute frenzy. I mean, it was buzzing everywhere. Reporters were combing all over Central California searching for this mystery woman because she hadn't yet been named. But then on January 24th, they found Amber Frye.

Okay, first of all, I met Scott Peterson November 20th, 2002. I was introduced to him. I was told he was unmarried. Scott told me he was not married. We did have a romantic relationship. When I discovered he was involved in the disappearance, the Lucy Peterson disappearance case, I immediately contacted the Modesto Police Department. Although I could have sold or

sold the photos of Scott and I to tabloids. I knew this was not the right thing to do. For fear of jeopardizing the case or the police investigation, I will not comment further. I am very sorry for Lacey's family and the pain that this has caused them.

And I pray for her safe return as well. Amber Frye had contacted Modesto Police Department on Monday, December 30th, 2002. She met with detectives and gave information about the relationship with Scott Peterson. And Amber Frye has been cooperative in the investigation and has been eliminated as a suspect in Lacey Peterson's disappearance.

Now the media was already in a full-blown frenzy, like I said, not only over the case, but now over learning about the fact that Scott had this secret affair, this mistress, it is just not looking good. So the fact that he had been cheating on his eight-month pregnant wife, it just turned this whole thing into honestly a circus.

For the many people in the public that had already believed that Scott had something to do with Lacey's disappearance, now they've really hated him even more. They were dead set that he was the one responsible. This really just solidified their theories of Scott being guilty. I think everybody sitting at home wants the answer to the same question.

Did you murder your wife? No, no. I just thought. And I had absolutely nothing to do with her disappearance. And you used the word murder, and yeah, I mean, that is a possibility. It's not one we're ready to accept, and it creeps in my mind late at night and early in the morning. Amber Fry came forward. I'm glad she did. You are? Definitely. Why? It's the appropriate thing to do, and it really shows...

what a person of character she is and it allows us to get back looking for Lacey. Had you told anyone? Did you tell police? Told the police immediately. When? That was the first night

We were together. The police. I spent with the police. You told them about her? Yeah, from December 24th on. That wasn't true, and Scott Peterson called us after the interview to set the record straight. He said he never told the police about his affair with Amber Frye, but claims he did tell his wife. Did your wife find out about it? I told my wife. When? Early December. Did it cause a rupture in the marriage?

It was not a positive, obviously. It's inappropriate. But it was not something that we weren't dealing with. A lot of arguing? No. No. No. I can't say that even she was okay with the idea. But it wasn't anything that would break us apart. There wasn't a lot of anger? No. No.

Do you really expect people to believe that an eight and a half month pregnant woman learns her husband has had an affair and is saintly and casual about it, accommodating, makes a peace with it? Well, yeah, you don't know. No one knows our relationship but us. But what hadn't been made known yet is that there was actually an entire opposite side to this whole story.

And that is what a lot of people think proves his innocence. So we're going to keep going with the whole story and all of that, but we are going to take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors of today's episode. An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. You may be able to save too.

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Okay, so we're now at the point where the affair is exposed, Amber is exposed, everybody is hating on Scott and thinking he is 100% guilty and responsible, right? But at this point, remember, Lacey still has not been found. So police kept searching for her, all while keeping a very close eye on Scott. They questioned him, and they even recorded his phone calls for four months during this investigation.

But then it all came to a head in the spring, because sadly on April 13, 2003, the body of a baby was found on the shore of the San Francisco Bay. The umbilical cord was still attached, but it was torn.

A day later, a mile away from where this baby was found, a severely decomposed corpse also washed up on the shore. The body was barely recognizable, and it was also missing a head, arms, and most of the legs. DNA results later confirmed, though, that this body belonged to Lacey, and that the body of the baby was little baby Connor.

When Lacey was found, Scott did not give her dental records to the police to help identify her, and he actually said that he didn't know the name of her dentist. However, they actually went to the same dentist. Now, because of the level of decomp on Lacey, a cause of death was never determined. However, even though she had two cracked ribs, forensic analysis couldn't determine whether this was done before or after Lacey died.

The majority of her organs had been removed, except for her uterus. Now, in a truly haunting detail, it was never determined whether Connor was born alive or dead, but both bodies were found only eight miles north of the Berkeley Marina, that same marina that Scott went to go fishing on Christmas Eve.

However, I want to table this for a moment and I'm going to come back to this because we need to talk about Connor's age, the time of the recovery. We're going to get to that. So we're going to table that for a second and keep going, but we will come back.

So in the months leading up to this discovery of Lacey and Connor's bodies, the Modesto Police Department and the FBI had been conducting a very thorough investigation, and that led to evidence that further convinced them that Scott was responsible for this crime. They had searched Scott's home, his pickup truck, his toolbox, his warehouse, and even his boat. In his boat, they had discovered a homemade anchor that Scott had made using concrete, and he made this in early December.

Investigators also found a powder substance on his boat trailer and on his boat. This powder was from concrete, and they suspected that Scott used this homemade concrete anchor to sink Lacey's body.

Scott purchased 90 pounds of concrete prior to Lacey disappearing, and he claimed that he only made an 8-pound anchor. If he had gotten rid of the extra concrete to fill in that hole by his house, wouldn't that be 82 pounds of extra concrete? He also previously told law enforcement that he threw the concrete away, and then another time he said he didn't know what he did with it. Search dogs also alerted to a blue tarp that was found in Scott's shed.

This suggested that Lacey's scent was on the tarp, and investigators thought that maybe Scott used that tarp to wrap Lacey up, put her in his truck, and then drive her to that marina and dump her body. There was one report that a neighbor had seen you loading something into a vehicle? I haven't seen that report. Did you load anything into a vehicle, anything large?

Some umbrellas, some market umbrellas. The tarp was also covered in fertilizer, and fertilizer is sometimes used to destroy DNA. The search dogs also alerted to Lacey's scent at the Berkeley Marina. And again, this is where Scott was on the day of her disappearance.

So not only were police suspicious from the get-go, but now the details of his story just continued to change from person to person all in the months that they had been keeping this very close eye out on Scott. So he said that Lacey was watching that cooking show on the morning of December 23rd, right? But the specific show that he mentioned apparently wasn't even on that day.

He also told police that he was golfing that day, but then he told other people that he went fishing randomly and that it was out on a whim. But that's not entirely true, because he actually got a fishing license four days earlier on the 20th. The license that he got was literally also only good at Berkeley Marina, and it was only good for the 23rd through the 24th.

Scott said that he was fishing for a sturgeon fish, but the lures that he bought for that type of fish, those cases were unopened, and it also wasn't that kind of fishing season for that particular fish. Additionally, he told the police that he ended up having to stop his fishing trip short because

on the day of Lacey's disappearance because it had started to rain. However, a review of weather reports indicated that there was absolutely no rain in the area of the Berkeley Marina, not on the day of Lacey's disappearance.

So the police kept uncovering more and more details about Scott's life, from debt, to phone calls that he made, to Amber after Lacey went missing, to even other affairs that he had had, and just so on. I mean, it was like you are now really peeling back the onion. The circumstantial evidence was growing day by day, and Scott's behavior was just getting weirder and weirder.

Not only did he show very little emotion, and he didn't really inquire with the investigators about the progress of the investigation, and that threw up a red flag, of course, but he also was buying subscriptions to porn channels. And this was just a few days after Lacey's disappearance. And he even sold her car.

Now let me just touch on the porn subscription for a second. Again I mean not to shame anybody and what you're into but like if your spouse goes missing and your priority is watching porn rather than asking the investigators what's the progress in the investigation have you gotten any leads have you gotten any tips.

That to me signals either you're a complete garbage human being or I mean that's actually what it signals. No matter what way you cut it you are a piece of shit whether you're guilty or not. That is such a gross thing to do when your pregnant wife is missing. Like you're more concerned with jerking it. I don't get it. I don't get it. So in addition to that and also selling her car he also had taken out a life insurance policy on Lacey and he had been talking to people about selling their house.

So while police couldn't find any concrete evidence to tie him to Lacey and Connor's deaths, they did believe that these other discoveries couldn't just be a bunch of strange coincidences. It had to be linked, right?

So with that, on April 18, 2003, five days after Lacey and Connor's bodies were found, Scott was arrested. Now, to make it even worse and make the circumstantial evidence and, like, the red flags wave even louder and higher and prouder, when they arrested him, the police found him in La Jolla, California, which is about a six-and-a-half-hour drive south of Modesto, and it's very, very close to the Mexican border.

At the time when he was found, he was on a golf course with some of his family members. And police couldn't figure out why he would travel six and a half hours away just to go golfing. And not only that, but he had bleached his hair. He was carrying $15,000 in cash. He had hundreds of sleeping pills. He had 10 Viagra pills, which gross. He had his ID, his brother's ID, a firearm, a dagger, and multiple cell phones.

Now, if that doesn't scream somebody is trying to go off the grid, I definitely don't know what does, guys. I mean, basically, it didn't look like Scott had traveled all this way to just go golfing. It more looked like he was trying to escape to Mexico. The change in his appearance, the cash, the burner phones, I mean, all of these are just dead giveaways that somebody is probably trying to flee.

However, Scott's father said that Scott had been living in his car and that he had changed his appearance to get away from all of the media attention that was coming down on him. According to him, Scott couldn't go anywhere without being swarmed by reporters, which is true, even at his own house. So he says that's why he was living out of his car, and that's also why he drove to La Jolla, in hopes that he wouldn't be recognized there and that he could get just a few moments of peace, a few moments of solace on the golf course doing something he loved.

But the police were not very convinced, and they arrested Scott. Scott was charged with first-degree murder for the murder of Lacey, and he was charged with second-degree murder for the death of his son, Connor.

Even though there was no cause of death and no direct evidence that was linking him to the crime, investigators felt like there was enough circumstantial evidence in this case. From the tarp, the dogs alerting to Lacey's scent, the anchor, the affair, and of course all of the inconsistencies in Scott's many stories. So Scott pled not guilty, and his trial began on June 1st, 2004.

The trial lasted from June to November, and prosecutors built their case against Scott, whose motive, they said, was to escape his marriage and the impending fatherhood. He just wanted to be with Amber. He didn't want anything getting in the way of that. They called on several witnesses, including Lacey's relatives and also Amber herself. They did this to try to prove that Scott had shown very little emotion during and even after Lacey's disappearance.

They played phone calls that Amber had recorded between the two of them, which were in just the weeks after Lacey vanished. And on these calls, you can hear Scott reading her love poetry. One of the letters of love poetry that Scott sent Amber was the lyrics to Come Away With Me by Nora Jones. Remember the area here? But not really that well. It's just kind of neat, isn't it?

I don't think church isn't that problem. Yeah, I don't even really, you know, know. You know, I mean, the only big times I've really seen Paris is, you know. I'm in Brussels now. Oh, yeah, that's right. You took the train to Brussels.

They were just like, wow, I can't believe he's calling you right now. Also in the calls, Scott told Amber that he didn't want children and that he was thinking of having a vasectomy.

So not only did he offer to be just okay with Amber's one child, he actually gave this child a book that was given to Lacey at her baby shower. And this was while Lacey was missing. He gave this book to this child. If he believed that she was coming home, why the fuck would he ever do that?

Lacey's OBGYN testified that she had already stopped taking those walks in the park because she had a spell and almost fainted. So kind of similar to what we talked about earlier with her having those problems. Well, the OBGYN actually testified at the trial. Her yoga teacher, her friends, and her mother all cooperated with the OBGYN in what she said, that she had stopped taking walks several weeks earlier.

They also had a hydrologist testify, who said that Lacey and Connor's bodies would have likely been dumped in the area where Scott said that he had gone fishing that morning. Prosecutors also claimed that Scott made cement anchors to weigh Lacey's body down in the bay, and they said that blood was found on the couple's bedspread and on the door of Scott's truck.

The prosecution's main theory here of this case was that Scott likely smothered Lacey on or before the day of her disappearance. He suffocated her because he just wanted to be with his mistress Amber. Then after suffocating her, he rolled her body up into a tarp, put it in his truck, and then drove to the marina where he eventually dumped her body in the San Francisco Bay.

When Scott told the police that Lacey asked him to help her fill up a bucket so that she could mop the house, he conveniently left out the fact that some housekeepers were actually there the day before, and they cleaned the entire house.

The prosecution believed this showed that Scott killed Lacey sometime between December 23rd at 9 p.m. and the early hours of December 24th. And that given the rest of his day and the time stamps that we know of, he would have had plenty of time and opportunity to clean up the crime scene. And that's why there was a mop and a bucket at the home and in photos that were presented in trial. Another story that is out there is that the kitchen was spotless. Mm-hmm.

And in fact there was still a wet mop around which indicated somebody had cleaned something very recently. Lacey was mopping the floors when I left that morning. Yes, the house is spotless. She had a cleaning lady on Monday the 23rd. So if the cleaning lady had been there, why have to clean again? Dog, two cats. Scott and Lacey's financial situation did not afford them enough money for Scott to just go randomly out on a boat.

And he specifically bought that type of boat because it came with a depth finder. Now, if that doesn't sound like a true carbon copy of Chris Watts, I honestly don't know what does, except for the bay. He didn't go fishing and dump Shanann's body. He went to his oil area for his work and dumped the body of Shanann and his two girls. I mean, just sick and twisted.

But again, it's like a carbon copy, the smothering, so that he could be with his mistress, rolling her up in something, putting her in the truck, which you just have to ask the question. Obviously, Chris Watts was aware of the Peterson case. I mean, hands down, his case happened way later than Scott Peterson. So why are you using the blueprint that got somebody convicted?

So next up, it was the defense's turn. And Scott's defense team argued that Lacey had been kidnapped during the time that he went fishing, in that little window of time. That the kidnappers held her until she gave birth, then they killed her, and then they dumped her body in the ocean. Now Scott's defense attorney, Mark, claimed that prosecutors primarily relied on circumstantial evidence, and that they had, quote, "...zero zip nada nothing of forensic evidence."

The defense disputed all of the forensic evidence that was presented by the prosecution, which included hair strands that supposedly belonged to Lacey that were found on Scott's boat, and also DNA from a set of pliers that matched Lacey's DNA.

Scott's attorney has claimed that because of the size of Scott's boat, if he did have a pregnant Lacey on the boat and wrapped in a tarp, that the process of putting concrete on her legs or whatever was put on her as an anchor to throw her overboard, it would have capsized the boat. And the boat is actually really small. The defense even conducted their own test of this, and they videotaped it. But it has been heavily debated on both sides of it.

They also harped on the fact that there were absolutely no witnesses, there was no murder weapon, and there was no evidence of a struggle that led to Lacey's death. Instead, they said law enforcement had been laser-focused on him because of his affair, and that they didn't even investigate other potential suspects. Scott's attorneys asserted that somebody else abducted Lacey during the time that she was walking her dog Mackenzie, and then they killed her.

So jury deliberation started on November 3rd. And on November 12th, Scott was found guilty of first-degree murder for Lacey's death. And he was also found guilty of second-degree murder for baby Connor's death as well. We, the jury in the above entitled cause,

Fix the penalty at death. This sentence is death. Jurors reached their dramatic decision to send Scott Peterson to death row after 12 hours of deliberations. Scott Peterson showed no emotion as he heard himself sentenced to die other than to clench his jaw. So with that, Scott was sent to death row in San Quentin Prison. But that was not the end of everything. Not even a little bit. Defense attorney Mark Garagos also spoke outside the court.

Obviously we're very disappointed. Obviously we plan on pursuing every and all appeals, motions for new trial and everything else. Dismissed juror Justin Faulkner monitored the verdict for Inside Edition. Do I think they got it wrong?

Yeah, you know, I do. I don't think I would have voted the way that they did. And this is where we're going to go into everything that people are suggesting indicates that Scott is really innocent. In 2012, Scott and his legal team filed a direct appeal to overturn his death sentence.

Scott's attorney and the state attorney general's office argued back and forth for years on this before the appeal was finally taken to court. Then in 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that prohibited the death penalty. And in 2020, the California Supreme Court finally heard Scott's reasoning for appealing his death sentence. Scott's legal team was arguing that Scott didn't receive a fair trial.

They argued that there was so much media attention surrounding this case from the get-go, and that the public had already made up their minds about Scott, that they had done this ages ago, and his legal team really felt like this could have made the jury very biased. Additionally, Scott's team argued that potential jurors were improperly excused because they had stated in questionnaires that they were against the death penalty. So because of that, they had been excused.

Being against the death penalty can't prevent somebody from being a juror, though. The only time it can is if someone felt that this view was so strong that it would prevent them from issuing the death penalty if a case called for it.

So the defense felt that the jury had been meticulously chosen to ensure that the jurors were all in support of the death penalty. Again, the defense felt like the public, the courts, everybody really had already made up their minds about Scott before the trial even began. And honestly, that is kind of how it was portrayed in the media. I remember it very vividly. He was earmarked as a guilty person before he even went to trial, truly.

The defense also argued that the trial judge made many mistakes and also acted unfairly. They apparently let two jurors onto Scott's boat. They required the prosecution to be present while the defense searched the boat, but not vice versa. And they didn't decide to move the trial to another county, even though questionnaires indicated that about half of the jury pool had decided that Scott was guilty before the trial had even started. The

The California Supreme Court decided to uphold Scott's guilty verdict, but they did overturn his death sentence. However, what this did mean was that Scott was going to be resentenced. So a year later in 2021, his resentencing hearing was held. Lacey's family was in attendance, and they gave a very emotional testimony about how their lives have just forever been affected by this.

So Scott was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. This was for Lacey's murder. And he was also sentenced to 15 years for the second-degree murder of his son, Connor.

However, between the time that Scott's team originally filed his direct appeal and when it was actually heard by the California Supreme Court, he also filed a habeas corpus petition. This was in 2015. A habeas corpus petition is very, very similar to a direct appeal, but there are a few differences. This petition allowed Scott's team to introduce new evidence that could cause him to receive a retrial.

Specifically, his team was arguing two things. One was juror misconduct, and the other was that many witnesses saw Lacey alive after Scott left the home that morning. His defense team said that multiple neighbors claimed that they saw Lacey walking with a dog in the afternoon on the day that she went missing, and that the fact that that was just completely ignored and not adequately looked into was a huge miss.

The mailman that always delivered Lacey's mail said that when he was delivering mail, which was allegedly in the time frame that Lacey was out walking Mackenzie the dog, the dog didn't bark at the house at all. And usually the dog would be barking. This one fact is usually offered as the smoking gun for Scott's innocence because Lacey must have in fact been walking the dog if this happened.

This was based on the fact that the neighbor who found McKenzie put the dog back into the backyard around 10.18 a.m., and the mailman didn't come until 20 minutes later. Despite this, Scott's attorneys have never brought this fact into evidence in any of his appeals. However, the biggest part of their argument was that a juror lied on her application and didn't include vital information that could have caused her to view Scott in an extremely biased way.

So in October of 2020, the court finally agreed to appeal on the basis of looking into potential juror misconduct. The hearing started in 2020, and it focused on the suspected lies of juror number seven. The juror's name in question is Rochelle Nice, but when the original trial was going on, she was nicknamed Strawberry Shortcake. This was for her then very bright red hair.

Scott's lawyers claimed that she purposely lied on her jury application for many potential reasons. You see, since Scott was found guilty, many TV shows, movies, documentaries, and, hello, even podcasts have been made about this case. And Rochelle was involved in quite a few of these productions.

She appeared in a 2020 episode, a documentary called The Murder of Lacey Peterson, she co-wrote a book about her experience on the jury, and honestly, so much more.

So because of this, Scott's team thought that she just wanted to be a juror so that she could be famous afterwards. I mean, after all, the case was all over the media before it even went to trial. So it was likely going to be even bigger after the trial ended. And this would be a perfect opportunity for a juror to capitalize on the situation and kind of parlay themselves into fame.

So, was she in it just to get famous? Was she purposefully trying to push for a guilty verdict to then make the story even more sensationalized? Most importantly, throughout these media appearances, Rochelle revealed information about herself that made Scott's legal team initially realize that she had lied on her juror application. On her juror application, Rochelle said that she had never been involved in any criminal activity and that she had never been the victim of any crime.

But in these media interviews that she was going on, she revealed that she had unfortunately experienced domestic violence at the hands of an ex-partner, who had been then later convicted of assaulting her. Her then-boyfriend also had an ex-girlfriend who threatened Rochelle, who vandalized her car and kicked Rochelle's door down. This was all done, too, while Rochelle was pregnant with her second child.

So in response to these threats, Rochelle filed a restraining order against the woman. And on the restraining order, she wrote that she feared for her life and for the life of her unborn child. So as you can see, there are some parallels between what happened to Lacey and what Rochelle feared would happen to her. Additionally, Rochelle had children, one of which she referred to as, quote, "'little man.'"

Other jurors testified that Rochelle referred to Connor as a little man as well all throughout the trial and that she seemed very heated and emotional during deliberation.

So did she feel some sort of connection to Connor and she wanted to get revenge for him? Was she wanting to convict Scott because of her personal experience that she had? I mean, she experienced how scary it was to have someone threaten her and her baby's life, so maybe she wanted to punish anyone who did that to other women.

It's possible, right? Well, in Scott's appeal, that's what they argued. They claimed that Rochelle wanted to get revenge on Scott and wanted to make him pay for hurting his wife and his unborn child. But Rochelle took the stand during this hearing, and she claimed that her situation never came to mind once when she was filling out the application.

Additionally, in a very weird turn of events, Rochelle started writing Scott letters a few months after he was given the death penalty. In total, she wrote him 17 letters, and Scott wrote her back eight times. Now, the letters were about an array of topics. In one letter, she wrote, What happened, Scott? What pushed you to the limit where you felt like you had to kill someone who not only loved you so much, but was carrying a part of you inside of her?

In another letter, she told Scott that the trial had deeply impacted her. It caused her to have a breakdown that made her go to a psychiatric care facility.

In the letter, she wrote, Then in a different letter, she told Scott about a previous boyfriend who had cheated on her. And she then asked Scott,

So Scott's lawyers brought these letters up during the hearing, and they asked Rochelle why she even wrote them. Like, why are you writing to the guy that you convicted, and why are you trying to, like, build this personal relationship with him? Was it another chance of trying to obtain some sort of fame or, I don't know, notoriety?

But Rochelle started crying at this claim, and she said that she deeply regretted sending Scott those letters. She said that she wrote them because she just wanted to hear Scott's side of the story, because they never got to hear his side of the story during the trial. She said she wasn't trying to be his pen pal, not at all, but she wanted to hear directly from him on why he did what he did.

Now, personally for me, it's not hitting. It is not hitting. It is very, very bizarre to me. I am putting myself in those shoes right now. Granted, I've never been on a jury for a murder trial, but hypothetically speaking, if I was on the jury for Brian Koberger's trial in Idaho and he was convicted, I could not imagine writing him letters, 17 no less, could you? Being like, hey, Brian, why'd you do it? Why'd you do it?

do a, why'd you commit a heinous quadruple murder? You know, I had a boyfriend once who stalked me on Instagram. Did you stalk them? I, like, I don't know. It is just so bizarre. And, like, maybe I'm just being hypersensitive to this. I just really do not understand. It seems like there is no reason that could logically explain that. But,

You tell me, are you guys writing to criminals? I'm not. Especially ones if I've had a hand in convicting them. So for Scott to obtain a retrial, his legal team needed to prove that Rochelle acted in bias when she was convicting Scott. Scott Peterson was Lacey's husband, Connor's daddy. Someone should have, the one person that should have protected them. And for him to have done that,

And overall, they claimed that there were many different reasons for why Rochelle could be biased. She was struggling financially at the time of the original case, and those close to her said that she would joke about this being an opportunity for her to get a book deal. So did she see the case in the news and then purposefully lie on her application so that she could just profit from everything? Or again, did she just want revenge on Scott for being another cheating man who hurt his wife and unborn child?

just like Rochelle had experienced herself. But Rochelle denied all of these allegations. She said that she didn't make any money off the story, and she didn't want to get revenge on Scott. She said that she absolutely based her decisions on the facts that were presented during the case, and not any preconceived ideas that she had made up about Scott before the trial even began.

So Scott's team really tried to argue that Rochelle was a, quote, stealth juror. Basically, someone who purposefully hides their biases to make sure that they are picked for the trial and then can push for a guilty verdict. However, despite all of these efforts, in December of 2022, a judge denied Scott's petition for a retrial.

The judge said that there wasn't enough evidence and that Rochelle did not purposefully lie and hide information about herself to ensure that she was picked on that jury. The judge ruled that the false answers on her application were because of a misunderstanding and that she had acted in good faith.

But that isn't even still the last of Scott Peterson. Not at all. And now we're really getting into the nitty gritty. Let's talk about it and see if he is in fact innocent. But first, we are going to hear from one more sponsor of today's episode. An official message from Medicare.

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So recently, it's been all over the news, as I mentioned, that the L.A. Innocence Project announced that they were going to take on Scott's case. But it is very important to note that the L.A. Innocence Project is not related to the infamous Innocence Project organization. They even tweeted that they have nothing to do with the Scott Peterson case and to direct any questions to the L.A. Innocence Project, who is taking it on.

Also, it's important to note that Scott reached out to the L.A. Innocence Project first. They didn't reach out to him. For years, Scott and many of his family members have been claiming that he is innocent, even making websites and social media pages to push this idea.

So after Scott contacted the L.A. Innocence Project numerous times, they agreed that he might have a case after all. So the L.A. Innocence Project claims that Scott's state and federal constitutional rights were violated and that they had new evidence that would prove his innocence. On January 17th this year, they filed a very long discovery motion to the court.

And they stated that new evidence now supports Mr. Peterson's long-standing claim of innocence, and it raises many questions into who abducted and killed Lacey and Connor Peterson. So if you aren't familiar by now, and I'm sure you guessed it, but let me just explain in case you're a little confused. The Los Angeles Innocence Project provides free investigation services and also legal aid to people who are wrongfully convicted of crimes.

The premise of their mission is great, don't get me wrong. Nobody wants innocent people to sit in prison for a crime that they didn't commit. But really? Scott Peterson, of all people? I mean, the trial happened over 20 years ago now. The case seemed so cut and dry, so obvious, a closed and shut case. But was it? Was it really? So as I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of evidence that people question, and many believe that the police department failed to properly investigate the crimes.

People have developed an array of theories about what happened to Lacey and Connor, and the LA Innocence Project claims that they have found new key evidence to prove Scott's innocence. And they are focusing their claims on a few key things.

First, there was a burglary across the street from the Peterson home in December of 2002. And a woman claimed that her home was broken into sometime between December 24th and December 26th while she was out of town. And that is also the critical window when something happened to Lacey. 75 pieces of jewelry and two handguns were stolen from her house.

Scott's defense team brought this burglary up in the original trial, but the prosecution said that the burglary didn't happen on the day of Lacey's disappearance, and therefore it didn't have anything to do with her or her being missing. They said that the burglary actually happened on December 26th, the day after Christmas, and that the police had already questioned the burglars and cleared them.

However, the L.A. Innocence Project claims that they have found evidence that indicates that the burglary did happen on the morning of Lacey's disappearance, on December 24th.

Additionally, the LA Innocence Project claims that there was evidence that some of Lacey's jewelry and even a watch was stolen from her own home and then later pawned. So, who had these pieces of jewelry? Where did they get them from? And is it in connection to the other robbery? It seems similar, right? It seems like there could be a link. Many people have theorized that this is how Lacey was actually kidnapped and killed.

Additionally, the burglars that the police interviewed, they all claimed one man as their leader during the crime. But this man was never found, and he was also never questioned. So my question now is, could the L.A. Innocence Project have gotten in contact with him, and maybe they received new information that could clear Scott?

So this theory is based on the idea that Lacey did go out that morning on that walk with her dog Mackenzie, just as she had planned, just as she had told Scott to do, and just as people found Mackenzie wandering in the street with the leash still on.

They think that she was walking, that she witnessed a burglary happening at the neighbor's house. And because she witnessed a crime and to prevent her from going to the police, the burglars then grabbed Lacey. They left her dog behind and they kidnapped her. This theory is further supported by the fact that many people say that they saw Lacey walking her dog that morning.

They even said that they saw Lacey in the same outfit that Scott had told police that she had been wearing that morning, the black pants with a white top. The theory continues that after the kidnappers took Lacey, they then held her for an unknown amount of time. Maybe they held her until she gave birth and then killed her and disposed of her body, or maybe they killed her right away and then threw her body in the San Francisco Bay.

In even more support of this theory, the LA Innocence Project is asking for a mattress that was found in an orange van to be tested. Now you might be wondering why this orange van is important.

Well, the orange van was found near the Peterson home, and it was found on Christmas Day, December 25, 2002. The van had a blood-stained mattress in it, and the entire vehicle had been burned. It seemed like somebody did that on purpose as well, so were they burning it and trying to get rid of evidence to maybe cover up a crime?

And get this, this was brought up to the police. It was brought to their attention during the initial investigation, but they didn't really even look into it.

A fire official who was investigating the van tested the blood on the mattress, and they found that it was human blood. However, it was apparently never thought to connect that van to Lacey. So people have theorized that this was the van that Lacey was kidnapped in. This is the van that was committing the burglaries. This is the van that they used to snatch her because she witnessed it. And then she and Connor bled on the mattress. Then the kidnappers tried to burn the van to cover up their crime.

The director of the Los Angeles Innocence Project, Paula Mitchell, has said that she found many deficiencies when reviewing Scott's case. She said that her team has found witnesses and investigative leads that would support the theory that Lacey had been kidnapped.

They feel that investigators purposefully ignored information that suggested that Lacey was actually taken and then killed by a random group of people. However, Paula also stated that many of these witnesses didn't come forward initially because the case was just so high profile and they didn't want to get involved. Additionally, the LA Innocence Project has said that they have asked to view many pieces of evidence from Scott's trial.

but have found that many pieces of the evidence has now been lost, and they are requesting for them to be found. So like I said, what the LA Innocence Project is suggesting is what a lot of people have been saying for many, many years. Many people have theorized and truly believe that someone else kidnapped and killed Lacey, and the burglary could support this theory, but other parts of the case could also support it as well.

Some people bring up the fact that Lacey's body was so badly mutilated when it was found. So some have theorized that this much brutality, this level of it, suggests that the killer was someone who didn't know and therefore didn't have any emotional connection to Lacey.

But then you must also consider that her limbs were removed because of the anchors and also the natural decomposition that would happen as she was in the water. And the evidence doesn't necessarily suggest that somebody removed her limbs manually.

Many people also bring up the fact that the scent dogs used in the investigation had a history of being wrong, apparently. The one who alerted to Lacey's scent on Scott's boat had a history of being wrong 66% of the time. That's a pretty big percentage. The second scent dog, the more reliable one, never even had alerted to Lacey's scent on the boat.

So other people suggest that Lacey's murder could have been linked to the murder of another pregnant woman in the same area. In May of 2002, Evelyn Hernandez disappeared, and this was only a few months before Lacey's disappearance. Some people even suggest that Lacey and Evelyn's disappearances were linked to a satanic cult, because they both disappeared on days that the satanic church considers holy.

Some also argue that a small cut that was found on Connor's body indicated that the cult bled him out in some sort of infant sacrifice. Disgusting, I know. So while all of the evidence that convicted Scott was circumstantial, it was pretty strong, and there was a lot of it.

For example, even though there are claims that witnesses saw Lacey the morning of December 24th wearing the black pants and the white top, this wasn't the outfit that her body was found in. She was found wearing a pair of khaki pants, which her sister testified she was wearing on December 23rd, the day that she went to the salon.

So this fact then supports the idea that Scott did kill Lacey, that he killed her later that night, and then he used all of Christmas Eve to concoct the alibi and dispose of Lacey's remains. Specifically, it supports the idea that he smothered her on December 23rd before then going on that fishing trip Christmas Eve morning. The fishing trip actually being that he went and dumped her body in the San Francisco Bay.

Plus, all of the lies, the deceit, and the evidence like the tarp really do point to Scott being the perpetrator. But let's talk about those witnesses for a moment. The witnesses who say they saw Lacey the morning of her disappearance. In a podcast called Rabia and Ellen Solve the Case, the hosts Rabia and Ellen talked about this case, and I wanted to bring up a few points that they made in it.

First, they talked about four independent witnesses who didn't know each other and who were never called to testify at the trial. The first witness was Homer Maldonado, and he didn't know Lacey, and he said that he was getting gas when he saw a pregnant woman walking a dog. He remembered noticing that she was not wearing a sweater or even a jacket, despite it being 40 degrees outside.

The next witness, Martha Aguilar, who knew Lacey, said that she did in fact see Lacey walking outside on what turned out to be the same street that another witness named Jean reported seeing Lacey on.

Gene didn't know Lacey, but he stated that he saw Lacey on the same street, La Loma, and he recalled noticing the dog Mackenzie because his dog was the same color. Other witnesses, Tom and Elizabeth Harshman, reported that they were driving between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and that's when they saw a white van with a stripe.

They said that they spotted a very heavily pregnant woman with short, dark brown hair, squatting and urinating outside of this van, while a scruffy-looking guy was standing over her. They said that they saw an arm then reach out of the van and pull this woman back inside the van, who looked very, very scared. You had a neighbor, Diane Jackson, who saw three men in a van in front of the Medina home on December 24th.

at about 11:40 in the morning. I was coming down Covina towards the park, going past Lacey on one side and Medina's on the other. And I just looked over and there were three guys on Medina's property and a van out front. And the only reason it caught my eye is that they turned around and looked at me. Sort of made me feel a little bit uncomfortable.

As far as the tips are concerned, some of the people who actually saw Lacey that they should have talked to, they never did talk to. So these are the people who were calling in, responding to the police. People are seeing Lacey walk the dog after he left. The Modesto Police Department or the investigators, they never came to ask me anything. On the day after Christmas, after I talked to the motorcycle policeman and gave him my statement that I had seen the dog in the park,

Nothing was followed up after that. I just figured people who knew better than I and knew more about the case had pretty much made a decision that what I had to say wasn't all that relevant. If anyone saw her after 10 o'clock,

then that let Scott out and that would be horribly inconvenient. Then the Vanessa Police Department would have to admit we have no idea who killed this beautiful pregnant woman. Another thing they brought up was that when Lacey and Connor's bodies were discovered on April 13th, 2003, there was a debate, a debate among expert witnesses over Connor's gestational age. On December 24th, 2002, Connor's gestational age would have been 31 weeks.

But one doctor measured him at between 34 to 36 weeks at the time of death. So if true, this would mean that he could not have died on the 23rd or the 24th, and that perhaps he lived for three more weeks. This possible scenario begged the question, did Connor die in utero, or was he actually born? And remember, investigators never totally ruled out the possibility of a live birth.

They said the people who saw Connor's autopsy photos noted that he looked like a newborn, not a fetus. They also pointed out if Connor died in utero, then he should have been mummified. But also, how could he have been in utero for three months, then expelled later? Because if he was in the water longer, he may have been more decomposed than he was.

They also brought up that there was twine that had been wrapped around Connor and that it had to have been hand-tied into a loop and could not have coincidentally wound up lodged around his neck.

They argued that this evidence proves that Lacey was killed shortly before the bodies were found, and that the killers dumped her in the bay to frame Scott. The bay searches started, I believe it was the end of December or thereabouts. They were also doing searches in the freshwater reservoirs up in the Sierras.

But when it came to the bay searches, that was pretty widely publicized because Scott had maintained that his alibi was he went fishing at the Berkeley Marina launching his boat. He said he went to the bay. He had proof he went to the bay. We believe she was in the bay, so we're searching the bay.

So to believe that Scott's guilty, you have to believe that someone bought a brand new boat that they've never had in the water before and then took this boat to the busiest marina on the San Francisco Bay, you know, to dump his wife's body in broad daylight. It just defies logic. And maybe not even frame him personally or directly, but since he was already the fall guy in the media, to really just secure that theory.

Lacey's body was found on the shore the day after Connor was discovered. And remember, her remains consisted of a torso, arms that were missing from the elbow down, one leg missing from the knee down, and a foot missing on the other leg. Her head was never found, though, and all of her organs were missing except for part of her uterus.

Also, in late January 2003, a lieutenant who worked in the investigations unit at the California Rehabilitation Institute near Los Angeles called Modesto Police to notify them about a telephone call that had been recorded between an inmate named Sean Tenbrink and his brother Adam Tenbrink. The lieutenant gave separate statements to the prosecution and to the defense.

He told the defense that the brothers were discussing the fact that Lacey was missing. And Adam mentioned something about Lacey walking up while Stephen Todd was robbing the Medinas, and that Todd had verbally threatened Lacey. He told the prosecution that he listened to the recording of this phone call between the brothers, and one of the brothers mentioned that Lacey had in fact seen Todd and others burglarizing a home in the neighborhood.

The lieutenant also said that he had set up a meeting between Sean and a Modesto police detective, and that Sean spoke to the detective over the phone from his office. He remembered Sean looking nervous, denying knowing Steve Todd, and denied the phone conversation with his brother about Lacey, even though it was recorded.

So a lot of people feel that ultimately this was yet again another example of a tip that Modesto police received and that they didn't investigate and it didn't get the attention that it deserved. And then get this, in a very weird twist, that tape of the brothers' recorded confessions, it no longer exists.

So as you can see, there is a lot of back and forth with this case. So can we even trust the claims made against Scott during his initial trial? It will be interesting to hear more from the LA Innocence Project and to find out what evidence they have to clear Scott exactly. If the blood on the mattress ends up being a match for Lacey or Connor, it could be a huge turning point for Scott.

He and his legal team have been continually pushing for his innocence for so, so long. It's going to be very interesting to see where this case lands. And I want to know from you, now after hearing the whole thing start to finish, do you think that this means that he could actually be innocent? Do you think that the Los Angeles Innocence Project actually has a case here? Or do you have no doubt in your mind that Scott killed Lacey and Conner?

Like I said in the beginning of this video where I asked you to comment and let me know what you think, let me know now. Give me a comment over on the YouTube section if you're watching the video version of this or vote on Spotify. I'll throw a poll up or of course, as always, if you're listening on Apple, you can leave your opinions on this case in the review section.

It's a wild one, guys. So we will definitely see where it goes. I am curious to know what you think. I do think, and my personal opinion with this case, is that during the initial trial, it was chock full of circumstantial evidence, right? I mean, not to say that Scott did himself any favors. I mean, watching the porn, bleaching his hair, going down to La Jolla, playing golf, having cash on and pills, all of the things, like not doing any favors definitely looks shady. But I do think that Scott did himself any favors.

But the actual true evidence against him was pretty circumstantial at best. And it was a massive media storm to where I'm not surprised that he was found guilty. Because like I said, it was kind of like he was already earmarked as guilty before it went to trial. But now when you hear of other things, the robberies taking place that same morning, the van...

it starts to make that circumstantial evidence feel even more circumstantial. Kinda, right? I mean, I'm not saying, again, that Scott's innocent by any means, but I think it does beg the question, what is the real evidence in this case one way or another? What is it?

So anyways, let me know what you guys think. Thank you for tuning in to another episode. I will keep you updated because I am going to be glued to this case. All right, guys, and before we go, don't forget about today's amazing sponsors. Snag those deals while they're there. Before they're gone, head over to Factor and get 50% off with code AE50 at the link in my show notes. And also get that custom hair care for yourself through Pros and get 50% off your first subscription order today. So all of those links are in the show notes, guys.

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