Laci Peterson, born Laci Denise Rocha (May 4, 1975"“ circa 2003),^[1] was the subject of a highly-discussed missing-person case after she went missing while eight months pregnant with her first child. Laci was last seen alive on December 23, 2002. Her husband, Scott Peterson, was eventually convicted of her murder and is currently on death row at San Quentin Prison.

Biography

Laci Denise Rocha was born in Modesto, California. Her parents, Dennis Robert Rocha and Sharon Ruth Anderson, met in high school and married shortly after graduation.^[2] Their first child, Brent Rocha, was born in 1971. Laci was the couple's second child, born in 1975. Her parents separated after Laci's first birthday. Dennis later remarried and had another daughter, Amy. Laci grew up on her family's dairy farm in Escalon, CA,^[1] and she was a cheerleader in junior high and high school and she was generally a happy girl. After graduating from Thomas Downey High School, Laci attended California Polytechnic State University. At Cal Poly, Laci Rocha majored in ornamental horticulture. Her desire was to one day open a specialty plant shop. She lived with her then boyfriend, Kent Gain (as of 2007, serving a 15-year sentence in prison for assault on a woman - Grace Ho), but the couple later broke up. While at Cal Poly, Laci met Scott Peterson at a small restaurant in Morro Bay called Pacific Cafe. He gave the impression of a nice, clean-cut young man, and no suspicions were raised then. The relationship soon became serious.^[3] By December 1996, they were engaged, and they married on August 9, 1997, a few months before Laci's graduation. For the first two years or so of their marriage, they delayed trying to have children, but in December 2000, they decided to try for a pregnancy. It took longer than expected, and it was later reported that Scott said he "hoped for infertility." Sharon Anderson stated in her book that she did not think Laci knew about this. Finally, on the verge of scheduling fertility tests, Laci and Scott Peterson conceived naturally in mid-2002. The baby was due on February 10, 2003. They decided to name him Conner Lee Peterson. Laci also kept a diary throughout her pregnancy.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]}

Disappearance

Laci Peterson

Apart from her husband, the last people known to have spoken to Laci before her disappearance was her half-sister, Amy Rocha, who cut Scott's hair the evening of December 23, 2002, at Salon Salon while she and Laci goofed around, and her mother, Sharon Rocha, who talked to her by telephone shortly thereafter, around 8:30pm the same evening. It was the last time that Sharon would hear her daughter's voice. Shortly after 10:00am, the following morning December 24, 2002, a neighbor found the family dog, a golden retriever Laci gave to Scott early in their relationship as a present named McKenzie, running loose in the neighborhood, wearing a collar and muddy leash. The neighbor then returned McKenzie to the yard. Laci's 1996 Land Rover Discovery SE sport utility vehicle was in the driveway, and her Louis Vuitton purse (containing her keys and cell phone) was hanging in the bedroom closet. A present from Scott to Laci sat under the tree, a Louis Vuitton wallet to match her purse.

When husband, Scott Peterson returned home from a fishing trip (witnesses later stated that Scott had made conflicting statements early on concerning his whereabouts that day, he said he had been golfing, not fishing to some) that evening, Laci was not there. He washed his clothes, ate some cold pizza, took time to clean up the kitchen, and took a shower. At that point, (roughly 5:15pm) he called Sharon Rocha to ask if Laci was with her, when she replied that she wasn't, Scott then used the words early on that disturbed so many, "Laci's missing." Sharon would later say that she knew in her heart something horrible had happened to her daughter. Scott stated that when he left Laci was watching an episode of Martha Stewart, and planned to walk the couple's dog, McKenzie, in nearby East La Loma Park.

Police were called by 6 p.m., not by her husband Scott, but by her parents, stepfather Ron and mother Sharon. An immediate search of the park and surrounding areas ensued. It was highly out of character for Laci to leave without a word being both very punctual and very pregnant. Police, family members, and neighbors searched widely on foot, in all-terrain vehicles, patrol cars, and sport utility vehicles, with helicopters equipped with search lights and heat sensors, and with water rescue units, search dogs and horseback teams.^[14] Law enforcement agencies from several counties became involved. Police immediately suspected foul play, again doubting Laci would vanish on Christmas Eve without contacting anyone. At a press conference, detective Al Brocchini said, "That is completely out of character for her."^[15]

A $25,000 reward was offered, later increased to $250,000, and finally to $500,000 (after a generous donation from a friend of Sharon Rocha's who wished to remain anonymous) for any information leading to her safe return. Posters, (now famous) blue on yellow ribbons, and fliers circulated, and the LaciPeterson.com website was launched. Friends, family and volunteers set up a command center at nearby Red Lion Hotel to record developments and circulate information, and over 1,000 volunteers signed up to distribute information and help search for Laci.^[16] Critics alleged that this was another example of missing white woman syndrome, and that other cases of similar caliber (primarily that of Evelyn Hernandez) were being ignored by the media and the community,^[17][18] despite the fact that Laci was from a multi-cultural background.

From the start, Peterson was reluctant to talk to the press; at one point, he stormed out of a family press conference when reporters asked if the police considered him a suspect. Laci's brother, Brent Rocha, defended Scott, claiming that Scott was too distraught to make public statements about Laci, and adding that that did not mean he was involved in her disappearance. "No way," Rocha said. "Absolutely not." Laci's family maintained Scott's innocence,^[19] and volunteers said that he joined their efforts at the command center every day. Later, it was said that Peterson enjoyed drinking and watching sporting events with his father, Lee Peterson, at the volunteer center and seemed arrogant, without emotion, and aloof.

It was later revealed that Scott Peterson had had numerous extramarital affairs, one of which Laci knew about, but the most recent with a massage therapist named Amber Frey, a single mother from nearby Fresno. The affair began after Scott met a woman, Shawn Sibley, at a trade convention where he represented his company, TradeCorp, and told her he was single and "looking." He joked that he should put "horn-dog" on his name-tag to help him meet women. Though Sibley was attached, she thought Peterson would be a good match for a single friend of hers, Amber Frey. She set them up on a blind-date in mid-November 2002 that went so well it ended with strawberries, champagne, and sex in a hotel. Frey informed the police early on of her relationship with Peterson after seeing news of Laci's disappearance on the TV and agreed to record their phone calls. She informed them that, a few weeks before Laci's disappearance, on December 9, Peterson had told her that he was a widower, having "lost his wife" and that this would be his first holidays without her. During the trial, audio recordings of Peterson and Frey's telephone conversations were played, and the transcripts were publicized (the actual audio recordings can be found on the Modesto Bee's website [1]). The contents were damning for Peterson's character defense. They revealed that in the days after Laci went missing, Peterson continued to call Amber on a regular, almost insistent basis. In one of the calls recorded, Peterson claimed to be celebrating New Year's Eve in Paris, at the Eiffel Tower, with friends Pierre and Pascqual (both fictional, of course). He said the crowd was "huge." He called Amber "sweetie" and sounded happy, even excited. In reality he was at Laci's New Year's Eve candlelight vigil.

On April 13, 2003, Good Friday, the decomposing, but remarkably well preserved body of a late term male fetus, his umbilical cord still attached, was found on the San Francisco Bay shore in Richmond's Point Isabel Regional Shoreline park^[20], north of Berkeley. It was discovered by a couple walking their dog. One day later, the body of a recently-pregnant woman, wearing cream-colored maternity pants and a maternity bra, washed to shore one mile away from where the baby's body was found. The woman's cause of death was impossible to discern; due to decomposition, the body was decapitated, the forearms were missing, the right foot gone, and the left leg from the knee was missing. Later reports from the medical examiner would also observe that there were injuries, two cracked ribs, that happened at or about the time of death. DNA tests verified what most already assumed- they were the bodies of Laci Peterson and her son, Conner. Separated only because Laci's upper torso, was emptied of internal organs and allowed for Conner to escape through a perforation in the top of the uterus, due to decomposition. Not by coffin birth as some had speculated.

Aftermath

Scott Peterson was arrested on April 18, 2003 in La Jolla, California in the parking lot of a golf course, where he claimed to be meeting his father and brother for a game of golf. At the time of his arrest, Peterson was carrying $15,000 in cash, had four cell phones, camping equipment, a gun, a map to Frey's workplace that had been printed the day before, Viagra, and his brother's driver's license.^[21] His hair and goatee had been dyed blonde. The police took this as an indication that Peterson had planned to flee, possibly to Mexico.

The death of Laci and her son led to the United States Congress passing the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which is widely known as Laci and Conner's Law. On April 1, 2004, Sharon Rocha (Laci's mother) and her common-law husband Ron Grantski were in attendance at the White House when President George W. Bush signed the bill into law.^[22]

In late 2005, a Stanislaus County judge ruled that Peterson was not entitled to collect on his late wife's $250,000 life insurance policy, having been convicted of her murder. Under California state law, criminals may not profit from insurance policies. On December 19, 2005, the money was given to Laci's mother, Sharon, as the executor of Laci's estate.^[23][24]

In 2006, Laci's mother, Sharon, wrote For Laci : A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Justice a biography and memoir about the life and death of her daughter, all proceeds go to fund the Laci and Conner Search and Rescue Fund started by Sharon Rocha.

See also

• Scott Peterson
• Domestic violence
• Jessie Davis, similar missing-person case
• Lori Hacking, similar missing-person/murder case. That is, the murder of a young, pretty, expectant mother, by her own husband (Mark Hacking) who shared similar deceptive traits with Laci's Husband, Scott Peterson. Somewhat disturbing is the fact that Lori was the same age as Laci, 27. They also both had been married to their husbands for five years before their deaths.
• As mentioned in Sharon Rocha's book "For Laci," she received an e-mail entitled "Did EVP Solve the Laci Peterson Case?" Many (including Sharon Rocha) have been awe struck by the accurate details a psychic who claims to communicate with the dead (and even Laci herself) had provided early in the case. The summation of her "research" and ultimate conclusion of exactly what happened to Laci is located on her website @ [2] in the section of "resolved cases."

Notes

• Rocha, Sharon (2006). For Laci. Crown Publishing Group.