Could five hidden forensic secrets finally smash the case wide open and set Scott Peterson free? THE SHOCKING TRUTH the jury never saw… This is unreal!

Scott Peterson has spent over half of his life behind bars — much of it on death row in California’s San Quentin Rehabilitation Center — for the 2002 Christmas Eve murder of his wife Laci and their unborn son Conner. The case riveted the nation after it was discovered that the former Modesto, Calif.-based fertilizer salesman was having an 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 with a woman whom he had told he was a widower celebrating his first holiday season on his own.

It’s also a case that refuses to go away — because no sooner had the now 53-year-old Scott been found guilty of the double murders than his attorneys began filing numerous appeals to overturn his conviction. His latest petition was filed by the Los Angeles Innocence Project and was denied in April by San Mateo County Superior Court judge Elizabeth Hill.

The petition introduced 14 new evidentiary claims, including sworn statements, eyewitness accounts, scientific research and alternative theories about what happened in the murders of Laci and the couple’s unborn son on Christmas Eve in 2002 — which Judge Hill described as “neither new, admissible nor material.”

Now, as his lawyers draft an appeal to a higher California court, a new documentary, Scott Peterson: The New Evidence, premiering July 16 and 17 on A&E, disputes the judge’s finding. “This documentary is built around the idea of stress-testing the Los Angeles Innocence Project’s findings,” says host Chris Pixley, an Atlanta-based defense attorney and ABC News legal analyst.

Here is a breakdown of five of the most compelling claims that are investigated in the documentary:

1. The Burglars

Peterson’s attorneys say authorities didn’t fully investigate a burglary reported at the home of Rudy and Susan Medina across the street from the Petersons on the morning of Laci’s Dec. 24 disappearance. They allegedly destroyed video interviews of two men (below, in mugshots), who were arrested and pleaded guilty, and limited testing of DNA found in a burned-out van later discovered abandoned a mile away. Laci theoretically may have interrupted the robbery in progress and then was abducted and killed by the burglars.

“I believe the reason they dismissed the Medina burglary is that they felt they already knew what had happened,” says retired LAPD detective Ninette Toosbuy, an investigator who appears in the documentary. However, prosecutors counter that the burglary occurred two days after Laci’s murder.

Donald Pearce, Steven Wayne Todd.

Modesto Police Department

2. Eyewitness Saw Laci Alive — with Her Dog

The docuseries identifies 15 people who say they saw Laci with her dog McKenzie on the morning of Dec. 24 — after the time Scott said he left their home to go fishing in San Francisco Bay. One witness, Diane Campos, a custodian at the county hospital, said she saw Laci walking the dog in Dry Creek Park at 10:45 a.m. Another witness, Tony Freitas, reported seeing Laci while he made deliveries in the La Loma neighborhood around 9:45 a.m.

According to Pixley, Modesto police largely disregarded the varying accounts — and Scott’s defense team didn’t call any of the witnesses to the stand. “You have to wonder whether the trial would have had a different outcome,” he says.

Laci’s dog McKenzie.

L.A. Innocence Project

3. San Francisco Bay Yields Clues

Laci’s decomposed remains washed ashore in Richmond, Calif., in April 2003, four months after she disappeared from her Modesto home, and Conner’s body was found about a mile away. How did they end up there? Hydrologist Ralph Cheng of the U.S. Geological Survey testified at the 2004 trial that, based on wind data, Laci, eight months pregnant, may have been placed in the water between Brooks Island and the Berkeley Marina, in the area where Scott said he was fishing, according to the documentary. (Conner’s body is thought to have separated from his mother’s in the water.)

An LAIP expert used state-of-the-art Delft3D hydrodynamic modeling, which analyzes both wind and water action, and concluded that Laci was likely placed in the shallows off Albany Bulb, a park only accessible by trail — and miles from where Scott was fishing. “It’s not impossible to conceive of someone [else] easily bringing a body and placing it in the water,” says Pixley.

According to an expert, a body placed in the water where prosecutors say Scott dumped Laci could be carried to the Pacific.

L.A. Innocence Project

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4. Who Wrote the Notes?

At trial, prosecutors said Scott purchased a 14-ft. fishing boat on Dec. 9, 2002, and secretly kept it at a storage facility for 15 days because he intended to use the vessel to dispose of Laci’s body in San Francisco Bay. But his attorneys now contend that Laci knew about the boat and, using handwriting analysis by forensic examiner Dr. Linton Mohammed, claim that she made notes about buying equipment for the boat from marine supply stores that were found in the couple’s house.

If true, that would undermine the state’s theory of Laci’s premeditated murder. But Judge Hill said the claim of new evidence wasn’t “material to the degree that it would have changed the outcome of the case.”

The documentary maintains that Scott’s defense was only made aware of doodles and notes about anchor prices possibly made by Laci in 2024.

L.A. Innocence Project

5. The Day Conner Died

Two prosecution experts compared measurements of Conner’s body with fetal growth studies like this one to determine exactly how old the baby was when he died — but failed to reach a consensus.

L.A. Innocence Project

At Scott’s 2004 trial, the prosecution’s fetal-growth expert Greggory DeVore testified that the baby Laci was carrying, named Conner by the couple, likely died on Dec. 23 or 24, 2002. LAIP now argues that DeVore’s findings were imprecise — “junk” science, says attorney Geragos in the doc — and cites other experts and recent fetal-biometric studies to suggest mother and child died between Dec. 23 and Jan. 27.

Says Pixley: “If Conner died after Dec. 24, Scott was not involved in that death [because] he was under surveillance. He was the prime suspect and being followed by the media.”