It was December 24, 2002—Christmas Eve morning—and in Modesto, California, where Laci Peterson lived with her husband Scott, it was a cool, foggy Northern California morning. The young, attractive couple woke up that morning, each with their own plans in mind. Laci had some last‑minute items to pick up for Christmas dinner at her parents’ home later, and she also wanted to take her golden retriever, McKenzie, for a walk.
Her husband Scott had plans to go fishing at Berkeley Marina, about an hour and a half away from the couple’s home.
Scott left the house around 9:30 in the morning and did not return until 4:30 that evening. When he got home, his wife was not there, and she wasn’t answering his calls. He normally would not have been so concerned, but Laci was eight months pregnant with their first child, a son they were going to name Connor.
Over the course of the next few months, a massive search and investigation took place for Laci. As Connor’s due date came and went, the need to find mother and child became more urgent. Then, on April 13, 2003, the bodies of Laci and her son were found washed up on the shore of San Francisco Bay.
To understand what happened that day and in the months that followed, we must go back to the beginning—to the families, the histories, and the lives of Scott and Laci Peterson. Understanding who they were, what their dynamic was like, and the cracks beneath the surface is incredibly important in helping us understand what happened at the end. It will give us insight into determining whether Scott Peterson actually killed his wife or if he is, as he claims, completely innocent and wrongfully convicted.
The story begins in December of 1945. On December 20, 1945, 36‑year‑old John H. Latham was found murdered, lying in a pool of his own blood inside his business at 2190 Main Street in San Diego, California.
His skull had been crushed by blows from a three‑foot‑long rusty metal pipe wielded by a former employee. The motive had been robbery—a man’s life for $200 in his wallet. Because of that, John Latham did not go home to his wife Helen and their four children that night.
John and Helen were the proud parents of three boys: John Jr. , who was six; Patrick, who was four; and Robert, who was only three months old at the time of his father’s murder. They also had one daughter, two‑and‑a‑half‑year‑old Jaclyn, who we know better as Jackie Peterson, Scott Peterson’s mother.
Shortly after the death of her husband, Helen Latham suffered a mental breakdown, and all four of her children were placed in the Nazareth House, an orphanage. At that point, little Jackie was separated not only from her mother but from her brothers as well, because the orphanage had separate units for girls and boys. Overnight, this two‑year‑old girl lost her father, her mother, and all her siblings.
She was essentially completely alone, surrounded by strangers, and she had no clue why she was alone or what had happened—she was far too young to understand.
Jackie would return to live with her mother ten years later, when she was 13, but their reunion was short‑lived. Right after Jackie graduated from high school, her mother Helen passed away, and she was alone again. This started a pattern of Jackie looking for love in all the wrong places.
Between 1962 and 1967, Jackie became pregnant three times by three different men. The first man abandoned her, so when she gave birth to a son named Don in April 1963, she gave the baby up for adoption. The next man who got her pregnant was already married to another woman, so when Jackie gave birth to a daughter named Anne, she gave that baby up for adoption as well.
The third father also walked out, and when Jackie gave birth to another son named John, she apparently received some criticism from her doctor when she showed up pregnant again. The doctor asked if she planned to keep this child instead of putting him up for adoption. Whether he pressured or shamed her into it, Jackie did end up keeping John, and she became a single mother trying to juggle her career and her role as a mother.
After purchasing a dress shop in La Jolla, California, called The Pudan, Jackie often brought her son John to work with her. Those who knew her at the time remembered that she would frequently overlook his needs in favor of the needs of her business. When she met Lee Peterson, a divorced father of three, it seemed like a good fit—they both had responsibilities from prior relationships.
Lee Peterson had grown up with very little money in Minnesota and was working for a trucking company when Jackie met him. His three children—12‑year‑old Susan, 10‑year‑old Mark, and nine‑year‑old Joe—lived with their mother in San Diego during the week but spent weekends with their father. Lee was a driven man, however, and he would not be broke for long.
He started his own successful packing and delivering business in San Diego, and within no time, the money began rolling in. As fast as it rolled in, Lee would spend it. He purchased expensive houses and fancy cars—a habit that would eventually lead to financial problems.
He had climbed into an upper tier of friends and society, and he did not want anyone to know that he had come from nothing, that he had grown up poor. It is a common story: people overextend themselves to create an illusion of success, and in most cases, it catches up to them.
Jackie and Lee met, got married, and Lee adopted Jackie’s son John. Then, on October 24, 1972, the golden child was born—Scott Peterson. From the moment he existed, he was his parents’ favorite.
They both had children from previous marriages; Lee was not close to his own children, and Jackie had had a rough start with John. But here was this new baby who connected them, and he would become the favorite. In an interview, Scott’s mother Jackie said, “He didn’t walk before he was one because someone was always carrying him.”
Scott was coddled, showered with attention from both parents from birth.
At first, they all lived together in a two‑bedroom apartment in La Jolla, where Scott and his older half‑brother John shared a room. When Scott was four, the family moved into a nicer home in Scripps Ranch, a suburb in northeast San Diego. Scott would accompany both of his parents to work—he was always with one of them.
He would ride along with his father Lee as Lee made his rounds picking up packages for delivery, or he would look on from his crib as his mother Jackie helped customers at her dress shop.
Lee Peterson, who had had trouble connecting with his three older children, could only connect with a child if they shared similarities and common interests. He made sure that Scott was brought up as a mini‑Lee. He took Scott to do all the things he himself enjoyed: fishing, hunting, and golfing.
When Scott was five, he was hanging out with his dad at the driving range; he had his own golf clubs and fishing poles by the time he was seven. Scott’s older half‑brother John did not receive the same treatment. John got into some trouble and was sent away to live with relatives.
The message was clear: he was not a good representation of what being a Peterson meant, so they essentially pretended he did not exist. This left Scott to receive most of his parents’ attention and to bear the brunt of their high expectations. If Jackie and Lee felt John was a lost cause, Scott was the last chance to represent the family and carry on the legacy.
This dynamic had a profound effect on Scott. As the hosts of the podcast note, it is a very common pattern: children from divorced families often act out when they feel replaced by a new relationship or a new child. Scott, however, seemed to internalize his parents’ expectations and became a perfectionist.
He wanted to be seen as super responsible, even at a young age. When he was ten, the family moved again—this time to a house in Pœ with a swimming pool and a creek nearby where Scott could fish. He attended Painted Rock Middle School, where he took his duties as a school crossing guard very seriously.
His mother tells a story with fondness: Scott would not let parents drive through until he had looked both ways multiple times, holding them up until he was satisfied it was safe. The parents would get agitated, but Jackie thought it was cute. Scott was a perfectionist, and even as a child, he wanted to appear responsible and mature.
He also joined Cub Scouts, and his mother Jackie was his group leader. Many parents of Scott’s peers marveled at how well‑behaved he was—like a little adult, especially compared to their very active children. One woman, Joan Perricano, said, “He was a little bit reticent, stoic maybe.
My son bounced off the walls, but Scott wasn’t that way. He was quiet and polite. He’s a smiler; when he smiles, his whole face lights up.”
Scott’s easy smile—huge, taking up half his face—was something many people remembered and commented on because it put them at ease, took down their guards, and seemed to say without words that here was a friendly, nice, trustworthy guy.
In his teenage years, Scott began working part‑time at a Rancho Santa Fe country club in exchange for lessons and time on the course. He had shown promise as a golfer from an early age, probably because his father had him on the golf course since he was a baby. Lee wanted to encourage him to pursue golf as a potential career, maybe even go pro.
Lee made a bet with Scott: if Scott could shoot par, he would buy him a Ferrari. Lee was stunned when Scott achieved this by the time he was 14—in fact, Scott was already a much better golfer than Lee had ever been. Scott did not get a Ferrari, however, because Lee probably could not afford it.
Instead, he was given a used sedan on his 16th birthday. Still, being given a car at 16 was something to be grateful for.
Throughout school, Scott was a good student and a good person. He was named MVP of his golf team twice. Up to this point, despite the tragedies in his mother’s life and his father’s sometimes harsh personality, Scott seemed like a great guy: a good athlete, a good golfer, smart, well‑behaved, charismatic.
But he was only 16. The story was just getting started. Scott was an intuitive kid who noticed things but did not always comment on them.
He filed them away for later use, integrating them into his own life and personality. He watched everything from a very young age and mirrored the behaviors of others—a trait often seen in sociopaths, who do not know how to express human emotion and instead observe and copy.
Besides a few peers who felt Scott could be a bit arrogant, most people saw him as a regular guy. He tutored the homeless, wore white polo shirts and letterman jackets to school, and helped lead his golf team to an undefeated season his senior year. His golf coach recalled that Scott was extremely respectful and never used bad language.
“Some kids will hit a bad shot and go into all kinds of antics,” the coach said. “Scott would hit a bad shot and go to the next one. I don’t think I ever saw him get out of control.”
Most people in his town thought for sure Scott would go pro, especially when he graduated from high school at 17 and received a golf scholarship to the University of Arizona in 1990.
Fun fact: professional golfer Phil Mickelson was actually one of Scott’s teammates during high school and also went on to the University of Arizona, where he became the second collegiate golfer to earn first‑team All‑American honors all four years. Mickelson graduated a year or two before Scott, so Scott had big shoes to fill. People expected him to follow in Phil’s footsteps.
But Scott was a big fish in the small pond of his high school. When he went to Arizona, a major golf school, he realized there were many others who were just as good as him, and many who were better. His father Lee later commented, “It was probably a mistake to send him there because it was such a big golf school.”
That statement reveals a lot about Lee’s mindset: cut and run if you cannot be the best. Scott likely felt the pressure and the disappointment from his father, even if Lee did not say it outright.
Scott left Arizona State after just one semester and moved back in with his parents, who had relocated to a cottage in Morro Bay, thinking they were planning to retire. Scott said he genuinely did not want to be in a place where he was not the best. In 1992, he attended Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo and played on the golf team for two years.
He then transferred to California Polytechnic State University and moved out of his parents’ house. He told them, “I’ve had the greatest parents, you don’t owe me anything.” So on the surface, he seemed like a super nice guy.
At Cal Poly, Scott shared an apartment with friends. They covered the flat roof with artificial grass so they could go up there, drink beers, and hit golf balls into a nearby field. He originally planned to study international business but switched to agricultural business because he had discovered a new passion for growing plants, vegetables, and cooking.
Again, Scott was extremely well‑liked in college. One professor commented that he wished he could have a class full of Scott Petersons, describing him as “more mature than most, pleasant to deal with.” Scott majored in agricultural business and worked multiple jobs to support himself through school.
It was at one of those jobs—working as a waiter at the Pacific Cafe in San Luis Obispo—that Scott met his future wife, the bright, beautiful, and vibrant Laci Rocha. Laci was sunshine and happiness wrapped up in a petite frame. She was only five foot one, a tiny brunette with a big smile and an even bigger personality.
She might have been small, but she was fearless and knew who she was and what she wanted from a very young age. She was born on May 4, 1974, to her parents Sharon and Dennis Rocha in Modesto, California. A childhood friend said, “She was always smiling and bubbly and talkative, usually the center of attention.”
Her mother Sharon said Laci slept through the night pretty much from the time she came home from the hospital. She was an easy baby.
As a small toddler, Laci began spending time outside in the garden with her mother and developed a love of all things green. She learned how to grow plants, flowers, and vegetables. The Rocha family operated a dairy farm, and both Laci and her older brother Brent spent many childhood hours there playing and helping with the farm work.
Laci also loved to watch movies, and it did not matter how many times she had seen a film—she would still get emotional at all the sad parts, to the point where her mother had to screen movies first to see if they would be too much for her sensitive daughter.
When Laci and Brent were still young, their parents divorced. They went to live with their mother in Modesto but visited their father on the dairy farm on weekends. It was the best possible case scenario for a divorce: they still got to go to the farm where they had spent many happy childhood years, they saw their father regularly, and Laci and Brent became very close, as children of divorce often do.
By the time Laci was 13, Brent was discouraging her from hanging out with him and his friends because they kept telling him how cute his sister was—and he did not like that. That is what big brothers do.
In high school, Laci was a cheerleader, very social, with a large group of friends. They did the things teenage girls normally do: went to sporting events, had sleepovers where they snuck alcohol from their parents’ liquor cabinets, got a little giggly, and prank‑called boys. Laci was vivacious, outgoing, and did well in school.
After high school, she studied ornamental horticulture at California Polytechnic—the practice of growing, arranging, and tending to decorative plants and flowers. Her mother always felt Laci had been born to be a wife and mother because she loved to cook, decorate her home, and care for others. She was a very maternal person.
One day, Laci decided to have lunch with friends at the Pacific Cafe. While waiting for their food, one of the waiters caught her eye. He was golden‑skinned, dark‑haired, with shining dark eyes and an incredible smile.
Laci gave one of the other servers her number and asked her to give it to that waiter. That waiter turned out to be Scott Peterson. When Scott first got Laci’s number, he thought it was a joke or a prank, so he threw it out.
But Laci knew who she was and what she wanted, so she was not shy about returning to the cafe and asking Scott why he had not called her. She had given him her number, so why did he not call? The two began chatting over the phone and making plans for an official first date.
The story of how they met is like a rom‑com: the meet‑cute, the lost phone number, fate bringing them back together. Laci’s confidence was remarkable. Even before their first date, she called her mother Sharon and told her she had met the man she was going to marry.
She insisted that Sharon make a trip to San Luis Obispo to meet Scott. Sharon drove up the weekend after their first date, and Laci took her to lunch at the Pacific Cafe. Scott had pulled out all the stops: he had picked a table for them and set it up with two dozen roses—a dozen red for Laci and a dozen white for her mother Sharon.
Laci’s family was incredibly important to her, and Scott knew that impressing Sharon would earn him points with Laci.
Laci was so taken with Scott that she would have done anything for him, including going deep‑sea fishing on their first date—despite the fact that she got motion sickness. She did not tell him that; she just went along, spending the whole time throwing up. But she did not care.
She was hooked.
The two were inseparable. Everyone who knew them marveled at how close they were, how they did everything together, how much they loved each other. They dated for roughly two years before Scott proposed, and they got married just months before Laci graduated college.
Their outdoor ceremony was attended by 150 of their closest friends and family. From the outside, the newlyweds had found true love: attractive, outgoing, kind, smart, motivated to achieve goals together. They seemed unstoppable.
Scott still had one year of college to complete after they married. There are reports and allegations from the police that at this time, unbeknownst to Laci, Scott had his first extramarital 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇. The prosecution and police have brought this up, though they have never identified the woman or said exactly how they know.
So we take it with a grain of salt. But 𝒸𝒽𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 on a wife does not necessarily make someone a murderer—it could be relevant or not.
There is also a woman named Lauren Putnam who came forward to Inside Edition in November 2004. She said she was 18 when she met Scott Peterson at the Pacific Cafe, the same place Laci and Scott met. According to Putnam, they worked together, and her attraction to Scott was instant and mutual.
Her friends and family were struck by the young, ambitious businessman, and her mother especially wanted her to marry him because “he was a catch.” Putnam described Scott as romantic: he would send her flowers and roses, take her to the beach with a picnic set up on the sand, and feed her fresh berries with wine or champagne. She said they dated for a year and a half, but then things took a turn.
Scott became a “stay‑at‑home guy” and lacked the ambition he once had. Putnam ended up breaking up with him. One of her reasons was that he was a little too straight‑laced—sometimes you just want to break free and dance until 2 a.
m. and take a shot, but Scott would not loosen up. When she broke up with him, he was pacing back and forth, upset.
But within a week of their breakup, Scott seemed to have rebounded with Laci Rocha, the woman he would ultimately marry and later 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁, allegedly.
Putnam recalled Laci as “angelic” and said Scott went out of his way to make sure his new woman met her face‑to‑face. “It was mostly ‘Hey Laci, come into the restaurant so Lauren can see us,’” Putnam said. They sat in her section, and she had to wait on them.
Putnam believes Scott did it to make her jealous. So this woman was likely the girlfriend before Laci—there is another woman whom the prosecutors referred to as the person with whom he had an 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 after marrying Laci. That remains unspecified.
A family member who does not believe Scott is guilty of murder described him as a 𝒔𝒆𝒙 addict. They said, “He has a sexual problem and has a need to sleep with other women.” It appears that Scott had a pattern of affairs throughout his marriage.
The prosecution mentioned that his first extramarital 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 happened very shortly after he and Laci got married, with someone either at the college or in the area. The details are not public, but the existence of such behavior is important when considering motive.
After college, Laci and Scott went into business together. They bought an old bakery in a strip mall and transformed it into The Shack, a burger place they wanted to be the go‑to spot for college students. Laci decorated with a cool but upscale vibe: signs made of driftwood, a trash can made from a wine barrel, and coastal elements.
Scott, ever the hands‑on perfectionist, even learned how to fix the ventilation system himself to get it up to code in time for an inspection. The Shack became a popular local hangout. The food was good, the aesthetic was nice, and Laci and Scott were warm and welcoming to customers.
The business was thriving and profitable—no small feat, as most new restaurants fail within the first year.
In the year 2000, something changed. Laci was the one who wanted to move to Modesto and start a family. She had wanted children for most of her life.
Running a restaurant was fun, but she wanted to begin a family. Her family and friends were in Modesto—a smaller town she knew, felt comfortable in, and felt safe in. She knew her children would have a support system there.
Many have claimed that Scott did not want to sell The Shack and was in no rush to become a father. Either way, they purchased a three‑bedroom, two‑bathroom cottage bungalow at 523 Covina Avenue in October 2000. Scott got a job at Tradecorp, a Spanish‑based agricultural supply company, selling irrigation systems, fertilizer, and chemical nutrients as a West Coast representative.
His clients were big farmers and flower growers throughout California, Arizona, and New Mexico, so his job required quite a bit of travel.
Laci began working as a substitute teacher but spent most of her free time turning their house into a home. She planted a flower garden, dreaming of working in it with her own children, just as she had done with her mother. She and Scott put in a swimming pool.
Scott joined a local country club to play golf and became the youngest member of the Modesto Rotary Club. The couple were known for hosting parties at their home, where Laci played the effortless host and Scott played the doting husband. They both loved to cook and would prepare beautiful meals for their guests.
To everyone on the outside, they were the perfect, happy couple.
By 2002, Laci was pregnant. She immediately began decorating the nursery in a white and blue nautical theme for her son Connor Peterson. Scott seemed genuinely excited about the birth of his child—he never said he was not looking forward to it, though he did make some comments to family and friends that people thought were a bit odd.
But he was supportive; he attended prenatal classes with Laci and was there for her. Yet while he showed this front of a husband madly in love with his wife and a man looking forward to becoming a father, no one really saw the cracks under the surface.
When his wife was about seven months pregnant, Scott was introduced to a young woman from Fresno named Amber Frey. She was a massage therapist who already had a child from a previous relationship. When she and Scott began seeing each other, he failed to mention something very important: that he was already married and that his wife was expecting a child.
According to Amber, she had no idea he was married. She had no idea he had this whole separate, second life.
That brings us to the holiday season of 2002, and Christmas Eve, the day Laci and Connor would vanish without a trace before turning up months later washed up on the shore, a mile apart from each other. The 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 with Amber, and the conversations Scott had with her after Laci went missing, is one of the most damning pieces of behavior. Scott was manipulative and engaged in a next‑level kind of gaslighting, lying to both Laci and Amber.
He would call Amber and say he was in Paris, when in fact he was at a memorial service for Laci and Connor while they were still missing. Eventually, he revealed to her that his wife was missing, in a way that seemed almost calculated.
Amber and Scott had been having dinner together; he had met her daughter, cooked dinner for them, and taken them to Christmas parties. The month Laci went missing, there is a picture of Amber and Scott at a Christmas party with her sitting on his lap. People knew they were together.
This was not a relationship Scott was trying to hide behind closed doors. It makes one wonder: if he had had affairs before, why had he never gotten rid of his wife? Was it because Laci was pregnant?
Did he think that once the child came, things would become stricter—that Laci would start asking where he was, why he was not home more, or that she would want him to stop traveling so much? He may have been using his job as an excuse to see Amber, telling Laci he was going to be in Arizona for the weekend when he was really with Amber. If Laci started saying they were going to be parents and she wanted him home to raise their son, he may have felt those reins tightening.
He may have realized it would be harder to carry on a separate life if he had to quit the job that allowed him to be so free.
Why not just get a divorce? That is the simple answer. But if Scott was in love with Amber and wanted a future with her, having a wife and a newborn son would make that fantasy very difficult.
If he had respect for Amber, and she had respect for herself, she likely would have ended things once she learned about Laci and the pregnancy. Scott was looking for a way to transition smoothly from Laci and Connor to Amber and her daughter—without ever confirming to either woman that he had been lying. The only way to control the narrative was to make sure Laci was out of the picture.
In the next episode, we will go over what happened on December 24, 2002, the timeline of that fateful day, what Scott said he was doing, and the multiple eyewitnesses who claim to have seen both Scott and Laci throughout the day. The timeline is the crux of everything, because his attorneys argue that if certain witnesses saw Laci or her dog McKenzie at specific times, it would have been impossible for Scott to have committed the crime. The timeline is essential—it builds on the foundation we have laid here, helping us figure out if it is even possible that Scott was there and could have done this to Laci.
