Scott Peterson: The Monster Within

My mild OCD has been present for as long as I can remember: the constant resets, the inevitable restarts, the never-ending rewinds. Though my symptoms have taken shape much differently in adulthood, including those representative of skin-picking disorder (SPD), there's one obsession I've not been able to let go of: locking the front door.

By the time I was five, I was getting up three times each night to ensure that it was so, willing away any intruders or creatures of the night that may have made their way down the dead end street I grew up on, enticed by the soft glow coming from the living room window. Without doing this, I was unable to rest.

It was debilitating, to say the least: I would lie awake for hours most nights, looking for solace in the trees wavering in the breeze out my bedroom window. As long they're out there and I'm in here, I'll feel safe.

But what happens when the monsters you're afraid of are already inside?

The Crime

On the evening of December 23rd, 2002, somewhere around 8:30 p.m., Laci Peterson chatted with her mother on the phone: about freshly-baked cookies, her unborn baby Conner, and Christmas Eve dinner. Scott Peterson, her husband, would be on his way a bit later than his wife the next day for the festivities, as he would be playing golf (a passion he held for a long time)-- a way of cultivating his own holiday cheer; something he expressed to several people he was excited to do.

Except that Scott Peterson never played golf on the afternoon of December 24th; he went to the Berkeley Marina.

Between 10:10 and 10:17 the next day, the Peterson's golden retriever, McKenzie, was returned to the yard after being found loose around the neighborhood, only to be found wandering around with a muddy leash a half hour later and brought back one more time.

According to Peterson, the last time he saw Laci alive was earlier that morning, 9:30 a.m., right before he was about to slip out the door to go fishing. Upon returning later that afternoon, he called his mother-in-law saying Laci hadn't returned home yet-- even though her SUV, a Land Rover, was still in the driveway-- and he was beginning to worry.

A half hour later, around 5:45 p.m., her stepfather Ron Grantski called the police and reported Laci as missing.

The Evidence

The most hotly disputed aspect of this case is not whether Scott Peterson actually murdered his wife and unborn child-- it's if there was enough evidence to convict him in a court of law to begin with.

A lone strand of hair from pliers found in Peterson's fishing boat, the only piece of forensic evidence, was linked through mitochondrial DNA to those recovered from Laci's brush-- but is almost always overshadowed by the overwhelming amount of contextual details littered throughout this entire case; strewn around like scraps meant for consumption.

McKenzie's muddy leash. The calm, cool, and collected demeanor; unwavering. Fishing at 9:30 a.m. (fishermen don't get their days started on the water that late, ever). A phonebook found by police on the counter, splayed open to a page for a Bay Area defense lawyer. His refusal to take a polygraph test. Plucking pictures of Laci off of the walls enclosing the investigative space where people searched endlessly for answers. Every second of the tapes communicating with Amber Frey (his girlfriend at the time of Laci's death and his third extramarital affair), most notably the collective ten where he expresses in early December that the upcoming holiday would be the "first without his wife," along with laughing joyously about the fireworks he wasn't watching from the Eiffel Tower on New Year's Eve. Trimble, the scent dog on the case, making his way to the end of the dock at the Berkeley Marina and stopping; knowing. The hair.

Sure enough, she was out there. Nearly four months later, on On April 13, 2003, the remains of a body were discovered in a marshy area on Point Isabel Regional Shoreline, just north of Berkeley; a day later, the decapitated and decomposing body of Laci was found along the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay.

The Conviction

On April 18, 2003, after a five-and-a-half month, media-frenzied, reputation-riddled trial that watched more like a television soap opera, Peterson was ultimately convicted on November 12th, 2004, of two counts of murder: first-degree murder with special circumstances for killing Laci, and second-degree murder for killing Conner, his son.

While the penalty phase rendered the death sentence on December 13th, 2004, it was overturned August 24th, 2020 in a 7–0 decision by the Supreme Court of California. Peterson's conviction was upheld, but the death sentence overturned because Peterson's trial judge, Alfred Delucchi, dismissed jurors who opposed capital punishment without asking them whether they could put their views aside-- leaving some to believe whether or not Peterson's trial was, as determined by the court of law, fair.

The Aftermath

Regardless of how much I've learned to work with them, I have to monitor and navigate my obsessive tendencies daily so they don't take over my life:

Stop picking your skin. You've already checked the washer four times. Make sure everything in the house shows even numbers. Make sure again.

My husband, ever-loving, sweetly supportive, and fully aware of my quirks, assures me each night that he's locked the doors and windows, including the front gate and the dead bolt on the backdoor. "I want you to feel safe," he says to me. "I'll protect us no matter what."

Perhaps this, this showing of love I'm so lucky to have now, is exactly why nearly twenty years later, I'm still haunted by Scott Peterson's case. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to truly stop wondering:

How will I know? How will I know?