The Prosecutors - Case File Revisited: Scott Peterson 4

Summary

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The Prosecutors - Case File Revisited: Scott Peterson 4

Podcast: The Prosecutors (PodcastOne)
Release Date: July 23, 2026
Hosts: Brett & Alice
Episode Theme: Investigation into the prosecution case against Scott Peterson in the murders of Laci and Conner Peterson, focusing on circumstantial evidence, Scott’s behavior, and details that shaped the narrative around his guilt or innocence.

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Overview

This episode is the fourth in a deep-dive series revisiting the trial of Scott Peterson, focusing on the prosecution’s case, the media circus surrounding the investigation, Scott’s extramarital affair with Amber Frey, and the circumstantial evidence presented at trial. Brett and Alice, both prosecutors, analyze the logic and complexities in the evidence, often exploring how particular details strengthened or weakened the narrative for jurors. The hosts maintain a candid, sometimes darkly humorous tone but consistently unpack the disturbing facts of the case.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Role of Amber Frey

[06:06 – 16:09]

• Amber Frey's Introduction: Police revealed Amber, Scott’s latest girlfriend, via press conference due to impending media leaks by the National Enquirer.
• Amber’s Unawareness: Amber was unaware Scott was married; prior girlfriends also didn’t know they were "the other woman."
• Laci’s Likely Knowledge: Alice speculates Laci knew of Scott’s affairs, evidenced by incidents like a girlfriend walking in on Scott and Laci in bed. Despite this, Laci never spoke ill of Scott to friends or family.
• Scott's Lies to Amber: Scott lied, claiming he was a widower spending his "first holidays without his wife," even inventing a fake Europe trip.
• Amber’s Cooperation: Upon discovering the truth, Amber cooperated with police and recorded 29 hours of her calls with Scott, which became critical to the prosecution.

“I just want you to think about if you were in a situation where your child...the mother of your unborn child is missing. Would you be able, physically able to do what Scott did?...I could not accomplish that. I just couldn't do it. It would be impossible for me to pull that off.”
— Brett [17:21]

Memorable Moment: The Candlelight Vigil Call

[19:00 – 23:10]

• Scott calls Amber from the candlelight vigil for his missing, pregnant wife, still maintaining the Paris vacation lie.

“It’s chilling to hear his voice in such a flippant manner when we know what's happening in the background...Here he is stepping off to the side to give his girlfriend of a couple of weeks a phone call and lying that he's in Paris.”
— Alice [21:42]

2. Media Narratives and Scott’s Public Behavior

[23:16 – 33:22]

• Scott’s Interview with Diane Sawyer: After media suspicion grows, Scott gives an exclusive to Diane Sawyer, lying about the timeline of disclosing his affair to police.
  • Police interview footage contradicts his story.
• Scott’s Pattern of Lying: Both hosts emphasize Scott’s continuous dishonesty and manipulation, both with loved ones and law enforcement.

“He believes they are so slick and so smooth and so smart and so manipulating that they can get up there on that stand and convince a jury—who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
— Brett [26:18]

• Emotional vs. Circumstantial Evidence: The hosts rebut claims that the case was "all emotion": Scott's coldness is used not as evidence of a bad personality, but as circumstantial evidence relevant to guilt.

3. Ambiguous Timeline and Pieces of Evidence

[33:22 – 40:51]

• Mailbox Rental (Dec 23): Scott rented a mailbox the day before Laci disappeared, possibly for correspondence with Amber—timing that could be interpreted in more than one way.
• Comparison to Chris Watts Case: Brett and Alice discuss how the lack of Scott’s confession, unlike Chris Watts, creates more holes in the narrative.
• House Cleaning: The alleged suspicious mopping of floors the day after a maid visit—possibly an attempt to clean up after a crime, though no forensic evidence of a struggle/blood was found.
• Porn Channel Subscriptions: Ten days after Laci disappeared, Scott adds first Playboy, then a harder-core pay-per-view package, to the home cable. Used to demonstrate his lack of concern.

“If your wife, who you may not love...is missing with your unborn child...Is [shopping for porn] really something that you would be thinking about in that circumstance?”
— Brett [42:14]

4. Prosecutor's Admissibility of Character Evidence

[44:03 – 47:41]

• Legal Explanation: Alice and Brett discuss evidence rules (404(b)), which limit introduction of prejudicial but not directly relevant evidence, like porn subscriptions. They note this evidence was nevertheless admitted at trial, possibly due to its “motive” value, but concede it’s more prejudicial than probative.

5. Duct Tape, Search Participation, and Incriminating Behavior

[48:02 – 54:24]

• The Two Hour Duct Tape Excursion: Scott takes two hours to obtain duct tape for search fliers the day after Laci’s disappearance; duct tape was later found on Laci’s body.
• Scott’s Search Behavior: Testimony that Scott avoided active search participation, once sitting in a parked car for 45 minutes instead of searching. Multiple unaffiliated witnesses confirm Scott’s unusual detachment.

“There’s no point...Why waste your time in searching? He knows exactly where his wife is—she’s in the bottom of the bay. I actually think that's pretty good evidence.”
— Brett [49:27]

• Golfing While Grieving: Scott played golf days after Laci and Conner were found, betraying little visible emotion compared to family and national grief.

6. Revisiting the Crime Scene and Nursery

[54:24 – 61:21]

• Trips to Berkeley Marina: Police GPS tracking showed Scott repeatedly revisited the area where Laci’s and Conner’s bodies were later found—interpreted as “consciousness of guilt.”
• Treatment of Nursery: By February (around the baby’s due date), Scott had turned the unborn baby’s nursery into a storage room, ignoring the traditional grief response of preserving the space.

“Compare this to the way people treat the rooms of victims all the time...yet for Scott, they haven't even found the bodies yet.”
— Brett [59:55]

7. The Concrete Anchors – The Central Physical Evidence

[61:21 – 70:04]

• Homemade Anchor(s): Scott made a concrete anchor at his warehouse. Prosecution asserted multiple anchors were made, based on void marks and residue, supporting the theory Scott weighted the body down.
• Debate over Excess Concrete: The defense claimed Scott used excess concrete to fill a hole at his house, but a state expert said the composition didn’t match the anchor’s concrete (defense expert disagreed—jury sided with prosecution).

“If you've seen the documentary, you know that there's a big deal made about what Scott did with the excess concrete...but prosecution actually called an expert in concrete...The jury heard this information...and apparently they came down on the side of the prosecution expert.”
— Brett [66:50]

8. Approach to Evidence & Next Steps

[70:04 – 74:25]

• The hosts re-emphasize that they are taking listeners through the complete prosecution case, as the jury would have heard it.
• They promise one more episode to wrap up both prosecution and defense cases.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Emotional vs. Circumstantial Evidence:
  “This is not emotion...it's about the fact that he was having an affair, that he was able to act this way when his wife was supposedly missing, that he was able to lie with this amount of ease, both to Amber and the detectives and to Diane Sawyer and... everybody else... that's what this is about.”
  — Brett [33:03]

• On the Significance of Detachment:
  “It is possible that Scott is a psychopath who didn’t murder his wife. That’s possible. But I am trying... to imagine the state I would be in if my wife was murdered while carrying my child...I would be locked in a dark room with a bottle of Jack Daniels, drinking myself into oblivion.”
  — Brett [51:57]

• On Prosecutorial Fairness:
  “We are presenting to you exactly what the jury heard in a much, much condensed manner. But we're not picking and choosing what facts to share with you. We are taking you through the trial.”
  — Alice [73:11]

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Summary Timeline of Notable Segments

• [06:06 – 16:09]: Amber Frey’s discovery, cooperation, and pivotal recorded phone calls
• [19:00 – 23:10]: Vigil call audio—Scott’s chilling detachment
• [23:16 – 29:27]: Diane Sawyer interview, Scott’s lying habits
• [33:22 – 38:30]: Timeline speculations, mailbox rental, comparison to other family homicide cases
• [39:26 – 43:49]: Mopping evidence and porn channel subscriptions
• [44:03 – 47:41]: Law on admissible vs. prejudicial evidence explaining 404(b)
• [48:02 – 54:24]: Scott’s search avoidance, duct tape delay, golfing and behavioral red flags
• [54:24 – 61:21]: Marina visits, nursery treatment, and the psychology behind such actions
• [61:21 – 70:04]: Concrete anchors and expert testimony battle
• [70:04 – episode end]: Meta-commentary on evidence inclusion and preview of final episode

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Final Thoughts

Alice and Brett emphasize their balanced prosecutorial approach—reviewing both strong and ambiguous evidence—and note that Scott’s repeated dishonesty, apathy during the search, and practical preparations for life without Laci and Conner are deeply incriminating, even if the physical evidence is sometimes circumstantial. The episode repeatedly explores the psychological angle: what Scott’s actions mean for jurors trying to assess guilt in a case without a confession and limited direct physical evidence.

Listeners are reminded that all presented evidence was before the jury, that more complexity remains (especially regarding the defense narrative), and that next week’s episode will attempt to wrap up this exhaustive case analysis.

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Transcript

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[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

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[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

I'm brett.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

And I'm alice.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

And we are the prosecutors. Today on the Prosecutors, we continue our investigation into the murders of Lacey and Connor Peterson. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always, with my superior, co host Alice.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Thanks, Brett. That was really nice.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Now, I'm not saying superior to who I'm.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

I know who it's to.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

If people want to assume that you're superior to me, that's fine. I'm fine with that. But I'm just throwing it out there.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

At least it's not inferior. Thank you very much. Exactly.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

No, you were very much. We are co hosts. We are equals in this endeavor. Alice doesn't just sit here and say full body chills the whole time. She's like, come On. Yeah, whatever, Whatever. We wouldn't want that.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Anyway, you're on a tear today.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

What's up?

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

I don't know. I don't know. I just, you know, just making jokes. I got lots of jokes, so. But we are so glad to be back with you guys doing this Scott Peterson case. Lacy Peterson. Connor Peterson. This is our fourth episode. I don't know, I think we're gonna get finished today, Alice, but I'm not sure. We might, I don't know, have a record fifth episode.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

If we don't, sometimes we just get excited and can't stop commenting about and there's so much to comment about in this case. So I. I'm not. I'm not totally sure we're gonna finish today. But that's okay.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah, it's okay. People, you know, just giving people what they want. They want to hear a lot.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Did I just hear some clinking of some whiskey?

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah, that was whiskey. Sorry.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

So maybe this is probably like a six episode thing.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah, possibly. Who can say? Who can say? Do want to say? Before we get started, Alice and I were just talking about Hannah Hill, who we've mentioned before, but we've mentioned her at the end of the podcast. I want to mention her here at the beginning when you guys are still listening and you hadn't gotten bored with us. Hannah's doing all the art for our podcast these days. So these awesome pieces of art you're seeing with the podcast she is doing and she is brilliant and awesome and you guys should check her out at Sirius moonlight on Instagram. You'll see the stuff that she's done for us as well as some of the other stuff she's doing. So I hope you guys will check her out. I hope you'll support her. We need to support people like Hannah. She's amazing. And I mean, I don't know. She's amazing.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Brett and I were talking about this. So Hannah does not listen to our podcast before she creates the art. We tell her the case we're going to do. And like good artists and smart artists, she is able to grasp the core of these issues and create these beautiful pieces that you guys see that when you look at the picture, you automatically know what case it is. It goes to the heart of the case. And again, she doesn't listen to us before she does it. So I'm so impressed. Hannah, thank you for your work and go support her, guys.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah. And just take this case. You know, the art she did for this case was McKenzie, the dog with the leash and that might not be the thing that someone would think about, who just casually thought about this case. And yet that is so important in some ways. It's the heart, this case, what Mackenzie was doing and the fact that she was found wandering around or he was found wandering around. And we're going to talk more about that today, actually, as we get into this case. We have started on the prosecution's case. We're going to continue that today. And we are, you know, we're not going to rush this thing. We'll get as far as we get. If we finish the story today, that's great. If not, we'll be back next week with more. But in any event, Alice, I will turn it over to you.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Absolutely. So last time we ended with a bit of a teaser. We were getting to Amber Fry. And now Amber is one of Scott's girlfriends. And I say that because he's had at least three girlfriends during the course of his marriage to Lacey. And Amber had no idea that she was the affair, that she was the girlfriend. She did not know Scott was married. And it's wild that the police had a press conference to introduce this woman, Amber Fry, to the world. They were concerned that the National Enquirer would get there first. Now, this is really interesting. As you guys know, the media was covering Scott and Lacey's case 24 7. And so Amber came forward, and they wanted to keep it a secret as long as possible. But the media got a tip that the National Enquirer would probably break the story, and they didn't want to be beat by the National Enquirer.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

And this is so interesting on so many fronts because it shows you the damage the media can do. Really. I mean, I don't want to be critical of the media here. You get this story, you got to run with it. But the police were using Amber. Amber was recording conversations that she was having with Scott, attempting to get him to give information about this case and maybe even admit this case. And that was incredibly valuable for them. But all of a sudden, they see that they're going to lose this incredibly valuable resource they have. And so it's one of those things where they have to get out ahead of it. Alice mentioned that this is at least the third girlfriend Scott had. Alice and I were talking about this a little bit before we got started. It's crazy. One of the girlfriends actually walked in on Scott and Lacey in bed. And you got to imagine this woman's thinking, my boyfriend's cheating on me with some other woman. And in fact, he's in bed with his wife. So.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Right. So the other girlfriends didn't know that they were the affairs. And now this is something that's really interesting, Brett. When you said that the other girlfriend walked in on him and Lacey, that means there was no doubt that Lacey knew he was a philanderer, that he cheated on her. Now, where this fell in their marriage, you know, where it fell with respect to when she got pregnant or when she found out she was pregnant, it's not clear to me. But she knew that he was a cheater and she stayed with him. Now, this isn't uncommon. She's married to him and, you know, eventually she gets pregnant with his son. And I can imagine wanting to make it work. But this is not a situation where Lacy was in the dark about the girlfriends or at least one.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Let me say this. I'm not going to criticize Lacey at all, because lots of people make a lot of things work, particularly when there's a kid on the way. Right. But I think one thing about that, that we can say, you hear from Scott's family a lot about how Lacy never said a bad word about Scott, how Lacy never complained about Scott. That doesn't mean there wasn't anything going on in that marriage, and it doesn't mean that marriage didn't have problems. Apparently, Lacy was one of those people who, whatever was going on in her marriage, she kept to herself because she certainly had reason to complain about Scott. She certainly had reason to say bad things about him. If other women that he's having affairs with are walking in on them in bed, she could have complained about that, but she apparently did not. So to the extent there's this. They had a perfect marriage other than the fact he's cheating on her, her with Amber, we don't know that because we don't know that Lacy would share any problems they were having in their marriage. And this is one of those things we could probably talk about a lot. I don't know if we want to talk about it right now or later, but you do have to wonder if with a child on the way, at some point, Lacy said to Scott, this has to stop. We got us. We got a child on the way. We have to be. You have to be committed to this marriage.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

We.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Or you need to go.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

And you know, Brett, I've known of women friends and guy friends who've had this conversation, and oftentimes there is a change in the guy. He's like, you know what? I need to grow up. I'm not in college. Anymore. I don't get to kind of live the. The, you know, twenties lifestyle anymore. And there does come a change. So if they did have that conversation, I've known those conversations to go well before. And for whatever reason, Scott decided not to change. Not only not to change, but to kind of lean harder into this. Into this life that he was living. So Amber gets introduced to the world through this press conference. And what we found out from that press conference is that Amber met Scott through a friend who told her that he was perfect for her. Apparently, Scott had hit on her friend. And we talked about this earlier, Sean Sibley at a trade conference. But Shawn was engaged at the time, and so Shawn wasn't interested. Still, it didn't stop them from having a conversation about Shawn's favorite sexual positions. And Scott also told Shawn that he had once loved a woman, but he'd lost her. So Shawn told Scott, I have a perfect person for you. And that's when Shawn introduced Scott to Amber. So after hearing some rumors, Sean reached out to a friend of Scott's in early December to see if he was, in fact, married. And that friend told her that she'd need to talk to Scott about that, which is a very weird response.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Right?

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

I think the friend either worked for Scott or worked at the same company as Scott and maybe didn't want to be the one to say, yeah, he's married.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

No, I agree with that. I just mean, if I were Sean and Scott's friend told me that response, I would be like, oh, dang, he's really married. I would not think, oh, there's some, you know, great, deep story about this. But anyways, Sean then calls Scott and confronts him about this issue of whether he's married. And Scott admits that he lied to her, but he's adamant that he's not married. Instead, that's when he says the fact that he's lost this woman that he once loved. Now, that's a pretty vague word as well, that he lost her. It doesn't indicate whether there's been a death, there was a breakup. It's just vague. I mean, what do you think of that when you hear the word I lost her?

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah. I'm not sure what. What he was doing here. I don't know if you told me that you lost someone. My assumption is they are dead. Right? I mean, typically, I don't know that people say, if they get a divorce, I don't think someone says, I lost my husband. I think they say, I got divorced. So when he's telling Amber this, you know, Sean confronts him and so he feels like, well, I have to tell Amber now. I have to tell her something. This whole, I lost my wife and this is my first holidays without her. I. I'm thinking, his wife died, he's a widower. This is, this is going to be really tough for him. He's going through his first holidays thinking about the love of his life who's now passed away. I mean, that. That's what. What I would be thinking. And I think that's certainly what Scott intended for Amber to hear when he said that.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Yeah, no, absolutely. So like you said, Scott tells Amber this, that this is going to be the first holidays without his now lost wife. And Scott also told Amber that he was going to Europe over the holidays. And he carries on this ruse, as you've heard the timeline before. He calls Amber and pretends that he's in different airports in different cities. So now Amber is no dummy and she begins to figure things out when she watches the news.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Before we get to that, I want to talk about the timing here. And I'm curious what you think about this. We said at the beginning, I think the very first sort of intro line idea was, did Scott kill his wife or is he the most unlucky man in the world? Because if you think Scott killed his wife, then you have him telling Amber this is his first holidays without his wife, that he lost her. Right. And that he's going away to Europe, so he's going to be out of pocket for a while. And that sets up perfectly with him murdering his wife before the holidays so that he is without her during the holidays. And being in a position where Amber's not going to think it unusual if she doesn't see him for a while while he's taking care of this. Now, on the other hand, if it's just an affair, of course he needs to be away on the holidays because he has all these obligations as a family man that he's not getting. He's not going to be able to see Amber on Christmas, for instance, because he's gonna be need. He's gonna need to be doing stuff with Lacy and her family. I don't know what you thought about that, Alice, or which way you think it cuts.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

I mean, it's hard not to be shaded. But we, by what we know happens ultimately. Right? And we'll get to this. But we do know that Scott calls Amber from the candlelight vigil for Lacey. And I mean, even if you were pretending, even if you were just making up the story about being abroad because you have family obligations. That is very different from calling from your missing wife's candlelight vigil to continue this lie. A lie has to end at some point, especially when you realize you are a national story splashed all over the news.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

And we're not going to play the hours and hours. I think there's 29 hours of calls. If you want to listen to them, you can listen to them. I don't know if we'll play them all, but maybe we'll play this one.

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[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Maybe it's worth listening to, because I want all of you out there who are married to imagine this. Look, we got lots of different fans and lots of different places. And I'm sure many of you are in different places in your life. Some of you are probably in marriages that are unhappy. I'm sorry about that. Or relationships that are unhappy. A lot of you may have children. A lot of you may have children with people who maybe you don't necessarily like very much, but I bet you like your kids. And I just want you to think about if you were in a situation where your child. Forget about Lacy. You know, maybe Scott doesn't like Lacy. Maybe he doesn't love her anymore. Maybe he doesn't care about her anymore. Maybe he cares so little about her that if she died, he. He wouldn't care. He's like George in Seinfeld, when George's wife, she's licking the envelopes and she poisons herself and she dies. And it's sort of. I don't know, it's probably the worst Seinfeld storyline. But in any event, George, he sees this as, like, freeing him from having to be married? Maybe he felt that way. But how many of you feel that way about your kids? How many of you feel about your kids with your ex wives, your ex husbands that way? I'm gonna go with none of you. I'm gonna go with all of you. Love your kids with everything you are. And you probably loved them, you know, when they were eight months in the womb and a month away or two months away from being born. Imagine. Imagine that you were in this circumstance. Yeah. You didn't love Lacy. Yeah. You were in a relationship with somebody else. You like that person better. But now the mother of your unborn child is missing. Would you be able, physically able to do what Scott did? Would you be able to carry on this ruse with some other woman when your son is missing and maybe dead somewhere? I mean, if it were me, I would be. I don't know. What I would look like to the outside observer. Right? Like, I can't tell you that. And we talk about this all the time. I don't know what you would see from me. I don't know if I'd be crying. I don't know if I'd be stoic. But I'll tell you what I couldn't do. I could not call my girlfriend from the vigil, from my missing wife, the one who's eight months pregnant, and talk the way Scott talks. I could not do that. I could not accomplish that. I just couldn't do it. It would be impossible for me to pull that off.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Yeah. The flippancy and airiness in his voice is.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Let's go.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

To be the best actor in the whole world.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

I'm going to mark. I'm going to mark it right here for the. For the purpose of this.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

That's right.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

We're going to play this right now. I want you to listen to this. We'll be back in a second.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Hello?

Baby? Yes, Amber?

Can you hear me?

Yeah.

You can?

[Sleep Number Mattress Announcer]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Hey.

Oh my goodness.

I found a quiet place. That's pretty good, huh?

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

That's really good.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Oh my God. Like been all this crazy static and stuff. I'm like, ah, so frustrated.

I'm not even trying to call it working. Amber. Yes, Amber. Oh, no, stop. Amber, I'm right there. Amber, are you there?

Yes, Amber, I can hear you.

Hey.

Yes.

Okay. There you go. I'm talking.

Okay. I'm like, stay still or something.

I know. I got a mood to make it work.

How's your. How was your New year?

What's that?

How was your new year?

It's good. I just. I went far now, so I came out another hour. Quiet alley. Isn't that nice?

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Yeah, it is. I can hear you.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Very good.

Trudy. Hops and fireworks. Nerds and Eiffel Tower people playing American rock songs.

Uh huh.

That's pretty funny.

Well, that's good. I'm glad you guys decided to go out.

Oh, definitely.

I can never remember your friend's name. I know, Jeff, but you always say, oh, bumps once.

And then we have Taqua, a friend of ours. Oh, he said, yeah,

resolution. What was that?

Should be. Should be. What should my New Year's resolution be?

Oh, I don't know. That was my question and everything.

Oh, I didn't think of that. I'll tell something good.

Yeah, you'll have to tell. So.

So where are you headed?

Well, I don't. Did you get my message?

No. Did you leave him? Yeah. I have a message.

I left you a message because I was like, well, I hope you at least get that. But I was going to. Or the sec. The San Francisco thing didn't work out, so I'm probably most likely gonna go later to Sean. So are you there?

Hello?

Hello? Are you there?

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Brett, I have nothing more to add except that it's chilling to hear his voice in such a flippant manner when we know what's happening in the background. You've seen video of it. There are hundreds of candles lit and strangers crying for Lacey. And here he is stepping off to the side to give his girlfriend of a couple of weeks a phone call and lying that he's in Paris. And we may have skipped ahead just a little bit, but let me tell you, the reason we have these recorded calls is when Amber realizes who Scott is, she does the right thing. She calls the police. And instead of outing that she knew who. Who Scott was and that he was lying to her, Amber agreed to cooperate and to record her phone calls with Scott. And that's how we have so many hours of recorded phone call between Scott and Amber. And, I mean, you heard that elaborate lie. He says he's in Paris. He's talking about intricate details, like fireworks at the Eiffel Tower. Not just that he's at the Eiffel Tower. I mean, it is an incredibly detailed lie that goes on for hours of conversations, for days, for weeks. Now, Amber and Scott, they talk dozens and dozens of times. There's about 29 recorded hours of calls. Brett, That's a lot of calls.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah, a lot. It went on and on and on.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Right?

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

And now Scott claims he only talked with Amber to keep her from going public lest it interfere with the investigation. How magnanimous of him. So in his. In his own defense of himself, he says, oh, I only kept talking to Amber because I didn't want her to suspect something was wrong or that she would turn against me. And then if she went public, then I knew the whole world would focus on the affair I had and not on my pregnant, missing wife. And, you know, at some point in these phone calls, Scott does admit to Amber that his wife has disappeared. I mean, at this point, it's been in the news for such a long time. And so there's really nothing else he can do but to admit to Amber. But he doesn't admit to her fully. He doesn't say, I'm sorry. I've been lying. It's all bad on me. He again turns it that he was doing this for the good of his missing wife. All of this time, Scott has shied away from the media. We've talked about how he covers his face when he's walking to his car, whenever the paparazzi are right there in front of his house. He doesn't talk to anyone. And the narrative against him is strong. The media can't get him to talk. And so they start interpreting his actions or inactions. Scott decides, you know what, he's going to take matters into his own hands. I don't know why he decides to do this, but he decides to give an interview, an exclusive interview, where he will sit down one on one with Diane Sawyer. Now you have to imagine what a big deal this was at the time. No one had really even heard his voice. He hadn't made pleas to the media, he hadn't spoken to the media. He covered his face whenever he saw the media. And now he agreed to do a kind of a tell all with Diane Sawyer. And during that interview, you've seen these interviews, You've probably watched this interview. It's close ups of Diane's face and Scott's face. And people are analyzing every tick, every blink, every sideways glance of his. And before we get to what he talks about, Brett, I think at this point, the narrative was so strong against him. He only had. He only had things to lose by giving this interview.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

You know what this reminds me of, Alice? And we've seen it. We've seen it a dozen times. It's the guy who testifies, right? Who's. Who is getting crushed, just crushed, because all the evidence is against him and he's obviously guilty. And his lawyer is like, whatever you do, don't testify. And he's like, nope, I'm gonna testify. And you've seen it before. They believe they are so slick and so smooth and so smart and so manipulating that they can get up there on that stand and convince a jury. Who you going to believe, Me or your lion eyes?

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Right.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Who are you going to believe? Me or all that evidence? Obviously you're going to believe me. That's what it reminds me of. Somebody who is so confident in their own ability to manipulate other people that they think if I just get a moment to speak, I'll be able to convince everybody to be on my side. That's what it reminds me of.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

You're totally right, Brett. I hadn't thought about that analogy. And you know what? I don't think everyone. You always have the constitutional right to testify. You also have the constitutional right not to testify against yourself. Now, I have only ever seen the situation where someone testifies and does what you just explained. They think they can win over the jury against all the evidence. They are very full of themselves and they are usually very guilty based on the evidence of the crime they are being accused of. I have yet to see someone take the stand who I believe their story that they were innocent. Now, that doesn't mean everyone we try is necessarily guilty. I just mean the ones who take the stand are so full of themselves in the sense that they have gotten things their way their whole lives. They've been able to get away with affairs and talk their way out of getting into trouble time and time again. And they think that this jury trial will just be another example of them being able to smooth talk their way out of it. And I've yet to see it be successful.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Right. No, I think that's right. And we see that here in this. In this interview with Diane Sawyer.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Right. And so, of course, this is after the Amber Frey revelation. And so Diane asks, you are having an affair. This has a lot of implications. People automatically go to think you killed your wife because you had this girlfriend that you loved and you wanted a life with her. And Scott says during this interview, he lies. He says, no, no, no. I told the police on the very night that they entered that Lacey disappeared, they interviewed me and they. And I told them I have an affair. But the reason I wanted to keep it quiet. Again, he says it's to protect the investigation and to keep the attention on Lacey. Now, here's the thing. We have video recording of his interview with the police on December 24th when Lacey disappeared. And Scott was asked point blank during that interview if there were any problems in his marriage with Lacey. And he answered, no. Now, a detective would later testify that he asked Scott if he had a girlfriend. And, and Scott also said no. The detective did not include this in his very detailed reports, which we've talked about before. If you leave something out of your report and it becomes an important part of the story later, the defense is going to hammer on it at trial. And that's what the defense did here. Now, here's probably what happened. It didn't seem important at the time. They didn't know about Amber Fry. They didn't know there was a girlfriend. So there are so many details to put in a report. This ended up being a really important detail.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

And to distinguish this from what we said before, because I like to stay consistent, we really hammered this in the Michael Peterson case because in that case, you had These murder detectives, murder detectives, these homicide detectives who showed up at Michael Peterson's house and said that they saw dried blood, and this has become a big thing, that there was dried blood. And that means Kathleen Peterson had been dead for a while because the blood had dried. But they didn't put that in their report. That's an incredibly important fact. And it's a fact that they would have recognized as incredibly important the moment they saw it. It's not like this, like Alice said, whether he had a girlfriend or not, him saying no. It's only important if he's lying. So you can understand them not putting it in their report. And the other thing is, whatever was in the report and whatever was asked, we have this video. Did you have problems in your marriage? I mean, the detective could have been more specific. But if Scott doesn't think him having an affair with another woman when his wife's eight months pregnant is a problem in his marriage, then that tells you a lot in of itself.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

This, again, you're. You're right. He reminds me of those who decide to take the stand, defendants who decide to take the stand. And it's obvious they're lying, right? It's obvious to the jury, it's obvious to us. It's obvious to the judge and even to their own counsel that they're lying. He knows that the police make reports of their interview, and so he knows he told them something different than he's telling Diane Sawyer on national television. Why does he do that? Because I think he's used to lying his way out of things. A lot of people who lie think that no one checks behind them, and oftentimes people don't. Right. If you tell your boss, I can't come to work today, my kid is sick most of the time, no one's going to call your house or your pediatrician to make sure your kid is sick when you take a sick day. And so a lot of people are used to lying. It just rolls off their sleeve. And I think Scott is used to lying all the time.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

He's been getting away with it for years.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Right. And even when he's caught, there don't seem to be consequences.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Exactly. So another thing that I just want to address. When we said we were going to do this on Twitter, there were people who said this was all about emotion. People convicted him on the basis of emotion. They convicted him because they didn't like the fact he was having an affair. And that was all emotion based. And it had anything to do whether or not he killed Lacy and that's just not true. This is not emotion. It may evoke emotions in you, and it should, but what this is, is circumstantial evidence of someone who, number one, lies with ease, number two, has no apparent concern for his wife or his child. And I just want to continue to distinguish this from what people often point to, which is the outward show of remorse or concern, the crying or the not crying or the being stoic or the not being stoic. This is not that. This is something so much more fundamental than that. This is not about emotion. It's not about how you feel about the fact he was having an affair. It's about the fact that he was having an affair, that he was able to act this way when his wife was supposedly missing, that he was able to lie with this amount of ease, both to Amber and the detectives and to Diane Sawyer and. And everybody else. That's what this is about. Not. Not. Scott's a bad guy, therefore, you need to convict him. It's not that at all. And the fact that that emotion comes along with this doesn't mean you should discount this as evidence, as legitimate circumstantial evidence that Scott is guilty of murdering his wife.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Absolutely, Brett. That's a great, great distinction to draw. Now the timeline gets even more hairy when it comes to Amber. On December 23, the day before Lacey goes missing, Scott rented a mailbox app, mailboxes, etc. So he could receive letters from Amber. The prosecution put this evidence on, but honestly, which way does it cut? See, if Scott were planning on killing Lacey the next day or even that night, why does he need a fake mailbox? Couldn't the mail just come to his own mailbox and no one would catch him? But also, it's possible that Lacey learned about Amber somehow that night, and that's why the murder happened when it did. So it may have just been the timing. Maybe he rented the mailbox on December 23rd. Maybe she saw the receipt for mailboxes, etc. And said, why are you getting a mailbox? We have a mailbox at our house. Are you having an affair again? And maybe when things got heated, he decided, you know, now is the time to act. So obviously, the prosecution thought it cut in favor of their story, which is why they presented it. But I'm not sure it's very clear cut. And that's what's so difficult about this case, is that there are so many facts that could cut one way or the other.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah, I think about. And I don't know how much you know about the Chris Watts case, Alice. It's a case that I never want to do, and we are never going to do.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

It makes me too sad. It makes me too sad. I don't know as much as I should, just because it makes me too sad.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah, we're never gonna do that case. So if you want that case, sorry, we're never doing it. That was the case that I started watching the documentary with my wife, and like, three minutes into the documentary, she was crying, and we stopped watching it.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

So those of you who know Brett's wife, like, he's the softy in relation in the relationship.

[Kiana (Shopify Testimonial)]

Absolutely.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

She's like the Iron Lady. But she just couldn't do it. And I didn't want to. Frankly, I didn't want to do it either. And there's so many similarities between Scott and Chris Watts, except Chris Watts was a really bad murderer. And he. He totally. He was never going to get away with it because, frankly, the way he disposed of the bodies, if he disposed of the bodies in a little bit better way, maybe he could have gotten away with it, but he was never going to. But we know so much about what happened in that case, because eventually he cracked. He broke, and he told us what happened. Scott's never going to crack. He's never going to crack and tell us what happened. So we're never gonna know those details. And that's one of the reasons we have so many holes that we don't necessarily have in the Chris Watts case. But I think it's similar. If you can sort of. If you take out everything Chris Watts told us, there's a lot of similar circumstantial evidence in both these cases. So we don't know. It's possible, frankly, maybe not even that unlikely, that some point on the 23rd or early on the 24th, Lacy discovered something that triggered this murder. I think that is highly likely that it really wasn't as planned as we say it is now. I say that turning Back to the December 8th and December 9th web searches about Currents in San Francisco makes you think it was pretty premeditated. But it's possible. It's possible it wasn't, or it's possible he wasn't going to do it. Then you could even imagine a circumstance in which Scott Peterson intended for Lacy to have that baby and then he was gonna off her. I mean, that's a possibility. I don't know.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Right.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

I don't know, Brett.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

It's hard to say. It's just impossible to say what exactly happened. And it's one of the strongest points for the defense that we just don't know what happened on the 23rd and the 24th, what would have triggered this murder, how the murder would have gone down, and these sort of individual steps Scott would have taken. We talk about this all the time. The best story wins. This is a huge missing chapter in this story for the prosecution. They just do not know what it was that happened that day. I mean, of all days, the day before Christmas to murder your wife. What it was, Was this planned? Was it random? They don't know.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Real quick on that. I, I, and I don't know. I don't have any more answers than you, Brett, but when you just noted, you know, maybe he had planned on Lacy having Connor and then offing her, I find that hard to believe because I don't think he wanted to be tied down with a wife or a child. Because back to the conversation with Amber. If he, if he had kids and he said no, I mean, who.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

That's good.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

That is, that is a. I can't even, I can't even. It's hard to lie about something like that. And again, so easily, because what would happen in like a month when he had a baby?

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

That's a good point. That's a good point. He probably didn't intend to do that.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Right.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Okay, sorry, I've cut you off. There's a lot more to cover. Let's keep covering things.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

This is why Alice is such a good prosecutor. Okay.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

This is why people think I'm cold hearted.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

So let's, let's run through a few other things that the prosecution brought up at trial as evidence against Scott. One of them we've mentioned briefly before, and that was sort of the cleaning of the house. So Scott told the police the reason the mops were out was because Lacy was going to mop the floor that morning. But the maid had been there literally, literally the day before. So she'd been there on December 23rd and she had mopped the entire house. This was not a maid that they had just hired. She had cleaned the house before. So apparently she wasn't so awful at her job that Lacy would think, I'm eight months pregnant, but by goodness, I got to mop this floor again because she missed a spot or whatever.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

And it's hard to believe that she would go through all that trouble to mop the house when no one's coming over. Right. She, they're going over to her parents house for Christmas Eve. And so it's not like she's preparing for guests, right?

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah. Now, I guess she was having this Christmas brunch where she's going to serve the. Whatever, the Grand Marnier French toast that she made. I guess they were having that on Christmas, I guess. But it still doesn't explain why she would feel the need to mop the house. Again, it doesn't explain why she would feel the need to mop the house, certainly the whole house. Even if there was some place that needed to be mopped, why'd she need to do that? It doesn't explain why Scott wouldn't just do it for her, other than the jerk defense, which is his ultimate defense for all this stuff. And it doesn't make sense.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

We're not stating the obvious here. The reason this is an issue is that obviously it looks like maybe Scott was mopping up a mess, a mess of perhaps killing his wife, some sort of struggle. But here's the problem. Even if you clean up blood or you clean up things with bleach, with whatever sort of cleaner you use, forensics can be done on it to see whether you used it to clean something like blood. You may not be able to find the blood, but you can find the cleaner and be able to tell if there's been cleaning done. And, Brett, what'd they find?

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

They found nothing. Yeah, nothing.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

And typically, you'll find something.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Now, it's possible. I think the most likely story here if Scott killed his wife is he strangled her to death or smothered her to death. And in an abundance of caution, wherever he murdered her, he mopped. There wasn't any blood. There wasn't really anything to find. But he's freaking out because he just killed his wife. And so he's trying to be thorough. Right. Like, I think that's the most likely story for why this happened. Now, another possibility is that Lacy was going to mop. That is a possibility. And that something happened in between when she decided to do that and when Scott left where he murdered her. I mean, there is always the possibility that this was a spontaneous act because Lacy had stumbled upon something and said, I'm leaving you, or whatever. That is absolutely possible. So that's the cleaning. The other thing people point to that I feel like often doesn't get mentioned in things like the documentary are Scott's interesting additions to his cable package. Once again, you just have to put yourself in this position. Your wife, who you may not love or you may love, is missing with your unborn child. And on January 8, Scott adds the Playboy channel to Their cable that not being sufficient for his needs. Five days later, he drops the Playboy channel and he adds the 10 ecstasy package, which I've never had the 10 ecstasy package. I am familiar with Playboy, but I'm not familiar with the 10 ecstasy package. I understand it is more hardcore than Playboy, so I guess he needed a little bit more in his life than Playboy could provide. But he adds that to his cable package, and I just have to wonder, you know, the sex drive being what it is and for some men, being overwhelming, would you really need a porn channel 10 days after your wife goes missing while you're still looking for her? Is that really something that you would be thinking about in that circumstance?

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Okay, give him the benefit of the doubt, Brett. He's thinking about that, but by adding it. So if this is something he wanted, he could have added it before. But the reason you don't add it is your wife will find it and say, what the heck, man? We are not paying for this, and you're not watching this with me in the house. So if you're adding it to your cable bill, there's the thought that you don't think Lacey's gonna come home to find this added to your cable bill.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Can you imagine if she had been kidnapped by some satanic cult, which we'll get to that later. And had escaped, and she comes back and Scott's added the Tin Ecstasy channel. I mean, wouldn't you be pretty pissed off? Like, that was. That was what your focus was on while I was missing?

[Kiana (Shopify Testimonial)]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Yeah.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Like, there's a lot of things to be mad about. I'd be like, you didn't mop. You went boating in a boat that I didn't even approve you buying, and you got the 10 ecstasy package. We have a lot explaining to do here.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Yeah.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Not to mention Amber. I mean, Amber's just an element, but. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

The prosecution brought this porn in, right? How did they get this in? Did they say it was 404B evidence? Did they actually get to present this? Because my. This is a great fact. But they didn't.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

They did. This is motive. Sorry.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

So my.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

So my.

[Sleep Number Mattress Announcer]

Okay.

[Sprite Living Announcer]

Motive.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Well, no, I don't know.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

I don't know if it's actually motive, but I don't know.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

All I have to say is, wow, that was quite the call, because when I first read that fact, I thought, great fact for the prosecution. But that would be really hard to come in because it doesn't really go to motive. Right. And not really. It just goes to show What a crappy person he is. But it doesn't really go to anything about the crime. And honestly, it's probably more prejudicial than probative. But it was let in.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah, I don't. That's a great question. I'm not sure how it came in. I would have to. I'd have to really dig in. I think there were a lot of. I mean, in this case, we're talking about 404. For those of you guys who missed our 404 discussion. When you have a trial and you're trying to introduce evidence that is not directly related to the crime. So it's not the gun, it's not photos of the crime scene, it's not your fingerprints or DNA, but it's something not directly related. You have to tie it to the case somehow. And if the only connection is this makes you look bad, or this will have an emotional effect on the jury, or, you know, you committed a crime before, so you probably committed this one. Oftentimes that doesn't come in because we don't want the jury making emotional decisions based on bad things you did in the past and say, well, if you order the 10 ecstasy channel, he must have killed his wife.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Right?

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

You don't want that. So you have to do something. You have to introduce it under something called 404, which is a rule of evidence. And essentially it sets out the instances in which you can bring that kind of stuff in. So it shows things like motive or means or absence of mistake or something tied to the crime. So it ties this seemingly unrelated thing actually into the crime. So one example people often use is you have somebody else on trial for a bank robbery, say they committed a bank robbery before. You can't necessarily bring that in. You can't say, well, they committed a bank robbery 10 years ago, so they must have robbed this bank. There's no, like, round up the usual suspects and tag it on the guy who's the bank robber, because we have a bank robbery. But imagine if the person who robbed the banks always wore a clown mask when they committed these robberies. And it's the exact same type of clown mask. And they committed 10 clown masks robberies, and they went to jail for 10 years, and then 10 years expire, they get out of jail and there's another robber who commits a robbery wearing a clown mask. Well, if you try that person, you could bring in all those prior clown masks robberies, because even though they're not directly related to this, this robbery, they show that this is how this person does it. This is their means. This is how they commit this crime. And so you could bring that in. So Alice is pointing to that, saying, what is the connection? It looks bad for Scott, but what is the connection to the crime that actually brings us in and makes it not so much more prejudicial to Scott than probative of his actual guilt that you'd be able to put it in?

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Great explanation, Brad. Sorry for jumping in on that.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Thank you, Alice. My expertise as an evidence teacher. Shining through.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Oh, Brett, we've been talking for, like, almost an hour, and I realized we've gotten through, like, three paragraphs of our episode. So much, so much.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Episode five here, guys. Sorry.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Sorry.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Those of you who hate Scott Peterson, in his case, you may have to endure another one. So in addition to ordering porn, Scott also. The day after Lacy disappears, Lacy's brother is at his house, and they want to put up missing posters. And Lacy's brother, understanding that the greatest tape is duct tape, asks if Scott has any duct tape that he can use to put up some of these posters. And Scott says he will go get some at his warehouse, which is only 10 minutes away. Two hours later, he returns with duct tape. Now, why is this significant? Is it significant? I don't know. But it became evident once the bodies of Lacy and Connor were discovered that duct tape had been used on Lacy's body. If you're wondering about the duct tape, Scott obviously had access to that at his warehouse.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

But what was he doing for two hours? And we don't know that he actually went to his warehouse to get it. Two hours is a really long time, especially when you are in the middle of putting up missing posters. Right. It is. Time is of the essence. And to be gone for two hours. I say that because he says he's going to his warehouse. Maybe he does go to his warehouse. Maybe he takes the time to clean things up.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

I don't know.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Yeah, but this, frankly, goes into Scott's general behavior during the search, which is another thing the prosecution put. So you had one witness who testified that he actually followed Scott from the volunteer center where they had set up to search for Lacy during the search. And he follows Scott to a mall parking lot where Scott literally parks his car and just sits for 45 minutes. You had multiple witnesses who would testify that Scott did not really actively participate in the search. And going back to the purpose of this testimony, it's essentially to show that Scott. There's no point. Why waste your time in searching? Right. He knows exactly where his wife is, she's in the bottom of the bay. I actually think that's pretty good evidence. I think it's pretty strong. Much weaker are the people who talk about how Scott referred to Lacy in the past tense. In television interviews. People say this is significant all the time. Sort of. The purveyors of the junk science of behavioral analysis will tell you that referring to someone in the past tense means that you secretly know they're already dead. Whatever. Everybody who's ever lost someone, everybody who's ever had someone disappear, they may know in their heart of hearts that they're never going to be found, that they are likely deceased, and they may refer to them in the past tense. And in fact, in this case, members of Lacy's family referred to her in the past tense before she was found. So I don't find that all that significant. But what I will say is significant is the fact that Scott's golf game did not suffer while his wife and unborn child were missing. And in fact, Scott was playing golf days after Lacey and Connor were found murdered and dumped in the bay. And I mean, it is possible that Scott is a psychopath who didn't murder his wife. That's possible. But I am trying, I don't want to imagine this, but attempting to imagine the state I would be in if my wife was murdered while carrying my child. I mean, even talking about it sort of like brings tears to my eyes. I would be locked in a dark room with a bottle of Jack Daniels, drinking myself into oblivion. If that happened, I would not be playing golf.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

And, you know, I think when we talk about emotion, that's exactly right, Brett. I think people around the country who didn't even know Lacey were reacting the way that you said you would react. And they didn't even know her just because of how tragic the story is. This eight month pregnant woman murdered and her unborn son murdered as well. I mean, there were people on the news who didn't know her, who were bawling their eyes out when the news came back that the DNA results matched that of Lacey and Connor. And the police said that Scott had almost no reaction when they told him about the DNA results. Again, it's hard to peg how someone should act in tragedy. But like you said, it is hard not to react. And we saw time and time again people all over the country reacting in probably more typical ways than Scott did.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

And I'll just say this, I always thought it was appropriate. He was arrested at a golf course. You know, he was arrested at Torrey Pines, which. Those of you who've played the old Microsoft golf game, you know, Torrey Pines back and forth. But that's where he was arrested, and it's an appropriate place because he cared more about playing golf than he did about his wife and child.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Right? And there's just a lot. I mean, the. The prosecution has a lot of nuggets like this, right? They also have all of Scott's trips to the marina because the police put a GPS tracker on Scott's car on at least three occasions before Lacey was found. Police tracked Scott. Scott to the Berkeley Marina. And apparently, he would just drive there, which, remember, is about an hour and a half from his house, and he'd sit and stare out over the water. That is a weird thing to do. Now, here's what's weird. You just mentioned, Brett, that one of the volunteers for the search observed that Scott drove to a parking lot and just sat there for 45 minutes. If you were trying to keep up the ruse, I would think that he'd actively participate in the search and. And make sure that they stay away from where the body ultimately is. The marina, right? Be like, well, she loves the. This trail in the forest. Let's go look in the forest. Right? She. I always told her, don't go out there.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

You're.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

You're very pregnant now, and there's lots of twigs and things that you can trip on. I would think that he'd be actively leading them away, but it's so strange, and I think just goes to his psychology when he's sitting there for 45 minutes and then does the same thing when he thinks no one's watching. He goes to the Berkeley Marina. Now, that might be because he knows he dumped the bodies there, and he's hoping no one finds out. Being overcome by guilt, what have you. Or it might just be he's feeling a different type of guilt if he had nothing to do with Lacy's murder, that he knows this was where he was when she disappeared, and if he weren't there, he could have been there to protect her. I'm. I'm just giving two sides of the story because.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

And that's a. That's very, you know, very considerate of you and thoughtful of you. For Scott, this, for me, is one of the biggest pieces of evidence, because to me, it shows so much consciousness of guilt. It seems like the kind of thing you would do if you had committed a crime, you'd murdered somebody, and you had disposed of the evidence in the bay. And it's like, you're constantly drawn back there because, you know, that's where it's all at, right? I mean, that's what it's all about. They're either gonna find it or they're not. And if they don't find it, you're good. And just the psychological pull back to that place where the evidence is located, to me, that's huge. That's huge that he keeps going back there. So I don't know. When I read that, for me, that was. That was. It wasn't even that big a piece of the prosecution's case. But for me personally, and this goes to jurors, and we talked about this before, that for each juror, there may be one thing that triggers them and one thing that convinces them. For me, this would be a big piece of evidence.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Brett, you know what this reminds me of? This actually reminds me of our hinterkaifeck episode with the ax murderer. Now, it's still technically an unsolved case, but in our episode, we think a lot of suspicion falls on Lorenz, who was Victoria's fiance and they did not ultimately get married, and who claimed paternity of her son, who was very likely not Lorenz's son. And one of the pieces of evidence that we thought pointed to the fact that he was probably. He may have been guilty of their murders was that he kept going back to the place where they were murdered and staring at the ground and talking about digging a grave for them.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Exactly, yeah. Very similar. I mean, and that's the thing. Scott's not a murderer, right? I mean, he's not, like, inherently a killer. We don't know that he's ever killed anybody before, and he probably hadn't ever killed anybody before. So no matter how committed he was to doing this, and whether he did it or not, it would have had a psychological impact on him, and he would have done things on the basis of this murder. And this feels like that. It feels like. Like you said, like what Loren's did. It just the constantly coming back to it or even. I mean, there's so many. We did. We talked about the Amityville horror. We talked about the murders that underlie that, and the fact that Butch just keeps coming back to the crime and recreating it and telling a new story. It's the same type of thing. Just being drawn back to this moment. And I think that's what you see here.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Right. You know what's so strange for me about this? This piece of evidence, though? This seems to be the only time Scott seems to feel any remorse about what he did, because. Let's talk about the nursery. Remember, they were about to welcome Connor, their baby boy, and they had a nursery set up. It was being decorated by Lacy. It had, like, a boat theme, a lighthouse theme. And when the police returned to the Peterson home in February. So Lacy's been gone for almost two months. Scott had essentially turned the nursery into a storage room. There was still the crib in there, but he'd piled a mattress and office chairs and clothes and other items into it. And some of the items had come from his warehouse. So the defense argued that this was just to keep the media from looking through the windows. But we have a picture of what the prosecution submitted as evidence at trial, and you can see that that just doesn't hold water. There's a lot of junk in the nursery, but it's not piled up against a window. The window has blinds. The blinds are drawn. It doesn't look like you can see through those blinds. So it doesn't seem like those things are piled in there to keep the media from looking in. Really. It looks like a pile of junk. And now, okay, it's been two months. Maybe he's lost all hope that his wife and son are safe and that they'll come home one day. But to treat this precious room so carelessly again goes to kind of that lack of remorse, lack of care for the fact that this is his baby boy's room, a room that he'll never come back to.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

And just compare this to the way people treat the rooms of victims all the time. You know, it is almost cliche that parents who lose a child will often keep the room as a shrine. They don't change it. You know, it's. They walked out that day when they were 15 years old and they were murdered. And 10 years later, if you walked into their room, it looks exactly like it did the day they left it. I mean, that you hear that all. All the time. And yet for Scott, they haven't even found the bodies yet. They don't know. For all he knows, for all he knows, she's just had that baby, you know, and yet this is what he's doing.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

That's a good point. You know, February is when his baby was due, and so there's even more importance in that month. You can imagine the grief of a parent if this is the month that their child was supposed to come home and that room is empty. But to treat it like a storage closet makes that really demeans the room. And things are not orderly in there. It's not like he wanted to put things in there because he needed room. I mean, it really looks like a pile of junk.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

No, it really does. And we're going to put this image, which was an exhibit the prosecution entered into evidence. We'll put this up on the website and you can take a look at that for yourself and tell us what you think. And it's. It's like in the middle, right? Like, I could imagine. Two responses. One is, you don't change a thing. The other is you change everything. Like, the room is, like, completely different. I can imagine that response. That's a rational response. I just want to. I don't even want to think about this as the nursery. I'm going to change everything. He doesn't do that. It's just piled full of junk. That's all it is. And this story that it was to keep the media from looking in the windows is bs. Whatever he was doing here, that wasn't what he was doing. So you can forget that. So we're definitely going to end up doing five episodes on this. Sorry if you hate this case. There's so much good stuff in this case, and we don't want to rush it. But the last thing we're going to talk about today are the anchors. And this is a key part of the case. And if you follow this case, you know that if you don't follow it, you're like, what are you talking about? Well, recall when Scott bought his boat, he bought it without an anchor. And Scott, being the frugal guy that he is, rather than buying an anchor, he told the police that he made one out of concrete in his warehouse. And indeed, a concrete anchor was found in his boat. In addition, concrete residue was found inside some of the buckets found in the warehouse. Now, here's the rub. The question that people have always asked is, did Scott make one anchor or did he make more? And the reason this is important, Scott, if he dumped a body in the bay, he didn't just throw it in the bay, he would have weighted it down. And in fact, the way the body was found supports this. As you may recall. All we really have is the torso, the arms, the legs, the head are gone. And this is consistent with what would happen if you, for instance, tied anchors to the body. The way. And this is disgusting. So, you know, bear with me. But the way decomposition happens, if there were, say, a storm or something that. That disturbed the body that's being weighed down, the torso would break away the parts that were tied down would remain. And that's what we have. We have the finding of a torso. So it's consistent with that that there would have been anchors. And so the prosecution states theory was that there were multiple anchors other than the one we found in the boat that were used to weigh down the body. According to the prosecution, you can see at Scott's warehouse where Scott made the anchors. And according to the prosecution, there are multiple, what I'll call voids or areas of less powder on that surface. So you can imagine Scott's making an anchor. He's pouring powder from a bag, maybe into these containers. The containers would be sitting on the board. If you look at the board, there are places where the containers are sitting. The prosecution introduced into evidence a photograph of this board with these voids. We are going to put this on the website and you can look at it for yourself and see whether or not you believe you can see these voids. Now, a lot of people don't see them. A lot of people look at this photo, and they do not see the voids in the photos. And it's possible they aren't there. It's possible as well that the photos don't really do them justice. And it's much easier to see them with the naked eye.

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But.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

But the police testified to it. And if you look at this picture, there are numbers on the board that are meant to represent where the voids are. And if you look at numbers, 35, like I said, this is going to be on the website. 35, 36, 37, and 38. I think that you can clearly see these circular indentations where these anchors were made. If you've seen the documentary, you know that there's a big deal made about what Scott did with the excess concrete that he supposedly used to make these anchors in the documentary. There's this big moment where one of the defense counsel is talking about Nancy Grace and how Nancy Grace said, what happened to the extra concrete? And they went to Scott's house and there is a spot, a hole near his driveway where the concrete is. And that's what Scott always said is he used the excess concrete to fill that hole, and there it is.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Right.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

However, not so fast.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

And that's a big moment in the documentary. I mean, you. You saw that, right, Alison? They make this like a big moment.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Oh, yeah.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

No, I was like, oh, dang, that's a good defense. I got all excited.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Terrific defense, right? And you might think if you hadn't spent untold amounts of time reading the Transcript in this case, that that's a big deal. But prosecution actually called an expert in concrete. Yes, they do exist to the stand to testify about this very issue. And that expert testified that the concrete near the driveway was not consistent with the concrete used to make the anchor. Rather, it was similar to cement used by Scott to put in a fence post near where the concrete was found. So essentially, concrete is a bunch of. You can make concrete. You can make concrete a lot of different ways. Some of them will have larger, like, rocks in them. Some of them won't have rocks. The concrete used to make the anchors did not have these larger rocks in them. The concrete used to set the fence post did. That concrete was more consistent with what was near the driveway than what was in the anchors. Now, the defense also called an expert. We've talked about dueling experts before, and here you have it. They called an expert who said that he thought these actually were the same kind of concrete used to make the anchors as used in the driveway. So the jury had to make their own decision. But I do want to say, to the extent the documentary led you to believe that this was never put in front of the jury or this was some big aha moment, that's not true. The jury heard this information. They heard from two different experts. And apparently they came down on the side of the prosecution expert.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

And remember the things that they get to. To think about. You can use your own logic, right? It makes sense if you are doing a home improvement project to have some excess concrete and to think, where do I dump this? It's kind of like when you cook and you have, like, oil or fat, right? You can't just pour it down the drain. It'll clog up your drain. So you have to find an empty bottle, put it in the bottle, wait for it to dry, and then throw it away that way. It's kind of like that with concrete. You can't just throw that concrete in the middle of your driveway. It'll dry, and then you'll have this big lump. So it makes sense to look around your house right from where you are within eyeshot and think, ah, there's a hole right there. Why don't I just dump it there? It won't create problems for me. It's a whole nother issue to be 10 minutes away at your warehouse and have extra concrete and to think, I have this hole at home. Let me drive all the way home 10 minutes with messy concrete, because your hands are probably messy, too, and risk getting concrete all over my car and on my steering wheel to take it home. To fill a hole that probably could be filled with a number of things doesn't have to be the concrete. I have 10 minutes away. Now, you can imagine that might be what the jurors were thinking when they determined that it was more likely that this concrete was different. Right. It might be that at the end of the day, they're like, I don't know, concrete is concrete. But from my own experience, why would you drive 10 minutes to dump essentially excess concrete? He didn't mix the concrete for the purpose of filling in a hole.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

It makes perfect sense that if he's using concrete 10ft away from the hole and he's got some extra, he's going to use it to fill up the hole. That makes perfect sense. If it's what the expert said, it makes sense. Like I said, it's dueling. You can read these two experts. They're experts on concrete. It's not that interesting, but you can read it and you can hear what they say and you can determine for yourself what you think is more convincing. But I think Alice is right. At the end of the day, put aside what the experts say, it just makes more sense that he would be using the concrete close to the hole rather than moving this concrete from his warehouse to do this. So take a look at the photos, see if you see the voids. Read the stuff, read the experts, and you can decide for yourself. Like we said, you guys are the jury in this. You know, we are, we're just, we're just giving you the evidence with our spin on it, our admitted spin on it. But you can read this if you want to. It's available online, it's all there. And we hope you will do that. So, look, we have spent a lot of time on this case, but this is a huge case. I mean, we're talking a multi month prosecution with a lot of twists and turns and it's a case that people are really interested in. So we wanted to do this right, and I think we are doing it right. And I apologize to you if you're just not interested in Scott Peterson. But we are going to finish next time one way or the other. Even if we're here for a while. Next episode will be our last episode. We'll get through the prosecution's case, we'll talk about the defense case, and we'll let you guys know what we think about this case. But you've heard enough that you certainly have thoughts. Hit us [e-mail] Prosecutors podcast.com is our website, Prosecutors Pod on all your favorite social media sites. If you guys listen to this and you hated the ads, you can always join us on Patreon for ad free distribution of our website. Excuse me. Of our episodes, we also have a store where we will sell to you Prosecutors podcast swag shirts, coffee mugs, onesie for your infant. And all the proceeds from that go to support the Cold Case Research Institute and all the good work that Sheryl McCollum is doing with them. So you can, you can buy and you don't even have to feel like you're helping us profit off of the sadness of all these crimes. You're actually helping to do some good. So we hope to hear from you guys. Let us know what you think. Keep leaving those 5 stars reviews on Apple. We read all of them and we often share them with each other, particularly the bad ones. But that should not inspire you to leave a bad review. Well, Alice, do you have anything else you want to add before we sail off into the sunset?

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

No, I'm just a little intimidated that you promised we're going to be finished next time.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

We are totally going to be finished next time. I am committed though. Who knows? This is a huge case. Huge case. The biggest one we've done, no doubt.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

And one thing I do want to emphasize, and Brett just said this, but you know, we get some criticism sometimes when we present a case and if someone doesn't, then this mostly happens. As you've mentioned before, Brett, in the Missy Beavers case where people say that we pick and choose what to present in the story this time, remember, we are presenting to you exactly what the jury heard in a much, much condensed manner. But we're not picking and choosing what facts to share with you. We are taking you through the trial. So keep that in mind when you're hearing these tidbits.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Exactly. I mean, you are. This is as close as you're going to get to sitting on the jury in this case without spending nine months of your life doing it. So I, there may be, I don't know if there's a podcast that spends a whole season or multiple seasons on this case. It's hard for me to believe you're going to get a more in depth dive into this case than you were getting right now. So we hope you're enjoying it. We hope you're getting a lot out of it. Let us know if you have comments or criticisms. We will be back next week with another episode, hopefully the last episode on this case. But we'll See, we don't want to cheat you, but either way, until then, I'm Brett.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

And I'm Alice.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

And we are the prosecutors.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

I love hearing the clink of your alcohol.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Hopefully I'm not slurring my speech with all this bourbon.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Nothing.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

It's my fault because I made you wait so long. You got really drunk while waiting for me. You're on speaker.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

Testing, testing, testing. Did you see that woman, Diane Sheeler? He was like the male prosecutor. Laughs too much when he talks about drinking. Drinking is very serious. You shouldn't laugh.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

A lot of people say we laugh too much and don't take the cases seriously.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

I'm so.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Okay, whatever.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

It's like, stop listening.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Yeah, don't listen. And, like, I laugh so I don't cry.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

No, seriously, we're talking about people dying here,

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Sam.

[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

What do you want? Then another child was killed. I mean, come on. It's, like, incredibly depressing. We're not a comedy podcast. It's not like we're like, they died. You know?

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

We'd be the worst comedy podcast.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a guest or producer)]

Okay.

[Alice (Prosecutor Podcast Co-host)]

Anyways,

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[Brett (Prosecutor Podcast Host)]

I make money moves, that was a mission statement for a whole new generation.

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