Scott Peterson, who has served more than 20 years of a prison sentence for the murder of his wife Laci and their unborn son, Connor, says he was an “a-hole” for cheating on his wife, but insists he wasn’t the killer.
“It’s horrible,” he tells an interviewer in a new documentary, according to People. “I was a total a-hole to be having sex outside our marriage.”
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/AP
FILE – In this March 17, 2005, file photo, Scott Peterson is escorted by two San Mateo County Sheriff deputies to a waiting van in Redwood City, Calif.
Peterson reminisces about what he says was the last time he saw his wife alive, “little things that are still with me,” like sharing a bowl of cereal, and watching her do her hair.
The former fertilizer salesman from Modesto, Calif., has been jailed since his conviction in 2004. For the first 15 years he was on death row — before his death sentence was vacated and converted to life without parole. The prosecution declined to pursue a new sentencing trial to seek the death sentence again after consulting with Laci Peterson’s family.
In the documentary, “Face to Face with Scott Peterson,” he maintains his innocence, saying he wants the public to hear him out in the film, which purports to shed new light on his case.
Defense lawyers said the evidence against him was circumstantial and that his philandering did not indicate guilt. In January 2024 the Los Angeles Innocence Project said it would reexamine Peterson’s case, citing new evidence and vowing fresh scrutiny of the old.
Laci Peterson, 27, was eight months pregnant with the son they planned to name Conner when she went missing on Christmas Eve 2002. Four months later, their bodies washed up in San Francisco Bay, hers headless and limbless. Prosecutors said the fishing trip her husband had purportedly taken the morning of her disappearance was really a mission to weigh down her body, wrap it in a tarp and sink it in the bay.
He was arrested in April 2003 in La Jolla, Calif., carrying $15,000 in cash, sporting bleached hair, and toting camping gear, four cell phones and a baggie stuffed with Viagra, leading police to suspect he was fleeing to Mexico. Meanwhile Fresno, Calif., massage therapist Amber Frey had told police they’d been dating, but she did not know he was married.
Peterson was convicted of first-degree murder for Laci’s death and second-degree murder for Connor’s.
With News Wire Services