The Double Life of Scott Peterson: Two Christmas Eves — Ep. 2 | MK Confidential

story ranch house at 523 Kavina Avenue. The front windows faced the street but heavy drapes

“cover them, blocking the view in or out. A 27-year-old woman has been missing from this house since”

that morning. She is 8 months pregnant. Her husband says he went fishing, 90 miles away, and that he came home in the afternoon to find her gone. Officer Matt Spurlock leads the way up the brick walkway behind him, Sergeant Byron Durfeldt is on the phone to the supervisor who runs a detective unit called "crimes against persons." I'm requesting the assistance of a captive detective sir, Durfeldt says. Spurlock tries the front door. It opens. Most of the lights inside are on.

There's a Christmas tree in the corner of the dining area. The officer's inventory, the presence, underneath it. In the nursery, new baby clothes are stacked in a white crib. miniature sailboats hang from the ceiling. One of the officers stops in front of a life-preserver on the wall.

“It reads, "Welcome aboard." In the living room, a tan and white throw rug is bunched up on the floor”

against the patio door. Officer John Evers steps around it and leaves it where it lies. They work through the rest of the house room by room. Closet doors open. A shower curtain slides back. On the kitchen wall, there's a chalkboard where Lacey has written "Mary Christmas in a youthful script." On the counter, left over pizza sits in an open box with a container of ranch dressing next to it. And beside that, a telephone book. Open. The police see a full-page ad with a photograph

of a young man being handcuffed by a uniformed officer and underneath it the words "criminal defense, former deputy district attorney." The lawyer lists his specialties. One of them is murder. Scott Peterson will later give an explanation for that, sitting in an interview room at the

“Modesto Police Department. He says he had the phone book out to call hospitals. There are two”

accounts of that day, the day Lacey Peterson disappeared. First, the way Scott Peterson tells

that that night to a detective with a notebook. Then the same day, again, the way investigators will say, "It really happened." I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK confidential. AI can clone your voice. For your signature, even create fake documents that fool experts. And criminals are using these tools right now to potentially steal from you. How? It's called title fraud. Your property records are public by law. Your name, your address, even your signature.

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consider necessarily any crime. Still, the officers don't leave that house before securing it, and out at the curb, Sergeant Duerfeld calls his supervisor back with a list of six things that do not sit right. It has been less than an hour since police were called, and the supervisor wants a murder investigator at that house immediately. The detective who catches the case is Al Brokini, 17 years on the job. He'd planned

a quiet Christmas with his family up in the Sierra Nevada foothills. After getting the call, he drives back down Route 108 toward Medesto, and the house on Kavina Avenue with a police scanner going on his dashboard. Brokini opens an investigation that night. He'll be with Scott Peters and on and off until 1/30 in the morning. Their taped interview begins at Midnight.

Here's how Scott describes that morning. Lacey is up first, and she has cereal. If she doesn't

longer, gets up around 8 and showers. They watch television in the converted garage. Her favorite

“show is on Martha Stewart. Scott doesn't watch the whole thing. He remembers cookies of some sort.”

He remembers they talked about what to do with meringue. She tells him her plan for the day, finished cleaning the house, mopped the kitchen floor, take the dog for a walk. Then the store for Christmas morning breakfast supplies, and for the gingerbread cookies she's making for the Christmas Eve dinner at her parents' place that night. He was going to go play golf at the club,

but it seems pretty cold outside, so he decides to go fishing instead.

Before he leaves Lacey asks him for help with the mop bucket. He tells Burkini what she's wearing when he leaves. Black pants, a white long sleeve top plane, nothing written on it.

“No shoes. Her white tennis shoes, the ones she wears to walk the dog, are not in their usual place”

by the wet bar. He says he looked. Scott leaves around 930 in his pick-up, and drives to the warehouse he rents on Emerald Avenue. I had a symbol by a martyr. We were working to make tables. Like maybe saw them on the trailer there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just got that, so I assembled it. Check my email. Send money mail. The email goes to his boss. Then he hooks up the 14 foot aluminum boat he bought two weeks earlier, which is stored at the warehouse, and tows it 90 miles to

the Burkley Marina. He feeds five dollars into the automated parking machine and takes the time to receipt. It reads 1254 in the afternoon. Scott's in the water by about 1 o'clock. He goes north

“a couple of miles to a small island with a no landing sign on it. It's called Brooks Island. He”

fishes for about 90 minutes. Catch is nothing. He tells Burkini that a lot of the reason he went was just to get the boat in the water and see how it ran. Back in the truck he calls Lacey as he's leaving the Marina and leaves a message on her voicemail. He stops for gas in Livermore on the freeway back toward Modesto. He hits traffic and calls the house again to say he will not be home by four. He stops at the warehouse to drop off the boat and gets home at 445. Scott comes around back.

Their dog Mackenzie is in the yard and Scott has surprised to see he still has his leash on. Scott takes it off of him and puts the leash on the picnic table then goes in through the French doors. The dog and their grey and white siamese cat follow him inside. The cat goes over to the mop bucket. Still sitting there full and looks like it's going to drink from it. So Scott carries the bucket out the side door, dumps it, and leaves it outside. He puts his clothes in the

washing machine, his jeans, his blue t-shirt, a green polo. To make room he pulls out a stack of stained white towels their housekeeper had left in there and piles them on top of the machine. He eats one piece of the cold pizza then showers, dresses, and checks the answering machine.

There are three messages. Two of them are his own from the road. The third is from Lacey's

stepfather, Ron Gransky, asking them to bring over whipped cream. This is supposed to be a celebratory evening. There do at Lacey's mom's house for dinner at 6 o'clock. At 5-15 by his own account, Scott Peterson looks at his watch. Sharon Rocha is looking at a clock too. She is Lacey's mother. She has a ham in the oven and she has just put a casserole dish of scalloped potatoes on the top rack. She's told everyone to come at 6. The clock by her stove reads 5-15. She finishes up in the kitchen

and goes into the bedroom to change. Two minutes later, her phone rings. "Hi mom," Scott says, "Is Lacey there?" "No," she says. She wonders why he's asking. In Sharon's account of it,

When I got home, Lacey's car was in the driveway, and Mackenzie was in the backyard with his

“leash on, and Lacey's missing. 22 years later, Sharon Rocha describes that call to Netflix producers.”

Scott called me to find out if Lacey was at my house, and I said no, and he said, "But since she's missing, missing what do you mean missing?" I mean, people don't use that term, lightly. So I told them to call her friends and find out if anybody has seen her. It's the word that stops her. Missing. Sharon says later that it was a strange choice of words. Lacey's not the kind of person who goes missing. She's practical and organized, and nearly eight

months pregnant, and they're coming for dinner in 45 minutes. Sharon asks Scott what time you got home. 445 he says. It's now 517. Scott's been home for more than 30 minutes before calling his mother-in-law to ask if she has heard from his wife. Within the hour, Lacey's stepdad,

“Ron Gransky is on the phone with the Modesto Police Department. "How can I help you?" "Yes,”

but my mother-in-law is called Eva's Fangol. My son is my son. My daughter's in this existence, this morning when she gave my pregnancy, said that to us for a while from afar. The dog came home with just the leash off." "And the dog came back without your daughter?" "Right. Okay, what is your address, Esther?" Two weeks later, Sharon Rocha opens that oven. The casserole dish of scallop potatoes is still sitting on the top rack. She looks at them for a long

time. Something else happens that evening before any detective arrives. At 530, Scott Peterson knocks on the door of a neighbor across the street, Amy Kriegbaum, to ask whether she has seen Lacey. Kriegbaum asks him where he's been all day. Scott tells her he was golfing. Down at East La Loma Park, at the end of their street, Ron Gransky is helping search for Lacey. Officer Spurlock finds him standing at the footbridge and asks whether he knows where Scott has been.

I believe he went golfing this morning, Gransky says, "Are you sure?" "Yes, he answers." Later that night, on Scott's front lawn with two officers standing there, Gransky asks his son and logic directly, were you able to get in a game of golf this morning? Scott hesitates. And he says he did not play golf. It was too cold that he went fishing instead. Gransky is a fisherman himself. 930 or 10 o'clock in the morning is way too late for fishing. He says,

“"You should have gone earlier. What were you fishing for?" Scott doesn't reply.”

Burkini asks Scott why the truck is back then. Scott answers immediately. He always does that he says,

because the toolbox in the bed has been broken into a couple of times. That morning he had loaded a set of patio umbrellas, wrapped in a blue tarp into the back of the truck to store at the warehouse. He forgot and drove to Berkeley and back with them still in there. Burkini asks whether Scott owns any handguns. Scott says, "Yes, a llama 22 in the glove box of his truck, where it's been since a fescent hunt about a month ago. Burkini pops open the glove box,

the gun is there, and he takes it." Burkini asks whether there was anything unusual in the house. Two things Scott says, "The leash and the back door unlocked." Near the end of the interview, Burkini asks to test Scott Peterson's hands for gunshot residue. Scott hesitates, then he asks, "Will boat motor exhaust register positive?" Burkini doesn't answer that question, but asks one of his own.

Would you be willing to take a polygraph? Sure, Scott says, "The detective asks a second time."

Scott says, "He's certainly willing." And then Burkini tells Scott what's bothering him and hour into the tape. "Well, concerns me the most is the fact that you're knocking home without a leash on." That bothers me, I mean, there. And that question. Yeah. Well, concern most is doing anything I can unto further progress. I appreciate that. Burkini asks him where he wants to go. Physically, Scott says, "Back to my home."

The polygraph is scheduled for the next afternoon, Christmas Day, with an agent from the California Department of Justice coming by to assist. At one o'clock, as detectives are waiting for him, they get a phone call. Scott has changed his mind. He says his father, Lee, told him

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“Acu-a-t-r-u.com promo code mkc. Now, the same day, again, not the day Scott Peterson describes.”

This time, the way police and prosecutors come to believe it really happened. Let's start with what was on TV. Martha Stewart is on that morning, Lacey's favorite show, and Scott remembers Martha talking about what to do with meringue. Detectives will pull that broadcast later. The segment about meringue aired at 9.48 that morning. Scott tells Burkini he left the house around 9.30. But the meringue is Scott's own detail.

Nobody put it to him. He offers it. And it airs 18 minutes after the time he says he was already gone. Which puts him still in that house until at least 9.50. Next door, neighbor Karen's service backs out of her driveway and finds their dog mkc. Luce in the street. Dragon Aleesh so dirty. Karen goes back inside her house to wash her hands after she's handled it. I left the leash on the dog and abruptly just left and shut the gate and went on with my day.

And I really didn't think much more of that until that evening. The next day when police take Karen's service's statement, they asked her to pin down a time when she found the dog. Using a receipt from an errand, she ran just afterward. She works it back to no later than 10.18. That leaves 28 minutes. From the time Scott would have heard meringue before leaving the house, and the time mkc was found outside barking and alone with no Lucey.

28 minutes for Lucey to finish mopping, load the dishwasher, make the bed, curl her hair, lace up her sneakers, clip a leash on mkc and head to the park and become a victim.

Police come to believe that Lucey Peterson never left her house alive.

They cannot say exactly when she is killed. They cannot say exactly how. Neither can the prosecutor who takes the case to trial. Here is Rick Distasso two years later in his closing argument. Quote the defendant's strangled Lucey Peterson on the night of December 23rd or the morning of December 24th. I don't know. I don't have to prove that to you. Strangling and smothering is not going to leave a lot of evidence. Unquote.

There is almost no physical evidence in that house. Investigators have a phrase for a killing like that.

“I believe that this was what I have called a soft kill.”

That he either suffocated her or he strangled her. And there would be two reasons that he would choose to do that. One is very quiet. Secondly, it doesn't make a mess. Investigators focus on the bedroom. The night brachini walked through the house. He saw a white comforter in Lucey and Scott's bedroom. Pulled up over the pillows, as though someone had tidied the bed in a hurry.

At the foot of the bed, there was an indentation running across, as though a body had been laid out there. Brachini does not write it down, but he clocks it. Two days later on December 26th, detectives come back with a warrant. A crime scene officer photographs the bed. Then they stripped the bed and take the comforter cover with them. Beside the indentation on that cover are two small spots. The spots are blood.

Forensics will later confirm the blood is Scott Peterson's. Detectives come to believe Lucey Peterson was killed on that bed. One theory they take seriously is that she reached up and

Investigators believe he wrapped her in a tarp inside the house

“and dragged her out through the back door, winding up the throw rug as he went.”

Police also suspect Scott mopped the floor and deliberately let Mackenzie lose with his Lucey still attached, setting up the possibility that someone took Lucey. Here is the prosecutor to Stasso again. "He wrapped her in a blue tarp and backed his truck up to the gate. He carries Lucey out, puts her in the back of the truck. Who's going to suspect him? Everyone thinks he's the perfect husband. Unquote." And that is what the umbrellas are for. Detective Craig Grogan, the lead investigator,

will testify that the patio umbrellas Scott loaded that morning. We're approximately the same height as Lucey Peterson. And that wrapped in a tarp in the bed of a truck, they would not only hide Lucey's body, but would explain what anyone saw him loading. Scott drives to the warehouse on

“Emerald Avenue. In his version, he spends one hour assembling a woodworking tool and sending”

one email. In the police version, this is the hour Lucey Peterson's body goes from the truck into the boat that no one knows Scott had. Brachini is inside the warehouse the same night, working by flashlight and the high beams of his own car. On the floor of the boat is a chunk of concrete with a steel loop set into one end. Scott tells him it's a homemade anchor and that the loop is there to tie the rope to. But there is no rope attached to it. There is also concrete dust

inside the boat, not on the rim, but down on the ridges that run up the sides and across the bottom of the boat. The detective can think of no reason for that to be there. Two days later, I'm December 26th, detectives come back with a search warrant covering Scott's house, his warehouse, his vehicles, and his boat. Brachini looks at the flat bed trailer more closely. On the trailer is a plastic water pitcher, the kind you might keep in a refrigerator.

It's about a third full of murky water with gray residue ringing the inside.

Brachini stands close and studies it. There's a mallet lying next to the pitcher. And in the dried concrete on the trailer, our four circular impressions each one the size of the bottom of that water pitcher. Brachini works out what he's looking at. Ready mix concrete and water poured into the pitcher. Let it set, knock it out with the mallet, stand it on the trailer to cure. Four rings, at least four anchors. They have found one

on the floor of the boat. That leaves at least three on accounted for. In the bed of Scott's pick-up, Brachini finds a small tool coated in dry cement. He assumes this was used to mix the concrete.

“Detective Grogon asks Scott how many anchors he made. Did you make just one?”

Yeah. Scott says he made it days earlier. Mixed in a small white painter's bucket, not in the

pitcher. Detective sees the pitcher but never locate the bucket. The police theory is that concrete

weights took Lacy Peterson's body down and that the cement on those ridges inside the boat crumbled off of the weights as she went over the side. Beneath the boat's bench seat, Detective's find a pair of yellow needle-nosed pliers. There is a single strand of black human hair clamped in the pliers. Lacy Peterson has black hair. A Modesto detective bags the hair seals it and marks it to be sent for DNA testing. There is no root attached to the hair, though, so the analysis does not

give a conclusive match. However, it says the DNA is consistent with a hair from Lacy's hair brush and a sample from Lacy's mother Sharon. The hair does not belong to Scott Peterson. At 10 o'clock that morning, the morning Lacy disappeared. Scott Peterson makes a phone call. It is the last call he makes for about four hours. No calls on the drive, not at the marina, not on the water. Police note this as a change from his normal behavior. He chose the boat from his warehouse

about 90 miles to the Berkeley marina. Detective's believe Lacy Peterson is in that boat. At 1254 in the afternoon, he arrives at the marina feeds $5 into the automated parking machine and takes the time to receipt and keeps it. That night, standing in his own driveway, he hands it to a police officer who has not asked him for it. At the marina, Scott puts the boat in the water and goes a couple of miles north toward Brook Island. That is where police believe Lacy Peterson's

weighted body into the water hoping that it would never ever come up. 4 months later, on April 13th

“and then the 14th, the decomposing bodies of a full-term baby boy and a woman wash ashore directly”

east of that island. The rest of the day is the day you already know. Scott calls Lacy twice from the road and leaves excessively loving messages she will never pick up. He drops the boat at the warehouse and he is home at 445. The dog is in the yard with a leash on and he takes it off. He dumps the mop bucket out the side door, he puts his clothes in the washing machine, eats a piece of cold pizza, showers, dresses and plays back the messages on the answering machine.

Then he waits. At 515 he looks at his watch and picks up the phone. Hi mom, Scott says,

is Lacy there? In the first version, that has a husband finding out his wife is missing.

In the police version, he knows very well what has happened to her.

“In the weeks following Christmas, police keep a close eye on Scott Peterson, they impound”

his truck and get a court order to put a tracking device on Lacy's Land Rover. When he rents another pickup, they track that too. Scott goes back to the Berkeley Marina three times after December 24th and he does not take the boat with him. Surveillance units watch him sit in his vehicle near the boat ramp, just looking out at the water. When he learns police are bringing in dogs, Scott brings the boat's cover home from the warehouse and puts it in a shed behind the house.

Then he sets a gasoline-powered leaf-blower down on top of the cover. The leaf-blower leaks. Police note that Scott Peterson is not otherwise careless with his equipment. Burkini interviews neighbor Karen's service again.

“Afterwards, he writes up a list and he gives it a heading. Scott Peterson, false statements. One,”

that police took his handgun from inside his house. Two, that he volunteered for a polygraph and officers told him not to take it. He told his parents and service this, at least four times. Scott tells Lacy's mom Sharon that he's deliberately avoiding the press so the coverage stays on Lacy, and that if he senses interest starting to fade, he'll give an interview himself just to bring it back. He calls a realtor about their house on Kavina Avenue and talks about selling it or renting it out.

There's no way of Lacy comes back that we're going to stay there, he says. On January 11th, 2003, Sharon leaves Scott a voicemail meant to bring him relief. A phone-our scan of San Francisco Bay has turned up something on the bottom. It's been identified and it's a boat anchor. It is not her daughter. The wire tap on Scott's phone is running while he listens to the message. As his mother-in-law's message plays, Scott Peterson lets out a low, quick whistle.

I've got this as mom is about quarter two one. This one to know I get that a call from Ron Clower, he's at Marina and it was a boat anchor. Of course we knew it was not Lacy but I just wanted to know I'm going to call your house in case you don't get this message hurt. Bye.

Scott Peterson has a cut on his knuckle. The cut is not the problem. The problem is Scott's

explanations for it keep changing. When Detective Grogan asks him what cut him, Scott says he doesn't know. Probably the door. He offers or something. Grogan asks whether it was just a scuff on the knuckle and Scott says yeah, left hand, index finger. Five weeks later, Scott's on television, holding up his hand for a Sacramento reporter named Gloria Gomez. She has just asked him whether it would surprise him if police found blood in his vehicles.

Take a look at my hand. You can see cuts here on my knuckles, numerous scars. I have work on farms. I work with machinery. I know I cut my knuckle that day, reaching in the toolbox of my truck and then into the pocket on the door. I cut out my knuckle and there's blood stain on the door. What happened to he doesn't know? Sometime after Christmas, Scott complains to Lacy's mom Sharon about Rokini,

including that the detective had checked his hands for cuts a few times. Then he makes a point of showing Sharon his hands. Sharon glances at them quickly and writes down later what she saw. Not one finger, but a line running across the knuckles of all four fingers, a cut or a slice,

In Scott Peterson's accounting, a man goes fishing, comes home to a quiet and empty house.

“Tosses in a load of laundry cleans up, eats a slice of leftover pizza,”

then calls his mother-in-law. To the police that man has killed his wife and unborn child,

dumped their bodies in the cold sea and is trying to cover up his crime.

“The Modesto Police Department will spend the next two years trying to prove it.”

But there's a problem. There are witnesses whose accounts do not fit the police timeline.

A van that doesn't belong on that street. Three men in a yard and people who say they saw a

“pregnant woman walking a golden retriever that morning. After the points Scott Peterson had left.”

After the time police had concluded, Lacey Peterson was already dead. I'm Megan Kelly. That's next time on MK Confidential.