A Deadly Game (45 page)

The coroner ruled that the autopsy could not reveal a cause of death.

Detective Grogan was left with the grim task of informing Laci's family of the discoveries. On the afternoon of Monday, April 14, Grogan left messages for Sharon Rocha, Ron Grantski, and Brent Rocha, requesting that they contact him.

About four o'clock he spoke to Sharon Rocha, informing her that the bodies of an adult female and an infant had been recovered from the San Francisco Bay. They had not yet been identified, but he promised to keep her updated. A little later, he relayed the same message to Laci's brother.

Around ten o'clock that evening, Grogan contacted the family again to prepare them for breaking news reports that the female's body had no head, hands, or legs. Both Sharon and Brent asked Grogan where Scott was. He did not know. Sharon told Grogan that she'd left a message for Scott the previous day, but her call went un-returned.

She then checked with Jackie Peterson, who had been trying to reach him since the previous evening and was beginning to worry. Sharon told Jackie that she thought Scott might want to be with family because of the news about the bodies. The press reports alone, however, weren't enough to convince Jackie that these were the bodies of Laci and Conner. She told Sharon about another female body, similarly mutilated, that had washed up in January.

That same evening, an autopsy was performed on the Jane Doe. It was in an advanced state of decomposition, missing not only its head, and portions of the lower legs, but all internal organs from the abdominal cavity except the uterus. Since no evidence of tool marks was found at the bone joints of the missing appendages, the medical examiner performing the autopsy concluded that either someone with great surgical skill had removed them, or the victim had been weighted in those areas, and then the water's currents and decomposition had caused the limbs to pull apart at the joints. The bones bore no sign of injuries that occurred before death, such as resorption lines, callous formation, or rounding of fracture margins. However, Dr. Peterson found that the woman's fifth, sixth, and ninth ribs were broken; the fracturing appeared to have occurred shortly before her death.

Jane Doe's missing limbs suggested that the body had been in the water a long time. The corpse also showed signs of extensive fish activity. In foraging on human remains, fish start by eating exposed areas of soft tissue that are unprotected by clothing. Once the exterior flesh has been eaten away they will swim up sleeves or through other gaps in clothing, and often find their way into the chest cavity and consume the internal organs.

In a subsequent review of the autopsy at my request, San Antonio's chief coroner, Dr. Vincent DiMaio, confirmed the Contra Costa coroner's findings, and theorized that the fractures were most likely sustained around the time the woman died. It appeared they were the result of one violent blow, such as a kick, to the left side of the rib

cage. The injuries could have been the result of similar violence to the body shortly after death, but simply dropping the body in transit would not likely result in such breaks.

While the body could have been identified as Laci Peterson by the tattoo on her left ankle, a missing ovary removed when she was a child, or the abdominal scar from the surgery, the state of decomposition eliminated these possibilities. Dental records were useless because the head was absent. The body did have an enlarged uterus, which signaled her pregnancy, but there was no physical evidence of a vaginal delivery. The fact that the woman had been wearing underpants supported this theory, he noted. The cervix and area below the belly button were intact, and there was no sign of a man-made incision to remove the baby. Yet a tear in the body's abdominal wall was large enough to permit the fetus to exit the womb through it, as interior pressure from bacteria and gases built up inside the mother-a sad phenomenon known as a "coffin birth."

In his confidential report, Dr. Peterson noted that the condition of the female's body was consistent with an exposure of three to six months in "a marine environment." There were barnacles adhering to the exposed skeleton. Some of the deep muscle tissue was still red, indicating
  
that
  
decomposition
  
had
  
not
  
progressed
  
completely through the remains. The cold temperature of the San Francisco Bay had slowed the decomposition process.

A toxicology examination of the woman's tissue revealed no illicit drugs or poison, only elevated levels of caffeine and PEA (a product of decomposition). As with Baby Doe, the autopsy alone could not determine the cause of death.

A large plastic bag bearing the logo of a company called Target Products, Ltd. also washed up in the area where the two bodies came ashore. It had a piece of silver duct tape wrapped around it. The police recovered the bag and used the Internet to identify Target Products as a Canadian company. The owner said that the bag sounded like what they used to cover pallets of their product, concrete grout used in bridge construction. They were currently shipping material to the San Francisco Bay area for projects, including the Richmond Bridge.

After the bodies were found, the detectives also began recovering fliers that had been posted by Scott Peterson. They wanted to know if he had used duct tape to affix them, if the brand matched the strip on the woman's body, and if the adhesive on the tape could be linked to a substance on the hairs found in Scott's boat.

At 5:50 that evening, police received a call from a woman reporting a suspicious incident. While she and her husband were dining at a restaurant called Skates over the weekend, the couple noticed something unusual in the bay through the restaurant's window. It looked like dark brown or black hair bobbing up and down with the waves about 150 feet from the water's edge. She said "the hair" did not appear to be attached to a person, which was the reason she didn't report it. It wasn't until hearing the news that police had recovered a headless body at Point Isabel, about three miles north of the restaurant, that she realized the incident might be significant.

Kristine Crawford and her certified cadaver dog, Dakota, arrived at the scene at 6:30 in the evening. Dakota, a six-year-old pit bull terrier, was a seasoned investigator who had taken part in sixty searches since being certified. A second dog, Merlin, and her handler, Eloise Anderson, were also called in to search the southern portion of the beach. When Dakota and Kristine Crawford started traveling north along the shoreline, Dakota hit on a piece of fabric tightly wedged between two boulders. In almost the same area, she showed interest in the breeze, which was blowing onto the shore in an easterly direction. Dakota walked into the water, but was forced to stop when it reached her shoulders. Investigators flagged the spot for future reference.

As they were wrapping up the search, an unidentified woman told the officers that she had spotted a tarp in another area of the beach. However, follow-up using the cadaver dog indicated no ties to the body.

The police also found pieces of duct tape stuck to some of the rocks in the area, and one officer located a dense metal rod that was wrapped in duct tape. Although the rod broke into pieces when he attempted to dislodge it from the rocks, he kept it as evidence.

As Grogan was overseeing police activity on the shoreline, Detective Brocchini was searching for Scott. It was likely he had quit driving his white 2002 Dodge Dakota truck, with its GPS tracking system because he suspected that he was being followed. Scott had apparently traded vehicles with his brother, John. Agents were watching his parents' house, his father's business, and an address in San Diego where the Dodge truck was parked. At one point in the evening, Lee and Jackie Peterson left their residence in Jackie's 1998 Jaguar. Scott was not with them.

On Wednesday, April 16, around 9:00 A.M., Brocchini finally located Scott through wiretaps on his cell phone. Peterson was checking his voice mail from 3949 Le Cresta Avenue in San Diego.

Surveillance units were immediately dispatched to the location, which was a house belonging to his sister Anne Bird's adoptive parents. Scott was staying there with Anne's permission, and using their Lexus instead of his Mercedes-Benz. Forty-five minutes later, Brocchini got word that Scott was walking around the neighborhood. An agent reported that his appearance had changed considerably since she'd last seen him in February 2003. He had grown a thick goatee and bleached his hair, eyebrows, and beard blond, with an orange tint. The female agent noted that "he appeared to be walking in the surrounding areas through alleys with no apparent place to go."

About eleven o'clock, the agent called back and reported that Scott knew he was being watched. At one point, he disappeared into an alley. As she pulled away from the curb in an attempt to locate him, she saw him at the corner, watching her. As she drove by, he smiled at her and shook his head. He also went up to a surveillance vehicle, asking the driver, "What agency are you with? Are you state or local?" He was obviously writing down the vehicle license plate numbers as well. Eventually Scott returned to the residence, but agents discontinued their surveillance around 5:30 when they realized that he'd slipped away again, this time possibly by motorcycle.

Meanwhile, police learned that usable DNA samples had been extracted from the bone and tissue recovered from both bodies, and results could be expected the following day. Based on that information, Detective Grogan was finally able to obtain an arrest warrant for Scott Peterson.

Now, all he needed was his suspect.

During my interview with Anne Bird, she revealed that she was the one who alerted Scott to the discovery of the bodies. She was en route to the Round Table pizza parlor in San Pablo with her kids when her husband, Tim, called with the news. Anne immediately dialed Scott to see if he knew. When she told him that the body of a woman had washed up, he reacted coolly. "They'll find it's not Laci and keep looking," she said. Later, when she told him about the baby, though, he grew very angry. "How could anyone do this?" he asked. Later, when prosecutors asked Anne to characterize Scott's reaction-did his anger seem to come from pain, frustration, pure rage?-she responded without hesitation that his anger seemed a result of being "discovered."

Interestingly, Scott had stayed with Anne for about ten days before the bodies washed up. She also supplied him with a key to her parents' house in San Diego, and to their three-story "cabin" in Lake Arrowhead. Anne found out later that Scott was using both places regularly without asking. Sometimes he let her know where he was by speaking in code. "I'm at Uncle Jim's cabin," he would say, or "it's busy," meaning that someone else was there with him.

Unbeknownst to the media, prosecutors intended to call Anne to testify, among other things, about Scott's visits and his revelation that he had "borrowed a shovel" from the cabin that he never returned. He never explained to Anne why he needed the shovel. But she knows that he also had access to a "secret room" in the basement of the Lake Arrowhead house, where a hidden door set flush with the wall led to a storage space and woodpile. Anne, who alerted Scott to the room when he needed to build a fire in the cabin, told me that she never looked in the "secret space" after Scott stayed there, but thought it a good spot to bury something, like jewelry.

During our interview, Anne also detailed her brother's stay with her family. When he first arrived, she was convinced of his innocence and was angry with police and Sharon Rocha for insinuating otherwise. She told me he started out as a great houseguest. One night, Scott insisted on making homemade spaghetti sauce after she pulled out a canned version. "Why are you using that?" he said. "I know how to make homemade sauce. It's easy, you just crush tomatoes." With that, he grabbed the car keys and headed to the store for fresh ingredients. Though Anne was pleased at his helpfulness, she was also curious about his high spirits during such a tragic time. Her story recalled Scott's odd behavior on Christmas Day, when he invited his neighbor Karen Servas to dinner, offering to prepare her a separate meal of tortellini less than twenty-four hours after Laci went missing.

During the visit, however, Anne grew increasingly uncomfortable with her brother's behavior and began keeping notes. While searching for Laci, Anne and two male friends took Scott to a local bar called the Ballast Pub. When one of the men asked Scott if he killed his wife, he responded, "No, I loved my wife," speaking of Laci in the past tense. When Anne and Scott paired up for a game of pool, she said, he remembered him getting angry when they lost the game.

Later that night, after speaking with Scott at their house, one of Anne's friends decided he was guilty. Scott had made a big fuss over one of the men's cars, a Ferrari, and was drinking heavily-mixed drinks, wine, and fancy concoctions in a martini glass. Another time, Anne and Scott were at the local yacht club. Anne's mother was babysitting and had insisted that she be home by 9:30 P.M. She kept trying to get Scott to leave, but he ignored her pleas and continued to order drinks. "He was being totally inconsiderate," she recalled.

All those subtle signs of trouble were eclipsed, however, when those bodies washed up close to her Berkeley home.

The following day, April 18, Sergeant Carter and Detectives Buehler, Grogan, and Brocchini drove to San Diego in unmarked vehicles to assist in Scott's arrest. Arriving at 4:00 A.M., they checked into the Best Western Escondido Motel. Even though they had a signed warrant, they wanted to wait for the DNA results before attempting an arrest. Once Scott was located, he would simply be watched pending those results, unless he headed for the Mexican border.