Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives (41 page)

E R A S E D

On the Disneyland trip, Scott spent a lot of time on the phone on

what he said were business calls. One day, as the extended Peterson

clan gathered in Lee and Jackie’s hotel room to exchange Christmas

gifts, Anne’s two-year-old son momentarily disappeared. Everyone

in the room leaped to their feet to search for the boy—except for

Scott, who just kept talking on his cell phone. Months later, Anne

wondered if he might have been talking to Amber.

On December 2, Scott called Amber, saying he was back in Fresno

on business and wanted to take her on a romantic hike. Planning

ahead as always, Scott showed up not only with a picnic lunch but

also with groceries to fix her dinner afterwards, all but ensuring him

another overnight stay. They took Amber’s daughter with them, and

Scott apologized for not having thought to childproof his car.

At some point that day, Scott told Amber that he was so happy

he couldn’t stop smiling—the same words he would later use in his

media interviews to describe the moment he knew he was in love

with Laci. Was he drawing on some memorized stock image of love?

Was he capable only of inferring emotions from a general physical

state, rather than actually feeling them— a hallmark of psychopathy?

Eerily, Scott described his expression to Amber as a ‘‘rigor-mortis

smile.’’ Perhaps it was just a malaprop, or maybe a revealing clue that

even Scott realized that his face was merely a mask, with no genuine

feeling below the surface.

At the end of their hike, they snuggled in his truck bed and

stargazed until the night grew too chilly. Scott would later com-memorate the romantic moment in a Christmas gift he had shipped

to Amber’s child: a battery-operated planetarium that projects the

night sky onto the walls and ceilings of a darkened room. Whereas

the defense portrayed this gift at trial as a cheap and meaning-less trinket— and mistakenly as a present for Amber, not her

daughter— it seemed to me to be quite meaningful. He certainly

put more time and thought into it than what he said he gave his wife

for Christmas, a Louis Vuitton wallet, which Laci actually bought

for herself while shopping with her mother-in-law the week before

Christmas.

On the day of the hike, Scott gave Ayiana another touching

present: a pop-up book version of the classic poem
The Night Before

Christmas
. In one of the most surreal moments of the trial, Scott’s

brother Joe would recount how it was a Peterson family tradition

to read the poem aloud every Christmas Eve before opening their

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presents—Lee, Jackie, and each kid taking turns reading a page, then

passing it on to another family member.

That Scott could call up such a warm childhood memory just

three weeks before killing his own child— on Christmas Eve, no less,

or a few hours before—is beyond comprehension. What makes the

image even more chilling is that there is a distinct possibility that Laci

actually bought that book to carry on the Peterson family tradition

with Conner, as she and Scott had gone shopping for books for their

baby around this time.

Scott went to great lengths not only to impress Amber but also

to cover his lies. On the day of their hike, he brought along a

photo of himself fishing, claiming it was taken on his fictional

Thanksgiving trip to Alaska. She hadn’t questioned his whereabouts,

but he apparently felt the need to use a few props to sell his story.

The following day, Scott called Amber back, claiming that business

required him to stay another night in Fresno. He cooked dinner for

her again and took mother and daughter shopping for a Christmas

tree. As they decorated it, Amber asked Scott straight out if he had

ever been married. ‘‘No,’’ he told her. ‘‘Ever get close?’’ Amber asks.

‘‘Never,’’ he replied emphatically.

Q

Scott Peterson did not wake up one morning and decide out of the

blue to kill his wife. For months, maybe years, the idea was probably

a dim fantasy, the dark stirrings of a restlessness and panic that had

nothing to do with Laci and everything to do with him.

To the outside world, Scott seemed to be the perfect husband, but

in his mind he was never ‘‘married,’’ never committed to the notion

of a wife and family. There was always a disconnection with Scott,

a mental escape valve. Cheating, ‘‘acting single,’’ a lost wife, a dead

one: reality was what he said it was.

Scott could live the life of a footloose frat boy in San Luis Obispo,

never mentioning the fact that he had a wife conveniently tucked

away in another city. He could talk to Janet Ilse about moving in

together while he was ‘‘happily married’’ to Laci. Even after moving

to Modesto, he could go on leading a double life, lying to all who

loved him without conscience or remorse. He could play the game,

and he could end the game when he decided it was time for a

new one.

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E R A S E D

Ultimately, Scott and Amber would see each other just five

times—a fact the defense made much of at trial, insinuating that

Scott could not possibly have developed feelings deep enough for

Amber that he would have killed to be with her. But motive for

murder is rarely that simple, or black and white. Scott’s desire to

get rid of his wife was not about replacing her with Amber or any

particular woman. It was a more nebulous quest to make reality

conform to his fantasies. His grandiose lies were projections of the

life he wished he had, the person he wanted to be.

That quest began before Scott ever met Amber and grew in urgency

as the baby’s due date approached. But the fact that he went out

looking for someone, and at least telling himself that he wanted a

serious meaningful connection, is important. For what he planned

to do, he needed to have the fantasy that a perfect relationship was

his for the taking, that another woman was out there who would love

him unconditionally.

The time Scott spent with Amber in Fresno was more like a parallel

marriage than a purely sexual affair. He shopped and cooked for her,

picked her daughter up from preschool, helped her relocate her

massage therapy practice, cancelled plans to attend a Christmas party

with Laci so that he could squire Amber to a holiday formal. Scott was

making plans to move his warehouse from Modesto to Fresno. If not

for the imminent arrival of a baby and Amber’s growing suspicions

about his marital status, Scott may have been happy to carry on with

two separate ‘‘families’’—neither having any idea the other existed.

In a pattern we often see with eraser killers, Scott’s relationship

with Amber intensified almost immediately. They may have had only

five dates, but they spoke on the phone nearly every day, on some

days exchanging more than a dozen calls between them. Between

mid-November 2002 and mid-February 2003, when Amber asked

Scott not to call her anymore, one of the very few days they did not

speak to each other at all was on Christmas Eve— a fact that stuck out

like a sore thumb when police subpoenaed Scott’s telephone records.

In their conversations, Scott idealizes Amber for all the things he

is not. He marvels at her ability to connect with people, raves about

her sense of touch. She is both a mother and a professional massage

therapist, an object of reverence and fantasy. His attraction to her

seems almost Freudian. On Christmas Day, just hours after killing

his wife and child, he asks Amber to sing to him, the next time he

sees her, one of the lullabies she sings to her daughter.

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Finding her at such a pivotal juncture in his life must have seemed

like a miraculous gift to him. She believed his fantasies, thought he

really was a guy with multiple homes and a jet-set lifestyle. He lied to

her shamelessly, but in some ways he was more honest with her than

with anyone else he knew— certainly more than he was with his wife.

Within a month of knowing her he told her that he did not want

to have any biological children, was thinking of having a vasectomy,

and invited her to come with him to speak with a doctor.

One of the most puzzling questions in the Peterson case is why a

man who did not want a child, who killed to prevent that child from

ever being born, would take up with a woman who had a small child

of her own. Whereas Scott showed little interest in his unborn son, he

was tender in his interactions with Ayiana. Perhaps this was simply

because he did not seriously plan to spend his life with Amber. Or

maybe a child who did not belong to him, who was already born,

who was a girl, was less threatening to him. She would not grow up

to compete with him, to challenge, rebel against, or outshine him,

as a son might. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that

Amber had already crossed the parental Rubicon yet was still 100

percent available to him emotionally and sexually, in a way he could

not imagine his wife ever being after their baby was born.

Whatever the reason, that Amber had a child in no way vitiates

the impending birth of Conner as paramount motive for the murder.

How otherwise could a man with a baby on the way, a son he had felt

move inside his wife’s belly and seen on an ultrasound, so cavalierly

declare as he did to Amber on what would turn out to be their final

date, ‘‘I don’t really feel I need a biological child. Assuming that you

and I are together, the one child I could see in my life is Ayiana’’?

Those were not mere words or halfhearted sentiments. He was

prepared to take the steps necessary to make sure there would be no

more children with Amber or any other woman. He was adamant

about having a vasectomy, even when Amber became tearful, telling

Scott that she definitely wanted more kids and that he was too young

to make such a potentially irrevocable decision.

Scott’s two lives were headed on a collision course. His wife had

decided she did not want to return to work after the baby was born,

and Scott’s job may have been in jeopardy. In the weeks leading up

to the murder, he appeared to be scrambling for money. He ordered

his credit report, and ran ads on eBay and visited pawnshops with

his wife to sell off some of her grandmother’s jewelry. Two days after

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E R A S E D

Thanksgiving, Laci took her newly inherited jewelry to be appraised,

telling the jeweler her husband wanted to know how much it was

worth. When given an estimate of at least $100,000, Laci remarked

that Scott would be very happy to hear that.

Yet that very same week he thought nothing of joining a local

country club— where he would later sneak off to play golf and work

out while everyone else he knew searched frantically for his missing

wife. His parents paid the $23,000 membership fee, but Scott had

to come up with nearly $400 in monthly dues. Laci appeared to

have some qualms about that decision, if not for the expenditure it

involved than for what it seemed to indicate about Scott’s priorities.

‘‘Now I’ll see you less than I already do,’’ she groaned, when they

told Sharon and Ron over dinner one night in late November about

the purchase. Scott feebly told Laci she could come with him—not

likely any time soon with an infant in tow.

Another sore point between Scott and his wife was his failure to

pay Laci’s health insurance premiums and prenatal bills. Laci was

so aggrieved by the situation that a friend overheard her during

the summer ask Scott whether he cared about her and the baby. He

didn’t pay the delinquent bills until the insurance was days away from

cancellation. Interestingly, the day he wrote the check was December

23, the last day anyone saw Laci alive and the day police believe she

was most likely killed. Perhaps he was afraid a debt like that would

look suspicious after her disappearance.

Q

Whatever wish or fantasy Scott may have harbored for escaping his

marriage and impending parenthood, a concrete plan to achieve that

end began to take shape in early December, when the wall Peterson

had carefully constructed between his two lives began to collapse.

In an offhand conversation with coworker Mike Almasri on Friday,

December 6, Shawn Sibley happened to mention the name of her new

friend, Scott Peterson. Almasri said he had met Scott, had interviewed

with him in June for a sales position at Tradecorp. He was very taken

by how young Scott looked and asked him how he came to be running

an entire U.S. operation at his age. Scott told him he got the job after

moving with his wife to Modesto.

His wife? Shawn was apoplectic. She immediately called Scott and

angrily confronted him: ‘‘Tell me I didn’t just set my friend up with a

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married man!’’ At first Scott simply denied the fact outright. ‘‘Must be

another Scott Peterson,’’ he said coolly. But Shawn was not appeased.

After she called a coworker of Peterson’s for more information, Scott

called her back in tears.

‘‘I’m sorry I lied to you earlier,’’ Scott stammered. ‘‘I had been

married. I lost my wife. It’s too painful for me to talk about.’’ Shawn

was too taken aback to ask him what happened. He begged Shawn to

let him tell Amber. She agreed, but warned him that if he did not

do so by the following Monday, December 9, she would tell Amber

herself.

The next morning and again in the late afternoon on Saturday,

Scott searched online want ads looking for a boat. He called a man

named Bruce Peterson about the fourteen-foot Gamefisher he had

listed and made arrangements to come see it the following day.

Saturday night Scott and Laci went together to a Christmas party.

Friends remembered how gallant Scott seemed, telling them how Laci

had offered to sleep on the couch so as not to disturb him, as she was

struggling with the latter stages of pregnancy. ‘‘Isn’t my wife great?’’

he said, beaming at Laci—adding that he, of course, declined her

offer. Even as he set into motion a diabolical plan, he remained on

the surface the adoring husband, ever grateful for such a wonderful

wife.

Scott had paid for and picked up the boat Monday morning.

Shortly after noon he called Amber, telling her that he was in the area

and wanted to see her. When he arrived he looked very establishment

in a blue suit, his membership pin for the Rotary Club affixed to

his lapel, but he acted like a scared cornered animal. Scott was such

a practiced fabulist that he could lie without thinking, but he was

outside his comfort zone here. For once he was not completely

in control of the situation, not sure if he could sell this one, and

he actually seemed to be experiencing fear. Amber could hear his

stomach making noises as he paced the room. Then he began to cry.

He used the same words he had told Shawn, that he had been

married but ‘‘lost’’ his wife. He said he lied because it is was so painful

to talk about that it was easier for him to act as if he had never

been married. He seemed so distraught, literally choking to get the

words out, that Amber too was afraid to press for any details. She did

ask him how long it had been, and he said that these were the first

holidays he would be spending without his wife.

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