Original subtitles

[somber music]

- Most murder cases are circumstantial.

You don't get a smoking gun.

- You take one of the things, it's nothing.

Two or three, it's nothing.

But when you add them up, it's pretty darn strong.

- I never imagined that this thing

would still be percolating 20 years later.

[invigorating music]

- I have questions about the case.

It's always bugged me.

- I know people are really heavily

invested that Scott's guilty.

- There is no evidence of cause of death.

There is no evidence of a crime scene.

- Laci's already set the table for Christmas brunch.

You're gonna travel 90 miles away to test your boat?

I didn't buy it.

- There isn't any evidence that Scott Peterson

engaged in any violence involving his wife.

- If you open your mind a little bit,

really consider the investigation,

there are a lot of questions.

There have always been a lot of questions.

- When you know that the jury

ultimately still convicted him,

you have to ask yourself, what's going on here?

- They gave us, in my opinion, no realistic alternate theory.

- The information we were given in that courtroom

only leads to the decision we came up with,

which is he's guilty.

- The police can't get it this wrong.

The DA can't get it this wrong.

A jury can't get it this wrong.

The appellate process can't get it this wrong.

The media can't get it this wrong.

- Is this the way criminal justice works in America?

- Here I am two decades later,

still trying to solve this crime.

- I'm still investigating.

I'm still looking at the evidence, asking questions.

- It's gonna be a fight for them to accept the truth.

- December 13, 2004.

People of State of California

versus Scott Peterson.

We, the jury, fix the penalty at death.

[dramatic music]

- And in a case that became something of

a national TV obsession, a judge today

formally sentenced Scott Peterson.

- In spite of all the pain and passion

expressed in court today, one person showed no emotion...

Scott Peterson.

- During my trial, I was indignant.

I was so angry at the media, because the reports

just weren't factual.

I strived not to show any emotion in the courtroom

because I didn't wanna, you know, see them break me.

* *

[indistinct chatter]

- When Scott was moved to death row,

we made every effort to get up there and visit him.

For the first eight years,

we had someone there every week.

- Our family has really been the glue for Scott

and for each other through these...

these hard times.

And just fortunate that that's the case.

- He would repeatedly say he... he was living visit to visit.

It was his lifeline.

[cell door clangs]

[suspenseful music]

* *

[birds chirping]

- Sitting through Scott's trial

and then spending years

combing over police reports, reading appellate documents,

talking with lawyers, our family had

kind of been tethered to the legal community

for 17 years.

My kids were grown.

Ultimately, I made the decision to go to law school.

I certainly never have felt like I needed to become

a lawyer to help Scott.

But I think now that I am a lawyer,

I certainly have a much better understanding

of the case and the issues.

If Scott is granted a new trial,

we'll be able to take more steps in the investigation.

We'll be able to call people to court to testify.

We have an incredible support system,

an incredible team of people who know this case

and help our family.

And without them, we wouldn't be where we're at.

And without Mike Gudgell,

I don't know that our investigation

would be where it's at.

[cheering]

- I thought that the trial was going to be

the arbiter of the truth.

And I don't think that's accurate.

Most of the journalists covered the story

from beginning to end, I think expected a hung jury.

I don't know anyone who isn't terribly

conflicted by the verdict.

It was troubling for those of us who really

knew the case intimately.

Scott was convicted, but there was no how, where,

when, even why.

Everyone involved in the case contributed in some way

to a sort of a conspiracy of circumstances

that led to the verdict.

- Anybody who disagrees with the verdict,

you have a right to disagree.

But if you weren't there, you don't know.

- A lot of media coverage,

so I think the jury pool was partly biased.

- Why did he leave his wife alone, eight months pregnant,

on Christmas Eve to go fishing by himself?

- There was a tremendous pressure on the media

to report every day.

And as a consequence, particularly the tabloid press

would report rumors.

- Was Scott Peterson planning to hire hit men

to kill his wife, Laci?

- Every evening, I would sit and watch one of the shows

and I'd wanna throw my shoe at the TV.

Initially, I spent a year, year and a half

covering a case from beginning to end.

I went on to do other things, including covering the wars

in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it always bothered me.

[unsettling music]

I don't really even think the case was solved.

So when I got back from covering the two wars,

I devoted as much time as I could to digging more into

what might have happened to Laci.

This is 2015.

The first thing I had to do was get

the 50,000 pages of documents and police reports.

And then I had to go through those documents

and find what questions or clues

were buried in those pages.

There was dozens of different tips that came in,

and I spent years looking into those.

But it finally came down

to the burglary across the street.

- We have two people in custody.

We do not believe that, at this time,

that there's any connection with the missing of Laci.

[ominous music]

- The police characterized the Medina burglary

as kind of a meth addict, and it was a crime of opportunity.

The Airport District was sort of a high crime area

not far from Laci and Scott's house.

And there was a larger effort

to burglarize houses in that neighborhood.

I would call it a criminal network.

I suspect that more people were involved

in the burglary than Steven Todd and Glenn Pearce.

This is just a working theory.

I haven't been able to prove it yet.

And that comes to the question of smoking gun.

But I think it's much more complicated

than what the police believe.

- Steven Todd and Glenn Pearce admitted their involvement

with the Medina burglary, telling the police

that the burglary happened on December 27th.

When the police pointed out to them that it couldn't have

happened on the 27th because the Medinas were already home,

they changed their story and said that the burglary

happened on the 26th.

It wasn't until much later that people began to question

whether this burglary really occurred on December 26.

We believe that Laci encountered the Medina

burglary on December 24th.

At 11:40 a.m., Diane Jackson saw three men

that were dark-skinned, not African American,

in front of the Medina home.

- So I think Steven Todd shared information

about the Medina home

with people in the Airport District.

It's their practice to share targets like that.

It's possible that three men in the van

were some of his friends or accomplices.

- So what likely happened is,

other people showed up to help.

The police have never identified that van,

never identified the men associated with the van.

And that van was parked directly in front of the house

that was burglarized.

It's directly across the street from Scott and Laci's home.

So this confrontation with Laci could have involved

the people in the van, not necessarily

Steven Todd and Glenn Pearce.

- Steven Todd confessed almost immediately to the burglary.

And I think that says something.

I think he was told, you're gonna have to take the fall.

I mean, you know, there's a confidential informant

that turned him in, so he was gonna serve time regardless.

The burglary could have occurred about the same time

Laci went for a walk.

It's possible that Laci confronted the burglars

or saw the burglars, or the burglars saw her

and were worried about whether she would call the police.

- So if you didn't kill Laci, who killed Laci?

[ominous music]

- We had a client who was innocent

but an entire world against him.

He's not capable of doing this.

And we truly believe that.

We also believe that...that the evidence backed us up on it.

To have a verdict of guilty

and then the death penalty,

no words can describe the disappointment, the sadness.

It was a huge shock.

I thought, despite the hatred towards Scott,

that they would actually listen to the evidence

and they would base their decision on the evidence

and only on the evidence.

Because I thought, there's no evidence here.

There's no forensic evidence, there's nothing

to tie him to the murder.

Our client didn't do it.

Nothing has changed since.

In fact, at this point, years later,

there's more exonerating evidence

that have come to light.

- In my years of investigating it,

I investigated a lot of leads

and looked at all possibilities...

that Scott was involved in a murder for hire,

Laci was abducted for her unborn child.

Most of them have been dead ends,

but a process of elimination at this point.

And, you know, there are a few things

that are left that are promising.

And I think the most important piece of information

is the van.

[tense music]

At the very beginning, police were looking for a brown van.

And all the media was also looking for a brown van.

- A brown van could back up

a defense theory Laci was abducted.

- Numerous witnesses reported seeing

a suspicious brown van in the neighborhood that morning.

- I noticed three people across the street on the Medinas' lawn

and they were right next to a van.

- I always look around.

And I have never seen a van like that before.

- And so you saw the van, coincidentally,

at the same time you saw Laci? Or...

- Yes. No, no, same time.

- There's some variation, but there were three or four

witnesses who saw the same van across from the Petersons',

next to the Medina home, on the morning Laci disappeared.

And then I heard about an orange van

that had burned in the Airport District

the morning after Laci disappeared.

Maybe that's our brown van?

- Police recently took the van to this crime lab,

examined it, and concluded that the van was not

in any way involved in the disappearance

of Laci Peterson.

- I remember sort of, you know, those internal instinctual

alarm bells going off that there was something wrong

and that...this sort of feeling stuck with me.

So that's 2004.

And then fast forward over ten years.

[suspenseful music]

Not believing everything I heard

either in the media or the police,

I started following the leads.

I decided to look through all the documents, 40,000 pages.

I started, on my own, interviewing witnesses.

I went to interview the owner of the van

where it was stolen, a moving and rigging company.

And he told me that the employees could take

some of the vehicles home and he believed

it was kind of an inside job.

If it was an inside job, and if employees were allowed

to take the van home for the weekend or whatever,

they could have just taken the van back

and no one would have even known.

So I think very logical that it was burned

to cover up a crime.

After that, I'm looking into

the criminal community in Modesto,

and some of the names I'm seeing

are associated with that burnt van.

The last person to drive it

definitely had a criminal record, including burglary.

And a family member of the owner of the van

was associated, a friend of Steven Todd.

Steven Todd's wife's sister lived in a house

right next to where the burnt van was found.

- The thing about the Airport District,

it isn't that big of an area.

And to have a burned-out van found near the relative

of one of the burglars isn't anything, to me,

that would be suspicious whatsoever.

Why now is this just coming up?

It seems interesting to me.

* *

- I wanna show you the van.

So these are the six color pictures I was able to get.

And to my knowledge, are the only pictures

that remain out of possibly over a hundred that were shot.

I found the three- or four-page report

from Bryan Spitulski, the arson investigator.

So I decided to give him a visit.

And he looked at me and he said,

I've been waiting ten years for someone

to come and ask questions about this.

- My name is Bryan Spitulski.

I've been a fire investigator for almost 30 years.

In 2002, I was a fire investigator

for Modesto City Fire Department.

December 25th, the fire came in for a vehicle fire

in an alleyway.

As I did my walk around, I noticed

there was a mattress in the back of the van

that was mostly consumed by the fire.

- And they put this round gas can over the mattress,

I'm sure thinking that the gas can would destroy the mattress.

But the metal gas can actually protected this

foot-and-a-half circle of mattress.

- It was a little bit discolored,

but it wasn't burned at all.

It's kind of a grayish off-white fabric

with rust-colored stains in it.

It looked like blood to me.

And I cut away a piece of that fabric so we could understand,

was this just a rust color or was this truly blood?

When we cut it away and we stuck it

into the container that had the luminol in it,

it went blue.

There's human blood on that item.

* *

[birds chirping]

[car horn honking]

- Between Christmas and New Year's,

the news started to come out about Laci missing.

When I heard that, that's when I got on the phone

and called up my detective and said, look,

now, you know, we've got this van.

We've got a mattress in the back of it.

It's similar in description of what everybody's saying.

I think you need to take a look at that.

[inquisitive music]

- The detectives came out. The police chief came out.

It was a really high-profile development in the case.

The first test at the scene,

right after they found the van,

was a presumptive test.

It's a field test.

- And then the next day, a sample would be

hand-delivered to the Department of Justice

for a more in-depth analysis.

- And it was tested there,

and they couldn't detect blood.

- So at that point, it seemed like

the...the air left the van.

It was no longer something that needed to be looked at.

Even though we had the positive luminol test,

that was it. It was done.

* *

It has been in my mind and has kept me awake

and has bothered me at night.

Why didn't this get brought up?

There's blood on a mattress in a van

that was burned about a mile from where Laci disappeared.

That screams "needs further investigation."

- They couldn't determine whether it was human blood

or not, but there was human DNA.

I contacted the defense and said,

are you aware of these photographs?

They weren't aware of it.

But they asked for the photos themselves

and then they asked for further testing.

It's possible that they could get a sequencing

and find out whose DNA is on that mattress.

- When you think about it, it basically comes down

that there was a crime, there's DNA.

We should probably find out whose DNA it is.

Pretty simple.

[birds chirping]

[dog barking]

- Hello. - Hi.

- Hi. Good to see you again.

- Good to see you.

Good.

Ready to work. - All right.

[suspenseful music]

- Well, I was thinking it could just be a good idea

to kinda lay out big picture of what we know

the evidence to be right now.

This is the evidence, starting with some of the things

we've known for 20 years, all the way up to new evidence

we've just obtained in the last year

and how we worked our way through this evidence

as kind of a family and a team of people

trying to solve a crime.

We all know that Laci went missing on December 24th.

The dog was found in the neighborhood with a leash on.

Karen Servas had put McKenzie back in the yard

no later than 10:18.

And she had closed the gate.

The neighbors across the street,

they had left the morning of December 24th.

They returned home December 26th

to find their home has been burglarized.

You have the neighbor, Diane Jackson,

seeing a van and men the morning of December 24th,

the day that Laci went missing.

So the evidence indicates that the Medina burglary

started the morning of December 24th.

The Medinas, who lived across the street,

didn't leave until 10:30.

So there was a perception that the Medina burglary

was unrelated to what happened to Laci

because the Medinas hadn't left yet.

- So many of the mistakes have to do

with the Karen Servas timeline.

- You found the dog in the street.

- Yes, I did.

- And put the dog in the backyard.

That ended up being very critical to the prosecution's

case because they needed to establish a certain time.

- Scott Peterson, based on triangulation

of cell phone records and cell phone towers,

in his own neighborhood at 10:08.

At 10:18, the neighbor finds the dog

running free with a muddy leash.

- That's a DA timeline.

That's not the defense timeline.

She could have gone missing at any hour that morning.

- The judge bought into this Karen Servas timeline,

the idea that Laci's already dead by 10:18.

So the judge said, the burglars weren't there,

so they couldn't have been involved.

- It meant the jury didn't hear evidence about the burglary.

- Years later, the defense discovers

this bit of potential evidence from a mailman

by the name of Graybill.

And he claims that he delivered mail

between 10:35 and 10:55,

and what he did notice was that McKenzie,

the dog that always barked every time he delivered mail,

wasn't barking, and that the gate

at the Peterson home was open.

- And if the dog wasn't there and Laci wasn't there,

that means she was walking the dog.

And we know that several people

had seen a pregnant woman walking.

- That was the missing piece.

Laci was still home when Karen Servas

put the dog back in the yard.

If Laci is alive after 10:30,

Laci could have encountered the Medina burglary.

- We know the timeline now because of Russell Graybill.

We know more about the burglary.

- We've spent a lot of time trying to connect

this burglary, the mailman, and Russell Graybill.

There's just so many tips and so much information,

and the timeline of the morning was so misunderstood.

These are the significant tips that came in

to the Modesto Police Department, a lot of which

are at issue in the filings.

There are more, but these are the ones

that are most commonly talked about.

As a family, we believe the police

were putting due diligence into following up

on the sightings of Laci.

[indistinct chatter]

They had some people came in with tips.

Passed those on to the police because

I wanted them to follow up,

and I thought they were following up on them.

I found out later when I started to read

the police discovery, their reports,

which were given to us before trial,

that they weren't following up on anything.

- Just a couple of things about the tip lines.

There's been now about 340 calls that's come in.

- There's been tips that the burglars confronted Laci.

One was a former Los Angeles reserve officer

who had seen someone being sort of muscled into a van.

- He was so disturbed by it that he called police.

[line trills]

His name was Tom Harshman.

- Hello?

- Hi. Mr. Harshman?

I'm doing research for a documentary,

and I read about your tip that you...

that you made to the Modesto Police.

[phone ringing]

- Tom Harshman calls twice on the 28th.

Then he's so upset by what he saw,

he actually goes to the police

so that everyone knows he saw a pregnant woman

being shoved into a van.

- I mean, there were a lot of phantom sightings

from people and things.

But as far as that being a specific one,

I never heard anything like that.

- No detective was assigned.

In fact, they put more effort into discrediting

the Laci sightings, rather than go talk to the people

who actually said they saw Laci that day.

- This is one thing that does bother me.

If I'm living in Modesto and Tom Harshman reports

that a pregnant lady was physically abused

on the side of a road, if it wasn't Laci, who was it?

- So any evidence that Laci is alive after Scott leaves,

whether it's Laci walking the dog

or Laci encountering a burglary,

is evidence that Scott is innocent.

- There are so many instances where

there was evidence that didn't fit

the detective's theory that they ignored.

- Very late in Scott's trial, a tip came in

talking about Laci confronting the burglary.

- My name is Xavier Aponte.

I was a correctional officer

at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco.

In January 2003, one of the correctional officers

responsible for monitoring inmate calls

overheard a conversation.

There were rumors on the street that Laci Peterson

had walked up and interrupted a burglary down the street

from her house.

[phone dialing]

I contacted the Modesto PD's tip hotline

because somebody might wanna follow up on it.

I did not receive any immediate calls back.

And probably about a week or so later,

I made a second phone call and reiterated

what I had left the first time.

- Modesto PD and the prosecution,

they'd been sitting on that information

and didn't bother to share it with us.

Later, we asked for the recording.

We never got the recording.

That recording does not exist right now.

Supposedly, the detectives looked everywhere.

Was this something that was deep-sixed?

The bottom line is, this was material,

exonerating evidence that should have been turned over

and it wasn't turned over.

- The Lieutenant Aponte tip, under further scrutiny,

as Detective Grogan started looking into it,

his story changed slightly.

And then as Grogan pressed him more,

he ended up recanting this information

and saying that it really wasn't true at all.

- Aponte has recanted everything he said.

Who's the officer that told you about it first?

He couldn't remember.

Where's your notes in the log where

you log in all these tapes?

Couldn't find it. Well, where's the tape?

Don't have it.

And that was the end of that.

It was just a big malarkey.

- At no time have I ever recanted my statements.

What I did say is that his conversation

seemed to be hearsay from the talk on the street.

The statements that I made were true and factual.

- Lieutenant Aponte has called in a tip

connecting the burglars to Laci.

You know you've got a duty

to turn over exonerating evidence

that tend to show someone's innocence.

- What else do we have?

- Right on the heels of the Medina burglary,

this reward was offered, I believe, on December 31st.

Well, on that same day, a Croton watch was pawned.

And when Laci went missing, she was wearing a Croton watch

that she had inherited from her grandmother.

- Tell me about the Croton watch.

- She inherited it, you know, before Christmas,

not long before Christmas.

And it was kind of gaudy.

It had a bezel with diamonds around it.

We joked about it. We called it her rapper watch.

* *

- On December 31, 2002, a lady came in and she sold us

a 14-karat-gold Croton Watch.

Everything we loan or buy goes to a master computer.

I was contacted by the Modesto Police Department.

They thought maybe it was Laci Peterson's watch.

They just came in and said

they're here to pick up the watch,

and they took the watch.

- Where is the watch?

And was that Laci's watch?

They never found it.

- I knew it was missing.

But the first time I heard that the police

knew about it being pawned was well after I was arrested.

The police have to provide the defense

with discovery when they ask for it,

any exculpatory information.

The police hadn't shared this with us at all.

And now I know why, because they covered it up.

- I think it was a wild goose chase.

If it would have been something of importance,

if it would have been major,

it would have been in the trial.

- We can never prove it was hers.

It never amounted to anything other than speculation.

- It may have been Laci's

and it may not have been Laci's.

But the bottom line, they interviewed

the owner of the pawn shop.

It should have been turned over to the defense.

Never turned over to the defense.

- This really highlight the failings

of the Modesto Police investigation.

The sightings of Laci were not followed up on.

The sightings of McKenzie were not followed up on.

This burnt van certainly was not followed up on.

This watch was not followed up on.

- Now, do you think some things were followed up on

by the Modesto Police, but documents

or related evidence

wasn't turned over to the defense?

- I strongly believe, based on the sum total of the reports

and how things are cross-referenced,

that there's a strong possibility that

we're missing reports on the Croton Watch.

It was confirmed we were missing reports

on this burned van when Scott's appellate attorney, in 2006,

requested from the district attorney, hey,

can you send me your whole file on this van?

Scott's defense attorney, Mark Geragos,

initially had a few files on this van,

but he did not have photos of that bloodstained mattress.

- People want the answer they believed in

to continue to be the answer.

You know, people are who we all are.

We're...we're slow to admit we're wrong.

[suspenseful music]

* *

- In California, death penalty cases just take a long time.

You know, we had 12, 15 years where nothing happened.

The bigger hope that Scott would be exonerated

really drove what we did,

specifically his death sentence.

We didn't really know how long it would take.

We just kept investigating.

His attorneys kept working.

We just hung on to every shred of hope,

every, what else can we do?

And...and let's do it.

- News today, convicted killer Scott Peterson

is officially off death row.

He was resentenced to life in prison

without the possibility of parole.

- Judge Delucchi made an error during jury selection.

He said, if you're against the death penalty,

well, then you're excused.

When law in California says, if you say,

I am against the death penalty, the judge is supposed

to ask you questions about it.

Judge Delucchi didn't do that.

And the California Supreme Court, for that reason,

overturned the sentence for Scott Peterson.

- I felt a sense of relief when Scott's

death sentence was overturned.

I know the first time that I went to go visit him in person

at Mule Creek, I'm sitting in this big room

with all these people and waiting for Scott

to come through the door.

And he came through the door,

unescorted and unhandcuffed.

I was just looking at him and I actually was wondering

what was wrong with his walk.

I was like, why is he walking funny?

And I realized later that I had not seen him walk

with his arms swinging for 20 years.

- All rise.

- Once the death penalty was off the table,

Scott Peterson, at that point, lost a lot of resources

that were available to him.

- The problem for Scott Peterson is that

now that he's off of death row,

he's lost state-sponsored representation.

- There is a practical reality for all but the...

the wealthiest people in America that,

at some point...

and we're certainly there, 20 years post conviction...

families lose their ability to afford the cost

of high-end attorneys.

- There was clearly a need for an organization or a team

that was financially secure,

had access to a lot more resources.

- I wasn't even remotely qualified

to take over his case.

There's a number of problems with Scott's conviction,

but one of the things going on in his case

was that there needed to be some DNA testing.

And Scott's attorney had noticed that

the newly formed Los Angeles Innocence Project

had a DNA grant.

- 2023, Scott Peterson's appellate attorneys

reached out to the Los Angeles Innocence Project

in the hopes that they would take on the case.

- When the Innocence Project takes a case,

it sends a message.

- When the Innocence Project gets involved,

they only get involved if they believe they can win a case.

This appears to be the beginning stages.

- The Los Angeles Innocence Project

has filed a motion asking for, I believe,

17 items to be DNA tested.

A couple of those items are associated

with the Medina burglary, a burned van that

was found about a mile from Laci's home

the day after she went missing.

And 11 of those items were recovered either with

or near Laci and Conner's bodies.

- We've got this other narrative going on

that has been going on since that week,

a burglary across the street that happened

around the same time that she was supposed

to go out for that walk.

- They wanna find out if a van that was found

torched near the Modesto Airport

is connected to the burglary.

Inside, investigators discovered a mattress

with stains confirmed to be blood.

The Innocence Project wants to conduct

new DNA tests on those samples.

Could it be Laci Peterson's blood?

[inquisitive music]

- I think with the filing of these motions,

the public has a much better view of what happened

when Laci went missing.

A lot of this information wasn't public

until these filings.

- I think there's enough evidence

that it's probable that...

that someone else may have committed the crime.

- The Peterson family credits Mike Gudgell,

a journalist who used to work for ABC News,

with tracking down new evidence.

- I'd been doubted by my friends and family for years.

Having it validated was an important moment

and sort of the arc of my commitment to this.

Ultimately is about injustice,

and not just for Scott... for Laci too.

And the Los Angeles Innocence Project efforts are important.

They have substance and they need to be taken seriously.

- It is clear that they believe

that the Medina burglary

had a connection to Laci Peterson's disappearance.

They're not necessarily stating that the individuals

who were convicted of the burglary

are the ones who committed the crime,

but that there's a larger web of individuals

who may have been the ones involved in her disappearance.

- It's a little overwhelming to look at the evidence

in this case and realize how solvable this crime is.

- To have an innocence organization take his case,

I think, really speaks to the fact that Scott is innocent.

- It would be impossible for me to acknowledge

and thank everyone that is responsible for bringing

this case to the successful conclusion that it did.

But there are...

- Well, if there was any doubt, I would be shouting it.

I would be making noise about it.

But nothing has changed in these 20 years since

that makes me have any doubt that we got the right guy.

If you can imagine a family that's pretty tore up

and they probably have this nagging belief

that their daughter, stepdaughter or what have you,

is dead...

Anybody that has a thought that there's a claim of innocence

on Scott's part doesn't know the case as well

as those of us that worked it did.

- Peterson's new legal team believes he may be innocent.

- This is how our criminal justice system works,

to be sure that we have the right person in custody.

- The LA Innocence Project taking up this fight

at this time, not totally unexpected.

- This isn't nothing new.

I mean, this has been talked about.

This is...I don't have a reaction.

I believe this is bullshit.

There is absolutely no reasonable doubt.

None. He did it. Jury got it right.

- If there was any doubt, I would be shouting it.

I would be making noise about it.

I have no doubt about Scott's involvement

and the fact that he was the killer in it,

because there's just too much

circumstantial evidence to ignore.

From the beginning of this investigation,

Scott was the focus for Al Brocchini and I.

- There was blood on the duvet.

It turned out to be his blood.

In the end of the bed,

it looked like something laid there.

- So this could have been a situation where

maybe he strangled or smothered Laci

on the end of the bed there.

She scratched him during the struggle

and then that blood got on the comforter.

- Scott did run to the neighbors,

but the first neighbor he ran to, he told them,

I've been golfing all day.

Have you seen Laci?

Then he changed it to fishing.

- We knew he'd been fishing.

There was saltwater in the boat.

But his fishing rod was more of a freshwater fishing rod.

And the lure packages hadn't even been opened.

- And so that made us a little bit more suspicious

of what he was up to.

- The timeline suggests that there were witnesses

that saw Laci on the morning of the 24th

after Scott left for his fishing trip.

- Anybody that said they saw Laci

walking the dog got interviewed.

- Eyewitness testimony is very subjective.

It would be very easy for a witness

to wanna be helpful, to claim later

that they saw Laci, when actually they didn't,

it was a mistaken identity thing.

Or, more sinister, people who wanted to get

involved in this because it was high profile,

it was in the news, and everything like that.

And we had a few things like that that popped up.

But in addition to that, as the case unfolded,

there was information from her doctor

that she wasn't really in any condition to make a walk.

- One of the working theories is that Laci Peterson came out

of this house right here, 523 Covina,

and there was a burglary in progress

right across the street.

- When it comes to the theory

of Laci being abducted by the burglars,

people saw vans in the neighborhood.

They saw women walking dogs in the neighborhood.

But nobody saw Laci being abducted, making noise,

screaming, confronting somebody,

having an argument in the street.

- Todd and Pearce, they alibied out.

We went to, where were you on Christmas?

Well, they were eating dinner with Mom and Grandma.

It was investigated thoroughly.

- It's rare that a guy who's doing burglaries

to source a narcotics habit is gonna

turn into a violent offender and abduct a girl

and keep her hostage.

And you have to remember that a lot of property

was recovered from the burglary,

and of all this property that was inventoried and photoed

and examined, there was not one piece of property there

that belonged to Laci.

That's why, to me, the thought of the burglars

being responsible for her disappearance

is pretty much fantasy.

- We had the... the Berkeley receipt.

On that day, we have the timestamp.

We know that it's from that marina.

They just gave everyone, you know, a way to implicate you.

- Half of America knew where this man was on Christmas Eve.

If someone else committed this crime,

where they would deposit the bodies

is in the San Francisco Bay.

If you want to assure that you aren't gonna be convicted

and Scott Peterson will be.

- If the burglars were gonna frame Scott,

they're not gonna weight the body down and hide it.

You're gonna want it to come up.

Wouldn't they just put her body right on the beach?

- They don't have a boat.

They don't have a truck that can pull a boat.

They have no way to get to the bay.

- I guess it's possible, just like anything else is.

But it's also possible that Jennifer Lopez

is gonna call me after she leaves Ben Affleck

and wanna have a date.

- The Modesto Police Department did

a phenomenal job in this case.

- I feel pretty confident about the case

that was put together by our team and especially the way

it was presented to the jury by the prosecution.

And can they do it again if they have to?

I believe so.

Now we've got this blood that needs to be tested,

and my attitude on that is, test that evidence.

And then you're gonna be able to show

that it doesn't come back to anything

to do with Laci or Scott.

If we had the wrong guy in prison,

we would wanna know about it.

- Even 20 years after the conviction,

you still have the detectives trying to justify

or prove their case.

The Los Angeles Innocence Project

only takes cases for defendants

who have a credible claim of innocence.

The orange van may be the smoking gun,

but no one can tell.

We all have to wait for the DNA testing.

- Convicted murderer Scott Peterson

is in front of a judge today.

- The next big hearing is on May 29th.

And this is a crucial hearing because the court's

gonna be deciding on a number of DNA testings.

And we're hoping that the court approves, if not all,

at least most of them.

- Today's hearing could be the most crucial

in the attempt to try and earn a new trial.

- If Laci Peterson's DNA is on that mattress,

that's gonna exonerate Scott Peterson.

[suspenseful music]

* *

- A judge ruling is expected today.

- A huge decision here for this judge

to try to determine whether there can be

new DNA testing done on these pieces of evidence.

- A no to DNA testing could be a dagger

to the LAIP's argument,

but a yes to the testing could be a huge step forward

in asking for a new trial.

- Convicted murderer Scott Peterson

appeared virtually in a Northern California courtroom

as a judge denied nearly all DNA testing requests.

- The judge mostly rejected Scott Peterson's request

to test about 15 pieces of evidence, except for one.

Peterson will be allowed to test a piece of duct tape

that was found on his wife's body after it washed ashore.

- Most people, including me,

expected that the DNA testing requests would be granted.

- Paula Mitchell, in her argument before the court,

said, in all the years

that I've been asking for DNA testing,

I've never had this kind of resistance.

- That, in itself, speaks volumes, if you ask me.

- The DNA on the duct tape on the pants are gonna be tested.

- If someone else's DNA is on duct tape

that's adhered to Laci's body,

that indicates someone else is culpable.

That doesn't get Scott a new trial.

That releases Scott.

- It's the initial stages.

This is not the end of it. It's just the beginning.

And at least we've got one win.

They still have their discovery motion

that they can argue that can bring

additional information to light.

Even if you think the person is a monster,

under our constitution,

he or she is entitled to a fair trial,

something Scott Peterson never got.

- Criminal defense is inherently unfair,

simply because the state has all the resources.

- I think most people think that the courts

will get it right.

But the problem is, when the courts don't get it right,

it is incredibly hard to fix.

- I don't think you can honestly say,

in looking at this case, even if you have questions about it,

that this jury got it wrong.

The jury basically mirrors

what most people in this country believe

who have looked into this case,

and that is that Scott Peterson did it.

- There is no evidence of manner of death.

There is no evidence of cause of death.

There is no evidence of a crime scene anywhere.

There isn't any evidence that Scott Peterson

engaged in any violence involving his wife.

When you know that the jury ultimately learned all of that

and still convicted him, you have to ask yourself,

what's going on here?

And that's where, I believe,

the media plays a significant role.

- We've been following what appears to be movement

in the Laci Peterson case.

- All of us were so saturated with media attention

surrounding this case, all virtually one-sided,

all against Scott Peterson,

that I believe it became almost impossible

to make a rational decision.

- When ratings speak,

when people realize that

there's a voracious appetite for a story,

they're going to just rev it up.

And the more the media revved it up,

the more obsession there was.

- A Fox News alert.

A major development in the case of Scott Peterson.

- He was dubbed the Most Hated Man in America,

convicted of murdering his wife, Laci.

- For the first time in many years,

we're hearing from the family of Laci Peterson.

- This story was a huge cottage industry.

"The National Enquirer" never had it so good.

- The families of both Laci and Scott Peterson

watching in court this week.

- People think that there's some conspiracy as to

what we see in the mainstream media.

Well, here's what we see.

We see what people want to see

because that's how they make money.

- Friends and family of this young woman, Laci Peterson.

- Careers were made on it.

Within months, I was working at CNN

and had been a national reporter since.

In Modesto, Ted Rowlands, KTVU Channel 2 News.

- Nancy Grace was a reoccurring guest.

Her career absolutely exploded.

A lot of lives were changed

because of the death of Laci and Conner Peterson.

- A baby boy, umbilical cord still attached.

- There was a lot of hatred.

There was a lot of pretrial coverage

and a conviction in the media.

But otherwise, as far as evidence,

at least I didn't see any evidence.

- Twenty years later, you have two very compelling stories,

circumstantial as they may be.

If you think Scott Peterson is guilty,

yeah, there's a ton of evidence on your side.

If you think Scott Peterson is not guilty,

there's some compelling evidence on your side.

The problem is, there's no black and white,

here's why we think he did it or didn't do it.

There's nothing concrete.

And that's what the LA Innocence Project,

I guess, is after.

- Journalism is all about finding the truth

and holding our public servants accountable.

At some point, law enforcement has to engage in this.

It has to open their minds a little further.

- If they go to another trial, I'm not gonna like it

because it's gonna disrupt a lot of people's lives.

And the big thing for me is what it does

to Sharon, Amy, Brent.

When they got the verdict, they were probably

on the attitude that, oh, this is all done

and we can resume our lives.

But no, it doesn't work that way.

- People never come to terms with something

like a murder in their family.

There's no such thing as closure.

It's something that haunts you and you live with

for the rest of your life.

- It's been 22 years since Laci went missing.

So really, this tragedy is...

it's been part of our lives for a very long time.

My kids grew up with it.

My nieces and nephews grew up with it.

We've lived with this injustice droning

in the background of life.

Our biggest hope is that we not only

are able to free Scott, but ultimately find out

what did happen to Laci and Conner.

We need both.

And Laci deserves both.

- Her name is Laci Peterson,

and she has disappeared without a trace.

- Are you in any way connected to Laci's disappearance?

- I had nothing to do with Laci's disappearance.

- Somebody has Laci. - Authorities are baffled.

- A brown van could back up

a defense theory Laci was abducted.

- $1,000 for someone that leads us to the persons

responsible for the burglary.

- We were shocked to find out that

he'd been having an affair.

- I'm only left to question what else he may be hiding.

- A female adult body was discovered late this morning

by a woman walking the shoreline.

- Murder suspect Scott Peterson

had $10,000 in cash when he was arrested

near the Mexican border.

- A crowd of 250 taunted and heckled him,

calling him a murderer.

- Peterson has been found guilty of first-

and second-degree murder.

[cheering]

- Whoo-hoo! That's it! I'm happy!

- The judge in Scott Peterson's murder trial

sentenced him, calling him cruel,

uncaring, and heartless.

- Scott got what he deserved.

- Key questions remain unanswered

and have left some wondering, will we ever get to the truth?

[somber music]

* *

- Every moment is so real, is so tactile and still there.

And the smells and the lighting and the sound

of when I say goodbye to Laci, I mean, my family was gone.

I drove away, expecting to come back that afternoon

and have our wonderful Christmas together

after we both had, you know, fun mornings.

And no, they were gone.

And it's still very, very present.

But there are certainly times that I become a wreck.

Excuse me.

You know, I try not to be too emotional

when I'm out here in the day room of the prison.

* *