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

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0:39Not sure of the size or the material? Start with five samples for just$10 today to see them in your own light and match to your decor. Plus, get$50 toward any rug of your choice. Visit Ernesta.com today. That's E-R-N-E-S-T-A dot com. At 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve 2002, four Modesto police officers pull up outside a single-story ranch house at 523 Covina Avenue. The front windows face 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 eight months pregnant. Her husband says he went fishing 90 miles away and that he came home in the afternoon to find her gone.

1:26Officer Matt Spurlock leads the way up the brick walkway. Behind him, Sergeant Byron Duerfeld is on the phone to the supervisor, who runs a detective unit called Crimes Against Persons. I'm requesting the assistance of a CAP detective, sir, Duerfeld 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 officers inventory the presents 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.

2:08It 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 Merry Christmas in a youthful script. On the counter, leftover 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,

2:58The 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 it 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.

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4:54There is no body, nor even police must 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 Brocchini, 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 Modesto and the house on Covina Avenue with the police scanner going on his dashboard.

5:39Brocchini opens an investigation that night. He'll be with Scott Peterson on and off until 1.30 in the morning. Their taped interview begins at midnight. Let's just go over what we already talked about so I can make some notes. Just tell me about the morning. Here's how Scott describes that morning. Lacey is up first, and she has cereal. If she doesn't eat as soon as she's out of bed, she gets sick because of the pregnancy. Scott stays in bed a while 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.

6:20He remembers cookies of some sort. He remembers they talked about what to do with meringue. She tells him her plan for the day, finish cleaning the house, mop 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. That was a morning decision. Oh, was it morning? Go play golf at the club or go fishing. Okay. It seemed too cold to go play golf at the club, so I just decided to, you know, 9.30 or whatever.

7:06Before he leaves, Lacey asks him for help with the mop bucket.

7:20He tells Burkini what she's wearing when he leaves. Black pants, a white long-sleeved top, plain, 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 9.30 in his pickup and drives to the warehouse he rents on Emerald Avenue. I assembled my mortiser. It's a woodworking tool to make tables. You maybe saw it on the trailer there. It's about yay big. Yeah, yeah. I just got that, so I assembled it. Checked my email. sent one email, then took the boat up and went. The email goes to his boss.

8:15Then 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 Berkeley Marina. He feeds$5 into the automated parking machine and takes the timed 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, catches nothing. He tells Brochini 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.

8:59Okay, beautiful. I just left a message at home. 215. I live in Berkeley. I'll see you in a bit. We love you. Bye. 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 is 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 gray and white Siamese cat follow him inside.

9:39The 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.

10:23This is supposed to be a celebratory evening. They're due at Lacey's mom's house for dinner at six 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, Scott pauses.

11:10He says, hmm. Then he says the sentence that will change her life. 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, well, then she's missing. Missing? What do you mean missing? I mean, people don't use that term lightly. So I told him to call our 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.

12:00Lacey'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 he got home. 4.45, he says. It's now 5.17. 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.

12:43It's the weed shot. So the dog came back without your daughter? Right. Okay, what does your address say, sir? Two weeks later, Sharon Rocha opens that oven. The casserole dish of scalloped 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 5.30, Scott Peterson knocks on the door of a neighbor across the street, Amy Krigbaum, to ask whether she has seen Lacey. Krigbaum 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.

13:26Officer 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-in-law directly, were you able to get in a game of golf this morning? Scott hesitates. Then he says he did not play golf. It was too cold that he went fishing instead. Gransky is a fisherman himself. 9.30 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?

14:06Scott doesn't reply. Burkini asks Scott why the truck is backed in. 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 pheasant hunt about a month ago. Burkini pops open the glove box, the gun is there, and he takes it.

14:50Burkini 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,

15:11Brickini 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, An hour into the tape. What concerns me the most is the fact that your dog came home with a leash on. That bothers me. I mean, no question. Yeah. What concerns me most is doing anything I can to 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.

15:58Christmas 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 taking a polygraph was not a good idea. Scott Peterson will never take a police polygraph. Did you know many U.S. homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water? Even though contaminated water looks clear, it could put you at risk for devastating health concerns, including fatigue, hormone disruption, cognitive decline, even cancer. Surprisingly, standard fridge and pitcher filters do little to remove most contaminants, and bottled water contains microplastics.

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17:29That's aquatrue.com. A-Q-U-A-T-R-U.com. Promo code MKC. Hey, Chicagoland. The Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Eden's Plaza in Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget. Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for? Come see All That's In Store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Wayfair, every style, every home. Now the same day again. Not the day Scott Peterson describes.

18:13This 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 Mackenzie loose in the street.

19:01Dragging a leash 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 Service's statement, they ask 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 Mackenzie was found outside barking and alone with no Lacey.

19:4328 minutes for Lacey to finish mopping, load the dishwasher, make the bed, curl her hair, lace up her sneakers, clip a leash on Mackenzie, and head to the park and become a victim. Police come to believe that Lacey 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 DeStasso two years later in his closing argument. Quote, the defendant strangled Lacey 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.

20:22Strangling 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 call 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 that it's very quiet. Secondly, it doesn't make a mess. Investigators focus on the bedroom. The night Brickini walked through the house, he saw a white comforter in Lacey and Scott's bedroom pulled up over the pillows as though someone had tidied the bed in a hurry.

21:05At the foot of the bed, there was an indentation running across as though a body had been laid out there. Burkini 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 strip 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 Lacey Peterson was killed on that bed. One theory they take seriously is that she reached up and scratched him as he was strangling her to death.

21:49Then Scott has to move her. Investigators believe he wrapped her in a tarp inside the house and dragged her out through the back door, wadding up the throw rug as he went. Police also suspect Scott mopped the floor and deliberately let Mackenzie loose with his leash still attached, setting up the possibility that someone took Lacey. Here is the prosecutor, DeStasso, again. Quote, he wrapped her in a blue tarp and backed his truck up to the gate. He carries Lacey 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.

22:30Detective Craig Grogan, the lead investigator, will testify that the patio umbrellas Scott loaded that morning were approximately the same height as Lacey Peterson. and that wrapped in a tarp in the bed of a truck, they would not only hide Lacey'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 Lacey 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.

23:16On 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, on December 26th, detectives come back with a search warrant covering Scott's house, his warehouse, his vehicles, and his boat. Burkini looks at the flatbed trailer more closely.

23:55On 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 wringing the inside. Burkini stands close and studies it. There's a mallet lying next to the pitcher. And in the dried concrete on the trailer are four circular impressions, each one the size of the bottom of that water pitcher. Burkini works out what he's looking at. Ready-mix concrete and water, pour it 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.

24:38That leaves at least three unaccounted for. In the bed of Scott's pickup, Rikini finds a small tool coated in dry cement. He assumes this was used to mix the concrete. Detective Grogan 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 picture. Detectives see the picture, but never locate the bucket. The police theory is that concrete weights took Lacey 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, detectives find a pair of yellow needle-nosed pliers.

25:26There is a single strand of black human hair clamped in the pliers. Lacey 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 Lacey's hairbrush and a sample from Lacey's mother, Sharon. The hair does not belong to Scott Peterson. At 10.06 that morning, the morning Lacey 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.

26:11Police note this as a change from his normal behavior. He tows the boat from his warehouse about 90 miles to the Berkeley Marina. Detectives believe Lacey Peterson is in that boat. At 12.54 in the afternoon, he arrives at the marina, feeds$5 into the automated parking machine, and takes the timed 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 Brooks Island. That is where police believe Lacey Peterson's body is discarded into San Francisco Bay.

26:55He went out to Brooks Island and he dumped her weighted body into the water, hoping that it would never, ever come up. Four 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 Lacey 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 4.45. The dog is in the yard with the 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.

27:44Then he waits. At 5.15, he looks at his watch and picks up the phone. Hi, Mom, Scott says. Is Lacey there? In the first version, that is 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 Lacey'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.