August 21, 2024

Face to Face with Scott Peterson: “Well, then who else did it?”

the true crime that's worth your time

The crime
Apologies for cribbing from my own American Murder: Laci Peterson review, but:

On or around December 24, 2002, Laci Peterson – eight months pregnant with her and her husband Scott’s first child, a son they’d already named Conner – vanished in Modesto, CA. Laci and Conner’s bodies were discovered, a mile apart, in April of 2003, at which time the suspicions that had swirled with increasing intensity around Scott reached terminal velocity.

Scott Peterson was convicted of the murders of his wife and son in 2004. Various post-conviction relief efforts remain in progress. Scott has never wavered in his claims of complete innocence.

Peacock's Face to Face with Scott Peterson adds to that summary the possibility that prosecutors committed Brady violations, and that that plus Modesto police intransigence meant Peterson didn't – couldn't – receive a fair trial.

The story
Face to Face opens on Janey Peterson, Scott Peterson's sister-in-law, and her archive of case materials – flyers, letters from supporters, buttons with Laci's smiling face on them – and then quickly notes that Scott himself will talk to filmmaker Shareen Anderson (Trial by Fury: The People vs. Scott Peterson; Po Kutchins co-directs), having not spoken on-camera since 2003.

[keep reading SDB’s review here, or pay for a subscription to get it ad-free in your inbox]

So, you know what to expect from Peacock's three-part docuseries from the beginning: a documentary centered on the idea that a rush to judgment convicted Peterson, wrongly, with assistance from incompetent and/or venal law enforcement.

And there's nothing per se wrong with that approach. In fact, it's a solid one given the reasons the case continues to compel us – that, more than anything, we just want to know what the hell happened to Laci and Conner that Christmas Eve. Face to Face gets participation not just from Peterson but from various other case figures (although notably not from the Rochas, Laci's family), and while watching it back-to-back with AM:LP probably isn't indicated thanks to the near-verbatim recycling of various "scenes," it's a watchable and thought-provoking three hours.

But I kept murmuring the same phrase during that three hours: "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." 

Again, the absence of "real" physical evidence against Scott Peterson is what continues to drive interest in the murders of his pregnant wife and child after more than two decades – that, and Peterson stepping on his own dick (this is the legal term) repeatedly during the initial investigation, and I have to tell you that Face to Face did not exactly revise my impression of him as a glib weirdo.

His justification for claiming that he bought the notorious boat as a gift for Laci's stepfather, Ron, is typical: "I really love the idea of grandparents." Y...eah, sure? But also, wh…at? Who talks like this? Peterson also tries to characterize his relationship with Amber Frey as not a relationship at all, but rather a one-night stand "plus," I guess, as though we haven't all heard the phone calls, which do not suggest a casual situation. He's had literal decades to formulate a better response; he says…that. 

But Peterson also says that he kept calling Frey after Laci's disappearance because he wanted to prevent his infidelity from entering the investigation and pulling focus from the search for Laci – and I think that instinct was actually correct on his part, though it's possible that's a retrofitted excuse. I think it's possible, even probable, that Peterson's…inexplicable affect, let's say, did focus law-enforcement's attention on him, to the detriment of a true and thorough investigation into Laci's whereabouts. I think it's possible, even probable, that the jury Overton-windowed "reasonable doubt" over to something more like "a preponderance of the evidence" in order to give themselves and the families/the culture any answer as to what happened. 

And I think Peterson's case shares a couple of aspects with the Jeffrey MacDonald case that I didn't mention earlier this week. The facets I did mention include "pregnant victims, and defendants who may have felt deep and disordered ambivalence about the kids/dog/picket-fence roads they’d started down," as well as "a blandly handsome dickhead who’s apparently oblivious to how he’s perceived" – who tried to steer the story, failed miserably, and wound up doing life without parole in no small part because a jury of his peers thought he was an asshole.

They also share an accused who will never admit to wrongdoing, no matter how many teams of attorneys get negged by how many appeals-court panels – and who feels empowered to continue denying culpability by 1) the near certainty that he didn't get a fair trial, and 2) the tireless – albeit perhaps compromised – advocacy by a key figure on his behalf. In MacDonald's case, evidence got mishandled, his right to a speedy trial was treated casually at best, and you could make a reasonable argument as to ineffective assistance of counsel. Then Errol Morris waded into the fray to claim, among other things, that the justice system should have taken Helena Stoeckley seriously.

In Peterson's, it does seem like Modesto PD drew certain conclusions based on an absolute smorgasbord of suggestively sketchy behavior, and that various leads pertaining to the morning timeline and the break-in at the neighbors' house didn't get followed up – or that they were, and law enforcement deleted them so as not to muddy the waters. There is for sure information the jury should have heard, because that's another thing that makes the Peterson case "major": the "what would you do" questions it raises, from all angles. 

What would you do as a juror in the Peterson case? I don't know what I'd have done; I can't get past the specifics of the lying to Frey, and I can't past the decision to go alllll the way to the Bay to fish, on Christmas Eve…but there is reasonable doubt, for me, in the case as presented, and if you add the burglary and the pawned watch and blah blah blah, I don't know if I can convict him.

What would you do as an investigator? Face to Face isn't unsympathetic to the detectives, but it does create doubt around every narrative as decided on by police, which is valuable IMO – and at the same time, you see how police "pattern rec" functioned, and that they really did believe the nearby burglary was a coincidence. We'd all like to think we'd follow all leads in all directions, but…would we?

What would you do as a member of Peterson's family? Janey Peterson is what we call "kin, not blood" – she's married to Peterson's brother, who doesn't appear on camera – but she's in both the recent docs, she went to law school to try to help with Peterson's post-conviction case; this case is now her life, and she's the semi-Errol Morris figure here. (Or the semi-Janet Malcolm, if you agree with some redditors that Janey is ensorcelled by Peterson.) But what does the brother think? Why is Janey the one leading the charge and sitting for interviews? What would I do if my BIL went on trial for murdering his wife and Dan was like, "The thing iiiiiiiiis well yanno I'm pretty sure he did it I'm out good luck to y'all"?

Face to Face raised all those questions for me, and while I don't know whether that's the docuseries' effectiveness or just the way the case itself works on the societal mind, it's worth watching either way. So much of what makes a given case compelling is the search for the truth, for what happened – and while you won't necessarily get any new information in Face to Face, it has something to say about the search itself.

As Peterson himself sighs near the end, "People want the answer they believed in to continue to be the answer." The guy can't say the right thing the right way 98 percent of the time, but damned if he didn't nail the true-crime industrial complex with that shit.