What the Jury Never Knew About Laci Peterson’s Murder and Why Scott Peterson Should Not Be On Death Row
Book Review & Interview
An Interview with Matt Dalton – Author of “Presumed Guilty: What the Jury Never Knew About Laci Peterson’s Murder and Why Scott Peterson Should Not Be On Death Row” by the late Bill Bickel – former Managing Editor of Crime, Justice and America magazine. Originally published in 2007 and reposted with permission from Crime, Justice and America magazine
For the first five months after Scott Peterson’s 2003 arrest, Matt Dalton was the #3 man on Peterson’s defense team (after Mark Geragos and Kirk McAllister), and the attorney most involved in hunting down evidence. He left the case – and the firm of Geragos and Geragos – in September of 2003, shortly after he violated a gag order by discussing, in the presence of two Sacramento Bee reporters, his theory that Laci Peterson could have been abducted and murdered by a satanic cult.
In Presumed Guilty, Mr. Dalton – true to the book’s subtitle – details several pieces of evidence the jury never got to hear (as well as several that were presented at trial and rebutted by the prosecution: The witnesses who claimed to have seen Laci Peterson walking her dog the day after Scott allegedly killed her, for example, might have seen another, similar-looking pregnant woman who as it turned out lived in the same neighborhood and walked a similar-looking dog).
At the very least, Presumed Guilty provides a little balance: Every other high-profile book about this case (including Anne Bird’s Blood Brother: 33 Reasons My Brother Scott Peterson is Guilty, Amber Frey’s Witness! For the Prosecution of Scott Peterson and Catherine Crier’s A Deadly Game) is essentially an indictment against Scott Peterson.
There is clearly, I should add, no love lost between Matt Dalton and the law firm that fired him three years ago and tried unsuccessfully late last year to block the publication of his book. I interviewed Mr. Dalton for CJA Radio earlier this year…
This is Bill Bickel, managing editor of Crime, Justice & America magazine, and I’m online and on the air with Matt Dalton, author of Presumed Guilty: What the Jury Never Knew About Laci Peterson’s Murder and Why Scott Peterson Should Not Be On Death Row. For those of you who might have spent the past few years on another planet … On December 24, 2002, Scott Peterson returned home from a fishing trip and reported his pregnant wife Laci Peterson missing. Police soon discovered that Scott had a girlfriend, and at about that time he officially became the prime suspect. He was arrested April 23, 2003, convicted November 12, 2004, sentenced to death March 15, 2005. Mr. Dalton was Scott’s attorney for much of the pre-trial period. Matt Dalton, welcome.
Thanks for having me.
Cutting right to the chase here: Obviously you feel there was a lot of evidence the jury should have seen but didn’t, and that Scott Peterson should not be on death row, as per the cover of the book. But your gut feeling, not a legal one: Did he do it, and by this I mean would you be okay with your sister dating the guy? And I say “dating” rather than “marry” because he obviously is not great husband material.
My personal opinion is that he is innocent. My purpose in writing the book was to point out all of the uncertainties that exist in the case.
That being said, is there one thing about the case, about Scott Peterson’s story that’s just nagging at you, that you’d really like him to explain to your satisfaction?
Well, it’s my opinion that the case against him was very weak. On the other hand, I feel there is a lot of evidence that his wife, Laci Peterson, was abducted on the morning of December 24, and that evidence was never presented. Real witnesses saw Laci Peterson… You know, I spent six months living up there, right after he was arrested, investigating the case fulltime, and I went through everything that the police had related to Laci’s disappearance. All the police reports, dispatch logs, about 30,00 pages, that I went through word-for-word, line-for-line, and there was critical information that was not represented to the jury and critical information that was not investigated. Six witnesses saw Laci Peterson walking her dog [on December 24] the day after she was supposedly murdered. If the police say she was murdered on December 23, how could these people have seen her alive the next day? Three of these witnesses had seen her walking her dog in the neighborhood before, and one of those witnesses knew her; and none of those witnesses were presented to a jury. I spoke to all of them, and they were all very credible. They each independently and separately reported what they had seen, and didn’t know that the others had reported seeing the same thing. Their statements were documented right after the disappearance. They have Laci walking in an almost perfect circle around her block, her regular walking route, and none of this was presented to the jury.
Then I guess the question has to be: Why not? Why would the defense not use these people?
I don’t know. I left the case prior to trial. The defense lawyer [Mark Geragos] who handled the trial had these witnesses on the witness list. He spoke about them in his opening statement. I can’t explain why he didn’t present them.
If you had to name a single factor that led to Peterson’s conviction, or a single moment that turned the tide…?
Well… My expertise in this case was investigating the disappearance of Laci Peterson, and I was privy to all the information the Modesto Police Department, and that’s all I know. I know there are real witnesses out there who saw Laci Peterson alive the day after she was supposedly killed. And there’s much, much more.
As an observer of the trial, was there a moment when you said to yourself “Okay, he’s toast now”?
Nothing that convinced me. I honestly did not think he was going to be convicted on the weak evidence that they had. But I have to say, in my opinion, it was amber Frey that was his downfall. But there was no evidence that convinced me that he’d murdered his wife and child.
Regarding the burglary of the house across the street from the Petersons’ – you wrote quite a bit about that – you said there was clear evidence that the burglary did take place on the 24th of December, they say Scott said that Laci disappeared, there were eyewitnesses, the police report files December 26; yet when the burglars confessed to the crime they confessed to having done it on the 27th, which means they would have been breaking in plain sight of half the world’s news media. So what is the deal here? Were the police deliberately trying to cover this up because it contradicted their theory of the crime? How could this sort of thing happen?
I think the police focused too early on Scott Peterson, that’s my opinion. They didn’t follow up on any other leads. I also want to say that there are people walking the streets today who’ve had their convictions reversed, and their cases were investigated by police also.
What you’re talking about sounds like a deliberate altering of facts though. That seems a little bit blatant. Do you suppose this sort of thing is more common than I think?
My purpose in that chapter of the book is to state as factually as possible, “this is what happened, these are the reports, these are the statements that were given,” and none of that was brought to the jury’s attention.
You mention in your book that Modesto seemed to have been a hotbed of unusual criminal activity around the time Laci went missing: the brown van that may have been involved in an attempted abduction, the house break-in, the possible satanic rape and abduction. Do you think the trial could have been won – I know you think the trial should have been won anyway – but do you think the trial could have been won simply by introducing all of this, plus the six witnesses, focusing entirely on reasonable doubt (which is of course how Robert Blake was acquitted his criminal trial)… just reasonable doubt, reasonable doubt, not trying to prove Scott Peterson innocent in any way?
Oh absolutely. I feel the evidence is very strong in Scott Peterson’s favor, indicating that somebody else was responsible for abducting his wife. I feel [Mark Geragos] really blew the case by not presenting this evidence. Now I want to make it clear, this started with the Modesto police department, they were the ones investigating the satanic group who just days before Laci disappeared had abducted a girl into their van and raped her, and members of the group bragged that they were going to murder on Christmas. The group was from this area called the Airport District which backed up to Laci’s neighborhood and according to the Modesto police report, there were six criminal incidents that occurred in Laci’s neighborhood within a twelve-hour period of time between the night of December 23 and the morning of December 24. The police report indicates that four suspects were identified in these crimes, and they’re all from the Airport District. So you have all these Airport District felons committing felonies in Laci’s neighborhood at the time she disappeared, and that’s the kind of uncertainty that bothers me, and that was no investigated.
If you focus on one area, just a few blocks from Laci’s house on December 24, a day after she was supposedly killed, three of the six witnesses saw Laci walking her dog at the same time. One of the witnesses tells police, in a police report, that she sees Laci being followed by two men that were cursing at her, and at the same time, another witness hears screaming from that area. And in the same location, around the same time, a witness sees a suspicious van speed away from the curb, a woman’s coat is hanging out the door, and she describes unique details on this van. Now it appears the same van was seen by two other witnesses sitting in front of Laci’s house just 45 minutes before that. This is all documented in police reports. And this wasn’t presented at trial. Very strong evidence she was abducted, which is in addition to the physical evidence attached to her body including the duct tape.
You write that the duct tape found on her body was never compared to the duct tape found in the brown van.
There was just a failure to investigate leads. Scott Peterson never had his case investigated. The rape victim has identified the owner of that brown van. That was never presented to the jury. Why wasn’t that presented? Why were the bloodstains inside the van never tested? And that’s not fair to Scott Peterson. If Scott Peterson had had a public defender, the state would have provided an investigator to follow up on those leads. And there’s so much of that in this case. One of my big purposes in writing this book was to present and show the uncertainty of this case. The fact that a burglary took place across the street from Laci’s house and one of the guys convicted admitted to his buddy in prison that he’d confronted Laci during the burglary, well, the tape of that is gone. The tools used by the burglars in the burglary across the street are gone. Laci’s shoes, found in the street, gone. Her gloves, found in the street, they’re gone. We had three missing videotapes that could have helped Scott Peterson, they’re all gone. Physical evidence attached to the baby, that’s gone. You have seven pregnant woman who suddenly disappeared in that area, two mutilated pregnant women end up in the San Francisco Bay, and what about the fact that the watch Laci had on was pawned three days after she disappeared? That’s the kind of uncertainty that bothers me. You can’t execute a man under these circumstances.
It sounds as if the police were more concerned with getting Scott convicted than finding out who actually killed Laci.
It appears that way.
That’s troubling.
I agree.
Dr. Keith Ablow, in his book Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson, writes that according to his research – and apparently he’s never actually met Scott Peterson – Scott probably did kill Laci but he was insane at the time. Catherine Crier, in A Deadly Game, says with a similar certainty that Scott is a sociopath along the lines of Ted Bundy. In your time speaking with Scott, did you get any inkling that any of this could be true?
No. No. I know there’s nothing I can say that would convince anybody, but… I spent a lot of time talking to him, and there was absolutely nothing. In fact it was just the opposite, I wrote about it in the book, the way he reacted to the autopsy. So for them to draw that sort of conclusion is pretty outrageous in my opinion.
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