Closing Arguments for the People

Guilt Phase:  By Rick Distaso

November 1, 2004

MR. DISTASO: Thank you, your Honor.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for your time. I'm not going to spend a lot of time doing that because I want to spend time on the evidence. I want to thank you for your time you spent in this case. You've been here a long time and everybody in the trial really appreciates it. I think in this case an important place to start right from the beginning is hearing from Laci herself.

So go ahead, John. (Video played)

That was Laci Peterson early in her pregnancy; happy, as you can see, obviously; not aware of what was about to befall her some months down the road; obviously in love with Scott Peterson. And I think that's the biggest part of this case. The betrayal aspect of Scott Peterson. Laci Peterson had no idea what was coming from this man. And, in fact, she probably trusted him more than anybody else, I think is what the evidence showed us. Now, let's go to the next picture, John, Laci in life at the Christmas party. This is probably one of the most telling pictures in all of the trial. Laci sitting alone at that Christmas party, by herself, teetering in on those big high heels, even though her feet are swollen with an advanced state of pregnancy, with a smile on her face, making the best of it. That pretty much describes in a nutshell Laci Peterson's life in December of 2000 and 2. Go to the next picture, John.

Of course, here's where we ended up. Laci Peterson washing ashore on the San Francisco Bay around Point Isabel and found at that dog park on April 14th.

Laci Peterson didn't wash ashore totally alone in the San Francisco Bay, of course. She washed ashore with her unborn son, Conner, about a mile north on April 13th. Go ahead, John. Show that picture. Okay. Click out of there.

It's no mystery how we got here. Scott Peterson is the one who brought us to this place. Like I told you in the beginning of this case, when we did opening statements, this is a common sense case. It might have seemed complicated. You know, it took a long time to put on. It's not. It's a very simple common sense case. Go ahead, click on that, John.

The most important fact in this case, go ahead and click on "common sense", the most important fact in this case is, and the one fact that cannot be refuted, no matter what anybody says, no matter what any interpretation of the evidence you want to believe, you cannot deny one particular fact, and that's that the defendant went fishing right here off of Brooks Island. Or he said he went fishing. That's where he took his boat that day. Laci Peterson washed ashore right here at Point Isabel. Conner Peterson washed ashore right here at the Richmond shoreline in that marshy area. The only man, or only person that we know without any doubt that was in the exact location where Laci and Conner's bodies washed ashore, at the exact time that they went missing, is sitting right there. Not another soul do we, have you heard any evidence fits that description. That alone is proof beyond a reasonable doubt in this case.

You can take that fact to the bank and you can convict this man of murder. Go ahead and click on the pictures.

Remember what he told us? He said he went fishing off an island two miles north. He said there was some broken-down piers. You can't see them on the screen, but that box shows, and the picture's there in evidence and you'll see them there. He said there was a no landing sign. Click on the other one, john.

There's a no landing sign on the island. There it is. Go to the tip of Brooks Island.

This is the tip of Brooks Island. Another no landing sign and some trash on the shore. He also described that area. So we know without any doubt this is where he went. Now, look, here's what I know some of you are thinking. Look how far Brooks Island is from that shore. Those are buildings. Some of you are thinking How do you take a boat out in the Bay and nobody can see what you're doing? Well, look how far Brooks Island is off the shore. I'll show you another picture in a minute, but, these are buildings. Now, put it in people size, and put in a small 14 foot boat. No one on the shore can see a single thing you're doing a mile and a half out in the Bay. It's impossible. Go ahead and click back on that picture.

This is where the defendant said, remember this is where Dr. Cheng said the bodies had to be because of the shallow area in here, because of the currents?

Go ahead and click on it. This is what it into likes. This is the tip of Brooks Island, that tip with the seagull in it, so you know we're looking at the same spot. This is just right off the tip of Brooks Island, looking back towards the shore. Those are all buildings. This little, tiny, there's a little, tiny blue thing that you see there? That's that huge, I mean you can't even see it. I mean I see people squinting. You can't even see it from this far away.

That's that huge U.S. postal building that's blue where Laci Peterson washed ashore. You can't even make it out in the picture from Brooks Island. There's no way, I don't care if it's bright, this is a bright daylight. Look at this picture. There's no way that anyone that's on that shore can see a single thing that anybody's doing out in the Bay. It's impossible. Go ahead.

Now, what does the evidence show as to how the defendant committed this crime?

It's very simple. The defendant strangled or smothered Laci Peterson the night of February, January, December 23rd, or in the morning while she was getting dressed on the 24th. I can't tell you when he did it. I can't tell you if he did it at night. I can't tell you if he did it in the morning. I'm not going to try to convince you of something that I can't prove. I don't have to prove that to you. I only have to prove that he did it.

What did the doctor tell us about strangling and smothering? It's not going leave a bunch of evidence. Remember this whole, went through all of this evidence. Where's the bloody crime scene? Remember what the doctor said? As crude as this sounds, and I hate to say it: If you don't put another hole in somebody, not going to get a big, bloody crime scene. It's just not going to happen. When he was ready to leave the house, he wrapped her up in that blue tarp. And I'm going to talk about that later. He backed up his truck to the gate. Take a look at the diagram. And you've seen the pictures so I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this. You back a truck up to the gate here at the house, and this is Laci's Land Rover parked right there. You back a truck up right there, you got, you got a fence and house on one side, you've got his house on the other side. Nobody can see a single thing that you're doing.

He carries Laci out, he puts her in the back of the truck. Remember what he said he did that morning? He said he loaded a bunch of patio umbrellas into his car to take to the warehouse, which, of course, he never took to the warehouse that day because they were still in his car that night. He said he was doing that, Well, I'm doing it because of the rain. Of course, the patio umbrellas, here they are, and you can see how big they are, those full-size patio umbrellas, everybody's seen them. He says he took the patio umbrellas, they're folded up. He said he was going to take them to the warehouse and, because it was starting to rain. That's what he told the detectives. The real reason why he said that was because he wanted to have a reason why they were still in his truck all day. He loads Laci into his truck. He puts these patio umbrellas on top of her. She's got the tarp on her. No one is ever going to know what's going on. It's not that difficult to do. This is not some big mystery. You know, I mean, look at this. We got cameras in the courtroom, we've got all these people out here as if we're here for some big murder mystery. We're not. It's a very simple case.

He puts Laci Peterson in the back of the car, he snaps the leash on the dog, and he leaves the gate open and he drives away. And, you know, like most dogs, I have a dog, and probably a lot of you do, you put a leash on my dog he's going to say, Hey, we're going for a walk. He followed her out into the, he followed the truck out into the street as Scott Peterson drove on down the road.

Of course, that's when Karen Servas found the dog, right as Scott Peterson went away. The defendant drives to his warehouse, opens up the door, backs his truck into that open space. I don't think I put a picture out for that, but that open space right where the boat was. He backs in, he unloads her into the boat, he shuts the door. Now he can do whatever he wants. He puts her, she's in the boat. He attaches the weights to her. He gets, in the process he gets some of her hair caught in these pliers. And let's talk about that. I'm going to talk about it a little more later, but just right out of the gate: Your hair does not fall into and wrap around the teeth of pliers. That doesn't happen.

How many of you sitting on this jury operate pliers on a regular basis, probably most people. Everybody uses needle-nose pliers for something. How many times does your hair fall into the pliers and wrap around through the jaws? That doesn't happen.

After he gets the weights attached, he puts the cover on the boat. Here's what it looks like. You can't see into the boat with the cover on. Straps it down, just like Bruce Peterson said you can do. You just put some bungee cords, it's got those little hooks on the side. You guys are all going to able to see this evidence. I'm not telling you anything that's not right here. He puts the bungee cords on, straps it down, and he drives off to the Bay. Nobody can see a single thing that this man has done. And everything that he did that I just told you took probably about the length of time that I took to tell you, which is, what, maybe ten minutes? He drives out to the Bay, and, you know, everyone is thinking like, Well, gosh, he drives out to the Berkeley Marina, you know, in the middle of the day; boy, that's risky. Of course it's risky. It's risky to kill your wife. I'm not going to tell you it's not.

On the other hand, he drives out there on a day when there's no one around.

We're going to talk about that more at length. He backs his boat down in the trailer. He's got the cover on. He goes and puts the truck away. And then how hard is this? He takes the cover off the boat and stuffs it around her body.

So he uses the cover to cover up. Who is going to see that? Who is even going to suspect it? Who cares if somebody is driving out in the Bay with the cover stuffed in the boat? People do that probably all the time.

He drives out to Brooks Island. He dumps Laci out. It takes him all of, what?

He gets there at 12:54. We know from his cell phone records he's back at the marina at 2:12. So it takes him less than an hour. Probably 30, 40 minutes at the most. He drives home and reports her missing. Nothing mysterious or out of the ordinary or even anything about this case. It's simple. It's a simple case where a man murdered his wife.

Now, let's talk about who is going to suspect him. Everybody thinks he's the perfect husband, right? That's what they think. Go ahead and click on that.

They think, you know, the perfect couple. They're living the American Dream.

They're madly in love. We heard all of this stuff. Remember he's the perfect gentleman. The perfect husband. Well, you know what? Show me something that's perfect and I'll show you something that's not. And it's not perfect here. Go ahead and click on that picture. This is what people thought of them. This is what his family thought. This is what Laci's family thought. Two lives going on here with Scott Peterson. Two lives. The one in the public perception, and, you know what, that's a theme that goes through this whole case. And I'm going to show you a bunch of examples. Two lives. Click out.

Now, let's go to how, the defendant's reality. Go to that, John.

Here's how well the defendant in his mind was perceiving himself. Not his fantasy world, because we're going to talk about that, but this is how he felt about his reality. He think he's facing midlife. The guy is turning 30, but he thinks he's facing midlife. But that's what he tells Amber in one of the calls.

I'm old, he said.

He said: I kept hoping for infertility. I looked at the quote last night.

It's actually: Kind of hoping for infertility. That's what he tells Rose Rocha when Laci announces her pregnancy: Darn, she got pregnant; I wasn't, I didn't want that to happen. He tells Brent Rocha: You know, I'm doing bad at my job, I'm turning 30 and becoming a father all in the same year. Boy, life really stinks for Scott Peterson. You know, most people would be overjoyed to have this. Maybe not the lousy salesman part, but the rest of it for sure. But not this guy. Click out.

The two lives of Scott Peterson. Click on that. Scott Peterson created a fantasy life for himself. Scott Peterson, in his fantasy world he was rich, he was successful, he had a beautiful girlfriend, he was a jet setter. Remember, vacations in Kennebunkport, fishing in Alaska, jetting off to Europe.

And you know what? He liked that life. That was a fun life. Who wouldn't like it, right? So in Scott Peterson's mind the only way to continue that life, he had to have a plan: Don't want that dull, boring married life with kids that's coming; I need to have a plan. In October he starts making a plan. Go ahead and click on that.

In October he's looking for another relationship. That's obvious. He talks to Shawn Sibley. He tells her a bunch of things. Remember, the whole fantasy life thing. The rich, the successful, the jet setter. He tells her it all. He says he owns the company. He actually says he owns TradeCorp. He says one of my name tags attracts women. I'm rich. Horny bastard. Remember that that was his nickname, HB, in every one of his e-mails. And this I think is the most important thing, though, of all those things I just told you. First off he tells her he's looking for another relationship. Okay, we got that. Then he tells her this. In October, I don't remember if it was the first meeting. I  line don't remember the exact time he tells Shawn Sibley this. He says, she's talking to him about his, her fiance, and saying Oh, he's my soul mate, you know, and whatnot. And Scott Peterson tells her this, he says: You know what, I once was with a woman who was my soul mate.

This is in October. We're going to talk about the December ones in a minute, but in is in October: I was once with a woman who was my soul mate, but I lost her. That's what he says. He's talking about Laci then in October. Laci Peterson was dead to Scott Peterson a long time before he actually killed her.

Now, November the plan continues. He starts a relationship with Amber Frey.

The fantasy life with her continues. All the things that I just told you about.

All of that keeps going on. He also tells her something that's very important.

He says, you know: I'm going to be going on this, you know, great European trip, and I'm going to be with my family over the holidays in Maine, Kennebunkport, and then I'm going on this trip to Europe and I'll return at the end of January, and then we can resume our relationship, you know, maybe more intact then. Why do you think that's important? Why do you think he told her that? Because he knew what he was going to do. He knew what he was going to do all the way back in November.

I'm going to talk about Amber and the motive in a minute, but did Amber, am I'm standing up here telling you that Scott Peterson killed his wife to go off and marry Amber Frey? You know he was very obsessed with her and lusted after her, and I'm going to show you a number of examples of that.

I don't think he killed Laci Peterson to go marry Amber Frey, though. Amber Frey represented to him freedom. Freedom is what he wanted. The end-of-January comments is important because he knows what he's going to do and he figures, you know, he's not a stupid man. We've seen that. He knows there's going to be some uproar, some hoopla, over Laci going missing. He has no idea it's going to snowball into this huge mass that it became. He had no idea that was going to happen. No one did. He thought: Yeah, everyone's going to, you know, a couple weeks will go by, everyone is going to be worried, looking for her, the police will do their standard thing, fill out a missing persons report, nothing will happen and that will be the end of it. How many times have we heard that? I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know. You hear it all the time: So and so went missing. You never hear about it again.

For some reason, and much to this man's detriment, this case blew up. It snowballed. It didn't go away. But he didn't know that back in November when he was setting this plan in action. He tells Amber throughout the month of December, you know, he doesn't want any children, her child's going to be enough for him. It's a perfect relationship, of course, because her child doesn't mean anything to him. He has no connection to it, he has no responsibility to it, he can do whatever he wants. He can leave and show back up whenever he wants. He tells her he's talked about, he talks about getting a vasectomy, and he asks her at one point if she trusts him enough to make decisions for her in the future. They go out and pick out a Christmas tree together. Remember they go to Shawn's birthday party. The Christmas party where we've seen the pictures. The same day, of course, that Laci was alone at her Christmas party.

Now, in December some other things happen that are very important that causes the defendant, if he wasn't going to actually, he's thinking about the plan, but if he wasn't actually going to carry it out, there's some things that solidified it in his mind and he had to do it. One of which is Shawn Sibley calls him and says Hey, what's the deal, on December 6th: Are you married or line not? He says No, denies it completely the first time. Says No, I'm not married at all. He then, he then calls her back and tells her, sobbing hysterically, was what the testimony was, or on the answering machine. Says I lied to you; I used to be married, but actually I lost my wife. That's what he tells her.

To show you how twisted this guy's sense of reality is, I mean if that's not clear in this trial already, there's nothing I can do to convince you of it now.

But let me show you a little example of that. To show you how twisted Scott Peterson's sense of reality is, he actually tells Amber in January, on January 12th, she asks him: You told me that, that Shawn Sibley called you; what did you tell her? He says: Well, I told her I lost my wife. No, before that. He says: Well, you're right; you're right; I initially lied to her and denied that I was married. That's what he said: I initially lied to her and denied that I was married; then I called her back and told her the truth, that I lost my wife.

This is on December 6th: I told her the truth that I lost my wife. Of course, he hadn't lost his wife until he actually killed her, but in his mind, you know what? Maybe that was the truth. She was dead to him a long time before he killed her. Go ahead and play that clip for me, John. It's January 12th, 1804.

(Tape played)***

Recently dead. That's what he said. Those are his words. On December 7th he researches boats, waterways in Northern California, both freshwater and salt water. On December 8th he looks up Bay charts and fishing information.

This short period of time in December is the only fishing and boating information on his computer. So the avid fisherman apparently never needs to look up any information at all about fishing. And we're going to talk about his fishing abilities in a minute.

So December 9th he buys a boat. On that same day he goes down to Amber's home crying, tells her that he's sorry, he's lied to her, he actually had been married and he lost his wife. In marked contrast to that, to the defendant's actions in putting this plan into place to kill Laci, the two lives going on here.

Remember what Laci went out and did on December 9th? Remember what the testimony was for that? She went out and bought his Christmas present. That's what Laci Peterson was doing on December 9th. She spent 534 dollars on looks like a ten-inch professional table saw.

Now, Scott Peterson told the news media, and I think he might have told the police, I don't remember, but he told the news media for sure that he told Laci about his affair with Amber in early December. He says she knew all about it. I don't think there's a single person in this courtroom who believes that. Except for maybe him. Go ahead John, play that clip. The GMA clip.

(Video played)

Well, yeah, I expect people to believe that. I'm Scott Peterson.

I expect people to believe anything I say. That's what this guy wants you to believe here. You think, there's no arguing? No, not at all; I can't even say, well, I can't say she was okay with it; but it was not any big deal with us.

A woman's seven and a half months pregnant, her husband's out having an affair and she doesn't care at all? Does that appear to be anything that you heard about Laci Peterson in this case? Of course not. That's ridiculous.

On December 20th Scott Peterson buys the only saltwater fishing pole that he has. It's right here. It's a lightweight saltwater fishing pole. And I'm going to talk about it. It's not at all set up for any of the things he was supposedly fishing for that day. But this is it. So the avid fisherman will run out to the Berkeley Marina from Modesto, 90 miles away on Christmas Eve, buys a fish, doesn't even own a fishing pole to fish there until December 20th. And he bought it as a prop. He didn't buy it to go fish for sturgeon that day, I can tell you that.

He also bought a two-day license and two lures. Here are the lures that he bought. Not even opened. I don't know anyone who's ever caught a fish with a lure that's still in the package. He bought this two-day license. He told us and he told Detective Brocchini that it was a morning decision to go fishing.

Do you remember that? It was either go to play golf at the club or go fishing.

It was that morning he decided to go. If that's true, why is this license filled out for December 23rd and December 24th? Why would you fill out a license on the 24th for the day before? John, pull that concrete picture.

Around the same time he talks about, he tells Detective Grogan and Brent Rocha that he makes one anchor at the shop. You know, there was a lot of talk about this picture and, you know, remember the defense made a number of jokes about it, oh, you know, the Rorschach test, I think, or hieroglyphs. I can't remember what words they used. You cannot tell me that someone makes, number one, this much mess on the trailer to make one eight pound anchor. You cannot tell me that. That did not happen. Especially you put this thing in one paint bucket, right? How do you get concrete everywhere?

The other thing, too, is, you know, when you go back there, we've been putting these pictures on the screen and they're kind of hard to see. Take a look at this particular picture. You've got concrete right here and right here in a circular pattern. You have concrete right here in a circular pattern. You have concrete right here in a circular pattern. You have concrete right over there in a circular pattern.

I'm not making this up. I'm not telling you to see something that's not there.

You go back and judge it for yourself. Don't take what I say about it and don't take what they say about it as, as what it is. Go back and look at it. And I'm telling you, though, when you do, you're going to see exactly what we've been describing to you. The defendant says he bought the concrete at Home Depot. He says that, remember, remember the video we saw of Grogan and him, you know, they put up their hands, something like a 60 or 90 pound bag?

Well, where is the rest of it? Where did it go? There's no left-over concrete there at the shop. It's certainly not in the driveway. It doesn't matter which of the experts you believe. It's not, you know, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and call it a 60 pound bag, okay? That's an eight pound anchor.

Let's say he uses too much. Two pounds more, so ten pounds. Where's the other 50 pounds of concrete?

The defense expert said they pretty much picked up everything that was there and they, what, got 22 pounds maybe? I'm going to talk about that later, whether that's even correct or not, but let's just assume for the sake of argument that it is. Where's the rest of it? There's no empty bag of concrete found in his shop. I'll tell you where the rest of it is. It's in those anchors at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay.

The defense tried to make an issue with the concrete. Remember Mr. Geragos dragged in that, that bag of fence post concrete. You know, it was kind of funny, everybody kind of laughed. I even chuckled a little bit, you know. I don't blame anybody for laughing at that.

But you want to know something else? Where is it? It's not in evidence.

Nobody testified to it. You're going to go back there and you're going to go, look, I brought a whole bunch of evidence out here. You're going to go back into that back room and they're going to cart in that evidence. You know what?

You're not going to see that bag of concrete they brought in here. Their expert never even spoke about it. In fact, their expert agreed with everything our expert said, except for the one thing, of course, well, the thing in the concrete. Never heard a word about this fence post concrete, or anything like that. You've got to ask yourselves why that is.

Going back to, you know, he said, he told Grogan he bought that concrete at Home Depot. The defense presented this, this as evidence, a receipt from Lowe's in November where he's returning some concrete. Not that he bought the concrete in December to make these anchors. Or the one anchor, I guess, but this is returning it.

What does this have to do with anything? So he returned some cement in November. Does that show that he made anchors somehow? I'm missing it.

Going back to the defendant's fishing story. You know, we talked about the, the umbrellas being in the back of his truck at the end of the day. Remember he took those umbrellas to the shop, according to him, so he could keep them in the shop there and get them out of the rain. Of course, they're under a patio cover, so I don't know why you would do that to begin with.

But besides that fact, let's say he did that. Why didn't he leave them in the shop? Well, I forgot. That's what he told Detective Brocchini on the tape: I forgot. Okay, so let me get this straight here. You've got a whole stack of umbrellas in the back of your pickup truck. You have to back your pickup truck up to hook the boat up. How are you not going see those, number one. You then drive all the way out to the Berkeley Marina with them in the back of your truck. You have to back the truck down to put the boat in the water. Of course, you don't see them then, I guess. You then drive all the way home and you have to put your boat away. They're still there in the truck. If your reason for taking them there that morning is to put them in the shop, then put them in the shop. But, of course, he doesn't do that, because that was never his reason for putting those umbrellas in the truck.

Once they served their purpose of covering Laci's body, he didn't care about those umbrellas anymore. He only cared been Detective Brocchini started asking him about it. Because it is, it's suspicious: What do you got those in your truck for, you know; but he's a good liar. He comes up with a story quick.

Much quicker than me. You can tell if I'm lying. It's all over my face. Not this guy. He can look Diane Sawyer straight in the eye and tell her a bald-faced lie.

He says he leaves at 9:30. The evidence strongly supports he left much later than that. You know, remember the Martha Stewart thing and the meringue. You know what? I'm going to tell you straight up, that was an embarrassment to me personally because I told, because I stood up here in opening statement and told you something that wasn't correct. I told you there was no mention of meringue in that Martha Stewart tape. And you know what? We were wrong.

You know what, though, the truth is a good thing. The truth about that Martha Stewart reference to meringue is one of the best facts for the prosecution in this case. The defendant says: I saw a segment of Martha Stewart where she was making some cookies of some sort, something to do with meringue. That segment did air on December 24th. Do you know when that segment aired? What was the testimony? 9:48 in the morning. If this guy saw it, and it appears he did from the description he gave, he was in his house at 9:48. Now, nobody at ten minutes to 10:00 or twelve minutes to 10:00 says they're leaving at 9:30, so he's lying about that.

Let's talk about that cell phone call. Pull up the, that cell phone chart, John, if you could. Let's talk about the cell phone call. Remember the cell phone call that he made at 10:08? We had a lot of testimony about the cell towers, and got really back and forth. Voice mail, incoming voice mails when someone calls you, outgoing voice mails when you're checking your voice mails.

Remember that?

Well, it all boils down to this: The main cell tower for 523 Covena is 1250 Brighton. If you leave, and it's overlapped coverage with 10th and D. If you leave Covena and you're driving towards where the shop is, you fall into the 10th and D coverage area. Remember what the expert said? How do we know that the cell tower information for this particular day and this particular call at 10:08 is accurate?

Well, here's, this is 203 G. This is a cell phone, I mean, yeah, a cell site chart that Investigator Jacobson did. It's in Eastern Standard Time.

Remember what you heard? The cell site stuff comes in Eastern Standard Time.

Invoice calls comes whatever time you're in. Here Pacific Standard Time.

That 10:08 call voice mail retrieval, it's right here in the records. I'm not making any of this up. This is 203 A 1. You guys can go back there and check this all yourself.

Voice mail retrieval, that call starts at 1250 Brighton, it ends at 10th and D.

At 2:12 there's another voice mail retrieval, and remember Investigator Jacobson wrote VMRT, voice mail retrieval whenever it is, puts him in Berkeley. Well, we know for a fact, by his own statement and by the receipt he was in Berkeley at that time. So that's accurate.

The rest of these are in the invoices. These are calls tracking his movements.

He's in Berkeley. Berkeley. He's in Oakland. He's driving home. At 2:34 he's in Oakland. At 2:40 when he calls his father, Lee Peterson, he's in Castro  line Valley. Driving back to Modesto. At 2:45 when he calls his father again, he's in Grassland Avenue in Castro Valley, driving home.

There's an incoming voice mail. 3:44. That one is not in the invoice records.

You can't track people through cell sites for incoming voice mails. Remember what the lady said? You got to use the records together.

Here he's in Livermore, makes a call to his home. And then at 5:44, when all this is reported, we know he's in front of his house, 1250 Brighton. Those calls that became an issue that were a problem, remember we had all that discussion about, those are all incoming voice mails. They're not in these invoice records.

The next call that is in the invoice records, another voice mail retrieval where he's calling, checking his voice mail. Guess what? Puts him right at 1250 Brighton at 6:29 when he know he's standing in front of his house. This cell site information for that 10:08 call is completely accurate, and it's backed up by the records themselves.

Now, Karen Servas, put that clock back up, John. Karen Servas finds the dog no later than 10:18. How do we know that that's true? Let's talk about Karen Servas for a minute. Karen Servas has no stake in this case at all. She's just a neighbor. She's not an agent of the prosecution. In fact, if anything, before this all started, she was a friend of the defendant's; remember? She had been over to his house a couple of times, or numerous times, really. Her kid had even swam in his pool. He would help her with stuff if she needed it. They had no ill will between them whatsoever.

She originally tells the police, because they call and ask her, who found the dog. She tells the police: I found it exactly at 10:30. That's a fact. That's what she originally told them. She didn't deny anything here, like: No, I never said that, or, you know, I tried to back out, or anything else. She said: Yeah, that's what I told him. I originally told him it was right around 10:30.

But then you remember what she said? A day or two later she found that Austin's receipt. Austin's Christmas Store, 12/24, 2000 and 2, 10:34 a.m. She said: I found that receipt and I realized, you know, my time, I might be off on my time a little bit. And she said: I wanted to make sure for him, not for the prosecution, not for the Modesto police, not for any other reason but for this guy, for Scott Peterson, I wanted to make sure that my time when I found that dog is exactly accurate, because maybe that's going to have something to do with what happened to Laci.

Now, the fact that it turned out really badly for Scott Peterson doesn't mean anything as to why she did it. She did it because she was trying to help him out. So she went and back-tracked everything she did. Remember what she said she did initially? Here's the chart. She finds the dog in front of her house, looking down the street. She, she walked back over where she did to the gate, she walked back around, she then went back to her house, remember she made the motion of putting the dog away, put him in the gate, left the a leash on him.

She went back to her house, pretended to wash her hands, got in her car, drove downtown, drove twice around the bank parking lot. That's what she said she did. She didn't go into the bank at that time. Drove twice around the bank parking lot. She couldn't find a place to park. She went down to Austin's, went in, pretended to buy an ornament, came out, and from that point on that's when she stopped her time.

And then she just back-tracked how long that took from 10:34 and back-tracked, and she said she found that dog no later than 10:18. How do we know that 10:54 receipt is accurate? Because remember what she told you? She said: After I left Austin's, I made a phone call. Her cell phone records says she made that phone call at 10:37 in the morning, exactly as, as she said. Buy an ornament at 10:34, make a phone call when I go outside on my cell phone. It's right here in the records, 10:37. She then said she went to Starbucks, got some coffee, or whatever she said she did there; I don't remember. Then she said she went back to the bank and made her transaction.

If you remember at the end of the trial the defense asked Investigator Bertalotto about that additional record that she just got, which was at 10:53, completely supporting exactly everything that she said. Karen Servas is not lying here. Karen Servas is not doing anything here except being completely accurate to you all. And that's what we want. That dog was found no later than 10:18. And if that's the case, then this is what had to have happened in ten minutes, in a ten minute time. Laci would have had to get up, put on all her jewelry, because the defendant tells the police and some other folks, the dog tracking people and stuff, that they had on diamond earrings, the diamond changes, but the general description was diamond earrings, a diamond ring, a diamond watch.

So she puts on all of her jewelry to then, I guess, go mop the floor. Because he says, when he says he leaves, she's mopping the floor, she's got on a white shirt and black pants, and she's barefoot. So she has to have put her jewelry on, finish mopping the floor, put on her shoes and socks, changed her clothes, because remember, when she's found, Laci Peterson is not bearing black pants.

Laci Peterson is wearing a pair of pants just like these. No one confuses these pants with black. Except for maybe him. Because that man confused Modesto with Paris, Brussels, Normandy, France, and everywhere else. But nobody would do that. So she changes out of these nice pair of capri pants, I mean she changes out of her black pants she was wearing when she was mopping, into these nice pair of capri pants so she can go walk the dog.

She has to then get abducted by these mysterious, homeless, 290 registrants, you know, we're going to go through all these crazy theories that have been proposed to you. But she gets abducted by somebody. This is all in ten minutes.

The dog then has to, of course, nobody sees or hears, even though that dog barks like crazy. The dog then has to be able to come home in the ten minutes time, because she's now done all these things, been abducted, the dog comes home and has to be found by Karen Servas, all in ten minutes, all in a ten minute window, because at 10:08 the defendant is just now driving away from his house.

One thing I forgot to tell you about that 10:08 call. Another reason why you know it's accurate, Investigator Jacobson tested it. He got a cell phone in the exact same network, he did it three times. He made a phone call, he drove for a minute and twenty-one seconds, the length of time for that call, and every single time, 1250 Brighton it started, 10th and D it ended.

He even went to the shop, because remember that's where Scott Peterson is supposed to be, he's supposed to be at the shop. He even went to the shop and he made phone calls. Every time 929 Woodland. Never 1250 Brighton, never 10th and D. Actually, I want to make sure I'm completely accurate. I know that that, that those cell phone calls from the shop started at 929 Woodland. I can't remember off the top of my head exactly where they ended, because those coverage areas are very clear. So I don't want to tell you anything that's not accurate.

So regarding those Jacobson calls at the shop, use your own memory for those because I can't remember up here off the top of my head exactly where were those.  line

Before I leave Karen Servas and the timing, I want to talk about the only defense attack that they made on, on the timing was this: A couple receipts that were introduced by, by Bill Austin, kind of, and you really need to go back, if you're at all wondering about these, go back and get his entire testimony read back. It's very enlightening about these, this particular exhibit. But two receipts from two different days in January of 2004.

Somehow we're supposed to believe that this document makes Karen Servas's time line inaccurate.

Let's talk about the defendant and his fishing. This defendant rarely goes fishing, contrary to what I suppose Mr. Peterson would want you to believe. The fishing licenses that were found, a couple of two-day, I think there's three two-day licenses, including the one that he bought for this particular trip, as well as a year-long license from 1994. So what was that, eight years prior. The equipment that he had, when he does go fishing, it's freshwater fishing. You saw the last time he had been prior to this, August 2002, you saw him fishing in a lake with his dad. He goes maybe once or twice a year.

Remember Ron Grantski testified he asked him, I can't remember exactly how many times, but he asked him numerous times to go, and he said that he, he said that he went one time with him in 2000 and 1. He said he turned him down every other time. He never asked Ron to go fishing with him even though Ron is, like, that's his main thing. He carries a fishing pole with him wherever he goes.

After that one trip in 2001, remember what Ron Grantski testified to? He testified that Scott Peterson left his fishing pole, which is a very nice, expensive fishing pole in his garage where it sat there for 18 months, and never wanted it back. If I was an avid fisherman and had an expensive pole and went fishing with somebody, I think I'd want it back. There's no evidence the defendant had ever recently gone saltwater fishing, which is what is at issue here. The best that the defense could come up with is that Lee Peterson testified, I think the quote is that it appeared that he enjoyed it. That's what he said.

If you get that section of testimony read back where he's talking about the defendant going out on, as a boy on, I call them party boats, but I think he called them cattle boats, on the Bay, where you go out for a day of fishing, he did that as a boy. We're not talking about 2002 here.

We go back to the defendant's story on 12/24. He leaves his warehouse sometime, sometime after 11:00 a.m., drives to the Berkeley Marina. Which is about 86 miles away. He gets there at 12:54 p.m. Almost 1:00 o'clock. You have to buy this ticket, you have to back your boat down and launch it, and put your, put your truck away. You got to go do what you're doing, come back. We know he's back on his phone checking his voice mail at 2:12. So he drove an hour and a half, minimum, probably closer to, probably left right around 11:00, probably took him about until right when he got there, because he's driving with a boat on the back, and you can bet anything on the fact that he didn't exceed the speed limit that day. He didn't want anybody to stop him on that day.

So he gets to the Berkeley Marina. He, it took him longer to drive to the Berkeley Marina than he actually spent fishing. He goes, on Christmas Eve, all the way out to the Bay to fish for, what, 35, 40 minutes, alone. Nobody does that. That just did not happen here.

Now, he does that, he decides to go fishing, even though he has told Amy Rocha that he can pick up that gift basket at Vella Farms. Remember that? So he knows he's got to be back, but he's still going to leave to go fishing on Christmas Eve, when he has to be back, number one, to pick up that gift basket, and number two, get to dinner at Ron and Sharon's house, six p.m. When he comes back, you know, we heard what happened. He makes a phone call, he looks around, he talks to the neighbors. And the first people he contacts are Amie Krigbaum and Terra Venable across the street. Remember that? They have no stake in this either. They just live across the street. They probably kind of wish they didn't live across the street.

But the defendant goes up to their house and, you know, he's kind of frantic, or as I prefer to put it, pretending to be frantic, because this guy can turn it on and off in an instant. And we will see some examples of that. But he goes up there, he says: Hey, have you seen Laci? No, I haven't seen her. Okay, he turns around to go. They ask him: Where have you been all day? Oh, I've been out golfing.

Nobody, I don't care how upset you are, nobody forgets that they just got home from fishing at the Berkeley Marina. That didn't happen. So why did he tell them golfing? That's a much more important question, because that's where the defendant was originally going to go. He was going to get out there, dump Laci, get back, go hang out at the club, maybe have a drink at the bar, you know, screw around a little bit. It just took him longer than he planned. He was going to say: Yeah, I was at work checking my computer; yeah, I was there, see?

And I went to the club and, you know, you'll have some people that saw him, and that was it. He just screwed up. He screwed up his alibi. That's all that was.

Now, why did he change his alibi? That's a good question, because I know a lot of you are sitting here thinking Well, shoot, if I had just dumped my wife in the San Francisco Bay, that's the last place I'm going to tell the police I was.

It's a legitimate question. And, you know why he did that? He tells us on, on tape. Go watch Brocchini's interview again, or read the transcript. You can have that back there. He told Detective Mansfield this also. He said he bumped, when he was picking up the boat, coming home, so he's got the boat down there, tied up to the dock, Laci's long gone, she's under the waters of the San Francisco Bay, he says he bumped his boat up against, up against a piling, or something. He said there was a maintenance man there who saw him who was laughing. He said a couple guys saw him there at the marina.

Once that happened he knew: I got to go with fishing; I have to go with fishing, because if I say anything other than I was here at the Berkeley Marina, and people saw me and can recognize me, I'm toast. It's a big bay. You saw those pictures. The Bay is huge. He thought he got her into deep water. You heard what the experts say, you get her into the deep water channel, she's going out under the Golden Gate. You heard how difficult it was to search the Bay.

We're going to talk about that. It's no big deal to tell them: I was out fishing in the San Francisco Bay; how are they ever going to find her. And the defendant had no choice but to go with that. Remember what the Berkeley Marina was like on the 24th? You heard from the employees. Cold, chilly, hardly any activity. The marina manager: It was a slow day, nobody came to the office.

Cold and cloudy. The, cold, windy, one of them said. Not busy at all. Gary Friedman, the guy who works at the bait shop, says no fishing trips were booked that day. December is a very slow month for fishing. Most fish are out of season. There was nobody there at the Berkeley Marina that day.

Remember this receipt? This is from the 23rd to the 27th, only three tickets were sold. Three tickets that whole time. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27. Three tickets; one of which is sitting right here in court. Only two other people launched a boat from the Berkeley Marina during that whole period. Now, there was some I think attempt by the defense to make it seem like the Berkeley Marina is the most happening place on the planet. Well, it wasn't on that day. That's a proven fact.

Let's talk about his fishing gear. He told, he couldn't tell the first responding officer what he went fishing for. He wasn't able to do it. He finally tells Officer Spurlock: I, when he asked him what kind of bait were you using, he puts his hands out and says: Oh, a silver lure, you know, about like that. Well, that matches the description of the silver lure that he bought, but he sure didn't use it. And remember what the expert said about this? The fishing expert? You can't use this in San Francisco Bay. You can't catch any fish on it. It's used for fishing off shore. This striker lure you can use in the San Francisco Bay. Not at this time of year. What you use in the San Francisco Bay, because what the defendant eventually goes with, he says: I was fishing for sturgeon or striper. It appears he was really going for the sturgeon angle, which is, of course is, quite frankly, a great fact for the prosecution, because there's no way that that guy was fishing for sturgeon on December 24th. That just did not happen.

Remember what the expert told you? He said: Look, here's a sturgeon. You know, we're not all fishermen here. I didn't know what a sturgeon was until this case came about. But this is a sturgeon, okay? This is what he said he was fishing for. Look, this is the fisherman. Look at the rod he has. It's got that big open-faced kind of reel like that. I can't remember what he called that. A casting reel, maybe. A big, big heavy pole. It's not this. You don't fish for sturgeon with this. Remember what he said this was? This is a freshwater bass lure. You don't fish for sturgeon with one of those. You know what else about this pole? See how it's apart? That's the way it was on December 24th in the defendant's boat. This pole wasn't even put together.

Here's the pictures that Detective Brocchini took on December 24th. There's 70.

This is 70 Q. When you go back there, take a look at it. Here's that pole right there. There's one half of it. There's the other half. It's not even put together. So either the defendant took it apart when he got home for whatever, who knows why you would do that; the other pole's not apart. So he either took it apart, or it was never put together to begin with. You're not going to catch a sturgeon on a rod that's not put together.

What else do you need to catch a sturgeon? What else do you need, actually, to catch any fish in the San Francisco Bay, sturgeon or striper, in December.

Remember what, remember what the experts said? The fish, it's cold. The fish are feeding on the bottom. You need one of these. Terminal tackle. This goes on the end. You put a big fat, called I think he said grass shrimp or mud shrimp. I don't remember exactly. But put a big fat shrimp on the end of there, it's got this big fat sinker, and you throw it down there and let it sit on the bottom. That's how you catch a sturgeon or striped bass in December in the San Francisco Bay. It's not what the defendant had. That's not what the defendant was doing. Because remember, if you're an avid saltwater fisherman, so avid that you're going to drive out in the middle of the day to fish in the San Francisco Bay, at the drop of a hat on Christmas Eve, even though you have plans later in the afternoon, because all this has to be true for his story to work, you're going to have the right equipment. The reason it doesn't work is the story's not true.

You know what else, remember what else the fisherman said? This chart right here, I can't remember if this is the one he used or not but it will work.

Remember where you fish for these fish? Up in the San Pablo Bay. You don't fish for them down here at Brooks Island. If you know what you're doing, and, you know, in order for his story to work you have to know what you're doing, then you go fishing in the right spot. That's not what he did.

The reason all this doesn't work is because Scott Peterson didn't go fishing on December 24th. He went to go dump his wife's body in the San Francisco Bay.

<morning recess>

When the defendant's fishing story started falling apart, he told the officers kind of intermingled things. But he also told them that, well, I also went just to get that boat in the water. I think that might be a direct quote from Detective Brocchini's transcript. I don't remember exactly. But I just wanted to get that boat in the water, you know. He told Agent Mansfield he never fished in the San Francisco Bay before. He said he only wanted to put the boat in the water to ensure there were no problems with it. Click that "Numerous Fishing Locations".

Nobody in their right mind is going to take a small aluminum fishing boat that they have never used before, remember, now, we're off the fishing story here.

You are just taking the boat to make sure it's working right. Who, in their right mind, is going to drive the ninety miles, out in the middle of San Francisco Bay, in winter, all by yourself, the first time you have ever used it, when you have what, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. And look at all the other places that aren't even marked, all within close distances. Here is one only 9.8 miles away. If you are in a lake, you take boat out for the first time in a lake, something goes wrong, you know, it's not that big a deal. You will eventually get to hit land in your lake.

You might have to walk a ways to your car. You are going to be okay. Same thing, any of these places here.

You take your boat out in the San Francisco Bay, you have a problem. You never used it before. You know what, you get swept into one of the shipping channels, you are toast. You get swept up in the deep water channel, in the currents, you are out under the Golden Gate. Who is going to take that risk just to take their boat out, someone who's just taking it out for the first time? No way.

Somebody who is going out to dump their wife's body? Absolutely. Is it a risky thing to go out in the San Francisco Bay by yourself in a boat you have never used before? Yes. Is it a risky thing to kill your wife and you have to get rid of her body? Yes. If you are going to take someone out there, get rid of them, you will take the risk. If you are just going out for a pleasure cruise, your maiden voyage, no way. No way one can believe that's true except for maybe this guy, in his fantasyland kind of mind, he might believe it's true.

Going back to the defendant's story. As he's driving back, remember he calls Greg Reed, his good friend. Never mentioned, hey, just took my new boat out, went fishing. Then Greg Reed told you he's a big hunter. Any man, that would be like a natural thing to talk about. He never mentions it.

Talks to his father twice, never mentions, hey, I just got back from fishing.

Yeah, I had a great time. Now, when the defense was questioning Lee Peterson about that, the reason he gave for it is he is not really interested in it. Of course you saw him in August fishing. So you decide whether you find that testimony believable r not. A guy actually goes fishing on occasions, once in a while, with an, on a lake with his son, don't you think his son would tell him, hey, I just went out fishing, if that's what he really did?

He says he goes home. He sees McKenzie in the backyard with the leash on. He says the door is open. He comes in. And before he does anything to look for Laci, he gets some pizza. He said he's been out all day, hasn't eaten. Who takes an all-day fishing trip, doesn't take any food or water?

He says that he washes his clothes. Only his clothes. Now, why are you going to do that? The reason he gave, I think to the media and to everybody else, well, I got some salt water on it. So what? You got a, you are going to take the time when you know you have to be at your in-laws, you know, like in an hour. Your wife's not there. The dog is in the backyard with a leash on.

There is all these weird things going on. Oh, better wash my fishing clothes. I got some salt water on them.

Do you think that's really why he washed his clothes? Or do you think he washed them because he wanted to make sure he didn't leave anything on them? What's makes more sense to you? What is more reasonable to you?

Anybody, I'm sure there is people on this jury that have gone fishing before.  I'm sure when you come home you might have got something on your clothes. And I doubt that you took things out of the washer and took off just your clothes and washed them. It's not reasonable.

What the law says about this, because there is going to be two interpretations. I'm sure they are going to get up here and argue all this stuff makes sense. What the law says about this, if there is two reasonable interpretations you must go with the one that points to innocence. Absolutely do that, if they are both reasonable. That's the cornerstone of our legal system. However, if one is reasonable and one is not reasonable, you must reject the one that is not reasonable. That's what the law says. Nobody goes out on their maiden voyage into San Francisco Bay under these circumstances unless they are dumping their wife's body.

Let's go to Amber Frey and the affair. Go to that. Go to those pictures. This is the life that Scott Peterson wanted. Click again, one more time. Not necessarily with Amber Frey, although he was completely obsessed with her. But this is what he wanted. He didn't want that dull married life, got-to-stay-at-home- with-the-kids, thing that he had coming with Laci. People were, look, well, shoot, a lot of people are like that. Why doesn't he just divorce her? He's still tied to her for the rest of his life. Kids don't just go away.

He didn't want Conner Peterson. He didn't want a baby. Wait until, you have heard, I'm going to talk about some of things he said about that in private.

Those two lives, things coming up and grabbing him.

The reason that he killed Laci Peterson was Conner Peterson was on the way, you know. If it was just Laci, he could do this two-life thing, okay? Wasn't that hard, really. Only one that even, if she even, if she found out, you heard some testimony that there might have been some other affairs. It was hearsay. You can't consider it for the truth. Quite frankly, I don't care if you do consider that part of it for the truth. So what if, so he had some other affairs? When it was just Laci, that's okay for him. If she finds out, he's only hurting her. No big deal to Scott Peterson.

But when Conner came along, things were going to change. No more of this running around living this double-life thing. Couldn't divorce her. Remember, he wants to live the rich, successful, free-wheeling bachelor life. Can't do that when he's paying child support and alimony, and everything else.

We're going to talk about his finances, and what, and the spin that was tried to put on this. It's not like this guy was rich. Although his parents gave him a ton of money. I guess they could bail him out. But he wasn't making a ton of money. He didn't want to be tied to that kid for the rest of his life. He didn't want to be tied to Laci for the rest of his life, so he killed her. It's as simpleas that.

It's no big secret here. There is no big mystery here. Here is what he told Amber Frey on January 1st, late. This is 12:01. She's been missing seven days.

Give him the benefit of the doubt. Call it eight days. Doesn't really matter.

He tells Amber Frey he's quoting from a book he read, Jack Cadillac. I had never read that book. It is about a guy that hitchhikes across America. Has a great time living, free wheeling, bachelor kind of life. Here's what he says.

This is what Scott Peterson, direct quote. I never had a prolonged period of freedom like that from responsibility, and this is interesting to me, and something you could incorporate into life.

This is on January 1st. The most horrible, just incomprehensible event has just occurred to him, and he's like, you know what? This is kind of cool. I never had that prolonged period of freedom from responsibility. Well, you know what?

He just got it for himself, and he knew he did. And even though the media was kind of building up, and even though things were getting a little out of control, he was still working the plan.

Remember he is still in Europe, still working the plan. And in Scott Peterson's kind of fantasy world, things were going to work out for him. Never had that prolonged period of freedom from responsibility. That's what this guy wanted.

That's what this guy had just gotten.

Now, there is going to be no dispute that Scott's lust and obsession with Amber Frey increased after Laci went missing. Look at these calendars. 56 minutes in November they talked. Eight hours in December. December was going up, especially at the end there. And then look at January. This is after Laci Peterson is missing. Right? When, remember when, the spin that's going to be put on Amber Frey is that she was nothing to him. It's going to be the spin that you are going to hear, that she was just an affair.

You know, Laci was pregnant. Weren't having sex any more. Got this overactive sex drive that he has to fulfill. My guess is that would be the best spin they can put on it. But that's what they are going to say, something like that.

That she meant nothing to him. Well, for meaning nothing, he talked to her sixteen hours in January. Talked to her six hours in February. She meant nothing to him, though.

Here's some of the things he told her January 1st, that same phone call I told you about. We could care for each other, fulfill each other for the rest of our lives. You are so lovely, it's unreal. Our relationship will grow, have confidence in that.

On January 2nd, those two lives, thing happens. Two lives with Scott Peterson.

Got the private life where he does what he wants. You got the public life where he puts on this fake persona that he wants people to grab on to to manipulate.

Very manipulative man.

On January 2nd he tells Detective Grogan, he says do you think when Laci has the baby I'll get half my family back? Do you remember? We heard that testimony.

That's January 2nd. Laci has been missing eight days, grieving husband. You go, oh, God, do you think they took her for the baby?

For one thing, you know, when I first heard that statement, you got to be kidding me. Do you think I'll get half my family back? Who wants half their family back? Anybody who has kids, you know, some of you have kids. Who would ever say that? But, to him, that's a good thing a grieving husband would say.

Let's go with that for a minute.

Let's look at the private. Let's look at what he was saying in private to Amber Frey on January 2nd. Play January 2nd. You heard, would swoon.

You would laugh in stitches. And, you know, I can't remember something, do something for hours. But to Detective Grogan, do you think when she had the baby I'll get half my family back? Remember, he is still in Europe at this time. He's in Modesto. You know that. Play 2242. This is when he says, calls her back that same night. On January 2nd, 2242, this is what he says then

I'll think about you, and I'll feel your lips. Laci Peterson had been missing for all of, what, nine days? No one can tell, no one should get up and tell you that this man wasn't completely obsessed with Amber Frey, lusting after her.

Happy with what he's done, because he's finally gotten what he wants.

It continued even after this, of course, when he hasn't told Amber yet. But it continued even after she confronted him. She finally confronts him on January 6th. He tells the media in some of those interviews that, yeah, I told Amber.

I called her and told her. Right. He says a few days later. Actually thirteen days later. And what he says to her, only reason he calls and tells her this, he doesn't, it's not like, oh, jeez, I got this change of heart. I have got to own up to it. She puts him up to it. She's telling him in there, hey, Sauki is calling me.

You guys can listen to these calls again. You can read the transcript. But saying something to the effect, when she is working with the police, then they say, see what he's going to say about this. Sauki calls me from New York, might be something wrong. What's going on? And during that call, I think it's 10:16 on January 16th, he realizes, I don't know what you are talking about? I don't know anything about it. Then he calls her back. The worst thing in the world. Then he owns up. Probably figured that she knows.

But even after that, January 6th, 2302, I'm longing to hold on to you. At 2329, you changed me this last month. You are so special. You are amazing.

January 7th. I hope in my heart there can be some future relationship with us.

On January 14th she asks him, why do you want a relationship with me, Scott?

You know. You got this missing wife. You are the only one on this planet hasn't figured that out yet. This is what he says. He says I desire to make you happy. So this is the, I think that's the call when something, I want to be a joy for you. I want to learn from you. He goes on and on.

This is also the same day that he inquires about selling Laci's house for the first time. He asked Terri Western on January 14th about that. He says, oh, I can't bring Laci home to this house. Of course, she's only been missing three weeks. I want to sell the house so she has nowhere to come home to.

He tells her on January 25th, you have such an amazing character. This is after the press conference, because the media is bugging her so much that Modesto Police Department has her hold a press conference on the 24th. It's either the 24th or the 25th.

He says that you have such amazing character. I actually had to pull over and threw up when I heard youcry. Give me a break. I pulled over and threw up because I heard you cry at the press conference. This is what he is telling her.

This public, two lives things hits home hard during the end of January. He tells Mike Richardson, there is some testimony, oh, Mike I'm so lost without Laci. Lying, you know, public Scott. Wants to be the grieving husband.

Private Scott, wants the fantasy life. On February 7th he says, because, you know, he's still pursuing her. February 7th, 2003. Can we sit down and see each other? I'm asking to see you. How about LakeArrowhead? A possible place he wants to have a meeting with her in Lake Arrowhead. He tells her on that call, there is one thing I want to tell you. It's so special, I can't tellyou over the phone. We can guess what that is.

You know. He's never told her he loved her. I don't think Scott Peterson did love her. Scott Peterson doesn't love anybody but himself. Didn't love Laci.

How could he have done all the things he did and love Laci? Didn't love Amber.

Didn't love his parents. He lied to themconstantly. His friends, he lied to them too. Scott Peterson loved himself, no doubt about that. February 8th. I care about, I want to be the second-most joy. February 8th he says you will have all the answers to the things you want to know. You will get the answers to all of them. It's going to take time and trust, well, not trust, but time for me to be able to tell you.

What did he mean by that? I would, then she figures it out, and you and Laci were having problems, you are probably going to come up with some lie about how she ended up dead. I don't know. That's what he tells her. On February 10th, it's her birthday. Weird series of calls. Called me when you are driving past the hospital, that kind of thing. And he leaves, gives her a birthday present.

Scott Peterson is an interesting guy with presents. There was some testimony about, remember we made the everyone laugh about that star theater thing?

It's so cheap, or whatever it was, that he gave Amber for Christmas? Scott Peterson gave her inexpensive gifts, but very sentimental gifts. He is a very manipulative man.

The star theater thing. Do you remember one of the first dates they went on, they went hiking, they sat on the back of the truck, who could see the first star? Well, that gift meant something to Amber Frey. Same thing with this, with the birthday. He gave letter a little cross. You heard some religious references there. He gave her some bird seeds, some other stuff he knew she would like. He gave her a Nora Jones CD, which is right after he's been trying to get her to come down to Lake Arrowhead. The Nora Jones CD, I think the title of it, "Come Away With Me." Let me look for sure. Yeah, Nora Jones, "Come Away With Me." He's a very manipulative guy. Scott Peterson knows next exactly what he's doing at all times.

Let's talk about his lies. A lot of people have told me, well, you know, the guy had an affair. That doesn't mean he killed his wife. That's true. Doesn't mean he didn't. A lot of people use that like that's a positive thing. Oh, yeah, he had an affair. That's great. You know. Doesn't mean he didn't. Puts you in the race, right? A lot of people said, well, he had an affair, lied about it. That doesn't mean he killed his wife. Doesn't mean he didn't.

Not only does that put you in the race, now you got a fair, you have lied about it. Now you are a little bit ahead. Pretty soon with all these things that he's done, you are a little bit ahead, and a little bit ahead, and a little bit ahead. And, guess what? Pretty soon you did kill your wife.

All the lies he told Amber, I'm not going to go through them. All the holidays, the Europe trip, all that. But, you know, I'd like this one. I'll play this one for you to show you how manipulative he was. Even after he told Amber about Laci on January 7th, she says, she asks him, okay, are you going to tell me the truth? Oh, yeah, from now on everything I tell up is the truth. And I can't remember, maybe twenty, thirty seconds later, this is what he tells her.

Go ahead, play January 7th, 1613.

Guess what? That was a lie. He hadn't gone to Alaska for Thanksgiving. He tells, now, why lie about the affair? Remember, he supposedly told Laci about the affair. If he told Laci about the affair, there would be no reason tolie about it because she would already know. There is no reason to cover. Oh, gosh, I'm scared my wife going to find out I'm having an affair. Supposedly he already told her.

He is lying about the affair because he killed Laci. He doesn't want anybody to know about it, because that's going to cast suspicion on him. He tells the police, Detective Brocchini, you guys have any marriage problem? No.

Everything is good? Yeah, un-hun.

Agent Mansfield. Any third parties involved in the marriage? No. He tells those in the interview with Grogan as well. Eventually calls Detective Grogan on January 25th and admits that he was lying about that. Which is very interesting, because then he goes on national television, and, John, play that GMA Clip Number 4 for me, and lies to them about it.

Two lives catching up on Scott Peterson. He wants, in public, everybody to think he's doing the right things. He's the grieving husband. He's cooperative withthe police. He is helping out. He's doing the things. None of it is true.

Two lives: Private life, public life.

He tells Ron Grantski on December 26th, Mr. Grantski asked him, he says something is fishy about your fishing story. Doesn't make sense. He thinks it's because Scott Peterson is having an affair, Scott Peterson was really down on the 24th with his girlfriend. Scott Peterson says no, no, that's not it at all.

He lies where he was on January 11th. Why is that? Cue up that January 11th call, 12:55. Why is that a significant date, January 11th? Why is he lying to people about where he was on that day? Because on January 11th, people are, the Modesto Police are searching the San Francisco Bay. Searching the San Francisco Bay. It's been reported in the media that they believe they might have found a body. So this guy is going in high overdrive right out there, thinking they found Laci, and they found her quick.

So what does he do? Remember, he is down that Gilroy, Hollister area. That's what the cell site tells us. He tells, his mom calls him at 10:48. She says, where are you? He says Fresno, or West Fresno, something like that. His dad calls him later in the day, where are you? Oh, working down in Bakersfield.

His friend Aaron Fritz calls him. I'm sorry. Not Aaron Fritz. Guy Miligi called. Mike Richardson. He's in Button Willow. He's in Bakersfield. He's not in any of those places. He's hiding out waiting to see what, if anything, the police found; because if the police found Laci, he's gone. There is no way this guy is hanging around at that point. So he finally gets a voicemail message from Sharon Rocha, and telling him that they find an anchor. This is what we get. Go ahead and play it. John, Play the end of that again for me

I wish I could whistle like that. It would soundbetter when I'm standing up here, but I can't. But he's like "Whew," close. Almost got me.

And listen to Sharon on that call. You know. I mean if that's not one of the saddest things you have ever heard? Because she is excited. She is relieved.

She is still clinging on to hope that Laci is coming home. And all we get from Scott Peterson is, "Whew," almost got me.

He then has the, Peterson then calls her right back, talks to her. Oh, yeah, you know, the police are searching The Bay. The fools found an anchor. He doesn't say those words exactly. He says, he talks about that. She says, "Hey, you know, am I going to get to seeyou tonight? Where are you?" And he says, "I'm down in Bakersfield." He lies to her to again for the first time.

Remember that false sighting of Laci in Longview, Washington? He lies to a number of people about when he contacted them up there, you know. Why is that important, is that you can, didn't mean anything. It wasn't Laci up there.

Just further evidence of two lives. You know. He wants everyone to think he's doing something. Oh, yeah, talked to detectives, got ahold of them. Hadn't even called them yet. But he has to keep that persona going. He's got to keep his public persona for what people perceived him. Got to keep that going, even though he doesn't, it doesn't mean anything. His mom called and she's excited about this sighting. And this is what we get out of that. Go ahead and play that 1:31, Longview call. You know, he laughs at the end of that call.

Rachel is up putting up posters and he laughs. Just amused by it. His mom is excited. Similar, quite frankly, kind of emotions that Sharon Rocha made in that other call. Why don't you get up there? Do you want to get on a plane, go check this thing out? Maybe it's her. It wasn't. But, no. Just, huh, huh, that's funny. Rachel is up there putting up posters.

He lies to his supporters too. And do you remember the call where he's down at bar in San Diego, then he calls the next day to Joan Faria where he's, play that call. 2-2, 1703.

The very next day he calls one of his supporters in Modesto. This is the  line message he leaves on her machine the very next day. I'm just leaving that session now. Been up in grief counseling for four days in the hills.

When, of course, we know that's not true. And why is he saying that? Again, why is he saying this? Saying he is just a pathological liar? No. He knows he has to hide his involvement in this case. And to do that in public, and with his supporters, he has to be the grieving husband, and that's the reason why he's doing it.

He's not lying just because he can't tell the truth. He can tell the truth.

Some things he said was true. He did go to the Berkeley Marina. The reason he's doing this is, he has to keep his supporters on the hook to keep his support base behind him, to keep the pressure off of him, and the suspicion away from him. That's why he's doing this. That's why these lies were important, not just because he's lying, because of who and what he's lying about.

Joan Faria, he's not lying to her about Amber Frey. Lots of people said so. He lies about the affair. So what? That call has nothing to do with at all with Amber Frey. Nothing at all. Longview, Washington, nothing at all to do with Amber Frey. January 11th stuff, nothing to do with Amber Frey. So it's not just, I'm just lying about my affair. That's not what's going on here. Not by a long shot.

He lies to his friends. Remember, he told Mike Richardson, he showed up in blaze orange hair, orange goatee, the orange eyebrows. He said he got that swimming inAaron Fritz's motel room. Everybody knows that's ridiculous. Just another lie that he told. Has nothing to do with Amber Frey.

Let's take a look at his behavior. Remember the candlelight vigil? I can't remember exactly what the testimony was, but something like 800 or a thousand people from the community in Modesto. You know, let me talk about Modesto for a minute. You know, you heard about Modesto. And you heard about, early on, they contacted the 290 sex registrants. And there is some homeless folks there. You know what, there is sex registrants and homeless folks in every community. But, you know, you saw the video of Modesto as a place. You saw a video where their house is, their neighborhood. That looks like every middle class neighborhood.

All of you, I know you live here, obviously live here in the Bay Area. I have been here, of course, this whole time as well. I have driven through your neighborhoods. Your neighborhoods here are just like the neighborhoods that these folks lived in Modesto, your normal, everyday, middle class, middle of the road place. It's not some big scary place where pregnant women are getting snatched off the street. That's not what's going on. That's not the evidence you heard. That's nothing that you saw about Modesto.

Candlelight light vigil, this tells you kind of about Modesto. For example, I mean this is New Years Eve, 2002. 800 to a thousand people show up to show their support and prayer and candlelight, and everything else, for a woman they have never even met. This isn't some scary, horrible place. But you want to know what this guy is doing on December 31st, 45 minutes before that vigil is supposed to start?

It's set to start at 5:00 o'clock. Everyone elseis there helping to get this set up. They are dragging the stage out. They are doing what they have to do.

This is what he does. This is what he's doing 45 minutes before the vigil is supposed to start for his wife and missing son. Go ahead and play that December 31st 1618, Amber to, It's really funny. That's what he said. I'm not even playing that call for you just to highlight the Europe trip. We have been over that ad nauseam. You know why I played that call? Listen to his demeanor, and then put it in the context with what's going on in Modesto at that time. He's laughing. He's happy.

How is your New Years going? Amber asks. It's great. I'm having a great time.

My wife and kid are gone. That, to him, is a good thing. It's his demeanor that's important. And in the context of where this was, 45 minutes before 800 to a thousand people showed up there to memorialize his missing wife.

At the vigil, remember Mike Wilson helped. Remember, they helped move the stage out. Mike Wilson tells him, you know, Scott you really need to go and be with your family. He says, no, I'm happier right here. Happier down here with some guy moving the stage? His own family was up on the stage. Lisa Krueger said he was smiling. Remember Ken McCall said he seemed to be in a good mood, somewhat jovial. So much so that he thought it was kind of weird. He chose not to speak to him that day. You know, there is no playbook for grief. That's what people have told me when I talked about this. I agreed with that. Everybody grieves differently. Nobody grieves like that. That's just not true. Grieving, true, you want to see true grief, please like at that picture of Sharon Rocha. That's true grief. Look at those people. That's after the vigil is over. That's true grief right there, like somebody ripped their heart out.

That's not what you heard from that phone call with the defendant.

Now look at what the defendant looks like on that day. Yeah. He's feeling the pain there, isn't he? You know. Remember that call the defense played in their case? It was on the day of the defendant's arrest, April 18th, when he was supposedly going to go down and play golf, I guess at Torrey Pines.

Who goes down and plays golf when potentially your wife and unborn son have been found up there in the San Francisco Bay? You know. It would take a team of horses to hold you back to get up there to find out what's going on. Not this guy. I'm going to go, you know, he ends up not playing golf that day.

According to the phone call he is too concerned about how he is going to look in the press. I don't want a picture of me playing golf in the press. That'sall he's concerned about. Not like they might have found my wife.

Now, ask yourself. Is this the reasonable behavior for a man who didn't commit this crime, who is innocent? No way. That's not reasonable behavior. If it's not, then I have proven this case, and this man is guilty. Now, ask yourself this. Is it reasonable behavior for a man who did commit this crime?

Absolutely. Two interpretations. The one reasonable, one unreasonable. You must reject the unreasonable interpretation.

Here is some things he said about, sayings about Laci. One, Brian Ullrich, all I want for Christmas is my wife back. Well, apparently my porn and my girlfriend too. Private life, public life. Lies.

Talk about the porn channels. Do those mean anything, that he was getting porn?

Who cares if he was getting porn. Doesn't mean, that doesn't mean anything.

You want to know what's important about that? It's that he got it on January 8th, got the Playboy Channels. Who cares if he got the Playboy channels.

That's not the argument. It's being upgraded on the January 25th to the Ecstasy Channel.

I don't care if he watches porn. Watch all the porn you want. You know what is important about that? The important thing is, he knew Laci was never coming home to see him watching those channels. Laci shows up on his doorstep on January 13th. Oh, honey, you were gone. My sex drive was so overactive I had to get the porn channels. Yeah, right.

No. He got, he got those channels because he knew she was not coming home and he's moving on with his life. He created a fantasy life in his head, and he made it his reality. That's what's important about that stuff. He tells Diane Sawyer though, private-public. Public life, we had a glorious marriage. That's what he said. Glorious marriage. That's what he said.

He tells the Amber, though, on January 6th, she asked him, this is before the confrontation, did you have any problems of your own, Scott? She is kind of, at this point, wanting him to kind of own up to some of this stuff. Do you have any problems? No, no problems. She said, really? He says, yeah. No. This is a long call I was going to play for you. I'm not going to. It's too long on January 8th where they are talking about whether or not Laci and Scott went to bed in separate beds that night. And he never answered her.

She says, finally she says something to the effect of, let me tell, I'm going through in evidence pretty much from my memory. If I say something wrong, go with the way, like the judge said, go with what youremember and what you heard. Or, better yet, check the transcripts, or get it read back. I don't want to say anything here that's incorrect. If I do, I want you to go with what you remember. That's important.

But on this January 8th call, she said something to the effect of, did you go to bed in separate beds? I'm not going to answer that. Silence. You know. She keeps pumping him for it. Finally she says, why? It would too painful. Do you think it's going to be too painful to hear that you went to bed with your wife that night? I know you are married. Oh, no. He said something to the effect, you probably think the opposite. They didn't go to bed together that night.

He tells of the public statements about Conner, public and private. And in public he says, remember what he says about the baby's room to all those media folks. Can't go in there. Not going in there until there is a little guy to put in there. Can't, you know. That door isclosed to me. It's not true.

Because when they went back there on February 18th, he turned that place into a storeroom. Go ahead play that video. It is on the 26th, the way Laci left it.

This is what it looked like when they went back. Can't go in there unless there is a little guy toput in there. Again, there is two lives, right?

Public and private.

Here's what he says to Amber Frey on January 1st. She asked him if he wants, she says, do you want another child? Because they have been talking about, you know, he wanted to have a vasectomy. Aiyanna, her child, is enough for me.

I don't want any more. Here's, look what he says. This is January 1st, midnight call January 1st. She is asking him if he wants another child seven days after his wife and unborn son have gone missing. This is what he says. Go ahead and play that part. Just not my thoughts currently.

Who could even speak those words if he's not guilty? Seriously, I mean let's just throw all this argument I have made, and throw all the emotions out, throw everything out of this case. How can he speak those words? Could any of you?

You are all reasonable people. Could any of you?

<noon recess>

Where, where we left off, we were kind of talking about at one point the two lives of the defendant. What I'd like to talk about now is kind of the defendant's manipulation of the media. Really, his using of the media.

What we've heard in this trial is a couple of things here. Either the defendant is manipulating the media, is keeping them around and keeping them on the hook, that's what he told Gloria Gomez. I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said: You know, it's kind of a conscious decision for us to keep, keep the media around; or, on the other hand, the problem with that is either, either that's the truth, or the media is hunting him and driving him out of town. You can't have it both ways.

If the media drove him out of town, then he didn't purposefully keep them on the hook. If he purposefully kept them on the hook like he says, then the media had no, no impact at all on his, on why he did in January the things that he did. And that's the simple fact.

Now, look at it logically. This is a guy who goes on Good Morning America, you know, which is what, a national television show, probably viewed by millions of people, and he wants, he wants you to believe that he's somehow afraid of the media and they're hunting him and driving him out of town.

I mean that's ridiculous.

He also goes, right in that same time period, Good Morning America he's on, and then he goes on, he gives two that you saw. Let's see, Gloria Gomez and Ted Rowlands interviews. Two local interviews. So this is a guy who is so afraid of the media that they're driving him out of the town, that he's going to give interviews that are going to be broadcast around the entire world.

I mean, again, that just not consistent, that's what the defense is, it's what they want you to believe. They're trying to explain why he's doing all the wacky things he's doing. Selling his house. Selling laci's car. Getting a post office box. Breaking his lease. All because the media is hounding him.

It's just not true. That's a fact.

How many, you know, you are all reasonable folks. You people, I would think, would be kind of nervous about going on Good Morning America. But you've seen him. He wasn't nervous a bit. He looked her right in the eye and told a bald-faced lie.

This is not a guy who is intimidated by, really, anybody, or anything. He's certainly not intimidated by the media.

The reason he did those things is it was part of the plan. He's still working the plan. The plan was, remember at the end of January he's going to come back and start up again with Amber? He's still working the plan. He's taking off out of Modesto.

Who of any reasonable person, your wife and unborn son, your pregnant wife, I guess I should call her, call Laci that, goes missing on December 24th. Who is going to want to put their house up for sale on January 14th? Who is going to want to put their house up for sale, and as he told Brian Argain, his friend, Hey, on January 22nd, Hey, what about selling my house? Hey, can we keep it quiet?

I'm not making any of this up. It's all in the transcript: Can we keep it quiet.

Then he talked a little bit more, and he says: Hey, you know, can I sell it furnished?

So he's not only going sell his house, the media, of course, is driving him out of his house. This is what he told Gloria Gomez, I guess what he wants everyone to believe. But he's not only going to sell Laci's house and car, he's going to sell all of her stuff. You know, honey, you know, what if miraculously, let's assume he's innocent, which there's no evidence, the evidence is overwhelming he's guilty, but take his story for a second and let's assume he's innocent, what's he going to tell her if she shows back up: Oh, honey, you know, I know it's a little odd, but, you know, a couple weeks into this I decided to sell the house, and, well, all your stuff, too.

The reason he's doing all these things is because he knows she's not coming back. And he's just separating his life from Modesto, his life from Laci, his life from Conner, and he's starting anew. It was all part of the plan that he started way back in October.

Before we leave that, I do want to play one clip. Actually, a couple clips for you. Here's a clip of the defendant as he's being interviewed by Detective Brocchini the night this happened. Before you play that, John, let's put this into perspective.

This is the night that Laci Peterson allegedly got abducted. This should be the most horrible event that he has ever experienced in his entire life. It would be for any of you. It would be for any of all of these people out here. It would be for me. It would be for anybody sitting at that defense table, except for him. That's the way it should be.

And let's take a look at what his demeanor was on that night. I only pulled a small segment out, but you know what, I would actually suggest that you go back and watch this whole interview if you have any question at all about this, because it's a very telling interview. And pay attention to how he looks.

Go ahead.

Calm, cool, collected, chuckling at times. Where, where is any concern at all? Oh, she told me what she was going to do for the day. You know, no big deal. Yeah, she's gone. No big deal.

Now, let's look at the, what, when Scott Peterson wants to present this false image to the public, let's show how he portrays that. I mean, this guy is like a master actor there. Go ahead and show me the next clip, the Good Morning America clip.

He can turn the tears on when he wants to, though, can't he?

Let's talk about the, into January, the trips to the Berkeley Marina, what those mean. You saw there was a number of them. January 5th, 6th, the 9th.

This is the chart for the 9th. The 26th, the 27th. And let's see what, what did the defendant do with those trips.

Let's actually put this in perspective first. Why is the defendant going to the Berkeley Marina? Remember he had never been there before. This is, the fishing trip was supposed to be his first time there. So this is not a place he frequencies all the time.

So let's go with what was kind of insinuated by questioning, I guess, or what Mr. Peterson's version would be: Well, I'm going there to see if somebody saw me. I guess, you know, whatever, let's take that for a second.

Well, if you're going to do that, don't you think you'd stop at the office and talk to somebody? Don't you think you'd go and look for that maintenance man who saw you? Don't you think you'd do any of those things? Don't you think you'd spend more than a couple minutes there?

He knows during this time, what's the real reason he's going there? Let's don't pull any punches. What's the real reason he's going to the Berkeley Marina. And doing what he does, there's the GPS track. He comes down, drives around to the lookout, drives back around to the lookout.

He's there for just minutes. You know, he drives in, checks it out, drives back around, checks it out. That's what he's really doing. He knows the police is  searching the Berkeley Marina. He doesn't call them up and say: Hey, you guys searching the Berkeley Marina? Anything I can do to help you?

You didn't hear any evidence of that at all. All you heard was he made these secret, surreptitious trips out there to check up on them. I mean, he wants to know if they're looking in the right place.

You heard the testimony where the anchor was found. That was found down, I'm pretty sure it was testified to it was down at the end of the Berkeley Marina there. Well, that's, they're not looking in the right place. So he's satisfied on that trip.

You know, let's look at what he did. He, on January 5th he hops in that silver Subaru, a car that's not associated with him at all. Hops in there, changes his clothes you heard after doing his, the two lives things again, doing his little public thing, going around, laying out flyers, doing that. And ne then all of a sudden goes in, changes his clothes, jumps in that silver Subaru, and bam, he drives straight to the Berkeley Marina. He drives just around this overlook here, and bam, straight back to Modesto.

I mean, that's a long trip to go, remember he was driving 85, 90 miles an hour. That's a long time to spend a couple minutes out at that overlook at the Berkeley Marina. He's not going there to look for anything. He's not going there to help anybody. You're going there to check up on the cops and see what they're doing. That's why he did it.

January 6th, well, this time in a little more surreptitious fashion. He actually drives his Land Rover. Remember we heard Oh, he can't, the reason he sold the Land Rover is because it was so tore up.

That is ridiculous. Go back and listen to some of that or have read back to you some of that surveillance folks' testimony. He drove that Land Rover all over the place. The there was nothing wrong with the Land Rover at all. The only thing the police did to it when they seized it is pulled the headliner out to test it. That doesn't affect the way the car drives at all. He was driving it all over the place.

But not on January 6th. He drives to the Enterprise Rent a Car place, rents a red Honda, bam, back out to the Berkeley Marina. Spends a couple minutes there.

And remember they lost him downtown sometime in Berkeley. He's not a guy who's going out to these areas to look for, you know, to talk to people, to do anything other than check on what's going on. He goes again on the 9th in a rented car. Remember it was that Dodge, I think it was a Dodge that day. No, Chevy S-10.

On January 11th, remember when he was lying on all those calls, remember what he did that day? He rented a silver Saturn and went out to, remember what he did. Jill, Agent Henry testified to this. He goes out to the Land Rover.

Remember he was looking underneath it, he walks all the way around it, he looks under it again.

What do you think he was looking for? He's not a stupid man. He knows, you know, he made the surveillance. He knew they were following him. He was looking for a tracker. That's why he wasn't driving the Land Rover. That's why he kept renting cars, why he kept going out there in cars that weren't associated with him.

On January 26th he drove his Land Rover out there. And then on January 27th, remember he drove out not to the Berkeley Marina, I should have brought that chart out, but I didn't. He drove out here to the frontage road to look out at the Bay and see where, that's what the GPS showed. He's not going to find the maintenance man for the Berkeley Marina out there on the frontage road.

Go back and, and, you know, look at those boards. The GPS tracks are clear as day on there. You can see exactly where he went. And that's, that's the reason why he was doing those trips.

Now, let's talk about the, some of the physical evidence and other evidence that you heard in this case. Let's talk about, first, Laci walking.

Were we trying to present to you that Laci was an invalid, that she couldn't walk anywhere? Of course not. There's no evidence to support that at all.

The question is was Laci walking on December, on a cold morning on December 24th with a big dog. I mean, that's the question.

And let's look at what the evidence was. Well, she had been walking in November, on November 6th and November 8th. It's in her medical records. And she got dizzy and I think she said she almost threw up or almost passed out, or something like that, in the park.

You heard from all her friends. You heard from Rene Tomlinson that she felt big. She was taking it easy. Stays Boyers said on November 14th Laci told her she stopped walking. Terry Western said that Laci told her on December 14th that she was tired a lot, it was hard to walk. Sharon Rocha testified to the same kinds of things. And even Karen Servas, the neighbor, who saw Laci last, I think it was the last time, she might have seen her on the 23rd, but saw her on the 22nd when she was in the backyard and the defendant was mowing the lawn, she said that Laci told her she felt really tired and she almost fell into the pool because she got dizzy.

Now, is that the kind of person that's going to go out on Christmas Eve morning and to go walk a big dog? It's just not. I mean, that's a simple fact.

The only person who testified differently than that, the only one, is the defendant's mother, Jackie Peterson. And she testified that she and Laci had done that walk down to the beach and had walked, you know, two hours kind of up and down the hills in Carmel.

Well, you saw Mrs. Peterson testify, and you saw her medical condition, which she had at the time, and is it reasonable for you to believe that that happened?

Is it, I mean, really, is it reasonable?

It's just not. You know, Laci and Mrs. Peterson did probably drive around town, they probably drove down to the beach, they probably drove up to the shopping center, but those folks were not walking around Carmel up and down those hills for two hours. It just didn't happen.

Let's talk about the autopsy. The cause of death in this case could not be determined. And that's a fact. You know, the sea doesn't give up its secrets very easily. And simply because someone is a good murderer and is able the hide the body for a long period of time doesn't mean they get off. You don't get a free pass for being a clever murderer.

But it's a fact that these bodies were too deposed for the pathologist to tell us what, what happened to them.

Cause of death is not an element of this crime. The elements of this crime are somebody, a person, here Laci and Conner, both under the law considered people, even though Conner was a fetus, were killed unlawfully, done with malice aforethought. There was a murder, and I'll talk about this later, but if it's done with premeditation, it's first degree murder.

I'll talk about premeditation. You hear that all the time. Probably hear it on TV. It's not some big secret or, you know, some magical legal term. It's just that somebody stopped and thought about what they were doing. That's it.

You can premeditation in the blink of an eye, if you want to. Just that somebody, instead of just killing, somebody actually said: I'm going to kill; I've made the decision to kill.

That's what premeditation means.

The example I frequently use, it's a little silly but it makes the point, is when you come up to a stop sign, or not a stop sign, but a streetlight and the light's red. And you walk up to it and you stop and see the light's red, so you acknowledge that it's red, and you say, You know what, I'm going to go ahead and cross the street anyway, and you start crossing.

Well, you just made a premeditation jaywalking in the street. That's all it means. It just means you stop and think about or you acknowledge what, what you're about to do.

So you heard, as I went through that definition, cause of death is not an element. And, you know, people kill and the cause of death is not determined all the time. Here these bones were basically skeletonized. You heard that there was some fatty tissue that had turned. Of course, Laci was missing limbs and, and parts of her. And I hate to say this, but, but some jurors even kind of wonder Well, you need the whole person to find, to find someone guilty of murder.

No, that's not an element either. Doesn't say you have to have recover the entire person, just that you proved that somebody had been killed. Clearly that was done here.

Laci had been in a marine environment for three to six months. That was Dr.

Galloway's determination from her analysis, which, of course, fits the facts perfectly here because she went, the defendant killed her on December 24th.

She was found on April 14th. So what is that, January 24th, February 24th, March 24th, it would have been, April 24th would have been four months. So one, ten days shy, I guess. Did I miss a month in there? I'm not sure.

Anyway, it fits right in that three to six month period that she said.

Now, why is that important? Well, let's jump ahead to, let's go all the way back to when I started this morning and said Okay, Laci and Conner washed up right where the defendant was. So that's a fact. Proven fact. I can't say anything about it. The only other way, either he did it, of course, or somebody put the bodies there to frame him.

And I'm going to talk about what possible reason you would have to frame an unsuccessful fertilizer salesman in Modesto. But before we get there, let's look at how somebody, or why somebody would frame, you know, anyone. Let's take Scott Peterson out of it for a second.

If you're going to frame somebody, that means you're going to try to pin the crime on them, right? So let's say I'm this faceless bad person that has abducted Laci Peterson. Somehow I figured out exactly where the defendant went, because I would have to know exactly where he went fishing in order to put the bodies right where he went. And I want, I want the bodies to be there, or at least to be found, so that the suspicion will go onto Scott Peterson.

What possible, here's how you know without any doubt that that's not true.

What possible reason would there be then to weight down or hide the bodies so they aren't found for, what, four, four and a half months, whatever it is. If you're going to pin it on somebody, that means you're going to want to make it look like they did it. If you want to make it look like they did it, you put the body right up on the shore right out of the gate. Maybe you put it ten feet off the shore, but you're not going to put it so it's hidden in the water so nobody finds it, because how is that possibly framing Scott Peterson?

The only reason these bodies were found, yeah, the defendant put them in the water with weights on them. The only reason they were found is not because of some frame-up job or somebody all of a sudden said Let's raise them up and pin it on Scott Peterson. Why would anybody do that? They've gotten away with it for four months and now all of a sudden they're going to raise the bodies so suspicion will go to him?

No. I mean that's ridiculous. Ludicrous. It's not reasonable. It didn't happen.

The only reason those bodies were found is remember what Dr. Cheng testified to.

There was an extremely low tide on February 12th. And there was a very violent storm on February 12th. That combination broke the, broke Laci Peterson free and sent her floating towards the shore. That's the only reason that those bodies were found at all. Not because of some magical frame-up job, or for any other reason.

And if that's the fact, and that's the evidence that was before you in this case, then that man's a murderer. It's as simple as that.

Again, like I said, there's no mysteries in this case.

What was Laci wearing when she was found? She was wearing those pants which I showed you. And I'm not going to show you those autopsy pictures again. You know, I could hold those pictures up and prove it to you, but you saw it. If you want to see it again, absolutely look at it, but you saw this stuff.

She was wearing those pants, they were very frayed and degraded, of course. And they were in the normal position of wear.

So what does that tell us? She wasn't sexually assaulted. Nobody assaulted her and, you know, had her get dressed up again and throw her back in the Bay.

The other reason we know she wasn't sexually assaulted is there were no injuries at all to any of her genitalia.

Her bra was in its normal position of wear. So that's further evidence of that.

And, finally, her maternity panties were in the normal position of wear. All those things were found on her body.

What else do we know from her body? There was no vaginal birth in this case.

So it wasn't like somebody grabbed Laci to hold her for the baby. That did not happen. No vaginal birth. Her cervix was intact and closed. That means that Conner did not come out of the birth canal.

What else do we have? There's no tool marks, which means she wasn't dismembered. There's no indication that she had been stabbed, that she had been cut. You know, dismembered. Her arms, I mean her legs, arms, or head had been cut off. No evidence of that whatsoever.

There was duct tape on her. So we know that whoever killed her, the duct tape was attached to her. I think it was running up one leg and her upper torso. So we know that whoever killed her used duct tape.

There were barnacles, the duct tape is important for a couple of reasons. One of the main ones is it obviously proves she was murdered, but secondly, it has barnacles on it. Remember there were barnacles on the duct tape and there was barnacles on Laci's body itself. Both consistent with Laci, you know, obviously being in the marine environment.

Now, why do I bring that up and tell you about it? Because remember all that testimony that we had about that big plastic TARGET bag that was found and, you know, the insinuation, you know, kind of from the defense, remember they called Officer Phillips who testified he smelled the bag, and I'll talk about that in a minute. But kind of the insinuation was that's somehow related to this crime.

Well, that TARGET bag had no barnacles on it at all. It was wrapped in some duct tape, but you remember from Pin Kyo, the criminalist's, testimony, it didn't match the duct tape that was on Laci. That TARGET bag had no human tissue in it. No deposing fat. No nothing that you would have if Laci Peterson had been wrapped in that bag.

That bag didn't have anything to do with this case. The only reason it even came up was because Officer Phillips had this memory at the last minute that the bag smelled like Laci. That's what he said.

Well, you know, there's a couple things about that. First off, remember they ran a cadaver dog by the bag, and a dog's got a better nose than Officer Phillips, and that dog didn't hit on the bag.

Secondly, this is going to sound very crude, and I apologize for it, but Officer Phillips had been standing by Laci Peterson's body for I think the testimony was seven or seven and a half hours. You know, I'm surprised he could smell anything but Laci Peterson at that point. I mean it's unfortunate, like I said, I hate to put it in those terms, but maybe one that's a little more palatable. Kind of like when you go into a smokey bar. Even though you're not smoking, you walk out in an hour and that's all you smell is the smoke. You know, it's the same kind of phenomenon.

Let's talk about Conner's condition. Conner was decomposed extremely. So much so that the doctor couldn't determine the cause of death. But he was much less decomposed than Laci. In fact, Conner, the way the doctor described it, it was really sad. I think the doctor said Conner was macerated, which means soaking something in fluid. That's what that term means. And, you know, anybody who's soaked anything knows what happens to that kind of stuff. But Dr. Galloway said it best, although it's the crudest definition. She said he was kind of like mush. That's what he was like.

I, I think a better term, as sad as it is, is he was kind of like a jelly fish. There wasn't a whole lot left to him. He's a tiny little guy. You know, that's what he was when he, when he came out.

Remember on Laci, I forgot to tell you, there was no evidence of an incision on her uterus, or in any location where somebody had killed Laci and then tried to take the body out.

So we've got this tiny little guy who we know went in the water with Laci Peterson. There's no other explanation. Like Dr. Peterson said, if he was anywhere but inside her uterus, he would have been eaten or completely decomposed.

I mean it's a horrible thing to say, and I can't believe I have to stand up here and tell you folks this, but that's just the facts of the case. It's an important fact because it proves to us that Conner Peterson was inside Laci, died inside Laci, and went in the water with Laci. That's what that proves.

There's other things, too. He had meconium, which is like the first stool sample that a baby has inside of him when he's born. He still had that in him.

That was an indication, that was an indication to the doctor that Conner had not been born. It's further evidence that he went, he died inside of Laci.

And let's talk about, I'm going to show one picture from the autopsy, and I apologize for it in advance, but go ahead and show that picture.

This is Conner Peterson, of course, when he's sitting on the Coroner's table.

The reason I'm showing you this is to talk about the tape material here, plastic, whatever you want to call it, around his neck there and under his arm, and all that.

Nobody tied that around Conner's neck. That did not happen. Look at that, if somebody tied that knot around Conner's neck, for whatever reason, I don't know, to kill him, you know, suffocate him, for what I have no idea why you would do that, but if that's what happened, you would have injury there to his neck, and there's nothing. Look how loose that is.

The other thing about that is there's some knots in there and you wonder how did you, look, it's totally wrapped around him. He came ashore. Remember that area where he came ashore is a tidal flat, so at high tide it's covered with water all the way. At low tide it's ground. He came ashore on a heavy storm surge. In fact, when you go back and look at the pictures, you can see the line of debris where the heavier objects settled first and, you know, the lesser heavy objects, as the tide was receding. That's what was going on. As he's back and forth in that storm surge and floating ashore, he just wrapped up in this stuff.

For anyone who's having a hard time grasping that or believing it, how do you get knots in something like that, think of some simple examples. An extension cord. I do it all the time. I take my extension cord that I use when I clip my hedges, I throw in it a drawer. When I pull it out, it almost always has a knot in it.

What about Christmas lights? I don't know if anyone's ever unwrapped Christmas lights every year without getting a knot in it. It's what happens when you put all this stuff together.

Remember the doctor testified, he even testified that babies in the womb will sometimes get knots in their umbilical cords. So the fact that there's a knot in there, or even kind of a loose bow tie, if you look at that thing, it's actually not even wrapped around his neck. It comes around and comes down under his arm. That's where it is. He just floated into that, and in the tidal surge it got wrapped around him. It has nothing at all to do with his disappearance.

How else do we know that?

Let's say it did. Let's say that somebody killed Laci and tried, for whatever reason. Let's just pretend. That's what the defense's theory is. Let's just pretend. Killed Laci, tried to pull the baby out and the baby died. Well, for one thing, if they both go into the water at the same time, Conner's gone. Once he's out of the womb, he can't be protected.

There was some talk that well, maybe, you know, I guess that's why this TARGET bag came up. Maybe they put him in a plastic bag. Maybe they did this or that.

Well, the bag's not airtight, so he's going to keep decomposing at the same rate as Laci. Remember what the doctor told you? He would be gone. There's no way that they could float together like that and be found at the same time, no possible way, unless he came out of her just like Dr. Peterson said, through normal decomposition, that tidal surge when it broke him free, he broke free, and they both started their tracks to shore. That's the only way this could have happened.

Now, let's talk about the age of Conner. The, remember we talked about that at length. Dr. Galloway's example, her estimate was 33 to 38 weeks. That was based on some anthropological charts that she did. But if you remember her testimony, and if you're at all unclear on that, I'd ask you to get it read back. You know, I've asked you that a bunch of times. The court reporters hate it when we say that because it's a lot of work to find those testimonies and read it back, but it's important that you guys do that.

The, what, what she said was that estimate that she gave, you have to, I think it's an average of 35 weeks from anthropological charts. And then you have to plus or minus, part of her study, two weeks on either end. So I think that's how she came up with 33 to 38.

Well, remember what she said. It's in the redirect. So, you know, this is where this stuff is said. What she actually said was to get two-thirds of the babies, so for us to get kind of a good guess on two-thirds of the babies, you have to plus or minus two weeks. Well, that still leaves out 33 percent of, of the babies that are out there, right? One third don't fall into that range.

She said to get 95 percent of them you have to plus or minus four weeks on either end. So, now, that gives us with Conner 31 to 40 weeks.

So what does that tell us? It tells us the anthropological charts that Dr.

Galloway had is just too big a range for us to really make any definitive determinations.

What the anthropologist is really good for is dating how long remains have been in the water, or on land, or whatever. You know, the three to six months that she gave for each individual, with Conner being inside Laci, is very accurate.

But the dating of the baby is not as much.

So we have to look for some other, other things. Remember what Dr. DeVore said. Dr. DeVore was a specialist in neonatal ultrasound. That's all he does.

He takes pregnant women and he does ultrasounds on them and tries to measure the babies.

He came and measured Conner's femur. He also compared it to Dr. Galloway measurement and he came up with, he applied a standard growth curve. Nothing magical or mystical about what he did. He just took those measurements from where they were, from what those earlier ultrasounds were, he applied a standard growth curve to them that they do with babies, and he said Conner's date of death, depending on which of the three measurements he had, was the 21st, the 23rd or the 24th. e

Now, we kept hearing two of those were no good because we know she was alive on the 23rd. Well, we know she was alive on the 23rd up until 8:30. We don't know if she was alive after that. In fact, there's a lot of evidence to support that she wasn't. Either way, though, Dr. DeVore's measurements show us and his testimony shows us that Conner died right at the exact time the prosecution said he did.

The, the other experts you heard, Dr. Endraki put the baby at 32 weeks and six days. Dr. Tow-der said that Dr. Yip didn't change the due date. So all that testimony about changing the due date was contradicted by one of the doctors in his office.

What happened was at that second ultrasound, I'm trying to make this kind of simple, but at that second ultrasound, the second ultrasound has a plus or minus, I think it was testified to, of ten days. So if it's within seven days, the doctors' office doesn't change the due date. But the ultrasound had a different, had a different calculation, so they put in the chart. It was a corrected date of confinement, I think that's what they call it. That's all that was. It didn't really mean anything.

Now, the only evidence that you heard to contradict any of the prosecution witnesses regarding Conner's age when he was found and the date of death and all of that was Dr. March. That's it.

Nothing else contradicted anything else that the prosecution expert said.

But before, actually, before I talk about Dr. March, I'm going to forget something if I don't bring it up now. There was, remember what Dr. Peterson said about Conner's body when he examined it by itself? When he didn't, you know, put it in context with Laci's. When alls he had to look at was a baby that washed ashore in the San Francisco Bay and he didn't know that Laci and Conner were associated. Remember what he said? He said: Based solely on that, I couldn't determine if the baby was born alive or not.

That's very important because I have a feeling when the defense gets up and argues they're going to argue to death that the doctor said that that baby was born alive. That is absolutely not what the doctor said. Alls he said was: The baby was too decomposed for me to make that determination. That's it.

Based solely on the baby alone.

But you put the baby with Laci, and everything makes perfect sense. And that's how he came up with his opinion that Conner died while he was inside Laci.

Now, let's go back to Dr. March for a minute. I think it can be argued that Dr.

March was the most unbelievable witness of the entire trial. You know, I think if we had asked Dr. March any question at all, if we had said, you know: Dr.

March, what date is Halloween going to be on next year? He would have come up to this chart, he would have scribbled furiously, he would have drawn a whole bunch of things, and he would have said December 29th.

Because that's pretty much what he did.

Dr. March's entire testimony was based on, apparently based on a conversation, I mean Laci's conversations with Rene Tomlinson that she had announced her pregnancy. And from that, and his whole opinion was critically based on this.

From that he deduced that Laci took a positive preg, I mean, took a pregnancy test on that day, had never had a positive pregnancy test prior to that day, and that, and so because of that he could then deduce these date of deaths that were different than what Dr. DeVore said. That's what it was based on.

And he came up with that because he said Well, Laci went to a baby shower the day before. And he said well, if she had known the day before, of course she would have spoiled this other woman's baby shower and announced this whole thing, because that's what women do. Geez, I'm a fertility specialist; I know what women do. They would of course announce it at a baby shower. There's no way they would keep it to themselves.

That's just not true. You know, women wait to announce pregnancies all the time. Some women wait to announce it until they're showing. There's no indication at all that Laci would have gone to Rene Tomlinson's baby shower and announced that she was pregnant.

I mean, you know what, maybe she didn't want to spoil it. Maybe she said Hey, you know what, this is your day. That is much more reasonable than making these medical, coming here before you and making a very critical medical decision based on information that's not within the medical records. There's nothing in the medical records that says on what is it, June 9th, I think, that Laci Peterson took a positive pregnancy test. I mean, he said that right on the stand.

Let's talk about the boat. The 14 foot aluminum fishing boat. You know, and these kind of boats have been around for years. And, you know, I know there was a lot of talk that, I don't know if 'talk' is the right word. Maybe insinuation is the right word; that, you know, somehow these are unstable and, you know, they're ready to tip over at the drop of a hat and boy, there's no way that, you know, you could dump a body out of the boat and that's impossible because, you know, it's going to go over and the defendant would have gone in the water, and the whole bit.

Of course, there's no evidence that would have done that. In fact, the guy from the company that makes these boats, remember what he said. He brought the, you know, the pictures to show the tests they do. They fill the boat completely full with water. Completely submerged and it still floats. They put weights on one side, completely submerged, it still floats. They put, I think they put weights in the, let me take a look here.

Yeah, they do side stability tests with the boat full of water. They do level flotation with the boat full of water. They do all these calculations.

And, you know, the things is these aluminum fishing boats, they've been around for years. I can't remember exactly what the guy testified to, I think it was at least 20 years. It was probably more. And don't you think, if these boats were tipping over every time a couple of guys leaned on one side to net a fish, that there, that there would be, we wouldn't have these boats or they would fix them or they would do something?

Remember Bruce Peterson? We brought in the guy who sold the boat to the defendant. Remember what he said? Did you ever use that boat? Heck, yeah, I used it all the time. Well, what did you use it for. For fishing. Well, where at? And, you know, he told us a bunch of different places. Who went with you?

My wife. Well, were you and your wife ever on the same side of the boat? Yeah.

Yeah, if she caught a fish, I'd go over there. Did you ever have any problems?

No. Could you get up and walk around? Yeah. Was there any problems? No.

You know, it's a ridiculous argument to say you can't do this. I mean, look, you've got Laci Peterson in the boat, you sit on the middle of the seat; you know, I'm not saying take Laci Peterson and sit up on the gunwale of the boat, you know, the rim. That's not how you do this. It's easy. Sit on the middle of the seat, pull her up so you kind of counterbalance it, and push her over.

That's it. It's done in probably a minute, or less.

You know, you want to see some other pictures, take a look at this exhibit.

Remember what the fisherman said? Here's a guy, here's three adults, full sized adults, fishing in a 13 foot aluminum boat. This one is actually smaller than the defendant's. Three adults in the Bay, standing up in the boat on the same side while they're about to land, I think he said this is a 60 to 70 pound sturgeon.

I said Did you have any problem doing that? He said no. And I think, I can't remember if I asked him or the defense did, but somebody asked him Well, could you pull a big sturgeon in and out of that boat? Yeah. Yeah, he said no problem. Well, you couldn't do it by yourself, could you? He said Yeah, sure I could. He said it just like I said it, you sit on the seat, you pull it in, you know, you put one end up on the side and slide it over. It wouldn't be any problem at all.

There's no evidence to contradict that whatsoever.

You know, there was a question how could Laci Peterson fit in the boat. I know we talked about that. Well, here's Kim Fulbright, a member of my office. She weighed, I think Laci weighed a hundred and 53 pounds. I think the testimony was Kim weighed a hundred and 57 pounds. They were both about the exact time of ne pregnancy. At least very close. And, you know, here she is. She fits right in the boat, no problem. In fact, she disappears underneath the side of the boat, if you look at it. And this is in the back compartment.

Throw the boat cover on there, no one's going to see a thing.

Here's from the middle compartment. Same thing. In fact, in the middle compartment, she disappears even more.

And finally, here's her in the front compartment. You can't see her at all.

So for anyone to get up and argue to you that you can't put a pregnant woman in that 14 foot boat, it's just not true.

What else do we know about the boat? Nobody knew about it. No one, all the friends, family, the Peterson family, Rochas, nobody knew the defendant had bought a boat. So you've got this secret purchase going on.

Why do you keep that boat secret? Remember Ron and Sharon were I think at the defendant's home on December 15th with the defendant and Laci. Remember Ron said Hey, you know what, I got Sharon out fishing today. It was kind of a rare event because it's not something she did a lot. Oh, yeah, they talked about fishing, talked about what they did. Nobody mentioned the boat.

The boat was bought on December 9th. Why not? If Laci knew about the boat, remember what Sharon said. She would talk to her about purchases. She would talk to her about what was going on in her life. Nobody said she was a wallflower, afraid to talk. In fact, the testimony was kind of contrary to that.

Nobody knew about the boat, even his own family.

Remember the boat cover. You all probably wondered why we spent so much time talking about the boat cover. Well, other than the points I already made about it, there's something really important about it. Remember where it was stored?

Remember, I mean remember where they found it, is what I should say.

Okay. You've got this boat cover. It was in the back of the defendant's truck.

I think the testimony was it was in the back of the defendant's truck on December 24th. I might be wrong about that. There might not be any testimony on it until the 26th.

But regardless, this is the boat cover for the boat. If you have a boat cover for your boat, why isn't it with your boat? Why isn't it in your boat? Why isn't it on your boat? Why isn't it in the warehouse where you keep your boat?

All legitimate questions, unless you used it as part of killing your wife.

And then maybe what would you do? Well, maybe, instead of leaving it there in your warehouse, or keeping it in your boat, or keeping it here under this covered patio, or keeping it here in this particular shed, you'll walk it all the way around your house, remember this gate's locked, you can't even go in there, so you walk it all the way around your house, you put it in the shed that's farthest from anything else, and then open, I mean, then put a leaky gas blower on top of it so it's completely saturated with gas. It smells like gas.

Remember what Detective, remember what Detective Brocchini testified to when the defendant called him on the 25th? Hey, are you using cadaver dogs? You know, kind of a funny question right out of the gate like that. Are you using cadaver dogs?

Remember what Captain Boyer said about gasoline? It throws off cadaver dogs.

Let's talk about the defendant's handgun. Remember he had the handgun in the car, and remember the whole story that was made, I mean, the whole questioning of Detective Brocchini that, that, you know, he took that handgun without telling him?

Well, he had every right to take the handgun without telling him. It's against the law to drive around with a loaded handgun in your car.

But regardless, even if you think the detective overreached there, let's say, let's say you think that, okay? There's some interesting things about the handgun. Why did the defendant have the handgun in his truck?

If you killed your wife and you're taking it for protection, it makes perfect sense. It's perfectly reasonable.

What the defendant said, the reason the defendant said he had the handgun in his car is he left it there from a pheasant hunting trip. Remember that? He said he went through certain actions to, to work the gun and it jammed.

Remember the gun expert came and said It worked fine for me. With the ammunition that was in there. So we know that's not true.

Remember his own father said I don't remember him having a handgun on that trip.

So why did he take the gun? How do we know, let me phrase it to you this way.

How do we know the defendant took the gun that day with him for protection? If you just killed your wife, you're driving down the road, you've got her body in the back, it makes every sense to have the gun.

Here's what the defendant said. All his guns, remember, were kept in this room, a spare bedroom. Remember Detective Brocchini asked him, this is People's 37 O I'm showing you. Asked him about the duffel bag that was on the ground. It's hard to see even close. But if you blow it up it's worse. That's why I'm showing you here.

There's a duffel bag here. Detective Brocchini said Hey, what's the deal with the duffel bag? There was a jacket in there, looked like somebody reached down and pulled it out in a hurry. He said, Oh, yeah. Yeah. That. Remember he had this stuff hanging down here, as if somebody's in a hurry.

And remember what the defendant's story was: Well, I got some white shoes out of there. I got some white tennis shoes out and I took the tennis shoes and I e went and I put them on my wet bar.

Okay. What possible reason would you be in such a hurry that you pull all this stuff out and leave it hanging off of there, and leave the thing hanging on the ground, and take your tennis shoes and put them on the wet bar outside? Is that reasonable? Or is it reasonable that, Man, I got to get my gun, I got to get out of here.

So you're scrambling around trying to find it, you reach up there, oh, it's in this bag, you pull it down, your stuff falls, falls on the ground, you pull the gun out, throw it in your glovebox and off he goes.

You know, you know how else we know that the defendant was really concerned about that gun? Was because, remember what Detective Brocchini testified to, after he dropped him off in the early morning hours of December 25th, on the day that should be the most horrible day in his whole life, he calls him up an hour or two later, he says: Hey, did you take that gun out of my truck? I wish you would have told me.

Why did he go back looking for that gun if he didn't know the detective took it?

Why did he go straight back and look for his gun?

Because he was worried about it. Because he knew that it was associated with this crime, and he wanted to deal with that.

You know, the other thing, too, and this is just a side note, really, but, you know, those sturgeon are big fish. And remember I asked the expert, you know, Well, can you, can you bring a gun with you to shoot the sturgeon to subdue them? He said No, you can't do that. So we know the defendant didn't have the gun with him for that reason.

Let's talk about the defendant's financial status for a minute. His business, by everyone's imagination, I mean even their expert, was doing poorly. Their expert's testimony was basically it was a startup company and was going to be funded by, you know, ad nauseam, or at least four years, I guess. Whatever. So it was supposed to lose money.

But they didn't show their expert, you know, a real critical e-mail where this is, looks like it's written in November, 4 November, 4 November, 2000 and 2, and this is People's 298. And what his boss is telling him: Dear Scott, thanks for your report. The sales in October are only 50 percent of your revised targets, and the question to be done is why. I think we should be able to see now concrete signals of an inversion, you know, a switching, of the trend we established for 2003, a break-even principle.

I mean, they're telling him, What's going on here? You're less than 50 percent of your revised goals. You know, what's the deal here? The story's not that the company is just going to just give money away to Scott Peterson to spend as he wants to. The company is saying Hey, you need to get on the ball.

But that e-mail, you heard his testimony, from the defense expert, was never shown to him. And remember also, you know, the People's expert testified the defendant and Laci had a high debt to credit ratio. They, I'm not arguing to you they were on the verge of bankruptcy or they were near the end, or anything like that. But they were living kind of at the upper end of where they could handle it.

And what their expert said is No, he had all this money, he had tons of money to spend, look at this chart. Remember they put this chart up where it looked like he had two thousand dollars a month, you know, of free money just to spend away.

And all of a sudden we asked him Is that gross or net? You know, we all got to pay taxes.

Oh, well, yeah, that's, that's gross, so, you know, immediately cut, cut that down by a third, cut this down, cut that down.

It was not an accurate portrayal of these people's finance. What the defense expert presented to you was just not correct.

Let's talk about the dog tracking evidence. Remember Eloise Anderson testified that her tracking dog, Trimble, her tracking dog, Trimble, tracked, she checked both of these choke points here at the marina. She checked the bathroom area. She ran it through the parking lot. It was a she. And then the dog hit along the vegetation line, where you heard from the experts that's where the scent collects. Went down to the end of the dock and gave end of trail signal for Laci Peterson.

And remember there was a whole discussion about what scent article she used and whether it was the appropriate one and was it better than a slipper and whatnot.

Well, they kept talking about the glass case, and that's not what the testimony was. What the testimony was was that she scented her dog on the glasses inside the case. This is the best scent article that there is. Anybody, look, I can take my glasses off right now. Around your nose pad you sweat, around your ears you sweat. Of course Laci's scent is going to be on this.

Not only that, it doesn't matter who handled the outside of this thing. Scott Peterson, the detectives. You know, you didn't hear any evidence that anybody did, but let's just pretend they did. It doesn't matter at all because there's nothing the matter with the scent article at all because it's scented on what's inside.

Now, Mr. Seitz came and, you know, I don't have a whole lot of contentions with Mr. Seitz. He basically agreed with everything that, that Captain Boyer and Eloise Anderson said. He said that, he said that they can track scent in vehicles. And remember, I don't think Laci Peterson, I'm not arguing Laci Peterson was in Scott Peterson's truck. I'm arguing she was in the back of the boat.

So we're not talking about a sealed-up container. We're talking about a boat that, you know, when you drive it is going to get some air flapping out and going to get scent spraying out all over the place. But he said, and he agreed, he said Yeah, my dog's tracked scent in vehicles before. And he basically agreed with everything, scent theory, that the experts said. He said Yeah, you know, people have a live scent and the dogs can track it. If somebody dies there's a residual live scent that is going to stay on them for a period of time.

It's not like as soon as we're dead, bang, our scent changes. I mean that's just, I mean that's just common sense.

Alls he testified to was I ran my dog across this boat ramp for a minute to a minute and a half.

Now, what sort of search was that? 60 to 90 seconds. Ran the dog, you know, one pass maybe, I don't know how long it takes the dog to work. Maybe two passes, didn't find anything, put the dog in the truck.

I'm not saying, I'm not arguing to you Ron Seitz was lying. I don't think he was. I don't think he's a bad guy. It was just an insufficient search.

He even said when Mr. Harris was questioning him, Mr. Harris said Shouldn't you have checked these choke points? Yeah, I should have.

You heard from all the experts that scent collects along the vegetation line, and he didn't check there. He checked across the concrete ramp.

And finally, at the end remember what he said? He said Yeah, either I or Eloise could be right. He wasn't saying It's my way or the highway. He just came here and told us what his dog found, not what hers found.

Let's talk about the hair in the pliers. John, pull up that picture for me, would you?

Here's the pliers at the, as they were at the search warrant. And when they were pulled out of the boat. Need my laser pointer.

Here's, this is when they were just picked up, and I put this box, and you know what, you really can't see it, but I'm going to talk about it anyway because you can go back there and you'll be able to see it yourself when you look at the actual photograph. But here's where the pliers were. There's really no dispute that Laci Peterson's hair was found in those pliers. It matches microscopically. You heard that from Rod Oswalt and from the FBI expert. I think her name was Karen Reubush. It matches her mitochondrial DNA.

GERAGOS: Objection. There's a stipulation, there's already been an admonition that he cannot say that matches mitochondrial DNA. Same issue –

JUDGE: I don't believe he said he matched. It was consistent.

DISTASO: That's fine. I apologize.

JUDGE: That's all right. I already admonished the jury this could happen.

DISTASO: Yeah. Well, it was consistent with her mitochondrial DNA. I'm arguing to you that that is more than proof beyond a reasonable doubt that that's Laci Peterson's hair in those pliers.

So the question is how did it get there. Is it, was it a shed hair? Did it just fall off and magically appear into the pliers, where they were? Well, let's look at that.

Here is the photo, again the same photo, People's 70. These are the actual photos that Detective Brocchini took on the 24th. And you can see where the pliers are.

The end of the pliers there, underneath the bench seat in the boat. This is on the 24th. So we know that those pliers, when Detective Brocchini went to the warehouse on December 24th, that the needle-nose or the portion of the pliers where that hair is underneath the bench seat of the boat.

So right out of the gate let's ask ourself, if Laci, although she never told anybody she saw the boat or knew of the boat or anything else, if we assume that she did, just for the sake of argument, and she leaned over somehow into the boat, how did her hair get into the needle-nose or jaw portion of the pliers?

Here is the picture of the pliers as they were on the 26th or the 27th. I don't remember exactly which day, when the search warrant was served. And you can see where they were. Remember where they were on the 24th. Here's where they were on the 26th and 27th. The exact same place.

So now we know where the pliers were on the evening of the 24th. We know they didn't move until the search warrant was served on the 26th or the 27th.

And remember what the testimony was. That picture that's on the screen, and I can't remember what People's number it is, but you've seen it a million times.

I think it's 120 A, was taken right after the hairs were picked up.

And look where those little boxes are. Where those little boxes are, there's a little tiny bit of debris. Remember the plant expert came and said, because remember what happened was, remember they thought this was one hair originally, and then remember they checked it later and the two hair fragments came out.

And the expert came and said Yeah, it was two hair fragments, and in his opinion it was probably two separate hairs.

Well, look at it logically. This is what the detectives see when they pull it out in the search warrant. It looks like one hair. Nobody pulled them out at that time to look. Remember what the testimony was, they opened the evidence bag, opened up the pliers and dropped it down in there.

And remember that little piece of debris which the plant expert came and said it wasn't organic. It was something nonorganic.

And also look at the other end, that little tiny grass. Remember he said it was common bluegrass, or something on there. So how do we know, this is the 26th, how do we know for sure nobody messed with this hair at all, that there's nothing at all wrong with this, that nothing bad happened, nobody planted or did anything? Well, remember those two little fragments; they're there on the 26th and the 27th, go to the next picture, and there they are again when the criminalist gets them and is ready to do his examination.

So if somebody planted hairs in, they would have to plant the exact same tiny little fragments that we saw from before. And that just didn't happen.

So we know without any doubt that the two hair, or the hair fragments that were collected from the 26th are the same ones that were tested by the criminalist when he got it, because it's right there in his picture.

Is this a good time for a break?

<afternoon recess>

When we left off I was talking about the pliers. Remember what else the expert said. The hairs were matched or splayed by biomechanical means, which means they got crunched in the pliers' jaw.

If your hair just falls out and falls down into the pliers, how is that going to happen? You know it can't. That's further evidence, of course, these pliers were used in this crime. There is a lot of talk, go back to the main picture of the pliers. The first one. The first one. Picture one.

There is a lot of talk about these pliers. And remembering back, remember how the expert came and testified that when she examined the pliers they were rusted? Remember there was a whole lot of talk about whether, well, whether the pliers were recently used? That was part, now they are pretty rusted.

Well, don't forget there is plenty of pictures, I'm not going to show you now, but there is plenty of pictures of water in the bottom of that boat. These pliers were sitting in salt water for a time until they were picked up. So it was at least a couple of days. And then when they were picked up, they just continued rusting until they tested them in February.

How do we know that? Don't take my word for it. You don't have to. Take a look at this picture. Right here, down by the, look down here by the handle of the pliers, and the thing is black. There is a little bit of rust on here.

You will have a lot better picture of it when you take it back there with you.

Here we know for sure is a black tiny bit of rust. Look what the pliers look like when they test this, she tests them in February, months later. Now they are completely rusted. Look at this. Completely rusted. Completely rusted. They just continued rusting.

They weren't rusted back when the defendant used them in this crime. They rusted when she got them, because nobody cleaned them off. They put them in the evidence locker waiting to test, they continued to rust.

I want to go back to Doctor Cheng's testimony very briefly. When I said there was a big storm that pushed those bodies loose, I guess I said February 12th. I didn't even know if he mentioned that to me at the break. It was actually April 12th, if you remember what his testimony was.

He also said, this one last thing I want to talk about, that he also said that the weather on the 24th, remember the winds were calm. A good day to, you know, again, going back to that, well, yeah the boat would have pitched, all that kind of stuff? He said, no, the winds were calm. It was a pretty uneventful day out on the San Francisco Bay on the 24th. Easily doable for the defendant to just motor out there, dump Laci, come on back.

Let's take a look at this anchor real quick. You guys have seen it, passed it around, everything else. Remember what the expert said about this? I mean the fishing expert. This cannot hold your boat in the San Francisco Bay. It cannot do it. Just can't. You throw it overboard, what's the first thing you are going to do? Start drifting. There is nothing that's going to grab in the mud.

Also, there is no rope on that here either. There is no rope on that anchor.

There was never any rope on that anchor, from any accounts that we have seen.

Here is the picture that Detective Brocchini took on December 24th. No rope attached to that anchor. You are going to use that anchor, I mean if you are going to use that cement weight, is really is what it is, but we have been calling it an anchor. You are going to use that as an anchor, this is on the 24th. Where is the rope that it goes to. You know, you take this thing like it is now, like it is in that picture, pitch it over your boat? Well, of course it's gone, right? There is nothing that's going to hold your boat.

This is not an anchor. It's just a weight he made. He made a couple other ones, at least four or five other ones that he used to hold his wife's body down.

Before I leave The Bay, I want to talk about, just briefly, a lot of testimony about them searching The Bay with the sonar. They didn't find anything. And, remember, you heard from the Dive Master, and he testified that, you know, there is a zero visibility in the bay. The tidal surge is incredible.

The way they searched The Bay, they get down on their hands and knees in the bottom and stick their hands down in the mud. I mean what are the chances of them finding anything, really? I mean like how small these anchors are. What are the chances in the entire San Francisco Bay? You saw the pictures. They are going to find this? Looks like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Also, you saw the sonar images, what the sonar really looks like. I think that I passed those pictures around to you. Tiny little squiggly blob, that is ten feet. How are you supposed to find a decomposing Laci Peterson on the bottom of The Bay?

Remember what they told you? We dropped our sonar fish. Remember that? We're going along, our sonar fish broke off. That's an $10,000 piece of equipment.

We hit the GPS coordinates so we know exactly where it went down. Took us three weeks. Remember, it's a big metal, I think he said three or four feet metal object, yellow, bright yellow. And he said we knew exactly where it went down.

Took us three or four weeks of searching. We didn't even find it.

Finally I saw this little hump that was down there. I sent a diver down, they were able to pull it out of the mud. That's how hard it was to find, something that they knew exactly where it was, that metal, and painted bright yellow.

What are the chances they are going to find Laci? Zero. I mean it's like finding a needle in a haystack.

Let's talk about the defendant in April. Go to that changed appearance picture.

We have all seen this a bunch of times. He dyed his hair kind of an orangey blonde. Dyed his eyebrows, his goatee. He said he did it because he thought the media was following him.

This is not true. He told his friend Mike Richardson, remember, he said, he remember, he was driving his dad's truck. And he said I'm driving it because I think the police put a GPS tracker in my truck. The police are following me.

Remember what Lee Peterson's testimony was about that? Well, we just like to switch cars. That's what he said. I mean that's ridiculous. He asked the Department of Justice agents, "What agency are you with, state or local?" Remember, when he's arrested he had almost $15,000 in cash in his car. He had numerous clothing items. I mean he was really prepared to live out of his car for a length of time.

There is no disputing that he had recently acquired camping equipment, a shovel, a water purifier, a mask and snorkel, a camp saw, knives, a rope, camp axe. You have seen the pictures of all the things he had. He had a hammock. He had his, he had Ann Bird, his sister's, credit card. He had his brother John's ID.

Remember what the testimony was about why he had the ID? That's ludicrous also.

Here's a guy with $15,000 in cash in his car. He is just carrying loose. He's going to get his brother's ID so he can go rip off Torrey Pines for 25, or what was it 25 or 30 bucks? Does anybody believe that? Do you think he believes that?

This is from a family that gave him $30,000 for that Del Rio membership. Was it like 20 or 30, I don't remember exact number. Some significant amount of money 20 or 30 thousand, something like that for a down payment on the house.

Lee Peterson gave him $5,000 in January. He wouldn't admit it on the stand.

Remember, the only thing he would say, well, I don't remember that. I showed him the transcript. Well, you know, we certainly discussed it, but I don't remember doing it.

Remember his mom testified on April 8th she gave him six or eight thousand dollars. And then she gave him another, on April 17th, $10,000. But we're supposed to believe that for 25 or 30 bucks or 50 bucks, whatever the testimony was, he's going to be ripping off Torrey Pines? That's. That's ludicrous. He's got his brother's ID.

Remember, he was driving at car that he bought in his mother's name. That was that Boy-Named-Sue kind of thing that's Mike Griffin. Said he had a Florida driver's license, but he gave his mother's license number. Remember, I asked her about that? She said yes, it was because the police kept taking his cars.

That wasn't true. They took one car. He sold the other car. Remember he wanted to get rid of the truck.

He said, well, yeah, his brother John, or whoever, was just dying to have Scott's truck, so he had to sell it, had to run off and try to buy a Saab in his mom's name, then a Mercedes. You know, I think it was clear that his family would do what they have to do to protect him from being prosecuted in this case.

Let's go to the last thing. No one else. Go ahead. I talked about the timing.

Let's talk about the dog.

You know it's a Golden Retriever. I'm not trying to make this dog into Cujo.

It's not Cujo. But there is, but it's a simple fact, it's a big dog. Okay.

You are walking, you are walking down through the neighborhood. And you heard about this neighborhood. You heard about all these, you know, you are wondering why we are putting on all these pregnant ladies up on the stand to testify about walking the neighborhood. Because a lot of people, a lot of pregnant women walk their dogs in that neighborhood, and nothing ever happens to them. Some of them even look like Laci Peterson.

So you are walking your dog. Got this big dog with you. And either the defendant killed her, as I have argued to you all day that he did, or someone came and grabbed her. Don't you think the dog is going to bark? You heard him bark right? Heard him bark on the videotape. You heard him bark on some of the calls. You heard the pool man testify he barked. I think Rene Tomlinson, I'm not a hundred percent sure.

And, you know, this is what the defendant says about his dog on January 1st at 10:05. He's talking to Amber. One of these where he is pretending he's in Europe. This is what he says about his own dog. Go ahead and play that clip.

January 1.

I want to kill him. He is talking about his own dog barking in the background. That's what he tells Amber on January 1st. Here all people that were out in the neighborhood, you heard testimony from on December 24th.

Russell Graybill. He was on Covena between 10:35 and 10:50. He didn't see anything. Amy Krigbaum, between 10:30 and 10:38. She didn't see anything.

You heard some testimony about Diane Jackson. Remember that? And seeing a van.

Remember what Amy Krigbaum said. She said that she had that white Siemens van at the time. I had her write on this picture. Remember, this is looking at the Peterson house. Remember, this is from her house looking there.

Remember what she said? She said, yeah, it was parked right in front of my house. He even had it right where it was, a van.

You heard Diane Jackson saw a van. I think the testimony was 11:40. You heard that through the officer. There is a van. Of course, she saw a van. Van is right there on the street.

You saw Kim Westphal, one of the women that came walking. Said she was walking on Covena around 10:50. She didn't see anything.

Kristin Dempewolf. Her husband Martin came in and testified. She said she left home around 9:15 to 9:30. I think the testimony was that it's on the map that is in evidence, it would have put her walking past the Petersons' home some time around 10:00 o'clock or so. I don't remember that exactly, so you should probably go back to check that one.

Remember, Susan Medina, the neighbors across the street. They were out on Covena a couple of times. They had a city inspector come at some time in the morning. Bob Nickerson. He was, he was there between 10:20 and 10:30.

He didn't see anything. Remember what she said? They left their home between 10:30 and 10:33 on the 24th. And the way they know that is because Susan Medina has her cell phone records.

She said, I called my son as we were leaving town. And the record shows they  left at 10:33. And she said, I called from Encina. It's on here, Encina, right turned on to Encina. That's where she called. That's where she called from.

And Encina is right around the corner. So she probably left her house her at 10:32. Couldn't take more than a minute to drive down Covena to Encina. She didn't see anything.

Now that's a good point. That brings up a good point with the Medinas.

Remember we heard all that testimony about the burglary at their house? There was a burglary at their house. It didn't happen on December 24th. It didn't have anything to do with Laci Peterson's disappearance, because the Medinas were home at the time the dog was found.

You can take everything about the cell sites, and you can take everything about Austin's receipts and throw it away, go with Karen Servas's original statement where she said, I found the dog exactly at 10:30.

Well, let me discuss that. She just left, or they were just getting ready to leave, or they were in their driveway and they hadn't left yet, and she found the dog.Now, the Medina's didn't see anything about the dog. What that tells us is that Karen Servas's 10:18 time is right. They already put that dog away.

But one thing we know without any doubt whatsoever is that Medina burglary had nothing to do with this crime whatsoever. Because that dog was found before the Medinas even left their home.

There are other people, I just want to run through a couple of them that were out that day. Brian High. He ran around the park at ten or 10:30. He didn't see anything. Patricia Mewhinney. She was walking at the other end of the park.

She didn't see anything.

Basically what does that tell us? Tells us that Laci Peterson didn't go out for a walk that day. It tells us that Laci Peterson was killed in her home, as we have been telling you now for five months, between the night of the 23rd and the morning of the 24th. That's what it tells us. That's what all of that evidence tells us. And there is nothing to dispute any of that. You can't dispute any of these people that were out walking around in the neighborhood.

Let's take a minute and look at the defense case. The defense wants, I mean it was clearly a case of attacking the police. I mean, obviously, if you didn't get that from the first day then I think you have missed it. But clearly it was the defense attacking the police.

Why do you do that when you are the defense in this case? Because you got to take the focus off the defendant. If you focus on the defendant, it's overwhelming that he's guilty. But you got to divert. Constantly divert. Take the focus off the defendant. Put the police on trial. That's what the defense was about here. But nothing is consistent. Let's look.

Either the defendant is an avid salt water fisherman or he's not. Right? If he is an avid salt water fisherman that would go running out to the San Francisco Bay at the drop of a hat on Christmas Eve, then he's going to have the right gear. He's going to know what he's doing. He's going to be fishing in the right place. Didn't have any of those things. He either is or he isn't.

If he doesn't have the right gear, if he's fishing in the wrong place, if he doesn't know what he's doing, then he's not going to run out to the San Francisco Bay at the drop of a hat. Can't have it both ways.

He's either courting the media, or he's being hunted by the media. Can't have it both ways. You either go on Diane Sawyer and do nationwide interviews, and do local interviews, do all these things, or you run and hide. Can't have it both ways. You need to base your verdict in this case on evidence.

You know, it is a little difficult for you all, I think, as a jury. I think it was because so much evidence was, came in, what's called hearsay. And, you know, it's a fine line for the jurors to kind of figure out what are we allowed to consider for its truth that it really happened, and what do we have to consider only for the reasonableness of what the police have done? And you heard vast amounts of information as to what evidence from hearsay that's only related to the reasonableness of what the police have done.

You can't consider it for the truth at all.

The most important thing, I think, of that, that I really want to make clear to you is, you did not hear a single witness who said they saw Laci Peterson walking in the neighborhood, or on Covena, or in the park on December 24th. You did not hear from this stand a single witness who said that. You heard officers testify that people reported to that. You can't consider that for the truth, not a single bit of it.

You know what's an interesting point, Detective Brocchini was on the stand. He was asked about Chris Van Zandt, a man who had called in and reported that he saw Laci Peterson down in the park on the December 24th, and it came in as hearsay. Not offered for the truth, so you can't consider it for that. And that was the testimony. That was it. Yeah, this guy said he saw her, called in. Okay.

Well, remember we brought in Chris Van Zandt, the actual witness. We brought him in and put him on the stand.

Okay, fine. Let's hear what he has to say. Remember what he told you? He said, I know for sure I didn't see Laci Peterson on the 24th in the park that day. So the only witness who, the only person who called in to the police and said they saw Laci Peterson that came in and testified, told you without any doubt in his mind it wasn't Laci Peterson that he saw that day. That's the only evidence you can consider for its truth. None of these other ones.

Remember the defense even put an exhibit in. I might have it over there.

That's all right. I'll move on.

The defense put an exhibit in. I wrote it in my notes here. D7Q. It was a map of these alleged witness sightings. And I think it included Tony Freitas, and Grace Wolf, and Homer Maldonado. I'm pretty sure those were the people. If I'm wrong, just look at the testimony, look at the map itself.

Not a single one came in to testify. Why do you think that was? This is a very experienced defense team. They are very good lawyers. They obviously know how to prove facts if they want to. Why do you think they didn't bring in a single witness to testify that they saw Laci Peterson walking that day? Remember, you heard a bunch of evidence about Tom Harshman. Remember that whole thing with the fence, and the woman urinating, and the van, and all that crazy story? How come Tom Harshman didn't get up here on the stand? Let's hear what he has to say if that's true. None of those people came in and testified. You know why?

You can assume because that what they were going to say was not credible, that's why.

Remember Investigator Bertalotto was asked about a guy named Chris Clark.

Remember Chris Clark? He didn't contact the police until April, 2004. He didn't know Laci Peterson. He never spoke to her. He said he saw her while he was working in the neighborhood. He said he knew this from his time in treatment for substance abuse. His problems obviously continued, because in 2004 he was under house arrest for his third DUI.

I'm not beating up on anybody with a substance abuse problem. Far from it. But it's not right to ask about hearsay evidence in this trial and not put this witness on the stand. How come this witness wasn't called to the stand? The investigator testified just back in April he went out to his house and talked to him. He is certainly available. Why didn't we hear from him? We didn't hear from him because obviously his story was not credible, that's why.

And, finally, let's talk about the law of the case. Like I told you, murder is an unlawful killing of a human being. In this case there is two humans involved, Laci and Conner.

First degree requires premeditation, which I have talked to you about. Second degree requires no premeditation. Still requires malice. You still have to have specific mental intent to kill somebody.

Malice, actually there is two types. There is express, which means I'm going to kill, and I do it, but I don't really think about it. If you really think about it, that's going to fall into first degree and premed.

Implied malice means you do an act that's so dangerous that the law implies malice. Put a bag over somebody's head, hold it shut, even in your mind you don't mean to kill them. Kind of an, kind of a hard example, hard concept to grasp. That would probably be implied malice.

 line Here, of course, there is lots of evidence of premeditation: The planning, the boat purchase, the researching on the internet, all of the equipment that he bought to make, the making the anchors. Lot of evidence here that the defendant premeditated this crime.

Finally in this case, as we have said from day one, it's a circumstantial evidence case. I want to talk to you about that real briefly.

What does circumstantial evidence mean? When you all came here, we kind of gave you those kinds of silly examples. You know, footsteps in the snow. Somebody obviously walked across the snow. A kid who standing outside of a pool and he's dripping wet, there is footsteps leading from the pool to him wet, it's good evidence, circumstantial evidence that he had been swimming in the pool, that kind of thing.

But how do analyze it in terms of a case like this? I think the best way to look at it is like a jigsaw puzzle. That's how you look at a crime like this. That's how you solve a crime like this. Like a jigsaw puzzle. Take each piece of evidence, and you look at it, and you'd see where it fits with everything else. And, you know what? Look at this evidence very critically. I welcome that, because you are going to see that the interpretations that I believe is going to be argued to you tomorrow are not reasonable, and they don't fit when you compare them with something else, some of the examples I have already given you.

Let's take a jigsaw puzzle of the Golden Gate Bridge. This is one I like. Take a blue piece. Well, the blue piece could be water, could be sky, it could be a car driving the across the bridge, right? Well, does that mean we take the blue piece because it can be these other things and throw it away? Of course not.

You put it in the puzzle where it needs to go.

Take an orange piece. Could be a sunset. Could be a piece of the bridge. Does that mean we just take it and throw it away? We look at each one in order. If we throw everything away, that's not the way we do it. Of course not.

We take the piece, you see where it fits with the other pieces. You know what pretty soon you put those pieces together and, you know, you got a bridge. Even if some of the pieces, you don't think, you personally don't think fit, you are still going to see what the puzzle is made of.

That's exactly what we have here. Each piece that I have talked to you about today fits only in one direction, and that's that this man is guilty of murder.

Circumstantial evidence, you know, look at these things like this. Is it a coincidence that the bodies were in the exact same area where the defendant went fishing?

Is it a coincidence that the defendant was lying about being in Paris and Europe, and not?

Is it a coincidence that he wanted to sell Laci's house, her furniture, her car?

Is it a coincidence he lied about the affair?

How many of these coincidences does the defense want you to swallow and have you still call yourselves reasonable people? If the explanation for all of these facts taken together is not reasonable as defense is trying to present, you must reject it.

If the evidence as we present, as I have argued it today, is reasonable, you must accept it and find this man guilty of the murder of his wife and son.

I thank you very much for your time. And I thank you for your time throughout this whole case.