Michael Fleeman - Laci: Inside the Laci Peterson Murder

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On Christmas morning...

Scott called his parents down in San Diego. They had always been fond of Laci. She had sent his mother a heartfelt note on the first Mothers Day after they were married and signed it with her name and a happy face. His mother knew it was her son calling because she recognized his voice. But she couldnt understand him. He was crying, blubbering, incomprehensible, save for a single word.

Laci.

ST. MARTINS TRUE CRIME LIBRARY TITLES
BY MICHAEL FLEEMAN

If I Die...
The Stranger in My Bed
Laci

INSIDE THE LACI PETERSON MURDER

MICHAEL
FLEEMAN

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as unsold and destroyed to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this stripped book.

LACI

Copyright 2003 by Michael Fleeman.
Update: December 2004 copyright 2004 by Michael Fleeman.

Cover photograph of Petersons The Modesto Bee/Polaris.
Background cover photograph Reuters NewMedia Inc./Corbis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN: 0-312-99585-7
EAN: 80312-99585-0

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martins Paperbacks edition / December 2003

10 9 8

At the end of the 1973 movie American Graffiti, a long hot night of cruising Modesto, Californias downtown streets in cool 50s cars yields to an inevitable dawn and poignant goodbyes, as Richard Dreyfuss boards a prop plane for college in the East and leaves his friendsand small-town pastbehind, maybe forever. The postscripts before the credits tell us that Dreyfuss, the smart, witty, sensitive guy, goes on to become a writer living in Canada while the kids he grew up with in Californias heartland meet less romantic fates: a tragic car crash, death in Vietnam and a career selling insurance in Modesto.

The films director, George Lucas, was a child of that heartland town and the movie came out of his life story. The son of an office supply store owner, he went to Modestos John Muir (elementary) School, Roosevelt Junior High School, Thomas Downey High School and Modesto Junior College. Despite his future success, he never really amounted to much academically, never ran with the cool crowd. He was short and shy and awkward. It wasnt until he became old enough to drive that he found his niche.

According to Dale Pollocks biography, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, the future filmmaker spent almost every night for four years driving up and down Modestos streets from three oclock in the afternoon until one oclock in the morning. On Saturdays and Sundays he would do it all day long. Night after night, driving souped-up cars, wearing dark shades, blasting the radio, Lucas would cruise up 10th Street and down 11th Street, stopping only to hang out at the drive-in hamburger stand. Lucas would sum up his Modesto youth in the 50s and 60s this way: Racing cars, screwing around, having fun, the endless search for girls.

While in American Graffiti Lucas didnt necessarily trash Modesto, which would have been an easy target, he did make it clear that the hero of the story was Dreyfuss, who, like Lucas, left the farm town for something more glamorous than selling insurance on McHenry Boulevardjust as the hero of another Lucas film left a hot dusty planet for something better in the heavens. But Modesto didnt hold this against the director, who would go on to become a major Hollywood force with Star Wars, and in fact has treated George Lucas like a favorite son. For fifteen years the city tried to recapture American Graffitis spirit with Graffiti Nights, an annual tradition of cruising and partying on the Saturdays after high school graduation, until the cruising and partying got so out of control (in large part due to booze and drugs) that it wasnt fun anymore. When six people were shot in 1994, the event was stopped, and the movie and its memories would be immortalized in quiet bronze in Lucas Plaza, the little park at a five-way intersection named after the director in 1997. There, cars pass a statue of a young couple, the guy in swept-back ducktail hairdo, the girl with a ponytail, sitting on the hood of a 57 Chevy.

In 1993, another graduate of Thomas Downey High School would leave Modesto for college after spending her teen years in her own American Graffiti way.

Only, unlike a George Lucas hero, after finding romance Laci Denise Rocha, brown-haired, brown-eyed, with a smile that would break the heart of a nation, returned to Modesto. She and husband Scott settled into a little green house on Covena Avenue to live out their years, raising children, holding dinner parties, tending to the garden, swimming in the new pool, spending time with her brother, sister, mother, father and step-father.

Her postscript was about to be written.

Hi, Mom.

It was Scott Peterson on the line.

Sharon Rocha was preparing Christmas Eve dinner for the family when her son-in-law called.

There was concern in his voice.

Is Laci there?

No, Sharon said.

She hadnt spoken to her daughter since the night before.

Well, said Scott, shes missing.

The wording was peculiar.

Laci was missing. Not gone. Not out.

Then a horrible feeling overcame her.

Sharon Rocha knew immediately that something was terribly wrong.

Scott called at least two more times on the evening of Tuesday, December 24, 2002, when a cold fog descended on Modesto.