Did they ever find Laci Peterson? The revelation that followed the American Murder's subject

The second episode of Netflix's docuseries American Murder follows the death of Laci Peterson. Laci Peterson was reported missing on December 24, 2002, while she was pregnant with her son. The case attracted significant media attention as it became a heavily sensationalized murder investigation.

Disclaimer: This article has mentions of violence. Reader discretion is advised.

Laci Peterson and her infant son's bodies were eventually found in a decomposed condition sometime around April 2003. On April 13, a couple walking their dog discovered the body of the infant son in the Point Isobel Shoreline Park in Richmond.

One day later, a passerby found Laci Peterson's body on the eastern shoreline of the bay. It was decomposed so severely that it was almost unrecognizable, with Laci's head, arms, and legs missing. DNA testing confirmed her identity on April 18, 2003.

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Laci Peterson's body was almost unrecognizable by the time of discovery

Laci Peterson's corpse was barely recognizable as human by the time the investigators discovered it. Her body had lost its head, most parts of its legs, and the arms.

During the murder trial, where Laci's husband Scott Peterson had been indicted, pathologist Dr. Brian Peterson (no relation) had testified that Laci had likely been killed while pregnant with her baby.

This went against the defense's hypothesis that the baby had been removed from her body and killed separately in order to frame Scott Peterson. As Dr. Brian Peterson put it:

"If he had spent substantial time in the water like Laci did, he would have been eaten. My conclusion was that (the baby) had been protected by the uterus."

The defense attorneys for Scott Peterson called upon fertility specialist Dr. Charles March as their expert witness. He contested the prosecution's claim that Laci and her baby had died on December 23, 2002, claiming that her baby could not have died any earlier than December 29.

However, during cross-examination, Dr. March revealed that he'd based his estimate on the secondhand account of one of Laci's friends, who claimed that Laci had told her of a positive home pregnancy test on June 9, 2002.

The prosecution cast doubts on the veracity of Dr. March's testimony for this very reason and pointed out that there were no medical records to corroborate the timeframe that Laci had tested positive for pregnancy on June 9.

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Scott Peterson was eventually convicted of Laci Peterson's murder

Scott Peterson was eventually found guilty of murdering his wife and unborn son by a jury on November 12, 2004. Scott was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances for the death of his wife, and second-degree murder for the death of his son.

Scott would subsequently be sentenced by the jury to death on December 13, 2004, with Judge Delucci confirming the sentence on March 16, 2005, and decreeing that Scott be executed via lethal injection.

Scott appealed his sentence, and the case was eventually heard by the Supreme Court of California. The court unanimously upheld Scott's conviction in a 7-0 decision on August 24, 2020, but also overturned his death sentence.

Scott would then be re-sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on September 22, 2021, with the sentence being upheld after another hearing on December 8 of that year.

Since then, Scott Peterson's case has been taken up by the Los Angeles Innocence Project, which has argued that new evidence has emerged in favor of establishing Scott's innocence.

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American Murder: Laci Peterson is the second installment in the Netflix series of true crime documentaries. It was released on August 14, 2024.