| Jan. 05, 2003 Divers scour water for signs of Laci Search near Berkeley Marina, but only a blue tarp was recovered Police shifted course Saturday in the hunt for a pregnant Modesto woman, pulling back from a massive search in her hometown to focus on nearby counties and the Berkeley Marina, where divers and water-trained search dogs scoured the Bay shoreline for signs of death. A search crew pulled a blue tarp from the marina waters Saturday afternoon, but it was unknown whether the tarp will shed any light on the Christmas Eve disappearance of 27-year-old Laci Peterson, said Modesto police Sgt. Ron Cloward. Scott Peterson told police he left his wife at home at 9:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve to fish at the marina, then returned that afternoon to find her missing. Peterson has not been named a suspect in his wife's disappearance, nor has he been ruled out, say police. Shortly after he reported her missing, police searched the couple's ranch house and took two vehicles and a pair of computers. They would not say whether they uncovered any clues. "We have to corroborate his whereabouts. We haven't eliminated him. We'd like to," said Modesto police Detective Doug Ridenour. "We'd be derelict if we didn't investigate that." Scott Peterson is cooperating, Ridenour said. As the hunt entered its second weekend, a mounting despair descended on Modesto, like the thick lid of fog that anchored there overnight, obscuring the trails and creekbeds where hundreds of police and volunteers have searched in vain since Peterson disappeared. Today, police will remove the command center they had stationed in a local park where Laci Peterson would walk her golden retriever, McKenzie, near the couple's home. As hope dwindled among some local residents, Ridenour insisted that police were "not ramping this thing down," only that they had searched Stanislaus County inside and out, including about 100 miles of waterways. Ridenour declined to comment on any specifics about the investigation, but acknowledged that the search at this point is most likely for a body. "We're hoping for a live body, but let's be honest: We're 12 days into this," he said. The search also expanded near Route 132 and in other areas that police declined to identify. In its 12th day, the frustrating search involved 16 dogs and scores of officers from several agencies. Among them were dogs and deputies from the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office. Earlier last week, police asked for help from anyone who may have seen Scott Peterson launch his 14-foot aluminum skiff from the marina. Police on Thursday aborted an effort to comb the shallow marina waters and the Berkeley shore. Better weather, not better information, brought them back Saturday, Cloward said. At 11:40 a.m., one of six dogs trained to detect through water the gases emitted by a decaying body, hit on something off the north end of Cesar Chavez Park, said Modesto police Sgt. Ed Steele. A sonar operator also got a reading from the area, Steele said. A team of eight Alameda County Sheriff's Office divers began searching the stretch of water in a grid pattern. Visibility was bad. The divers felt around with their hands, Steele said. They found nothing, but police pulled the blue tarp from the water. Search teams will return today, Cloward said. Bicyclists and walkers stopped to watch the line of divers, black flippers breaking the purple, blue and silver of the still water. Some marina regulars wondered why Scott Peterson, a manager at a local agriculture company, would come to fish the Bay in such a small boat in the off-season -- with only spotty sturgeon fishing now, they say. Marina officials said only three boaters paid to park their trailers at the boat launch between Dec. 23 and Dec. 27. Peterson showed police a parking receipt from that launch. He was not seen at the marina's bait shop. No harbormaster was on duty patrolling the marina that day, workers said. Family members of both Scott and Laci Peterson have ardently defended him, saying he was prone to such solo fishing trips. "To them, he went fishing. That was not unusual," said Kim Petersen, executive director of the Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation and a spokeswoman for the families. The foundation was formed after the 1999 Yosemite murders of Carole Sund, her daughter, Juli, and Argentina exchange student Silvina Pelosso. The volunteer center for that five-week search made its home in the same Modesto hotel where friends, relatives and volunteers in the effort to find Laci Peterson have engineered a similar operation. "It's déjà vu," said Petersen, who is not related to the family. "Even the hotel servers, they looked at me and just shook their heads like, 'Not again.'" On Saturday, several volunteers sat quietly off the hotel atrium, fashioning lapel ribbons in yellow and blue -- yellow for the young woman with a big, bright smile and a sunflower tattoo on her ankle; blue for her first child, a son due next month. Family members receded from the media spotlight Saturday, declining all interview requests. Across this city of 186,000, fliers of a smiling and very pregnant Laci Peterson appear everywhere: on trees and shops, car windows, doors, shop windows, in Spanish and English, color and black-and-white, with the reward figure -- $500,000 -- in bold print. Some search volunteers and local onlookers cling to the oddly optimistic theory that she was abducted by someone who wants her baby. "If somebody's got her, they want a good little baby and they would let her go to term," said Jim Turner of Modesto as he lingered with others under the fog in the park. "But there's not much time left for that. I don't know." Steve King said he has ridden hundreds of miles on his bicycle around the park over the past 12 days, searching for clothes, broken twigs, anything that might offer a clue. He will continue riding until the case is solved, he says. "It's a hopeless feeling," said King. "It's a very, very, very fine thread of hope. We all basically know there's not going to be a good outcome." HOME INDEX SEARCHES OF BAY BAY INFO SCOTT AMBER LACI EVIDENCE-NEWS COURT-DATES MAGAZINES PG 1 TRIAL NEWS WIRETAPS |
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