| JULY 7, 2004 MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS: Scott Peterson could have transported his dead wife in an oversized truck toolbox and moved her to his boat without anyone spotting her, prosecutors showed in evidence presented in court today. In visual detail never before delivered, prosecutors revealed the manner in which they believe Laci and her unborn son were taken 90 miles from Modesto to the San Francisco Bay and dumped in a watery grave. In testimony that had the jury and the audience riveted Wednesday, a prosecution witness described being the subject of an experiment to see if a woman's body could be hidden inside the suspect's fishing boat. They also for the first time indicated how they think Scott Peterson transported his pregnant wife's body some 90 miles from the couple's home and then dumped it from his small boat into San Francisco Bay. Kim Fulbright testified that she climbed into Peterson's boat and pickup after DA's investigator Kevin Bertalotto asked her to demonstrate whether a pregnant woman could be inside without being seen. Pictures flashed in front of the jury showing a petite eight-and-a-half-months pregnant Stanislaus County employee crouching inside the boat. The photos showed room to spare if the body was in the back of the boat, but it was a tighter fit up front. Still, the body was hard to see in side view angles in back or front. The prosecution used reenactment photographs to illustrate how Peterson could have concealed the body in a large toolbox in the back of his pickup truck and on the floor of his small boat. Kim Fulbright, who works for the Stanislaus County District Attorney's Office, was 38 weeks pregnant, 5-foot-2-inches tall and weighed about 157 pounds at the time she posed for the pictures. Fulbright's measurements were nearly identical to those of Laci Peterson at the time she vanished. Fulbright, was one inch taller than Laci Peterson was and only four pounds heavier when she did the experiment for prosecutors late last year. The woman also said she could fit inside the large toolbox in the back of Scott 's pickup. The photographs showed Fulbright lying in a fetal position lying on white paper that had been tucked into the large empty toolbox and on the floor of his boat, where she could barely be seen above the rim. Prosecutors have theorized Laci was killed Dec. 23 or Dec. 24, 2002 and driven to the bay and dumped. Previous police statements indicated Peterson had loaded large umbrellas into the back of the truck, suggesting they were being used to conceal his wife's dead body. Peterson has told police he last saw Laci before he left on a fishing trip Dec. 24, 2002. He stopped at a Modesto warehouse that he used for work and picked up his fishing boat, Peterson said. Police have suggested the body could have been moved to the boat at the warehouse. But neither investigators nor prosecutors have presented a detailed account of their theory from beginning to end. Hoping to drive the point home, prosecutors arranged for Fulbright to take part in the demonstration because she was similar in height and weight to Laci when she vanished. Defense attorney Mark Geragos had tried to keep prosecutors from showing the photos, saying the demonstration was irrelevant and argumentative. Judge Alfred Delucchi disagreed. "The jury can put whatever weight they want on it," he said, backing up deputy district attorney Rick Distaso's contention that Fulbright was similar in stature to Laci. Defense attorney Mark Geragos -- who lost a fight to keep the experiment away from the jury -- went on the attack during his cross-examination of Fulbright. Geragos asked sharply if Fulbright got in the boat by herself or asked detectives to put her in the boat. There was a difference between someone volunteering to pose for photos and a dead person stiff from rigor mortis being forced into those positions, he said in his questions. She said she got in by herself, and Geragos then asked sarcastically, "You were alive, you didn't have rigor mortis did you?" he fired at her. "Do you have any idea what it would have been like to be dead, to have rigor mortis and try to get into that toolbox?" No, she answered over and over, appearing somewhat surprised by the intensity of the questioning. Even with the cross examination, legal observers on hand thought prosecutors scored points with the testimony and photos. "It was powerful," said Oakland attorney Daniel Horowitz, who was in the courtroom today. "He demonstrated (the boat is) a big floating coffin. I think today for the first time jurors understand" how Laci might have ended up in the bay. The trial will not be held Thursday. It will resume Monday to accommodate Geragos attending a funeral for the son of Kirk Douglas. HOME INDEX LACI SCOTT TRIAL ALIBI-WITNESS LIST BODIES FOUND AUTOPSY |
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| BERTALOTTO & FULBRIGHT |