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| SCOTT PETERSON'S MOTHER TAKES THE STAND Jackie Tries to Save Her Son's Life December 8, 2004 |
| As Jackie Peterson took the stand, Mark Geragos entered into evidence many pictures. She started off how much she misses Laci and loved her. Then she mentioned that she only has 10% lung capacity due to many bouts of pneumonia and must avoid stress. She talks about the murder of her father, and that she never really knew him. Her mother didn't talk about it. After the death of her father, her mother Helen, had a disease causing everything she ate to calcify. She had a long painful death. Due to her mother's illness, she had to place Jackie and her brother's in an orphanage. The Nazareth House. She was close to Sister Vincent who was a nurse who gave her shots for her asthma. She eventually got a scholarship to the Catholic High School which allowed her to go live back home with her mother. She finished school and then her mother died. "We knew that God loved us and that just took over everything," she said, adding that her own health has deteriorated in recent years because of stress. "My life is hard," she said. After graduation she went to work for PSA Airline. The following year is when she gave her first child born out of wedlock, Don Latham, up for adoption at age 19. She just couldn't take care of him. She was young and naive. "I was just existing and I was naive and young and I got with someone that told you they loved you and wanted to marry you, that's what they meant. And it just wasn't so. And I think I got involved because I wanted a father and a family. I look at that now, but at the time I was just clueless. I was brought up very naive and not smart." She then spoke of giving her second child born out of wedlock, Anne Grady Bird, up for adoption. "Well, it was my brother's best friend and I met up with him and I suppose now he was like someone I trusted and we went together for a long time and we were in love and he graduated from college with his teaching credential and couldn’t find a job in San Diego so he moved to Los Angeles and came down every weekend and then -- I know this sounds like a broken record, but he -- then it was every other weekend and then he came down to tell me that he had fallen in love with another teacher he had just met and I was going to tell him that I was pregnant and I didn't because I didn't want to. I knew he would have married me and I didn't want to marry someone that was in love with someone else." For a third time she found herself pregnant and unmarried. She was asked by Geragos: "And along came John who the jury's heard from and he was born in 1966; is that right?" Jackie simply answers "Yes" No explantion on how he was conceived or by who. She then met and married Lee November 20, 1971, who cared for her and her son John. Scott was born on October 24, the following year. "I would say Scott was a Joy from the moment he was born. He went on jobs with Lee. People enjoyed him." She spoke of "Grandpa" who was very close to Scott...his best friend. "Somehow I knew it. I waited and waited for him to open the drapes because I could look across the little house. And finally I went out there with the coffee with the pretense and he had died in his sleep. But he had had a wonderful good-bye. We were lucky." "He was a crossing guard recommended by the teacher. He took it so serious and cautious." "Always a good student and all through school I heard teachers tell me they wish they had a whole classroom like him" "My father-in-law moved in with us and Scott loved him. When Grandpa died, Scott lost a friend" PICTURES - Scott's 18th birthday, Scott & Jackie when they met Ann Bird, the daughter she gave up for adoption. Picture of Scott as best man at the wedding of his brother, Joe. Picture of Scott with nieces and a picture of Scott with Don, the son Jackie gave up for adoption, at the wedding of Ann Bird. Scott as a 5th grade crossing guard. Scott told his parents one day, "I want to support myself and be on my own. And, actually, we were hurt. We wondered what we'd done wrong because we loved having him around. It was fun having him around." Some jurors look bored until Jackie starts talking about how Scott and Laci were a "perfect match". Sharon put her head down. "They tried three years to get pregnant. And originally Laci made (jabs?) she didn't want any children because she thought she couldn't have any. And we all understood it and one Thanksgiving my grand kids were wrestling, she said, that's a good reason for birth control right over there. But nobody took it that way because we knew she would not be unkind. And over the years she had some medical treatments and was able to -- they talked about adoption. They wanted a baby. And when she got pregnant we were all elated. Thrilled." Jackie Peterson, who uses a portable oxygen tank for her lung ailment, spoke very softly in response to questions from Mark Geragos, who is trying to convince jurors that his client deserves life in prison, not the death penalty. "He's an exceptional young man and he's my son," she said. "I know he's not perfect ... but he is genuinely a loving, caring, nurturing, kind, gentle person." Scott Peterson wiped tears from his eyes as his mother testified. "We mourn for Laci and Conner. We all had them ripped from us." "In this trial you've heard one month of how he reacted to the loss of his wife and baby being ripped from him. The bizarre things he did because he didn't know what to do at 30 years old when all his work was taken away. He was stalked by the media and everybody twisted and turned and harassed by the police and painted as a devil in the public. He's not that. He's never been that. He's always been nurturing and kind and loving." Suddenly an outburst. "If you kill Scott, it would be like wiping this family off the face of this earth and it would be as if Laci never existed". "Scott has been portrayed as an evil, person and he is not." She blames the police, media and many others. Jurors not taking it well. The courtroom shocked. Sharon shakes. Jackie leaves the stand.......Court ended for the day. CURIOUS COMMENTS... HOME INDEX LACI CONNER TRIAL VERDICT ALIBI-WITNESS LIST AMBER SCOTT'S AFFAIRS WIRETAPS PETERSON FAMILY |
| LACI & CONNER "A kiss to Laci & Conner in Heaven from me. They will always be together now!! FOREVER!! Kiss!!" SEFFI ~ CHICAGO ~ GUESTBOOK |
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