| LACI & CONNER "On the day of the verdict my 2 sons and I were taking a walk on the beach, a friend called to let me know the guilty verdict. I was so happy and relieved to hear the news. My sons and I made a huge tribute in the sand that read "JUSTICE FOR LACI" Darlene ~ Dana Point, CA ~ Guestbook |
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| LACI PETERSON'S MOTHER MAKES AN EMOTIONAL, GUT-WRENCHING OUTBURST DURING PENALTY PHASE OF SCOTT PETERSON'S DOUBLE MURDER TRIAL November 30, 2004 |
| SHARON ROCHA |
| The purpose of having the relatives of the victim testify in the penalty phase of the trial is to show how much they're suffering now and how much they will suffer later. Laci's sister, brother, stepfather, and mother all took the stand, and it left nearly half the jury box in tears. Laci's brother Brent Rocha called Laci the centerpiece of the family. Sister Amy Rocha said she always looked up to her, and stepfather Ron Grantski lamented that he'll never teach baby Conner to fish. But the most powerful testimony came from Laci's mother Sharon Rocha, who was wearing a gold, heart-shaped pendant with a picture of her daughter on it, as she took the stand on the opening day of the penalty phase. "Scott, you made a conscious decision to murder Laci and Conner. You thought after a few weeks we would stop looking for Laci, and we would just forget about her as though she never existed. "You threw them away like garbage," Your arrogance led you to believe you were more intelligent than anyone else. You were wrong. Dead wrong. You aren't intelligent at all. You're stupid. You're stupid to believe you could get away with murder. You murdered my beautiful Laci and her precious baby, Conner, my grandson. You murdered your own baby. You're a baby killer. "Not even Satan will claim to have a part in your making," she said. "You are proof evil can lurk anywhere, and that you don't have to look evil to be evil. How dare you murder her." Throughout the testimony, prosecutors displayed photographs of Laci, including one from Mother's Day 2002. Taken a week after Laci's 27th birthday, the picture showed three generations of women - Laci, her mother and her grandmother. "I put my face next to her stomach. I talked to him." — recalling seeing her pregnant daughter for the last time on Dec. 15, 2002 and speaking to her grandson, Conner. The prosecutor asked her what the first Mother's Day was like after Laci disappeared, "The first Mother's Day I laid on the floor and I cried most of the day because she should have been there," she said, sobbing on the stand and because she knew how much her daughter wanted to be a mom. Her voice echoed in the courtroom, her chest heaving as she fought back tears. Then Rocha, rising out of her seat, turned to her former son-in-law and yelled that he should not have killed his pregnant wife, "She wanted to be a mother," Sharon Rocha yelled directly at Peterson, her voice rising and cracking. "But that was taken away from her. You wanted to remove her from your life. Divorce is always an option. Not murder! Typical of your selfish, cowardly way, You chose what you thought was the easiest way out for you. You murdered her. Why, why did you murder Laci. Scott? Her sudden outburst was loud enough to make several jurors jump.Scott watched her and had no visible reaction. Rocha talked about how desperately the family searched for Laci, and how much the family appreciated the support of the community. Then turned to Scott Peterson once again and yelled, "There was someone who knew all along, and you didn't tell us! You let us go through this every day." The prosecutor asked Rocha about her thoughts on Laci's death, and she could only wonder about Laci's last moments. Rocha said Laci always suffered from motion sickness, and then said to Peterson, "You knew she'd be sick for all eternity and you did that to her anyway." Scott Peterson did tear up once. As the prosecutor searched for photos to project onto the wall, Sharon Rocha glared at Scott in silence. Scott met her gaze, but then turned away and wiped his eyes with a tissue. Five other jurors wiped their eyes at other points in the testimony. Laci and Conner Peterson were laid to rest together, but even then their killer deprived them of a final bond, Sharon testified as the courtroom audience sat stunned or sobbing. "I knew she was in the casket. She was in the casket, and I knew the baby was there, and I knew she didn't have arms to hold him," Sharon Rocha said, her eyes welling with tears during an explosive confrontation — from the witness stand — with her son-in-law, convicted of murdering his wife and their unborn son. "She should have had her arms," Rocha said on the first day of the penalty phase in Scott Peterson's murder trial. "It just haunts me all the time." Rocha recalled 116 days of agony — unable to sleep, wracked by nightmares, imagining her daughter standing before her — between the time her daughter was reported missing on Christmas Eve 2002, and April, when the dismembered bodies of Laci Peterson and her fetus washed ashore separately along San Francisco Bay. Her testimony moved some jurors to tears. Two women on the panel put their heads in their hands and sobbed as Rocha described her final moments alone with her daughter's remains. Another juror, a portly Teamster, closed his eyes, leaned his head back, exhaled and wiped an eye. Rocha described frantic days before the bodies surfaced, telling of sending someone to fetch coats and blankets as family and friends spent Christmas Eve searching and being unable to sleep for days. "I needed one for her because I knew she would be freezing when we found her," Rocha said, choking up. "I felt I needed to be awake just in case she called so I could go to her." The whole time the killer was in their midst and playing a calculating game of denial, Rocha said. "You knew where she was," Rocha said, glaring at Peterson. "Instead, you just let us go through this every day." The condition of the bodies prolonged the agony. They had to be identified through DNA testing, a process that took days. "When I was told she didn't have a head … I just dropped the phone and fell on the floor," Rocha said as some people wailed. "It never occurred to me the condition she might be in." She recalled Scott and Laci Peterson's first date, in which Laci got sick during a deep-sea fishing trip, and blasted him for dumping his wife's body in the bay. "He knew she got motion sickness," Rocha said, her eyes rimmed red. "You knew she would be sick for all eternity, and you did that to her anyway." "I can hear her giggling," Sharon Rocha said, gazing at a larger-than-life image of her daughter displayed on a white wall screen. "She didn't just smile, she would giggle. She would kind of bend over when she would laugh." "She was positive, she was upbeat, she was happy." "There were so many sobs in the courtroom, from Sharon to Laci's friends sitting in front of me to family members, deep, heartbreaking sobs," said courtroom observer and lawyer Gloria Allred. "It just haunts me all the time. I just hope she didn't know what was happening." "Every morning when I get up, I cry. It takes me a long time to get out of the house. … I miss her. I wanted to know my grandson. I wanted Laci to be a mother. I wanted to hear him call her 'Mom.' … Birthday cards, Mother's Day cards, I just can't stand it. … She's gone. I don't sleep well. I think about her all the time." "Laci didn't deserve to die." "It was the most emotional, powerful thing I have ever seen as an attorney in 20 years in practice," said legal analyst Steven Clark. Jurors will recommend whether the 32-year-old former fertilizer salesman should be executed or get life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 2002 murders. He was convicted on one count of first-degree murder in the death of his wife and one count of second-degree murder for the killing of her fetus. Peterson's defense attorney, Mark Geragos, did not question any of the witnesses. Prosecutors concluded their case after testimony from just the four family members. HOME INDEX LACI CONNER LACI'S FAMILY TRIAL VERDICT |
| Note: Story taken from several news sources |
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