| LACI & CONNER "I pray that God comforts Laci's family and friends and that they receive some comfort knowing that so many people care" Cindy ~ South Carolina ~ Guestbook |
| With wife missing a week, Scott promised Amber a future August 11, 2004 On the day of Laci Peterson's Vigil, Scott Peterson was calling his mistress, telling her he is near the Eiffel Tower......... "I'm uh,...near the Eiffel Tower and the New Years celebration is unreal." He told Amber Frey on December 31, 2002.. "The crowd is huge". (transcript) Scott promised Amber a "very beautiful" future in a phone call the week after his wife went missing, according to a recording of the conversation played at his capital murder trial Wednesday. "Our relationship will grow and when it's the right time, slowly it will be very beautiful," Peterson told Amber Frey during a call just after the stroke of midnight Jan. 1, 2003. (transcript) Jurors heard the hour-long call and recordings of nine other phone conversations Frey secretly recorded at the behest of police investigating the Christmas Eve disappearance of Laci Peterson. In the calls made during the first week of January and totaling about 2 1/2 hours, Scott never mentioned that his wife of five years had vanished. Even as volunteers frantically searched woods and lakes for Laci Peterson, he seemed content to wile away hours with Frey planning Hawaiian vacations, mulling the concept of love at first sight and discussing their favorite films. "Ooh! The best movie ever made is The Shining," he told Frey during a 45-minute talk Jan. 4. Despite the leisurely pace and passionate cooing, the calls show the lovers playing a chess match of deceit. Frey had learned that Peterson was married and his wife missing Dec. 29, but agreed to keep up the pretense of a relationship to help police. An unwitting Peterson continued his charade of bachelorhood and told Frey he was phoning from a European business trip. At some points in court Wednesday, the battle of lies on the tapes became comical. Some jurors smirked at Peterson's elaborate descriptions of his travels. He repeatedly explained the nine-hour time difference between western Europe and California to Frey who repeatedly told him she couldn't grasp it. The entire time he was about an hour away in Modesto. In one call Peterson placed to Frey at 10 p.m. Jan. 1, he told her he had arrived in Brussels from Paris and was preparing for a morning jog. He called himself "pudge boy" and blamed the French food for his weight gain. "I'll jog down to the main square," he told Frey on the tape. "Um-hum," she replied. "Which is kinda neat with all the big churches in the background," he continued. A moment later, Frey said, "You're in Europe though, right?" He answered, "Oh yeah." Later, he said he had tripped on a cobblestone and bruised his hip. One upside to his travels, he told Frey, was that his French was improving. In many of the calls, it appeared Peterson was pretending to have difficulty hearing Frey because of the international connection. "Amber, I can't hear you, sweetie," Peterson said during a Jan. 6 call. "I can hear you just fine," Frey replied. After a click, the line went dead. At another point, a bark interrupted the conversation and Peterson griped that another hotel guest had brought a dog, "I want to kill it".. (transcript) It was Laci's dog, McKenzie. By that time, Frey could scarcely have avoided blanket news footage showing Peterson walking his dog, McKenzie, around his Modesto neighborhood. A love of 'The Shining' The recordings came during Frey's second day of testimony, but the 29-year-old blonde spent very little time in the witness chair. She took the stand for a few minutes between recordings to answer some foundational questions about the calls and then walked quickly to the spectators' gallery where she sat next to her lawyer, Gloria Allred, and stared into her lap. At one point, Frey left court for a half hour to breast feed her 3-month-old son. As she tiptoed to the courtroom door, reporters craned their necks to see her, but neither Scott nor the jurors looked up from their transcripts. Prosecutors have suggested Scott killed his wife because he was desperate to hold on to his relationship with Frey. They plan to play dozens of recordings to demonstrate the intensity of the relationship and his ability to lie. The tapes show that Frey proved herself a canny aid to police. As the tape recorder rolled, she placed gentle, but constant pressure on Scott to discuss their relationship. "Do you want to be together with me?" she asked him. "Well, I mean obviously my, you know, my thoughts are that I think that we, you know, would be wonderful together," he replied. Later he mentioned her toddler daughter: "For the rest of our lives I think we care for each other and Ayianna and you know we could fulfill each other." Peterson told her he thought they were "95 percent" compatible, but needed to iron out the other five percent of their relationship. Those areas included their views on God and children. Frey was an enthusiastic churchgoer and wanted more children. Peterson did not attend church and said he was considering a vasectomy. When his wife disappeared, she was eight months pregnant with their first child. Her body and that of the child they were expecting were found on the San Francisco Bay shore in April 2003. During the phone conversations, Peterson also urged Frey not to overanalyze their relationship. "It's gonna flow naturally," he told her. The calls were sometimes emotional. Scott told her he was "tearing up" as they discussed the Warren Beatty remake of the movie "Love Affair," which he had urged her to rent. In a call a few days earlier, she broke into sobs as she discussed their future. "I deserve a lot of things," she cried. "Yeah," Peterson replied. As she did on her first day on the stand, Frey wore a conservative black suit. In one of the calls, she asked Scott if he wanted to know what she was wearing. When he said yes, she described "pretty sexy" black pants with a leopard print, boots and a magenta shirt. "It's very sexy too," she added. Peterson asked, "Are these black leopardy pants ... tucked in the boots?" No, she replied. Outside court, Allred said the "bombshell" of the day was that Scott's favorite movie is "The Shining." "It's a film about a husband whose mental health is deteriorating significantly and as a result he has to attempt to kill his wife," Allred said. Her client told Peterson her favorite movie was the 1996 film "Romeo + Juliet" starring Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio. Jurors are scheduled to hear more tape-recorded conversations Thursday, including the Jan. 6 conversation in which Peterson confessed to Frey that he was married and that his wife was missing. Frey's testimony could last two weeks. Peterson, 31, is charged with two counts of murder. His trial is now in its 11th week. HOME INDEX LACI SCOTT TRIAL EVIDENCE-NEWS ALIBI-WITNESS LIST WIRETAPS AUTOPSY SCOTT'S ALBUM PRELIMINARY HEARING |
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