He pleaded not responsible to 2 counts of capital homicide and employed high-powered protection lawyer Mark Geragos, well-known for representing shoppers resembling Michael Jackson and Winona Ryder. Geragos publicly referred to as for witnesses who may assist show his consumer’s innocence to return ahead. Later the lawyer floated the chance that Laci had been kidnapped by a satanic cult and he talked a few feminine witness who supposedly had vital details about the case. Cult or not, “it is clear she was kidnapped—that is the one factor that is sensible,” Geragos instructed Vainness Honest that August. “It is solely a matter of time forensically and we’ll discover out who did it.”

The trial would not begin till 2004, leaving loads of time for the twisted story of Laci’s loss of life to develop ever extra upsetting, with the resurgent tabloids and cable information networks—understanding precisely what readers and viewers needed because of the times of wall-to-wall protection of the Menendez brothers and O.J. Simpson‘s homicide trial, in addition to the disappearances of JonBenét Ramsey and Chandra Levy (who was additionally from Modesto)—transferring in for the overkill.

As soon as he was arrested, Scott was just about instantly forged because the cold-blooded killer—an image at odds with what most family and friends had considered him.

He and Laci “each appeared extraordinarily excited, as we had been,” Greg Reed, a pal of the couple who had simply welcomed his first little one with spouse Kristen Reed, instructed ABC Information after Scott’s arrest. “We had been each having our first infants on the identical time or fairly near the identical time. We had been each planning on principally elevating them collectively since we each lived right here in Modesto and in the identical neighborhood.”

“I simply suppose, what a waste,” prosecution witness Karen Servas, a neighbor of the Petersons who spent a clumsy Christmas dinner with Scott and his mother and father after Laci went lacking, instructed the Modesto Bee in 2007. “Why would you do this? Why kill your spouse and your little one? For those who’re that sad, I imply, I obtained divorced, it wasn’t that troublesome.”