by Cynthia D.

Walker

“A Lie may take care of the present, but it has no future.”

-Croft M. Pentz

“He who tells a lie is not sensible of how great a task he undertakes. For he must be
forced to create twenty more to maintain that one.”
-Alexander Pope

Advanced students of the Peterson case are acquainted with the name Mark Geragos,
family annihilator Scott Peterson’s celebrity attorney who owns the firm “Geragos &
Geragos” in Los Angeles. Geragos rose to fame defending, among others, Nicole
Ritchie, Michael Jackson, and Winona Ryder. One may imagine with ease the fee he
charges, and the Peterson family is notably wealthy, having availed themselves of both
their financial riches as well as their status to alter the narrative in relation to their
homicidal sheep of the family.
While perusing Geragos’ 2015 declaration, I couldn’t help notice a plethora of
inaccuracies which undoubtedly were a deliberate addition. Geragos’ statement
(provided to me by MC) reads as follows:

“…64. At the beginning of Mr. Peterson’s trial, I gave an opening statement in which I
told the ury that it would hear from several witnesses who would testify to seeing Laci
walking her dog, McKenzie, after Scott left the house to go fishing. I told the jury that
this testimony would establish that Laci was alive when Scott left, and that he was
therefor innocent. (44 RT 8643 et seq.)

65. I did not call these witnesses to testify.

66. My reason for not calling these witnesses was as follows. Mr. Peterson left home on
December 24’h around 10 a.m. The Peterson’s neighbor, Karen Servas, tstified that she
found McKenzie in the street with his leash on, at 10: 18 a.m. on December 24th.
Servas put the dog in the Peterson’s backyard and closed the gate.

67. Based on the timing of Mr. peterson’s departure and Ms. Servas’ finding McKenzie, I
believed that any credible sightings of Laci walking the dog had to have occurred
between 10:00 a.m. and 10:18 a.m.

68. After my opening statement, members of our defense team, including myself,
interviewed the people who claimed to have seen Laci walking the dog on December
24th. These witnesses uniformly stated that they saw Laci Walking the dog had in the
morning after 10: 18 a.m. Their statements did not coincide with Servas’s testimony,
and I therefor decided that the jury would conclude that these witnesses were either
mistaken or not credible…”

The claim made herein, that all eyewitnesses interviewed by law enforcement assured
without the shadow of a doubt their sightings of Laci Peterson had taken place after
10:18 A.M., is not only misleading but a typical element of the prevailing hubris of
Peterson’s legal and hobby defenders.
Peterson himself had volunteered to police a different time in the morning at which he
had presumably left his home, 9:30 A.M. Months later test runs and trials led by a
forensic team of experts revealed this to be incorrect once they pinpointed the precise
time Peterson had departed his driveway on December 24, 2002 – at 10:08 A.M. sharp.
In the meantime, forthcoming neighbors of the Petersons shared with Modesto Police
Department what they presumed to be sightings of Laci Peterson. Cynics consider the
eagerness with which the tips rolled in to be linked to the increase of the loot – the
reward money – set to half a million dollars with the aid of an anonymous donor, at
which point incoming calls to the hotline skyrocketed to ten thousand purported tips and
sightings.

One cannot help draw parallels to another domestic violence-linked case which I
covered in a previous post; Gabby Petito’s. While it serves no purpose to this post to
examine Petito’s own recorded abusiveness towards her #VanLife boyfriend Brian
Laundrie, we must inspect the staggering number of eyewitness reports detailing
sightings of the young woman notwithstanding the fact she was at this point already
deceased. Once this notable bit of information had been relayed to the public via the
news media, all further reported sightings involved Brian Laundrie himself. That both
Laundrie and Petito would have had to travel faster than the Omicron virus at a
Christmas brunch had no impact on the gullible masses whatsoever, leaving them
supine. Not one of these sightings turned out to be reliable, resulting in authorities
putting out a notice for citizens to cease calling in. The Petito and Laundrie sightings
were the Laci Peterson sightings 2.0. Alas, history does repeat itself.
In a shocking albeit somewhat anticipated turn of events substantiating my impressions,
as thoroughly laid out in my above mentioned posts, the slew of hobby Peterson
defenders who had gladly (and one might add, gleefully) taken an interest in the Petito
case, in the hope it would prove advantageous to their own make-belief delusions in
relation to unsubstantiated Laci Peterson sightings, began sharing photographs of
whom they identified as Gabby Petito. Little good did it do though, as they would not
even relent when another commenter shared – and proved – that even Petito’s own
parents had already confirmed the female on the photo not to be their daughter. They
maintained that the cops should still investigate, offering with this statement yet more
evidence about their gross absence of knowledge in relation to police procedures and
resources. Would investigating thousands of spurious tips have been enough to satisfy
their conspiracy theory-tarnished minds that so appallingly cling to the idea that
Peterson did not only not deserve his original death sentence but that he is, in fact,
innocent of all charges?

The San Mateo County Court reviewed all documented Laci Peterson sightings,
concluding that all were clearly influenced by the information contained on Laci’s
missing person poster, which reiterated Peterson’s original misrepresentation of the
time he had left home. It also stated Laci had planned to take a walk in East La Loma
Park with the couple’s golden retriever, the clothes she was wearing at the time her
husband had left – a white shirt with black pants – and that she sported a quarter-sized
sunflower tattoo on her ankle. When Laci’s body was recovered from the bay, she wore
tan pants, effectively confirming the court’s previous evaluation of the eyewitness
testimonies. 90% of all eyewitnesses confidently testified they had seen a pregnant Laci
wearing exactly these clothing items between 9 and 10 A.M., one of whom suggested a
time up to 10:50 A.M. at the latest. Diana Campos, who’d suggested 10:45, and 10:50
A.M. respectively, was later coerced by a defense investigator to change her testimony
to 9:40 A.M. to support the time Peterson had presented to police. A few random voices
suggested that the term “coercion” was legalese for “bullied.”
One of the eyewitnesses, Martha Aguilar, surrendered with certitude that she’d spotted
the aforementioned sunflower tattoo on Laci’s ankle. Impressive, considering her
husband Frank had been driving past the woman she’d described as “running,” seeing
her only in passing, through a rolled up car window. Martha died, leaving Frank to have
to make his most honest attempt at recalling her memories. However, in lieu of
contacting the local police to share this significant tidbit of news, he approached the
media, effectively calling into question the veracity of his statement. Most of all, his
contacting of the media was indicative of the prospect that the main underlying
motivation was financial rather than altruistic.
One of the most credible eyewitness testimonies stemmed from a tipster who knew Laci
personally, since their high school days. He verified that she had stopped by his place
of employment. Hours of investigative work later, this sighting, coupled with all others,
was relegated to the realm of fiction.

Peterson’s own words regarding Laci’s activity at the time of his departure allay all
suspicion of whether Laci even left the house that morning. The Petersons’
housekeeper had mopped all floors just a day prior. Still Peterson intimated that Laci
was mopping the floors on December 24, describing in great detail the areas she was
mopping and, solicitous husband that he was, he’d filled an entire bucket of water for
her, placing it in a central location in the house to ease her burden. To which degree the
murder of Laci was preplanned becomes even more evident once one takes account
that Peterson possessed the foresight to cement his lie by setting a wet, empty bucket
and two wet mops outside of the back door before police arrived to begin their
investigation into Laci’s disappearance. How does one mop and take a walk at the
same time?
Certainly, if one were to dip a mop in a freshly filled bucket by 10:08 A.M., pregnant or
not, we would look at approximately 30-45 minutes of mopping activity, considering the
area that required tending to and taking into account the moving of furniture, such as
chairs or potted plants. In preparation of leaving the house, Laci would then have put on
all her jewelry, socks, shoes, attached to McKenzie the dog a leash. In the process, she
apparently forgot to don a jacket, neglected to take with her her phone, keys to the
house. And of course forgot to lock the door. All of this points to an 11 A.M. departure
time at the earliest.
These questions and deliberations are amid the plethora of questions Peterson’s fan
base neither can nor will respond to. If only the critique of their baseless pet theories is
too reasonable, the response to it will be sufficiently hostile, which will be addressed
later on in this text.
To circle back to the title and beginning of the post, Peterson lawyer Mark Geragos
issued what he dated as a 2015 statement, expounding on why he had so suddenly
remembered not calling any of these eyewitnesses that had testified to Laci walking
McKenzie at La Loma to the stand. Each of them, he reassured the Supreme Court, had
allegedly seen Laci after 10:18 A.M. The reason this time mark bears such a
significance is that this is the time the Petersons’ neighbor Karen Servas returned the
dog to the backyard and closed the side gate to it. The original statements made by all
attorneys, by Peterson himself, by each eyewitness and neighbor are all in the public
domain and directly contradict Geragos newly “recalled” memories. Geragos’ slyness
affords his clients the best possible defense, which, no one would call into question
anyone has a right to. That Geragos, in what may appear as a show of repulsive
remorselessness for legality, signed, dated and submitted to the Supreme Court his
untrue 2015 statement, made him look like a Svengali of the lowest order, some say. If
anyone believes my description to be an abuse of hyperbole, I challenge you to join
Peterson’s fan clubs on social media and make an honest effort at civil debate, relying
on evidence alone.
Online, our most cherished positions on any number of issues have more to do with the
currency of emotion than they do with logic and careful reasoning. It’s really no great
surprise that we find navigating to an alternative/opposite set of beliefs so difficult. Not
because we fear being wrong about the topic or issue, but because we fear discovering
a flaw or shortcoming in our ability to arrive at our stances. To entertain such
possibilities is to admit to some flaw in our own rational certitude. The “debate” suddenly
becomes less about the expression of our position or argument and more about the
protection of emotional credibility. Protection of core, quieting self doubt, refusing to
really add up each line to check for accuracy… We fear being exposed. And we combat
such fears by calling on a combination of hubris and emotion to protect ourselves. We
realize, there is no debate or sharing of alternative ideas. The entire exercise becomes
almost entirely about protection of an emotional stance and far less about the defense
of actual ideas. I sometimes wonder which is the greater fear: admitting that we can be
wrong, or never feeling confident in being right?

Header Image:
Enhanced photo, courtesy of Anne Bird