It’s one of the most infamous true crime cases in history: On Christmas Eve in 2002, Laci Peterson was reported missing from her home in Modesto, California, while eight months pregnant with her first child. The story dominated the media for months, leading up to the discovery of their remains in the San Francisco Bay. Slowly but surely, law enforcement built a case against her husband, Scott Peterson, and prosecuted him for the brutal murders of Laci Peterson and their unborn son. In 2004, Scott Peterson was convicted on two counts of murder, though he pleaded not guilty and maintains his innocence to this day.
Now, 20 years after Peterson’s conviction, director Skye Borgman’s three-part documentary series American Murder: Laci Peterson utilizes news clips, interrogation footage, and courtroom cameras to bring the dramatic disappearance, investigation, and trial into focus. The series features interviews with detectives, lawyers, and jurors involved in Peterson’s trial, and also includes a conversation with Amber Frey, the woman with whom Peterson was living a double life at the time of his wife’s disappearance — and whose willingness to participate with law enforcement led to major breakthroughs in the case against him. And, for the first time since Laci’s death, her mother, Sharon Rocha, agreed to an in-depth interview for the series, offering fresh insight into her loss and the grief she carries to this day.
Laci and Scott Peterson
Laci’s close friends Lori Heintz, Rene Tomlinson, and Stacey Boyers.
On Dec. 24, 2002, Laci Peterson disappeared from her home in Modesto, California. She was eight months pregant at the time. Her husband, Scott Peterson, reported her missing, claiming he’d gone fishing at the Berkeley Marina that morning — Scott said when he returned home, Laci was gone. A massive search effort unfolded in the months following, involving countless volunteers, a headline-hungry media circus, and law enforcement growing increasingly skeptical of Scott’s claims.
Tragically, Conner Peterson’s body was found on April 13, 2003, and Laci’s remains were found nearby the next day. Both were discovered in the San Francisco Bay — less than two miles from the marina. Scott Peterson was arrested five days later and charged with two counts of murder. On Nov. 12, 2004, Peterson was found guilty of first-degree murder for Laci’s death, and second-degree murder for Conner’s death. Scott Peterson was sentenced to death in 2005, but in 2020 the California Supreme Court overturned his death sentence, citing errors in the jury selection process. The court left Peterson’s conviction intact, and he was resentenced to life without parole.
"I remember, before I met Scott, Laci telling me all these things about him," Rocha said in American Murder. “And I remembered saying, as her mother, 'I hope he's not filling her with crap.’ I've learned to go for my gut feeling.”
Scott Peterson is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the California State Prison, Corocoran. Peterson's case has received extensive media coverage and has been the subject of various legal appeals and public interest since his conviction. In 2024, Scott spoke out publicly for the first time in over 20 years about the murder and still maintains his innocence.
In American Murder, Rocha’s perspective on Scott’s role in Laci’s murder are some of the most heartbreaking moments in the series.
Laci Peterson and her mother, Sharon Rocha.
“Sharon did press when Laci went missing, but she’s never sat down to do an interview for a documentary,” Borgman told Netflix. “It’s not easy, after 20 years, to sit down in front of a camera. But we wanted this to be about Laci, to bring her back to people’s consciousness. Sharon wanted to talk about Laci’s spirit, and about the dragonflies that Laci loved. How Laci is still with them, and how Conner — Laci’s unborn son — is still with them.”
In addition to Rocha, American Murder: Laci Peterson features interviews with Laci’s friends, as well as Scott’s relatives and the law enforcement officers who worked diligently to bring this case to its conclusion. However, Borgman’s interest in Laci’s story goes beyond the events that unfolded in Modesto, California more than two decades ago. “There’s this statistic that is shocking to me every time I hear it—homicide is the number one cause of death for pregnant women. Every time I say that to people, they tell me absolutely that can't be true, but it is,” Borgman says. “Intimate partner violence is something that's really overwhelming. I want people to walk away from this thinking about that in a deeper way.”
Watch American Murder: Laci Peterson on Netflix now.
