"He came straight out and said, 'You wanna have an affair?' And I said, 'You're a very good looking guy, but I'm married,'" Gagnon told Detective Brocchini during a phone interview. "He said, 'Well, so am I.' I said 'Well, I'm a Christian, that's not my thing.' He said, 'Well, my wife's pregnant and I wanna kill her.' And . . . and it's like so, so off the wall that it didn't even sink in what he was saying. I didn't even question it really. Well, I did question him, I said, 'Why do you wanna kill her?' But not thinking he was serious, I guess is what I'm trying to say."
"He tell ya how far along she was?" Brocchini asked.
"He said about six months, and I said 'You don't wanna kill her, you guys have a new life ahead of you."
"So then what?"
"Then I remember him saying, 'If you were to kill somebody, and didn't wanna get caught, how would you do it?' If I had thought he was serious, there's no way I woulda given him any ideas, but I just said I would kill 'em and tie a weight around their ankles and throw 'em in the ocean."
Brocchini subsequently interviewed Gagnon's husband, who said his wife had no reason to lie. He supported her story, saying that she'd told him the same story right after seeing Scott on the news when Laci went missing. Of course, she waited months to come forward to the police. Yet when she was asked where the encounter had taken place, and whether she could provide any proof that she'd actually been there at the time-such as a credit card receipt-Gagnon was unable to comply. Investigators remained skeptical, and never followed up on her story. That is hardly unusual. Reports of this nature always emerge during high-profile cases. Important leads can fall by the wayside as the police try to perform triage on the constant flow of information, but most investigators work diligently to separate the serious from the merely sensational.
Even family members offered leads that were dead ends. Lee Peterson dredged up other cases that bore no resemblance to Laci's disappearance, sending the police copies of articles he felt might lead them in new directions-and, no doubt, away from Scott.
Despite Scott's continuing pleas of innocence, his life was being severely affected. He told Heather and Mike Richardson that 60 to 70 percent of his clients at Tradecorp refused to see him. His employer had agreed to keep him on, but he had given Scott thirty days to hire someone as a figurehead so he could continue working behind the scenes.
When police interviewed Mike Richardson, he said it seemed odd that Scott had chosen him to be best man at his wedding. The men had only been friends a short time, and Scott had several brothers- none of whom were in the wedding party. Scott's friend Aaron Fritz was a groomsman, along with another friend named Eric. Mike could not recall Eric's last name.
Another friend, Brian Argain, told police that he was no longer comfortable associating with Scott. Scott had left him several messages asking him to get together for a round of golf, but he repeatedly declined. Argain also noted that while Scott was usually direct with him, he no longer looked him in the eye when talking about his wife's disappearance. He said many of Scott's friends felt the same way, claiming that they'd become suspicious of him in recent weeks. As the receipt found in his belongings confirmed, things were so tense for Scott that the country club was refunding his $23,000 membership fee.
He was still a free man, but his world was rapidly shrinking.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
APRIL 2003
On April 13, around 4:15 P.M., Cerrito residents Michael Looby and Nicole Belanger were walking their dog beneath a cloudy, threatening sky. They had strolled about a quarter mile off a popular bike path near the Richmond Inner Harbor on the northern shore of San Francisco Bay. It was low tide, and their dog stopped in a grassy area amidst the marshland and began sniffing something furiously. When Looby walked over to investigate, he discovered what looked like the decomposed body of a baby.
Looby and Belanger hurried to a nearby housing development, where they asked a resident, Keith Woodall, to call the police. The Richmond fire and police departments wasted no time responding. Lying among the leaves and other debris, near a rocky area called "the breakers," they found the fetus. It was lying on its back with its head tilted upward. Although all four limbs were attached, the right arm was almost severed. At 4:53, the town's fire captain, Erik Newman, officially recorded that the infant was dead.
None of the investigators at the scene was able to determine the fetus's gender or race. Its genitals were not intact, and its intestines were exposed. A piece of nylon twine was entangled in the remains and appeared to be looped and tied or tangled around the neck. Coroner's Investigator Chris Martinez, a deputy with the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office, took several photographs of the scene and of the fetus, then gently wrapped it in a towel and placed it in doubled plastic bags for transport to the Contra Costa Coroner's Office.
The police ruled it an unexplained death. A preliminary police report stated that the infant, which weighed three and a half pounds, was full-term and appeared to be only a few days old. It was ashen gray and appeared to be essentially disemboweled. There was no obvious cause of death, as the external trauma had most likely occurred post-mortem.
In the wake of the discovery, a missing persons teletype was sent out to agencies across California. At eight o'clock the following morning, a clerk with the Modesto Police Department notified Detective Grogan about the gruesome discovery. The Richmond Police Department was investigating.
Although he was due in court to testify in a kidnapping case, Grogan immediately called Contra Costa County Detective David Villalobos, leaving him a voice mail before he turned off his cell phone and entered the courtroom.
During the lunch recess, Grogan received a call about another body.
This time it was an adult female, just found off Point Isabel in Richmond. Contacting Lieutenant Pete Small with the East Bay Regional Park Police, Grogan learned that park visitors had reported finding the remains shortly before noon. The responding officers had located the body of a woman washed ashore directly east of Brooks Island-the very spot where Scott said he was fishing on Christmas Eve.
Lying prone on the rocks, the body was clad in a bra and what appeared to be remnants of pants. The park police had not located a skull, and both legs were missing below the knee. Smalley knew about the fetus that had been recovered from the same general vicinity; the recent stormy weather must have moved the bodies onto shore, he thought.
Small suggested that the Modesto police hasten to the scene. The press was already arriving, and, more important, it was still low tide. Soon the body would have to be moved, and any evidence might be washed away. Grogan instructed Small to photograph, videotape, and recover the body as soon as possible, whether Modesto police had
arrived or not. He also requested that no details about the clothing or condition of the body be released.
Sergeant Carter and Detectives Hendee and Owen helicoptered to Point Isabel Park. As they landed, the officers could see reporters already camped out in the parking lot just east of the shoreline. From that vantage point, it wasn't possible to see the body, which was concealed beneath a yellow tarp, but two news helicopters had already taken footage, and one of the choppers was still circling.
Sergeant Dave Dubowy of the Park Police greeted the Modesto investigators and led them down to the cordoned site. This area of the beach was frequented by joggers and dog-walkers, he told them, given the traffic, he didn't believe the body had been there long.
The badly decomposed body had no head, hands, or feet. There was nothing below the right knee and only the tibia and fibula bones remained beneath the left. A good portion of the woman's buttocks, hips, and lower abdomen were intact, but they had undergone extensive decomposition. The rib cage and part of the spine were exposed, and the stomach and most internal organs appeared to be missing.
While the officers would have to wait for DNA testing before a positive ID could be made, there was some very telling evidence still clinging to the body. The bra that was fastened around the woman's chest was virtually intact, and bore a Bali label. Her pants were so decomposed that most of the fabric was mere fuzz, but the waistband revealed a Motherhood maternity label, and the color of the trousers, off-white or cream, could still be determined. The last article was a pair of Jockey brand underwear, also severely degraded.
One other item that was carefully retrieved was a strip of gray duct tape, about twelve to fourteen inches long, that had been affixed vertically down the front of the woman's pants.
Police on the scene interviewed A. Gonzalez, the woman who had reported finding the body. "Around 11:45 A.M., I was walking down the shoreline and just kept looking over the rocks, watching some dogs. And I was curious what they were looking at and I looked . . . and it was a body, face-down, and I saw the body and went and called authorities." When asked how she knew it was a body, she admitted that the decomposition had made it difficult. What she saw "had the shape of a body, but it looked like someone had wrapped it like a mummy." Gonzalez, who had a bachelor's degree in gerontology, was studying to be a physical therapist. Having taken a number of anatomy and physiology courses, she said, she had worked with a lot of cadavers.
Gonzalez also said that the body had been "pretty tangled in the rocks," and that she hadn't seen a head. The body was half in the water and half out, and from the lower thighs down, she couldn't see the legs. Gonzalez reported that there were a few additional people walking around, including one other woman who had spotted the body, but had already left the scene.
The interviewing officer asked if there was anything else they should know. Gonzalez said, "After the body gets investigated, they have to know there were dogs eating it."
The officer repeated, "There were some dogs eating it?" Yes, she confirmed. "So all the markings aren't going to be true to the crime scene."
"Okay, could you say how many dogs there were?" Gonzalez said there was definitely "one big black dog" that they'd spotted near the body. "It left a while ago. I think the owner was concerned about it getting sick."
Dodge Hendee reboarded the helicopter and took digital videotape and photographs of the recovery sites for both bodies. He also recorded their relationship to Brooks Island and the Berkeley Marina. Officers from the Contra Costa Coroner's Office rolled the female body into a sheet and placed it inside a body bag. Police then ordered that cadaver dogs be brought to the scene to search for additional body parts.
Brian Peterson of the Contra Costa Coroner's Facility (no relation to Scott) performed the autopsy on the fetus, now referred to as "Baby Doe." He determined that it was a full-term male infant in an advanced stage of decomposition. The skin was discolored but well-preserved. He estimated the gestational age of the fetus at between thirty-three and thirty-eight weeks.
Dr. Peterson was unable to determine whether the umbilical cord, only half a centimeter long and ragged at one end, had been tied or if it had simply detached in the water. The decomposition also prevented him from concluding whether the fetus had actually gone through the birthing process. He did, however, find evidence of meconium in the body, indicating that the baby had most likely not been born alive.
Meconium is a substance that accumulates in a fetus's lower intestine in utero. In 95 percent of live births, a baby expels the meconium within twenty-four hours after he or she is born. The fact that meconium was protruding from Baby Doe's anus indicated that if he was born alive, he probably did not survive for more than twenty-four hours. Dr. Peterson found no deformities or abnormalities that could have prevented the baby from surviving outside the womb if properly cared for.
The lungs were found to be small and wet, and Dr. Peterson could not say whether the baby had ever taken a breath. The stomach was empty, and there was no animal or fish activity. This was quite unusual given the advanced state of decomposition and suggested that the baby had been in utero until very recently. The body's condition also made it impossible to use its weight to reach an accurate estimate about age. Yet the height indicated that the child was close to full term. An estimated gestational age of nine months was based on its crown-heel length, although it could have been a large seven-and-a-half-month-old infant, since such measurement standards are merely averages.
Whether Conner was born alive became a critical issue at trial. Defense counsel Mark Geragos would tell the jury in his opening statement that Conner was carried almost to full term and was born alive. Since his client had been under police scrutiny from the moment Laci was reported missing, there was no way Scott could have removed and later disposed of Conner's body. Someone else must be responsible. The debate over Conner's life would become critical in the battle for Scott's as well.
None of the coroner's observations eliminated the possibility that this was Scott and Laci Peterson's child.
The coroner noted that a piece of fiberglass-type tape was loosely wrapped around the fetus's neck and left shoulder when the body was recovered. The tape appeared to be knotted at the point of the shoulder. Speculation would abound as to whether the loop and knot were man-made or simply the result of churning waters entangling the body in floating debris. There was only a two-centimeter gap between the material and the neck, which meant that the circumference of the loop was smaller than the baby's head. This could support the notion that the noose was affixed by someone after the baby was born, but the prosecution experts had other theories. The baby's brain had liquefied, allowing for the possibility that the loop could have slipped over the collapsed head. Furthermore, if the tape had been tied around the neck, the state would argue that there should have been a residual mark on the skin at the throat. There was none.