The director behind the new Netflix documentary American Murder has spoken about what happened to Laci Peterson and how elements of the case felt “overshadowed” by husband Scott.
Skye Borgman, who’s behind other Netflix true crime titles such as Abducted in Plain Sight and Girl in the Picture, also elaborated on why she chose to focus on this case now.
It originally unfolded in 2002 when Scott Peterson reported his wife, who was eight months pregnant with their first child, had gone missing. A nationwide search and media frenzy followed until April 2003, when Laci and son Conner’s remains washed ashore.
Scott was convicted of the crime and is currently serving life in prison without parole, although he is now fighting for a retrial. But Skye wanted to tell the story with Laci at the forefront.
“It’s always really important to me to put the victim forward, and Laci Peterson, I think, has been overshadowed many times by Scott Peterson and what’s going on with him,” the director told Today.
“And I just really wanted to make sure that we did our job and put Laci forward, and put Conner forward as well.”
When Skye and her team started looking into the case, she said, “it just started becoming clearer and clearer that this was a really relevant story to tell, even though it happened 20 years ago.”
“The biggest challenge, really, was just challenging those memories and those expectations and those ideas of what we think we know. Scott was convicted 20 years ago. Laci disappeared 22 years ago,” she continued.
“I think it has gotten a little bit like that telephone game, right? Somebody says something, and then it grows, and then it grows, and then it grows, and then the facts just start to get a little bit muddied.
“So I wanted to go back and tell the story from a fact-based perspective.”
One of the questions that’s been raised many times is what actually happened to Laci. With Scott maintaining his innocence and her remains in bad condition after having been left underwater for so long, no official cause of death was determined.
In American Murder: Laci Peterson, Sharon Hagan, a criminal investigative profiler, puts forward her theory of what she believes happened.
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“In my opinion, and this is based on my experience in many homicides, I believe that this was what I would call a soft kill – that he either suffocated her or he strangled her,” she explains.
“And there would be two reasons that he would choose to do that. One is that it’s very quiet. Secondly, it doesn’t make a mess.”
Hagan later says, “With a low-risk victim such as Laci, who was very much a homebody, whose world was very small and condensed, the most likely person who will harm someone like her is her intimate partner.
“And the statistics that we keep on homicide bear this out. In fact, not only does pregnancy increase the risk of victimization for women, but it is the number one cause of death for pregnant women.”
Although Skye’s team did reach out to Scott for the new docu-series, he declined to be interviewed.
“I don’t think our series is missing anything by not speaking to Scott,” she said. “I mean, our main focus was Laci, and we wanted to keep it that way.”
Scott is set to be the focus of Peacock’s upcoming documentary Face to Face with Scott Peterson, which takes a completely different approach to the Netflix series by looking at alternate theories.
Skye added, “It seems that their perspective is very different from our perspective, and that he’s claiming that he’s innocent and that’s the story that they’re telling.
“Really, our story really is much more Laci-centric, and really is about the investigation at the time, what was happening, and Scott’s behavior at the time… we talked to people from most sides.”
American Murder: Laci Peterson is streaming on Netflix now. You can read more about the disturbing details surrounding the case here, as well as a key piece of evidence about Scott’s boat and the hidden detail you probably missed.