Featured Image Credit: Netflix/Channel 4
Topics: True Crime, Netflix, US News, Crime
Joe Harker
A Netflix true crime documentary about a woman who went missing on Christmas Eve, 2002, and was later found dead says it has new information to share more than two decades after her death.
American woman Laci Peterson was reported missing on 24 December, 2002, by her husband Scott and her stepfather.
Her husband told police he'd last seen her in the morning when he'd gone to go fishing and told a number of other people that later that day he'd been out playing golf.
Scott Peterson said he came home to find the house empty and his wife gone, with none of her friends or family having seen her that day either.
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An investigation into the disappearance of Laci, who was seven-and-a-half months pregnant at the time she went missing, led police to become more suspicious of Scott and discovered he'd had extramarital affairs.
On 13 April, 2003, the body of a baby was found in San Francisco Bay and a day later the remains of Laci Peterson were also discovered.
Four days later police arrested Scott, who in 2004 was convicted of the first degree murder of his wife and the second degree murder of their unborn son.
He was sentenced to death, though in 2020 was moved off death row after his sentence changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Scott claims he is innocent, and the case is the subject of a new true crime Netflix documentary titled American Murder: Laci Peterson.
Netflix says the documentary will give the 'definitive examination' of the case and bring new information in the form of the first in-depth interview that Laci's mother Sharon Rocha has given on the case.
"Sharon did press when Laci went missing, but she’s never sat down to do an interview for a documentary," documentary director Skye 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.
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"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."
The documentary will also have interviews with Laci's friends, Scott's relatives and people who worked on the case.
Borgman said: "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.
"Intimate partner violence is something that's really overwhelming. I want people to walk away from this thinking about that in a deeper way."
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American Murder: Laci Peterson is available to stream now on Netflix.