The mother of murder victim Laci Peterson is opening up about the last time she saw her daughter alive in an emotional new interview.
Sharon Rocha will appear on the ABC special ‘Truth and Lies: The Murder of Laci Peterson’ next week, and detail her final visit with her daughter just before Christmas in 2002, the day she went missing.
She has previously spoke about the final meeting a number of times, most notably in her 2005 memoir ‘For Laci: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Justice.’
In that book, Rocha wrote that Laci spent the evening excitedly showing off her new baby nursery and made her mother rub her belly all night to try and feel her grandson kick.
Laci also confided in her mother that Scott showed no interest in touching her stomach or feeling his unborn son kick.
Sadly, Rocha did not get to feel the baby kick that night either, but she did get to talk to her unborn grandson for the first time.
It would also be the last.
‘Hello little Conner, this is your nanna talking to you. I love you. I can’t wait to meet you,’ Rocha said while laying her head on Laci’s eight-month-pregnant stomach.
Ten days later, Laci went missing and three months after that her dead body washed ashore north of San Francisco.
Conner’s fetus was discovered one day before his mother’s a mile down the coast.
Mother and daughter: Sharon Rocha is speaking out about her final visit with daughter Laci Peterson (above) in an ABC special that is set to air next week
Difficult time: The mother of the murder victim described her daughter as looking ‘sad’ and ‘hurt’ when she saw her on December 15, 2002 (Laci a few weeks prior with husband Scott)
Heartbreak: Rocha said that during that final visit, Laci showed off her new nursery and had her put a hand on her belly to try and feel Conner kick (Rocha above after hearing the jury convict Scott in 2005)
Rocha wrote that she was unaware at the time of the final meeting that her son-in-law had spent the earlier part of the day and previous evening with his mistress Amber Frey.
She said that she and her husband had joined Lacy and Scott on Sunday, September 15 to watch the season finale of ‘The Sopranos.’
And when the show was over, Laci took her mother up to the nursery and showed off some of the new clothes she had gotten for her unborn son.
That is when Laci noted that the baby was kicking and asked Rocha to put her hand on her pregnant belly.
Laci then said of Scott: ‘He takes his hand away if he cant feel it right away.’
Scott was sitting right in front of the two woman at the time but did not acknowledge his wife’s comment.
‘I saw the hurt in her eyes,’ wrote Rocha.
‘She looked so sad.’
Scott also recounted what he claimed were his final moments with Laci on the premiere episode of the six-part docuseries ‘The Murder of Laci Peterson’ on A&E, as well as his last phone call to his wife on Christmas Eve back in 2002.
‘Hey beautiful, I just left a message at home. Uh, it’s 2:15 I’m leaving Berkeley I won’t be able to get to Vella Farms to get that basket for papa I was hoping you would get this message and go on out there,’ Scott says in the never-before-heard audio from Laci’s voice mail.
He then tells his eight-months pregnant wife: ‘I’ll see you in a bit sweetie. Love ya, bye.’
Scott would never see his wife again however, and be taken into custody the following April when her body and the fetus of his unborn son were discovered near one of his known fishing spots.
The day had started off much like any other according to Scott, who almost 14 years later recapped that day from death row.
‘I don’t know what time we got up, probably Laci got up and went in the shower, she had some cereal for breakfast,’ explains Scott, speaking from the San Quentin State Prison.
‘Eats right when she wakes up otherwise she gets sick because she’s pregnant.’
He goes on to say: ‘I laid in bed a little longer and got up at eight o’clock probably or so. We were watching her favorite show Martha Stewart. She was gonna finish cleaning up, she was mopping the kitchen floor and then she was going to take the dog for a walk.’
Scott then starts laughing to himself as he recalls his plan for the day, saying: ‘Just decided it seems too cold to play golf at the club so I just decided, you know, to go fishing.’
He left Laci shortly after 10am and never saw her again, and had an alibi for all times after that, heading first to his warehouse and then driving two hours to Berkeley for an hour of fishing before returning home.
Scott did not catch any fish that day, but a receipt proved he was in Berkeley at the dock.
On the way: Rocha put her head on Laci’s stomach at one point and said: ‘Hello little Conner, this is your nanna talking to you. I love you. I can’t wait to meet you’
Newlyweds: Laci said that Scott, then 30, did not like to put his hand on her stomach just 10 days before she went missing and later turned up dead (Scott and Laci above on their wedding day)
It was while returning home at 2:15pm that he made that call, and when he got home he still did not think anything was amiss he realized, arriving back at his Modesto home around 5pm on Christmas Eve.
‘The only unusual things were the leash [on the dog] and the door being unlocked. I assumed she was at her moms,’ says Scott, who was speakign with his sister-in-law Janey.
‘Put my clothes in the washer grabbed some pizza from the fridge. Got milk and after I get out of the shower and put clothes on I call Sharon.’
That was at 5:17pm, and 30 minutes later Laci’s stepfather called 911 to report that they were concerned something might have happened to the 27-year-old, who was eight-months pregnant.
This is the first time Scott has spoken publicly about the case since 2004, when he was convicted of first-degree murder for the death of Laci as well as second-degree murder for the death of Conner Peterson, his unborn son.
‘I wasn’t the last one to see Laci that day. There were so many witnesses that saw her walking in the neighborhood after I left,’ Scott says in the interview.
That claim is supported by over 11 witnesses, who say they spotted Laci out walking her dog after the time in which the prosecution later argued she had gone missing.
Prosecutors successfully argued that Laci was killed some time between the evening of December 23 and the following morning during Scott’s murder trial.
The eyewitnesses tell a much different story however, including Mike Chiavetta who claims to have seen Laci’s dog walking around the neighborhood on Christmas Eve – after Scott had left for the office.
‘After I had talked to the police man and given my statement that I had seen the dog in the park nothing was followed up,’ says Chiavetta.
‘There was over 11 witnesses who saw Laci that day, this is all while Scott is at the office and on his computer, so he’s innocent,’ argues Janey, who has been Scott’s staunchest defender from the start.
Conner’s body was discovered first, almost four months later when it washed up on the shoreline just north of Berkley in April of the following year.
There was a nylon rope around the fetus’ neck and a large cut on the body.
One day later, Laci’s body washed ashore a mile away with tape wrapped around her torso.
It was three days after the discovery of his late wife’s body that Scott was arrested by police, who picked him up in a parking lot where he claimed to be meeting his father and half-brother John – who is Janey’s husband – for a round of golf.
At the time he was in possession of multiple cell phones, $15,000 in cash, 200 sleeping pills, his brother John’s ID, a dagger and a gun.
Scott also had a map to the workplace of his mistress and approximately 10 Viagra tablets.
In his interview, Scott talks about Amber for the first time and explains why he continued to speak with her after his wife was reported missing.
‘The overriding reason throughout it all was she starts giving media interview, there is no more search for Laci and Conner,’ says Scott.
‘I’d just seen what happened to the search for Chandra Levy. There was no more search for her.’
He then adds: ‘Every hour I could buy to keep the search going is all solved if I bring Laci and Conner home.’
On the row: Scott Peterson is escorted by two San Mateo County Sheriff deputies as he is walked from the jail to a waiting van Thursday, March 17, 2005 after being sentenced to death for his wife’s murder
Amber would eventually prove to be perhaps the most crucial witness in the case, providing the prosecution with their motive when she publicly announced that Scott had never told her that was married during their affair.
Both bodies were too decomposed to determine cause of death, which created a big hurdle given the lack of forensic evidence in the case.
‘There was no biological evidence, no forensic evidence, that pointed to the guilt of Scott Peterson whatsoever,’ argues a member of Scott’s legal team.
Scott goes even further, stating: ‘The police failed to find my family.’
The trial began in the summer of 2004 and Scott was sentenced to death by lethal injection in March of the following year.
An appeal of that decision was filed by his legal counsel soon after and is still pending after over a decade.
Scott recalls the moment he heard the verdict being read to Janey, saying: ‘It was just like this amazing, horrible, physical reaction that I had. I couldn’t feel my feet on the floor. I couldn’t feel the chair I was sitting in. My vision was even a little blurry.’
He goes on to state: ”And I just had this weird sensation that I was falling forward — and forward and down and there was going to be no end to this falling forward and down, like there was no floor to land on.
‘I, I was staggered by it. I had no idea it was coming.’
The only forensic evidence that was found by police was a single strand of hair in a pair of pliers on his boat, which Scott had been on in the hours before he returned home to report his wife missing to police.
Witnesses claimed however that he spoke of his wife in the past tense and questioned his jovial and joking nature during the proceedings, where hecould often be seen smiling and joking with his team.
Scott’s decision to dye his hair blond in the weeks before his wife’s body was found also perplexed many, who questioned how bereaved he really was for the missing woman.
The defense argued however that Laci’s death was likely connected to a burglary that occurred across the street from the house she shared with Scott.