Initially, mistress was suspected
In Peterson case, police at first had suspicions on Frey
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- A prosecution investigator admitted yesterday that he once suspected there was more than one person involved in Laci Peterson's disappearance and that Scott Peterson's former mistress may have been involved.
Steven Jacobson spent most of the morning discussing wiretaps of Peterson's telephone calls in the weeks after his pregnant wife vanished. But on cross-examination, the tone of questioning became heated as defense lawyer Mark Geragos pointedly asked the investigator about details he included in affidavits written to secure warrants for the wiretaps.
''One of the reasons you wanted to get a wiretap is because you believed there were coconspirators in this case?" Geragos asked.
''Yes sir," Jacobson replied.
''Because you believed that the abduction of Laci Peterson could not" have been done by one person? Geragos prodded.
''I believed that there could possibly have been more than one person involved in Laci's disappearance," Jacobson replied.
Jacobson even wrote in one of the affidavits that ''there was no way one person could have done that to Laci Peterson."
During two days of cross-examining Peterson's mistress, Amber Frey, Geragos accused her of not fully cooperating with police as she taped hundreds of phone calls between her and Peterson.
She denied the allegations and stated that all calls between the pair were taped and handed over to police.
Yesterday, Jacobson acknowledged that police at one time suspected Frey was not cooperating fully and may even have been involved.
''I felt it important to either corroborate her statements she was making to police or if she wasn't being truthful with police, to find that out, as well," Jacobson said.
Prosecutors allege Peterson killed his wife in their Modesto home around Dec. 24, 2002, then dumped her weighted body from a boat into San Francisco Bay. The remains of Laci Peterson and the couple's unborn son washed up a few months later, not far from where Peterson contended he had gone fishing.
His attorneys say he was framed after the real killer learned of his widely publicized alibi.
