Scott Peterson, the California man convicted for the 2002 murders of his pregnant wife Laci Peterson and their unborn son, has given his first on-camera interview in over 20 years.
The convicted double-killer, who was originally sentenced to die for the crimes, speaks in an upcoming Peacock docuseries about his extramarital affair with Amber Frey before the murders. “It’s horrible,” Peterson says in the series, according to People. “I was a total a-hole to be having sex outside our marriage.”
In the docuseries—Face to Face with Scott Peterson—he also reportedly slams the “so-called investigation” which led to his conviction in 2004. He claims important leads were ignored and prosecutors relied on circumstantial evidence.
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“I regret not testifying [at my trial], but if I have a chance to show people what the truth is, and if they are willing to accept it, it would be the biggest thing that I can accomplish right now—because I didn’t kill my family,” Peterson says.
The series, which is set to premiere on August 20, also covers the Los Angeles Innocence Project’s efforts to overturn Peterson’s conviction. The non-profit organization in January court filings claimed new evidence supported his claim of innocence, according to ABC News.
At his trial two decades ago, prosecutors argued that Peterson killed his 27-year-old wife because he wanted to be with Frey, his mistress. They also argued that he didn’t want to be a father and used the killings as a way of escaping his marriage without having to pay child and spousal support.
“That is so offensive and so disgusting,” he says of the prosecution’s claims, People reports. “I certainly regret cheating on Laci, absolutely. It was about a childish lack of self-esteem, selfish me traveling somewhere, lonely that night because I wasn’t at home. Someone makes you feel good because they want [to] have sex with you.”
In a separate three-part Netflix documentary due to arrive Wednesday, American Murder: Laci Peterson, Frey gives a sit-down interview of her own. She contacted police after hearing about Laci’s murder on the news, saying she’d been in a relationship with Scott Peterson for the past few months. Frey said he originally told her he was single until his story changed on Dec. 9, 2002, saying he actually had been married but his wife had since died.
Dec. 9 was also the day he bought a boat which he allegedly did not mention to anyone.
Two weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Peterson reported his wife missing. He said he’d been out fishing and returned to their home in Modesto, California, to find her gone. In April 2003, the bodies of Laci and the child, who they’d planned to name Conner, were found in San Francisco Bay near where Peterson claimed to have been fishing on the day his spouse disappeared.
Peterson was originally sentenced to death by lethal injection but the California Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that he should be removed from death row. His conviction was upheld, however, and he was resentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 2021.
His sister-in-law, Janey Peterson, has also maintained that he is innocent, training to become a lawyer partly to advocate for his release. She told People that the revelations of Scott Peterson’s affair and lying were “devastating and upsetting” to her family. Janey Peterson added: “Scott lied about cheating and that was upsetting. But he wasn’t charged with infidelity. He was charged with murder.”
