42 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The worst of the lot, May 22, 2006
This review is from: Laci Peterson The Whole Story: Laci, Scott, and Amber’s Deadly Love Triangle (Paperback)
I have read all the books on the market that covered this case.
Brad Knight's is the worst of them all. This book is loaded with factual errors and nonsense, but what was most troubling was his obvious contempt for single women with children. That mindset is archaic, egotistical, politically incorrect and derisive to the point of disgust. As for the errors, where was the publisher's fact checker, on vacation? By the time I was halfway through it, I kept a pencil and highlighter in my hand for the duration of the read. Here are some of my findings:
page 31: the author states that Laci told her friend Heather in December, 2002 that she was disappointed that she and Scott couldn't make it to Heather's Xmas party because of his work, and it was the last time Heather spoke to her friend. However, in reality, Laci did make it to the party sans Scott and to boot, the media showed photos OVER and OVER again of Laci at the party by herself. One book even juxtaposed the photo of the solitary Laci with the photo of Scott and Amber at another party the same night.
page 74: asserts that a woman of "lesser moral fiber" than Amber could have crossed to the "dark side" and not gone to the police. Yet, on page 181 he opines of Amber's "loose morals", even going so far as to say if it wasn't for her loose morals, Laci would be alive today! Pinning Laci's murder on Amber's conscience! More later on his disgusting characterization of Amber and her societal role as a single woman with a child.
page 118: discusses meeting some young girls at a Laci search and how he got one of their phone numbers. The book is supposed to be about the Laci story, we could do without the little personal asides throughout, such as this one where he boasts of getting a phone number..what's clearer is that he used a search and rescue effort to pick up chicks! And refer to the little aside on the bottom of page 138, his perverted curiousity of this woman. Again, we could have done without a window into his soft-porn thoughts.
page 120: one of two references to his bafflement that the police seized the white Dodge pickup Scott bought when he traded in the Landrover. It was common sense for those of us who watched the Larry King and Greta V coverage (including the author), that they took it in order to install the GPS tracking device for surveillance purposes. But even if that wasn't known, why is he questioning the cops using the truck, as he thought, to look for evidence. Why shouldn't they? It's not far fetched that Scott could have stored/hid something in there as soon as he got it, something that could be evidence in the case.
page 121: assumes that the police think the UPS driver should have known not to deliver a package in Laci's name to her home. DUH, I don't think the cops are that dense. If you have any clue as to how a delivery service works, and as a business owner that the author claims to be, there is no excuse not to, obviously there are policies that packages must be delivered to the shipping address on record unless the delivery service is told otherwise. And obviously, Scott didn't have the wine of the month membership stopped. No doubt the driver was under company orders to "attempt delivery". What was UPS supposed to do? Decide for themselves to return it, not ship it or ship to an alternate address? Hello, not a decision they are empowered to make.
page 143: states that Sharon Rocha called Scott to ask him to come to Richmond to identify the bodies, and goes on to paraphrase a phone conversation between them. This is innacurate. Sharon had not spoken to Scott for several weeks prior to the discover of the bodies. When she did call him after hearing the news, she left a message asking him to call her, which he did not do. The only conversation that Sharon actually had with a Peterson during this week was one she had with his mother soon after the discovery.
page 148: states that with the news of the discovery of the bodies, police immediately began tracking Scott's whereabouts..that's misleading..in fact, the police had been tracking him all along, what they did at that point was pinpoint his location to get men near him in order to pick him up at a moment's notice when the positive ID came in.
page 201: "turns up missing" Do I really have to point out the oxymoron?
page 210: provides an excerpt of a cultural anthropologist's assertion that the Laci murder was racially motivated, pointing to Laci's half "Hispanic" background. In this theory, Scott murdered Laci to destroy the 1/4 "Hispanic" baby he helped create because he preferred the white caucasion Amber. If the author had done his homework, he would have hopefully realized that this whole theory is moot because Laci's father's family was Portuguese, and as far as I know Portuguese are not Hispanic. They may be considered latin, or their language is derived from latin, but the people are not Hispanic. Further, the author suggests Scott was upset upon hearing about Laci's ancestry at a late stage in their courtship. How on earth does the author know at what point in their courtship Scott found out Laci's ancestry? If the author got this info from a source, he sure didn't say it. If Scott was upset by it, then why did he marry her if it was such a problem? Forget Scott "finding out" late in the courtship. Any joe schmoe would have recognized that there was some type of latin persuasion in her family tree if not from her looks, than from the pronounced vowel that serves as the last letter of her maiden name. Also, Scott and his mother had similar features as Laci..they were all three olive skinned, dark eyed and raven haired. Who's not to say there isn't a latin persuasion in Scott? Further, on page 213, he allows for the anthropologist's assertion that race was the reason Dennis Rocha let the caucasion Ron Grantski do all the talking. Apparently the author and the anthroplogist believe that to have kept Laci's disappearance at the forefront of news, you need to have a white caucasion spokesperson..the author assumes that was a Rocha family strategy. Talk about narrow scope. The anthropoligist may live in a racial fishbowl, but the author, if he was responsible, should have put forth that there are many possible explanations for Dennis having stayed in the background. Perhaps he felt he wasn't a confident public speaker, though the times I heard him speak, his words packed a very powerful, concise punch. Perhaps his grief was so overwhelmingly private to him he didn't want people watching it all of the time. To find a sociological explanation, the author should have looked deeper than the color of Dennis' skin. For instance, why not look at the type of man he was and his lifestyle. It was obvious from any cursory research on the family that Dennis was a farm man and spent his entire life tending to his farm. It could be said that Dennis was a simple man (and I do not mean in terms of intellect) but rather, that he lead a simple life, far from the busy, technology saturated corporate life of a more urban environment. The dairy farm was his life, not the hustle and bustle of a media drenched society. He'd probably never even seen a TV camera let alone have had to address one in his life. And finally, if the author had so many intimate, close-to-the-family but private sources, why didn't he just ask one of them for an explanation?
page 228: refers to Sharon as Ron Grantski's wife. Um, we didn't have to wait for evidence at the trial to know that Sharon and Ron were not married...the author could have clued himself in by his own hundreds of references to Sharon ROCHA and MRS. Rocha throughout the book. Or perhaps this offends his high level moral standard he sets for women.
page 270: refers to OJ, Nicole and Ron as a comparative love triangle to Scott, Laci and Amber. This is innacurate. It was not proven that Nicole and Ron had a romance and the speculation that OJ murdered Ron out of jealousy was ultimately superceded by the more sensible theory that Ron was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.
page 318: lays out this whole long-winded perspective on why Sharon shouldn't have filed the wrongful death suit as early as she did, only later to realize that the law at the time had a one year statute of limitation from the time of the murder. If he ultimately knew this, why were we subjected to his 5 page armchair legal strategies? (all of which throughout this book must have been extremely offensive to any lawyer-readers, because they actually went to law school)
page 306: first reference to many cases of mis-spelling defense attorney/Greta panel-regular Geoffrey Feiger's name. He even claimed to love Greta's show, but he must not bother to read the big words on the screen ever, they always spell Geoff's name with a G.
And lastly, only fellow macho egoists would appreciate his opinions on pages 222-223 of Amber's life situation and how HE, big man, would have picked a woman with a "clean slate" without THAT (italicized in the book) kind of mileage. Oh it's mileage is it, to bear a child? That inference is disgusting and misogynistic. And his juxtaposition of a young woman with no children versus a woman with a child from a previous relationship who owned her own home..how he would certainly choose the young woman with nothing, but many guys would choose the latter, believing the home-ownership value outweighs the child from a previous relationship! Gee Brad, I guess nobody looks inside a person huh? The marital worth of a woman is based on outer, tangible elments, no man can go deeper than the surface it seems, to love a woman for their character and heart. Decent men out there with depth of character should be very offended by this book. And for all its unschooled legal ramblings, this book really just made a good "case" for women to stay single.
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