Customer Reviews

Presumed Guilty: What the Jury Never Knew About Laci Peterson's Murder and Why Scott Peterson Should Not Be on Death Row

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

Dalton may be an attorney, (albeit a defense attorney) but he misses the most fundamental, basic formula in homicide: M.O.M.; Means, Opportunity and Motive.
Means; his bare hands, boat and tide charts; Opportunity; He was alone with her earlier that day and had plenty of time to kill her and transport the body to the bay where he ultimately dumped her; Motive; he did not want children and he had a new girlfriend.
An innocent man does not behave the way Scott did; running for the border with four cell phones, 15 thousand dollars in cash and camping equipment plus a newly blond beard and hair. He did not look for her when she first went missing, he showed zero emotions before during and after the trial and he told Amber Frey he "lost his wife" on December 6, some weeks before he actually killed her.
I also thought the hypocrisy of his mother was disgusting; she always carefully appeared in public wearing her oxygen equipment, yet was seen moving heavy furniture out of Laci's house wtih alacrity.
His weak statements about witnesses claiming to have seen Laci simply don't hold up; these witnesses illustrate the fable of the 3 Blind men and the Elephant as far as credibility goes; a burglary across the street and another story about a pregnant woman being harassed are two more rather contrived and pathetic attempts to shore up this non-case; the disappearance of six pregnant women within an 80 miles radius in the years leading up to this crime and questions about the autopsy report all add up to: One defense attorney's trying to make money off of a legitimate tragedy by cobbling together the weakest of possibilities and by doing so, only compounds the already tawdry reputation shared by the less honorable of his profession.
One only has to listen to the conversations betwen Amber and Scott, most notably the embarrassingly bad lie about being in Paris when he was standing in the middle of crowd of people searching for Laci...his voice irritatingly hoarse and raspy; This, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of a true sociopath; the only true aspect of Scott's persona.
I cannot even begin to imagine the horror and agony of Sharon Rocha; this sort of loss is bad enough on its own, but the know your child was murdered...and your grandson...is beyond the pale.
I was watching the news when the verdict was announced and how the crowd outside the courtroom cheered and how some were offended by this; I say to them, it is far more "offensive" to have your child and grandchild murdered. So save your self-righteous indignation and cheer that Scott finally received his just reward.

If you've followed the Scott Peterson case and are looking for new information, don't look here. Apparently it was all a big gimmick..."what the jury never knew about Laci Peterson's murder and why Scott should not be on death row." There is nothing in this book I haven't heard somewhere else. The Laci sightings were reported and investigated and nothing concrete came of that information. The Satanic cults, the van, the robbery, all investigated and this when no where. Tidbits here and there of stories we have heard over and over and over. Same old, same old, nothing new. This book...ugh...why did I buy it at full price the day it came out. All that talk about Scott suing the writer so the book wouldn't come out. What a marketing strategy and I fell for it hook, line and sinker. Does Matt Dalton really believe the public (the reading public) is that ignorant about our judicial system? I didn't think there was any viable information. I know there is no smoking gun, no direct forensic evidence against Scott, no crime scene, this case is based on his behavior. His bad behavior did convince me he is guilty. I mean who would rent a car and drive all the way to the Berkeley Marina from Modesto (about 90 miles) to stare at the water and then leave. That to me indicates guilt. I do however have concerns that a man can be put on death row with no direct evidence. This book is lacking in information. Save yourself all the trouble. The book is a lightweight too, not much material, not much at all -- 192 pages and that includes even the appendix. Never mind this book and look elsewhere. Save your money and save your time. After this book, I read Deadly Game by Catherine Crier. It was an excellent read. update* After reading Sharon Rocha's book I wonder how the publishing houses allow a bozo like M. Dalton to write this book? He was fired from the case so early on. He has no information.

I have read every book about this topic........... and no matter what the reviews say, I buy the book if it's about Laci Peterson. To those of you who are like me, you WILL want to read this book as well, however, this is the truth:

This book is very short and continuously repeats itself. It
talks about the different witnesess who saw Laci that morning. The only real "new" information in this book is about him stating that the robbery which occurred across the street actually occured during the EXACT hours Laci went missing, whereas the other books, police reports, trial transcripts, etc, claim it was either unrelated or happened another day.

However, this books lost ALL credibility with me when he claims that:
"Scott invited Laci's sister, Amy, over to his house for pizza on the night of the 23rd" Matt claims, "Amy DID go to Laci and Scott's house and ate pizza with them and watched 2 movies with them."

We ALL know this is NOT TRUE, Amy was invited, but did not go. After I read that, I was skeptical of anything he said. Which to be honest, was not very much. This book could be condensed to a two page article it repeats itself sooooooo much. But to those of you who are obsessed, like me, you will want to read it for yourself and make your own opinions. Others who are not obsessed, I would say the best book written about this topic is Catherine Crier's book, "A Deadly Game" and one of the more interesting is by Keith Ablow, "Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson." I can't wait to read "For Laci" by Sharon Rocha. I hope this helped!

5 years later, no higher court appeal, no credible request for a new trial, no false arrest/imprisonment/ countersuit, his own defense attorney bailed out on him. He had scratches on his hands consistant with strangling his victim who tried to pull his hands off her throat, and this book tries to make a case out of what he alledges is vital evidence? Get real, the book was about making a buck for the author, pure and simple.

I don't know if Scott Peterson killed his wife or not, but if what Mr. Dalton asserts is true, then the Defense was grossly ineffective! If I were on the jury and I heard 6 credible witnesses claim to have seen Laci after the time that Scott was known to be gone, I don't believe I could have voted to convict. What was Geragos thinking? No wonder he wanted to block this books' publication, it makes him look like a very incompetent(or too busy to care) attorney.

The Satanic cult stuff seems a bit unbelievable and although I believe that Brochini and Grogan were convinced of Scott's guilt from the beginning, it's hard to believe that the whole Modesto Police Department would knowingly ignore evidence.

What I didn't care for was the way that Mr. Dalton left things hanging. For example, the elderly witness that saw Laci on the 24th, should have been questioned on the record in case she couldn't make the trial(and didn't, she died) He admits it should have been done, but it wasn't. No explanation was given for this HUGE oversight. Was it his fault? Geragos'?

He wasn't able to view the Cronus watch at the Pawn shop, he said he tried, but if the watch was Laci's, then there is no way Scott could have pawned it, as he was under survellance at the time it was pawned. How could Geragos allow that to go un-addressed at trial? Again, if I am on the jury and I hear that Laci's watch was pawned and it wasn't pawned by Scott, I think I would have had some real doubt about how the mystery woman ended up with that watch, and why it was not followed up.

Overall, the book made me feel very strongly that Scott did not get a fair trial. If the jury heard half of what is in this book, I don't see how they could have been unanimous on a guilty verdict. I am not saying he is definitely innocent, as I said before, I don't know. But this book certainly brings up some issues that should have been addressed and Geragos doesn't look very good.

I have followed the Peterson case very closely. I have truly tried to weigh all facts, evidence, theories, etc. fairly and logically. However, Dalton's witnessess, his theories, etc. just do not add up. He states that he himself interviewed the six witnessess that "saw" Laci the morning of Dec. 24. Yet he gives very sketchy information about these sightings. For one witness (Diane Campos) he does not even give the time she saw Laci. The time he claims the councilman's wife saw Laci walking the dog was actually AFTER the dog was found! And he gives no information as to what these witnesses saw Laci wearing - white coat, black, hat?, etc. Logic dictates that when Geragos reviewed Dalton's findings there were too many inconsistencies with these witnesses for them to be taken seriously on the stand. They probably could not withstand a vigorous cross and could possibly be more detrimental to the defense. Further, with regard to the homeless, satanic activites, burgularies, etc. I wanted to really review this information carefully. However, there were too many disparate ideas....too many vauge theories that do not connect together. And not enough hard information. Dalton states there were several other missing pregnant women - yet gives no information about any of those cases (except for Evelyn Hernandez). How can a reader weigh this information when it is so sketchy and vauge? Come on! You were the one culling this information, Dalton - so give it to us more thoroughly!
I tried to give Dalton's book a true go....but many of his "facts" were flat out wrong. He stated that Scott himself called the police, that the baby was cremated, that Amy (Laci's sister) came over for pizza & movie the night of the 23rd (she was only invited). And he often states "I have no idea why this was never followed up". Dude - Geragos would've followed up on anything! I'd imagine his info. was followed up on and dismissed for a variety of logical reasons. Can anyone really imagine Geragos being presented with valuable information that could save his client (and give him a win on a huge case) and not using it?
By the time Dalton was off the case - very early on - he was not privy to what was going on....and it shows!

For the true Peterson followers this book is a waste. If you're really interested - flip through it in a book store and put it back down. It is filled with errors, and very insubstantial, very thin information that doesn't even connect. I cannot believe a lawyer would write such an immature book - it feels like my 13 yr. old brother wrote this .....like, "why aren't all these people listening to me"? Because they're intelligent.

I work in a large chain book store and I have read all the books on this case, because I was sincerely interested and wanted to know more than the headlines and tabloid TV, etc. I highly recommend everyone reading a book by Martha Stout -- The Sociopath Next Door and after reading this book, you can see or begin to see how and why Scott Peterson seems to fit the Sociopathic profile to a T, as does also, his mother. When you read Amber's book, you see he puts on a show of being everything she ever wanted in a boyfriend and he lies almost nonstop to be all that she wants him to be, etc. When you read Anne's book, you see how manipulative both he and his mother are-- to her and just how far he was willing to go-- to abuse his relationship with his new found sister and her adoptive family, etc. When you read Crier's book, you can see how the police zero'd in on him as the number one suspect from the start-- and "played him" every which way they legally could with the burden on him to be able to rule himself out as their number one suspect and how he failed again and again from the start-- even before they learned of the existance of Amber. When you read Laci's mother's heart wrenching book-- every mother's worst nightmare-- you learn from her recollections how -- when she had known him over 8 years, how from the get go--everything about his behavior was "off"-- inappropriate-- just not making sense--or "ringing true"-- I read Dalton's book and I wanted to have an open mind-- I can understand for example why the pawnshop owner might be able to refuse to cooperate with Dalton as an investigator to show him the pawned watch, but the Modesto Police would have had access to check out that watch-- who pawned it, etc. I can understand for example how Dalton could have turned up possible Laci sightings from people living in and around Laci's neighborhood, but why were none of these people called by the defense to testify? Yes, one Sr. Citizen died but what about the rest of them and why did they decide not to come forward, nor were they compelled to by the defense? Since the verdict and sentencing, but for Dalton's book, none of these folks have been willing to come forward either-- the other women -- supposedly six missing pregnant women-- would not their relatives want justice to be done for their loved ones too? Would not the relatives of these other missing women have come forward now demanding that Dalton's story and contentions be checked out?

We've all heard-- Actions speak louder than words-- everything Scott Peterson did-- prior to Laci's disappearance, and afterward -- speak volumes about his guilt-- he acted like a guilty person, an evasive person, a person who had something to hide, and kept making himself into a bigger and bigger suspect as time went on--- he just never acted the way a normal, innocent person would have-- the police can key in on this kind of behavior-- body language, conduct, etc. and he was so without any embodiment of grieving, of loss, of being the "victim" of a terrible crime done to him personally from the get go-- complete strangers gave up their holidays to search for Laci-- to donate their time and money and energy to the search for Laci-- and complete strangers showed more emotion and sadness and empathy toward the family and friends of Laci, than did Scott Peterson.

Normal people --- even normal adulterers-- show emotions that Scott Peterson has seemed totally incapable of showing. It's like he is souless-- I can not understand Matt Dalton's motivation in presenting this book of his-- Every person is entitled to a defense in our legal system and Matt Dalton has been working on the prosecution's side most of his legal career-- and it was his job to try to find another plausible theory for what happened to Laci Peterson. If not Scott Peterson, then who and why?

Most people are not kidnapped in broad daylight. People with a fairly large and protective dog are not going to be targeted in broad daylight. Laci did not have on her person a purse-- to be targeted for robbery. People who saw the shoes/sandals in the street, who heard the scream, who saw the coat in the van's door, who had the bad feeling, who are positive they saw Laci Peterson that day walking her dog-- at a time AFTER Scott Peterson had left Modesto for his fishing trip-- WHY have none of these people come forward demanding to be heard, demanding that what they saw and heard be put in the record?

If the dog had to be walked daily? And if Laci had not been walking the dog for the last month --- then who had been performing this task? It seems unlikely that on a "bad weather" day, when Laci had baking to do, had a full next 24 hours planned,--dinner with her folks on the Eve and Brunch at her home the next day-- that she would have been doing physical activities such as dog walking and/or mopping the floor in her pregnant condition --- or curing her hair so early in the morning of a bad weather day -- Nothing Scott claimed she was doing that morning or had to do that day rings true, based on what other family members knew she would do, etc.

While Dalton's book presents another view, most readers will be quite skeptical and demand more hard evidence that Laci was kidnapped, that other pregnant women were stalked and kidnapped and used in satanic rituals, etc. None of this has been established --- if this cult has been habitating in Modesto--where is this cult now? The woman who was also pregnant, who had a dog with the same name, who had the retail store and who felt she was being stalked that day-- where is she now? Why has Matt Dalton not been able to produce one witness to come forward to dispute the Modesto police, the prosecution, and now that a man has been sentenced to death-- why has no one come forward to try to set the record straight? Everyone else -- except Matt Dalton-- has accepted that this is truly a CASE CLOSED.

The first sentence of a book often sets the tone of the author's work. In Matt Dalton's exercise in futility, Presumed Guilty, his first sentence reveals (perhaps unintentionally) the reason his book fails as a treatise for Peterson's "factual innocence":

The jury moved into the jury box.

Yes: the jury.

The jury at Peterson's trial decided his guilt. Not the viewers, not Matt Dalton, not the press, not the Modesto police, not the crowd outside the Stanislaus County jail when Peterson was arrested, and not the media. The jury heard all the testimony, was privy to the voluminous exhibits and documentation, and given instructions on the law and its obligation to it.

Dalton should have read his first sentence and realized, as an officer of the court, what his role was in this case. He was merely an investigator hired by the defense team, and a temporary one at that. His duty to his former client, to the California Bar, and in the service of justice was to protect confidentiality and adhere to the judge's orders. By releasing this book, he violated any number of rules of ethics and insulted readers' intelligence in the process.

Peterson's trial was the most important aspect of this case and closed or negated all the holes that Dalton accounts in his book. For Geragos to overtly ignore any exculpatory evidence would have been the height of incompetence. While I may think Geragos is a pretty bad lawyer (and a fountain of comedy fodder), I don't believe he would intentionally omit anything relevant that would have helped Peterson; real proof of that would have meant disbarment.

As a former prosecutor, Dalton is keenly aware of the laws of evidence. He knows that none of his allusions of a third-party defense have any merit. Otherwise, there would have been a showing at the trial. His book is, at best, glorified tabloid fodder with no nexus established between the behavior of local thugs and dubious statistics on satanic cult activity in the Modesto area and Laci Peterson's murder. Over a third of the repetitive and irrelevant material is devoted to discussing disparate criminal activities and anecdotes about cults; yet, with all the investigation techniques at his disposal, Dalton never finds a single probative issue that would have withstood the scrutiny of a court of law.

The book is filled with misinformation and inaccuracies, far too many to enumerate in a review. This book is riddled with disinformation, out-of-context exerpts from police reports, anonymous witnesses who are never directly quoted, and impotent defense spin. For those with even a passing acquaintance with the case, it is a farce.

As it turns out, this is just page after page of whining. "Woe is me, I have it so hard, nobody will talk to me, nobody likes me, my boss doesn't appreciate me, everybody picks on me, I have no funds or resources, I wish I hadn't quit my day job."

Mr. Dalton collects reams of what he calls "evidence" that is never used in court, and he repeats the phrase several times: "I don't know why this never made it to court." Well, considering Geragos fired Mr. Dalton a few months in, it was probably because the "evidence" he was collecting was useless and stupid. He makes misleading statements and false assumptions. "The presence of duct tape suggests abduction." It most certainly does not; what a ridiculous thing to say, unless you want to consider that Scott, in a way, "abducted" his own wife and used duct tape to bind her dead body. He also assumes that EVERY sighting of a dark-haired pregnant woman walking her dog is Laci, regardless of when or where she's seen, no matter how far off Laci's usual route it is. He assumes that because the police aren't telling him about every, single piece of information they gather or every, single lead or tip they pursue, that they aren't doing any investigating anywhere else except on Scott Peterson. The police were exhaustive in their investigations of numerous leads and piles of information, they simply weren't obligated to tell him anything about it. So he decided that, of course, they must not be following up on anything else.

This is also as much a dig at Geragos as it is anything else; he finally admits toward the end that there was tension between him and Geragos and he resents being fired. I'm giving it 2 stars instead of 1 because it was interesting and I did finish it. But don't expect much in the way of "new" evidence that exonerates Scott Peterson, because there isn't any.

I find it incredulous that Matt Dalton even wrote this book. This case lasted almost two years and he was involved, for what, a month, maybe two. Mr. Dalton, the reading public, people in general and the jury are not stupid enough to believe the "satanic cult", homeless people and people trying to frame Scott theories you throw around. It is an insult to people's intelligence! Did you forget that Scott told Amber he "lost" his wife and the same day went out and bought a boat. Was it just coincidence that Laci and Connor were found in the exact location he went "fishing"? Luckily I didn't waste my own money on this book since I read a friend's copy and had no desire to even finish it. I am looking forward to reading Sharon Rocha's book!