Scott Peterson maintains innocence despite calling murdered wife a “bastard” for cheating on her | California

Speaking on camera for the first time in 20 years, convicted double murderer Scott Peterson called himself a “total bastard” for cheating on his pregnant wife Lacey before killing her, but maintained that he did not kill her or their unborn son Connor.

“It’s horrible. I was a complete asshole for having sex outside of marriage,” Peterson, 51, said in an interview published as part of a three-part documentary series that premiered on NBC’s streaming platform Peacock on Aug. 20, according to People.com. But he added, during the interview, conducted by video call from Mule Creek State Prison in California, that “I didn’t kill my family.”

The documentary series, titled “Face to Face with Scott Peterson,” comes seven months after the Los Angeles Innocence Project (LAIP) announced it was taking a look at the former California fertilizer salesman’s claims that his 2004 conviction was wrongful.

In the documentary series, which focuses in part on the efforts by the nonprofit LAIP to overturn his conviction, Peterson also dismisses the police investigation that preceded his conviction as a “so-called investigation.”

“If I have the opportunity to show people the truth and they accept it, that’s the greatest thing I can accomplish right now,” Peterson said, adding that he regrets not testifying at the murder trial.

The murder of Laci Peterson was covered almost instantly in media outlets across the United States. In the United States, researchers have found that women who are pregnant or have recently given birth are more likely to be murdered by an intimate partner than to die from obstetric causes. She was eight months pregnant when she went missing from her home in Modesto, California on Christmas Eve 2002.

Investigators discovered Laci’s body and the remains of her unborn child in April 2003 in San Francisco Bay near where Scott Peterson said he had been fishing the day Laci, 27, disappeared.

Police were deeply suspicious of Peterson, as he had had multiple extramarital affairs, including with women who publicly spoke out about him claiming to be a widow before Laci Peterson’s disappearance.

The woman became a key witness in the prosecution’s murder trial, in which they alleged that Peterson suffocated his wife to death in order to pursue a future with his mistress, masseuse Amber Frey, then took her body to the bay in his newly purchased fishing boat and dumped it overboard.

Peterson’s defense countered that his wife was alive when Peterson went fishing on the day she disappeared. Noting the scant forensic evidence collected by the prosecution, the defense argued that Laci had been kidnapped and that Peterson was framed for her murder.

The jury found Peterson guilty, citing abundant circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution, and sentenced him to death after 12 hours of deliberation.

The California Supreme Court vacated Peterson’s death sentence, finding that potential jurors had been improperly excluded for expressing opposition to the death penalty, but the court upheld the conviction and resentenced Peterson to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Court documents filed in January by Peterson’s LAIP lawyers said there was new evidence that supported his “claim of actual innocence” and “raised numerous questions about who may have kidnapped and murdered Laci and Connor Peterson.” The documents did not say what the new evidence was.

In a trailer for another documentary about the case, “American Murder: Laci Peterson,” which premieres on Netflix on Wednesday, Laci Peterson’s mother, Sharon Rocha, recalls that when she met her former son-in-law while he was working at a cafe she frequented and became fascinated with him, she hoped he wasn’t just “spouting crap at my daughter.”

Since then, Rocha said, he’s “learned to follow my instincts.”