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Scott Peterson arrested in wife's deathDNA identifies remains of Laci Peterson, unborn baby
MODESTO, California (CNN) -- Scott Peterson was arrested Friday in San Diego on suspicion of killing his pregnant wife, Laci, whose body and that of their unborn child were found on the San Francisco Bay shoreline this week, authorities said Friday. "There are no other suspects," Modesto Police Chief Roy Wasden told reporters. The arrest was made nearly four months after Laci Peterson was reported missing from her home in Modesto on Christmas Eve -- a case that captured national attention and resulted in a widespread search for the 27-year-old mother-to-be. Video showing Scott Peterson, 30, arriving at the Stanislaus County Jail in police custody was broadcast Saturday on CNN just after 3 a.m. EDT. Peterson was wearing a white shirt and khaki shorts, and had a blond goatee and lighter-colored hair. He was taken into custody in San Diego between 11 a.m. and noon Friday [2-3 p.m. EDT] by officers from the Modesto Police Department, Wasden said. Peterson will likely be arraigned in Stanislaus County on Monday on capital murder charges that would carry the possibility of the death penalty, county District Attorney Jim Brazelton said. Brazelton said his office has not decided whether to seek the death penalty in the double-homicide case. Before the announcement by Modesto police, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said DNA tests identified the remains as those of Peterson and her baby boy. "There is no question in our minds that the unidentified female is Laci Peterson, and the unidentified fetus is the biological child of Laci and Scott Peterson," Lockyer said. Wasden said Laci Peterson's family was told of the DNA match about 5:30 p.m. [8:30 p.m. EDT]. "They're just devastated," he said. Kim Petersen, a spokeswoman for Laci Peterson's family, the Rochas, read a statement at the news conference where the identification and arrest were announced. "Just as Christmas Eve is a family time, Easter is also a time for families. We request that you would allow our family to have this weekend to deal with these recent developments together in private," Petersen said, adding that the family would make a public statement Monday at 4 p.m. [7 p.m. EDT]. Police feared Peterson would fleeScott Peterson, whose parents live in San Diego, was driving there when he was taken into custody, Wasden said, adding that the arrest was made before the DNA tests had been completed. Lockyer said authorities feared Peterson would flee if he became aware of the developments in the case. "He was in San Diego, near the [Mexican] border ... perhaps since he was aware of the fact that there was surveillance that he might try to run," the attorney general said. "Driving up and down the freeway, he was aware of surveillance teams, was waving at them and being kind of a smart aleck, and so they finally decided that they ought to just pull him in," Lockyer said, adding that police had followed Scott "for a number of days, maintaining surveillance, wiretaps on phones, trackers on vehicles to try to accumulate the evidence." The arrest took place in the parking lot of the Torrey Pines Municipal Golf Course, witnesses said. Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren Rupf said no cause of death for Laci Peterson or the child had been determined. The body of the baby boy, who was due to be born in February, was found Sunday at Point Isabel Regional Park, on the San Francisco Bay. Laci Peterson's body was found washed up on rocks the next day, about one-and-a-quarter miles from the baby's body, authorities said. The park in Richmond, California, is about 90 miles west-northwest of Modesto, but only a few miles from the Berkeley Marina, where Scott told investigators he went fishing the day his wife disappeared. He gave police a ticket for the marina's parking lot stamped with that date. Investigators searched the marina and surrounding waters several times but found nothing connected to the case. Sources close to the investigation told CNN that a search was conducted in mid-March near the marina with a side-scanning sonar. The sonar detected what investigators thought might be a body attached to a weight that was keeping it at the bottom of the bay, but turbulent water kept divers from reaching the object. When the divers returned later, they didn't find a body but "saw some anomalies," the sources said. The area is near where the remains turned up this week, they said. Family unity unraveled as probe continued
At the end of last year, as teams of searchers combed the Petersons' neighborhood and surrounding areas, the Rocha and Peterson families maintained a united front, agreeing that Scott and Laci had a strong marriage. In January, the unity began to unravel after Laci Peterson's family was shown pictures of Scott with another woman -- photos taken shortly before Laci disappeared. On January 25, Amber Frey, a massage therapist from Fresno, said at a news conference that she had been Scott Peterson's lover but that she broke off the affair when she saw him on television in connection with his wife's disappearance. Frey said Peterson told her he was single. Three days later, Peterson acknowledged in an interview with ABC that he had had an affair, but said his wife knew about it and that they were working through their problems. Wasden said the last known contact with Laci by someone other than her husband was her mother, who spoke by phone with her daughter about 8:30 p.m. on December 23. Authorities said they are treating that as the starting point of the investigation. Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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