He helped raise Laci Peterson. Now he will be buried next to her
Ron Grantski, a surrogate father to Laci Peterson, died in his sleep Sunday at his Modesto home at age 71 after a lengthy spell of failing health.
He will be buried next week in an Escalon cemetery next to Laci and Conner Peterson, said Grantski’s companion of four decades, Sharon Rocha.
“We all wanted to be together,” said Rocha, Laci’s mother, of the burial plots she bought in mid-2003, after her pregnant, 27-year-old daughter and unborn grandson were killed.
Grantski had helped raise Laci from age 2 as his own daughter, although she also spent time with her biological father, Dennis Rocha.
Grantski testified at the 2004 blockbuster trial of Laci’s husband, Scott Peterson, who was found guilty of double murder and remains on death row pending appeals.
Grantski was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and lived in Nebraska before heading west with his family as a young child and settling in Sacramento, said his sister, Donna Barnhart.
In 1967, Grantski, a US Navy intelligence technician, was injured during a ferocious attack on his spy boat, the USS Liberty, by Israeli war planes and torpedo boats in the Mediterranean Sea. Suffering from napalm-singed hands and shrapnel in his backside, Grantski later was awarded a Purple Heart and shared the harrowing story less than a year ago with now-retired Modesto Bee columnist Jeff Jardine.
International politics kept the incident largely in the background, Grantski and others believed. But he and other members of Laci’s family were thrust in the spotlight after she vanished on Christmas Eve 2002, sparking a massive search.
On the witness stand, Grantski — an avid fisherman — said Scott Peterson’s fishing alibi was fishy. Endowed with a quick wit, Grantski brought a light moment to the dour courtroom when an attorney asked if he or Scott had caught anything the one time they fished together, a year before Laci disappeared.
“It’s wasn’t a very good day. That’s why they call it fishing, not catching,” Grantski said.
He gave a thumbs-up to Bee reporters when jurors returned a guilty verdict, and later discussed how his views against the death penalty earlier in life had changed with the emotional trauma of losing a daughter.
“We don’t believe in random killing, but some people deserve to die,” Grantski said in November 2016, sharing frustration at long delays for executions in California, including that of Scott Peterson. “He’ll probably be there long after I’m gone,” Grantski said then, in a previously unpublished musing.
Grantski’s only son from a previous marriage, Darrin, died in 2008.
The family expects to have a small graveside service next week at Burwood Cemetery, with details coming in a formal obituary, Sharon Rocha said.
“The last thing he said to me was, ‘I’m so tired; I just want to go to sleep.’ And he did,” Rocha said.
Garth Stapley: 209-578-2390
This story was originally published April 10, 2018 at 4:01 PM with the headline "He helped raise Laci Peterson. Now he will be buried next to her."