Stapley: Chandra Levy, Scott Peterson — Modesto grief stories — still sell books
Looks like the self-anointed “most controversial forensic pathologist” in the country is once again relying on Modesto’s long-ago grief to sell another book.
Cyril Wecht, who consulted in the separate murder cases of Laci Peterson and Chandra Levy, cited both in the subtitle of his 2006 book, “Tales From the Morgue.” His role in the Peterson case rises once again in promotions for Wecht’s latest offering, “The Life and Deaths of Cyril Wecht: Memoirs of America’s Most Controversial Forensic Pathologist.”
Levy was 24 and preparing to return to Modesto from a federal internship in Washington, D.C. when she went missing in 2001, and Peterson was 27 and pregnant with her first child when she vanished from her Modesto home on Christmas Eve 2002.
Both generated uncommon intrigue across the United States and beyond, largely because of the men in their lives. Levy was secretly involved with then-Congressman Gary Condit, who was not implicated in her murder, and Peterson’s husband, Scott, was convicted of double-murder in 2004.
Levy’s family retained Wecht to examine her remains when they were recovered from a Washington park a year after she disappeared, and Scott Peterson’s family retained him after the remains of Laci and Conner Peterson washed ashore in San Francisco Bay four months after she went missing.
Before Scott Peterson’s arrest, Wecht had been telling TV viewers how the remains of a pregnant woman and fetus could naturally separate with decomposition. He surmised that Scott had weighted his wife’s body, and that he did not hesitate to say he had fished nearby because “he fully expected that it would remain at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.” Wecht also speculated that Laci was killed in her home and that her husband “conjured up” his Christmas Eve fishing alibi after she was dead.
But Wecht changed his tune after joining Scott’s celebrated defense team led by Mark Geragos. In “Tales,” Wecht concluded that the trial lacked two “significant items: any direct evidence linking Scott Peterson to his wife’s murder and a courageous jury willing to put aside community attitudes and pressures.” In their own book, seven jurors said public opinion had nothing to do with the many months of evidence presented to them in court.
As a Modesto Bee reporter, I sat through and covered that entire trial. Geragos never called Wecht to testify. Reporters suspected that Wecht would refuse to twist the truth under oath, and that Geragos knew it.
To my mind, Wecht’s most significant contribution to the case was inglorious, and probably lost to most people’s memory.
In 2003, before Scott Peterson’s preliminary hearing in Modesto (and before proceedings were moved to Redwood City), my partner, John Cote, and I got wind that Wecht and distinguished criminologist Dr. Henry Lee were scheduled to view evidence at a crime lab in Ripon. While waiting in the public lobby, the defense team openly discussed a wild theory — that satanists had snatched Laci for her unborn baby — as John scribbled notes and our photographer snapped hundreds of frames.
One of Geragos’ junior attorneys noted the proximity of points where human remains were recovered to bizarre, sickening drawings on a barren peninsula inhabited by vagrants. John tracked down some of the artists, who laughed at the suggestion that their work was linked to the occult. I polled experts on sacrificial rites, and we delivered a balanced report.
Geragos fired the lackey attorney, apologized to Laci’s mother and the satanist theory never resurfaced, except on true crime shows.
Wecht, now 90, beat criminal corruption charges in 1979 and again after the Peterson trial, in 2008. His lawyers said both were politically motivated cases.
Scott Peterson awaits upcoming hearings to determine whether he’ll get a new trial because a juror was untruthful in information she provided before she was picked, among other issues. Meanwhile, prosecutors say they will seek to reinstate his death sentence, which last year was reversed because of unrelated errors the judge made in 2004 while selecting jurors.
This story was originally published May 7, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
