Police reclassify Laci Peterson's disappearance as homicide
Thursday March 06, 2003By JIM WASSERMAN
Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO (AP) Modesto Police said Wednesday their investigation into the Christmas Eve disappearance of missing pregnant woman Laci Peterson, 27, has become a homicide case.
Police, reversing more than two months of treating the woman's disappearance as a missing person investigation, declined to provide reasons for the change.
``As the investigation has progressed we have increasingly come to believe that Laci Peterson is the victim of a violent crime,'' said a statement released Wednesday by Craig Grogan, the department's lead homicide investigator.
Although the investigation started as a missing person case, Grogan said, ``We have come to consider this a homicide case.''
Grogan's said that belief has prompted a new $50,000 reward for ``information that leads to her location and recovery.'' Previously, the Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation had offered a $500,000 reward for information leading to Peterson's safe return home to her family.
The police announcement comes two weeks after police conducted a two-day search of Peterson's home. As reporters and hundreds of townspeople watched on Feb. 18-19, police seized 95 items from the modest single-story Covena Avenue house and took them to the department's crime laboratory.
Peterson's husband, Scott, 30, a specialty fertilizer salesman, was not present during the search. Police have also searched two of his pickup trucks, seized two family computers and a boat that Peterson bought shortly before his wife disappeared.
Scott Peterson says he last saw her the morning of Christmas Eve as he left to go fishing at Berkeley Marina. Police continue to say they neither consider him a suspect and not have ruled him out.
Laci Peterson's family released a statement today urging anyone with knowledge of her whereabouts to contact authorities.
The statement read, in part: ``Our family desperately needs to know where she is and what has happened to her. We realize that with every day that passes the possibility of finding her alive diminishes.
``Until we find Laci our lives are in turmoil. We feel as though we can't go on. We can't look beyond today.''
<
On the Net: http://www.lacipeterson.com
(