Laci Peterson Case

Laci Peterson Case

Additional articles on suspected Satanic cult and ritual murders, below-right:

Prosecutors countered Thursday's leak of information about Conner Peterson's dead body by asking a judge to release the full autopsy reports on the baby boy and his mother, Laci.

MSNBC reported Thursday morning that it had obtained "a portion of the coroner's report on the autopsy on the fetus."

The document states that the fetus was found with 11/2 loops of plastic tape around its neck and had a significant cut on its torso, a cut inflicted after death, MSNBC reported.

The details could suggest that Conner died separately from his mother, who was eight months pregnant when family members reported her missing Christmas Eve from her Modesto home. Her husband, Scott, has been charged with two counts of murder.

Excerpted from the full article at The Modesto Bee:

MSNBC Story: Peterson Baby Had Noose Around Neck

Laci Remains Raise Mutilation Questions

A Laci Peterson Look-Alike 'Debunks' Mistaken Identity

Two people who insist they saw the pregnant Laci Peterson walking her dog after 9:30 a.m. Christmas Eve now have even stronger reason to believe they are right. A woman from the same neighborhood resembles Peterson, was pregnant last year and could have been mistaken for her. But that woman had her baby in October and said she did not walk her dog that day. Scott Peterson, his wife's accused killer, said he last saw Laci at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 24 when he set out from their Modesto home on a fishing trip.

Excerpted from the full article at The Modesto Bee:

Warrant For Peterson Hair

Investigators in California used a search warrant to get a sample from the head of the California man, and to take a full-body photograph to assess the hair on his body. Peterson's hair and goatee were a bleached blond when agents arrested him April 18 after spotting him driving a Mercedes-Benz north of San Diego. Law enforcement sources said he was carrying $10,000 in cash, leading them to suspect he was attempting to flee the country.

Peterson's friend, Mike Richardson, said in an appearance on NBC's "Today" show, "I asked him if he dyed his hair or something and he said that he was swimming in a friend's pool, and it got bleached."

Should prosecutors determine otherwise, the information will deal another blow to Peterson's credibility.

Edited from the full article at WorldNetDaily

After a Long Wait, Laci's, Baby's Bodies Taken from Bay

Investigators Seek Clues About Body Found At Shoreline

Officials at the state crime lab are examining tissue samples taken from two corpses discovered along the Richmond shoreline, inching closer to determining whether the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Laci Peterson could be solved.

The findings of the badly decomposed bodies of a petite female Monday and a fully developed male infant Sunday along the muddy Contra Costa bayshore has reinvigorated an investigation stunted by months of dead ends.

Peterson, 27, was missing for the better part of four months. She vanished Christmas Eve from her Modesto home while her husband was fishing the San Francisco Bay waters off Brooks Island, authorities said. She was eight months pregnant then, expecting a son that she and her husband planned to name Connor.

The woman's body, found front-side down at the water line had been in the Bay for longer than a few days, said Chief Norman Lapera of the East Bay Regional Park District police. Some flesh was visible to investigators, but little more than human bone remained, Lapera said.

The find came just hours after storm-driven waves washed the infant ashore a mile northwest of the woman, officials said. A Richmond Fire Department official said Monday that the umbilical cord was still attached.

The remains were taken to the coroner's office in Martinez, where officials said they were expediting the autopsy. Genetic testing will be used in the process.

Scott Peterson told detectives that he had been fishing the waters off Brooks Island the day he last saw his wife alive. Much of the ire Peterson has drawn from the public has to do with an affair he had with Amber Frey of Fresno. Less than a month after Laci Peterson disappeared, her family withdrew their support of her husband after Frey disclosed her relationship with Scott Peterson.

A source involved in the local investigation said they were previously told about two possible connections Scott Peterson, 30, has to Brooks Island, a short distance from where the woman's body was discovered. The source said that title information for property on the island was discovered on a home computer seized in a search of the couple's house. A judge has ordered search warrants related to the case to remain sealed. -- Edited from the full article

The Peterson case is living up to its promise to be a real circus. Aside from Peterson's ex-girlfriend's choice of legal representation -- the high-profile mother of a Court TV reporter -- now Peterson's defense is fleshing out their claim that Laci and her unborn child were not killed by Peterson but, in fact, were killed by members of a "satanic cult" they claim was lurking in the neighborhood the day she disappeared.

While this claim may (or may not) prove to be spurious, there have been ritual murders done by people claiming to be Satanists or branded as members of a "Satanic cult" by others. The murders in Juarez are believed to be associated with a group practicing some form of Satanism, although members of the official Church of Satan or LaVeyan Satanists would be quick to take offense at this. There were also ritual murders by a so-called Satanist cult in Germany two years ago. Following are links to a few Satanic-cult killing stories as well as the homepage of the Official Church of Satan:

Women March to Call for End to Murders in Juarez

Since 1993, around 300 women have been brutally murdered and another 500 have disappeared in Ciudad Juarez -- a center for maquiladoras (assembly for export plants) and the home of one of Mexico's largest drug cartels. Despite the establishment of a special commission to investigate the murders, numerous police operations and a handful of arrest, the murders continue. Some women's groups suspect a dark motive behind police incompetence. Rumors abound of police cover-ups and possible links to drug-traffickers and satanic cults.

Satanism and Ritual Abuse Archive

Offers synopses of court cases in which there have been allegations of Satanism or ritual abuse.

Satanic Cults Cause Fears in Spain

An investigation into the activities of Satanic cults, undertaken by the Spanish newspaper ABC, has yielded disturbing information about the growth of the cults' activities, and the connection with murders, suicides, and human sacrifices.

Net Closes on Satanic High Priest

The monster of Florence who mutilated his victims for ritual Masses may not be the lowly farmhand tried for the multiple killings but a pillar of Tuscan society. The Monster of Florence, the murderer who preyed on courting couples in the Tuscan woods for nearly two decades and mutilated his female victims with a purposeful precision that long had investigators baffled, has returned to haunt Italy.

Three years after the presumed killer, Pietro Pacciani, died in mysterious circumstances, police in Florence have reopened the case ''in the light of new evidence.'' And the evidence suggests that, while Pacciani may indeed have carried out the murders, or some of them, the real masterminds behind the gruesome killings were a group of ''high society satanists'' who carried out -- and perhaps still carry out -- ''weird rituals that beggar belief'' behind the respectable façades of their Tuscan villas, led by a ''distinguished doctor'' with a ''sick and twisted mind''.

Official Church of Satan

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