Today, we are re-releasing our episode on Los Angeles's Griffith J. Griffith. It's a wild ride from Ireland to the US, to California, to Los Angles, to prison.
Today, we are re-releasing our episode on Los Angeles's Griffith J. Griffith. It's a wild ride from Ireland to the US, to California, to Los Angles, to prison.
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of State of California versus Ortho James Simpson case number ba-097
[Music] what your country can do for you and
what you can do for your country [Music] welcome to Doom to build the podcast
where we always have allergies I'm far as I'm joined here by my co-host Taylor hi Taylor hello I'm taking an allergy
pill right now no Taylor looks like she's having allergy situations going on and I also
have allergy situations going on and we also got a chance to hang out for the first time in
since January right yeah you're in Austin yeah yeah so that's pretty cool it was
very fun we went to a nice steakhouse in La Quinta and my daughter was sick but my son came and he had a great time yeah
gave gave him some business cards he loves them and it has the most this the
restaurant that we went to the steakhouse we went to is called LG's Prime Steakhouse and LG is the name of
the or the initials of the founder who has long since passed I think he passed in 2008 but they have this adorable pic
painting of him in the lobby it's like a room it's like a I would give it like a romancy kind of vibe like it's like a
modern edgy looking Steakhouse it's a nice steakhouse you know yeah but then there's this one painting of this very
very feeble looking old man wearing a Christmas sweater of some kind it's a definitely a Bill Cosby sweater you know
the civilian Bill Cosby sweater yeah different different ramifications back then but yeah it exactly that was okay
it stands out it is a painting that stands out amongst the modern artwork they have there so it was fun though
yeah very very fun and now we're back home I'm in Austin you're in Joshua Tree
and you're about to leave again for LA right yep I'm going to leave a little bit after this I have any impact yet but
I'll get to it Let's Do It um I want to tell you yesterday I was like in my one-on-one with my boss and
Florence is sick my daughter and I've said that and so she's sitting I opened up the bed in my office and on my couch
and she's sitting next to me and I heard this voice like a weird voice and I was like what is that I looked over and she
was listening to our podcast on YouTube and I was like ah and I like screamed her name and I was like hold on I had to
like mute myself and be like Florence that's not for you and she was like I didn't hear any bad words and I was like let's just not that's not me is our
podcast not child appropriate not child appropriate no okay do we need to put a
disclaimer on no it literally it says we have an explicit next to all of our next and
everything there's a big e ooh okay so like you know that's like parents discretion yeah yeah
and your discretion is definitely not appropriate for floating stage okay yes makes sense I'm gonna say knocked for
eight-year-olds makes sense makes sense so let's go ahead and Dive Right In so
if I am doing my math correctly you go first yes so I'll describe when I'm
drinking and then you can segue into yours okay so mine is a beer that I discovered while I
was living in La that I absolutely love I keep drinking it it is shocking how many calories are in this beer but it is
so well worth it it is a Sierra Nevada IPA I'm gonna hold it up with the camera so you can see what it looks like wait
hold on let me screenshot you I made it too okay
oh my God so sorry continue
um if I remember so I looked this up when I first fell in love with it and was like I wonder I mean this feels so
filling I wonder why it was like 360 calories or something it was something in a can yeah yeah that's crazy yeah it
was uh it was uh I need to look it up again just to make sure I didn't even fact checked on that but it was it's delicious and because my story is going
to take place in California I wanted to have a Californian beer to reminisce about the upbeat story I will be telling
later on it's in California too okay so also when me and Taylor were at
this Steakhouse this week I asked Taylor what her topic was on and she is truly committed because she was like I'm not
telling you to my face was like I'm not telling you so that's how close the chest we play these so I did not know
your story was in California uh hoping this is not that we don't have the same one because I'm
tiptoeing into two crime smidge but from a long time ago it was yours in the 1800s no great then where's all that
um yes so I'm drinking well this story has a lot of whiskey in it so I'm just gonna drink like a pint glass of whiskey
for this one which is not great don't do that so um I'll just go ahead and get started so
like we said later today I'm driving to La for work so I decided to take it back to the place that we lived in when we
lived there and talk about Los Feliz the neighborhood and I'm saying Los Feliz
because I lived there for eight years but I know you could also say those fleas whatever we'll I'll Teeter back
and forth and specifically the history of the man who donated the land to make Las Filas Silver Lake and Griffith Park
so this is a story of Griffith J Griffith and his wife Tina Messmer Griffith that is really exciting I okay
so yeah Taylor kind of teed us up so we both lived in La that's how we met each other was through a company work worked
out in LA and we lived really close to each other for most of that time because if you
remember my first apartment your friend is the one who hooked me up with it do you remember that yeah that was Nicole that was wait that's the DTF to call
yeah okay so she knew the guy who was wanting to sublease and I think so that was Los Feliz Los Feliz we're gonna go
back and forth yeah and then after that I moved into the apartment that I had in like Hollywood which is like which was right on the cusp of the most amazing so
we were always kind of just like really close to each other so like we're very familiar with this area the shark house the Jaws house is right there yeah how
exciting okay yeah it's a great it's a great neighborhood I'm gonna talk about that in a little bit too because we'll get some history of the area and a
little bit more about it um do you want to trigger warning that there is some domestic violence that's gonna happen
um in a little bit so um we'll get to that but Griffith J Griffith was born in Wales on January 4th 1850. I have no
idea why anyone would ever name a child that are you gonna name your child silken sand F soaking Sange that makes no sense
Griffith yeah it kind of it kind of worked I mean it depends on what kind of personality type he was but it could
work yeah I mean the J stands for Jenkins FYI but his family immigrated to the United
States in 1865 and settled in Pennsylvania and eventually he moved West to San Francisco so it was upgrade
up bringing in Wales was very poor he was always embarrassed by this so he kind of wanted to have his own American Dream he always wanted to be part of
high society that's something that we'll talk about later so he really had this like social climbing thing in the back
of his head while he was in San Francisco he started working for the newspaper and he wrote stories on the
mining industry so it was like gold rush mining time in California and he learned
a lot about it so basically he was able to flip the knowledge that he got from being a a journalist to being sort of
like a mining consultant and that's how he made his fortune so at 30 years old he made a [ __ ] ton of money being a
mining consultant in California so he's rich pretty quickly good for him yeah so in
1882 Griffith moved to Los Angeles and purchased approximately 4 000 Acres of
the Rancho Los Feliz Mexican land grant so this is the fun part that I'm going to tell you about the history of it you
said 400 right 4 000. 4 000 yeah 4 000 Acres of the yeah so this is the fun
part we're in the history of that area so a land grant is an offering of the sale of land to a specific person or
type of person like a veteran or a rich person for a certain reason or just someone who's willing to farm the land
like homesteading so it was land that they have like reserved for a specific person so California that includes like the
Baja California and part of Mexico was obviously like native man native land for hundreds of thousands of years and I
know I mentioned on on social media like a resume like 90 something percent of human history isn't
recorded so there's so much stuff that happened in California that we will never know about you mentioned last week about South America having such a rich
culture and we don't know anything about it because you know it was a colonized I read something this week that was like
Spanish colonizers would go and see these beautiful cities and then the next time he went a couple years later they'd
be gone because everybody was dead because of all those diseases so real shitty that we don't know more about it
but the land in California is often was often given to Spanish missions and
religious institutions there's a lot of like missions in like San Diego those beautiful like old buildings do you know what I'm talking about like a mission
yeah I mean the Alamo I'm being in Texas the Alamo was a mission like that's what
the in the facade resembles one so exactly exactly So eventually it does get more secular it opens up to more
people so at different times the land that is California now belongs to different people so there's the Spanish
rule with 1769 to 1821 the Mexican era was 1821 to 1846 then there was the
Mexican-American War um and started in May 1846 James K Polk was the president he was the 11th
president and responsible for the most land grabs in of all presidents so with
the Mexican-American War and some treaties he expanded the country by like
1.5 million square miles like a crazy amount like all of California and a big
part of the East so with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago ending the Mexican war on February 2nd
1848 so that war was just to two years long California became a territory of the United States and then between 1847
1849 California was run by the military and there was a government that kind of
stated in 1849 so after 10 months of being its own kind of government California was admitted to the Union as
a 31st state by the Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850 on September 9 1850. so just in California history how
we got here and this is so about 30 years later can't interact real quick yeah so that
means that California as a state has only existed for 170 years yeah is that
wild like there are cultures like there's like ruins in Egypt that are 30
000 years old and as a state California that's weird so much yeah timelines are crazy like I even like you
might look at the Timeline that I made of this is episode 17 so much of it leans towards like even like 1500 to now
that's what we know about and then I know a little bit about up to like maybe zero or a couple things below that but
like really we don't there's so much we don't know it's crazy most of you in history yeah so in 1882 Griffith gets Rancho Los
Felice and then this is where I also have a weird shameful confession so
Susie Izzard is a comedian that I love and she had a bit where she was like oh we're on Lafayette Street because
she's at a club on Lafayette Street in New York City and she goes you know what that means right Americans like you know about Lafayette and I literally at the
time I was watching this like on a DVD I lived in a building called Lafayette and I did not know about Lafayette like I
didn't know about the I still don't know he's he was like a French General who came to America was
really really good friends with George Washington in Hamilton he's in Hamilton they call him the Lancelot of the
Revolutionary set he was like friend she went back and was involved in getting Marie Antoinette overthrown so super
part of a big part of American History so now that I know more I have I literally have like a plate that I found a thrift store on my wall that's like
Lafayette in Washington I'm inspecting the troops of Valley Forge so like I know more now I wish I knew even more I
know I know who he is and I was like I'm so embarrassed about this like I need to
like learn more and it kind of like clicked for me and then it hadn't clicked yet that my passion was like being mad at the way we learned history
but I was embarrassed and then I also just remembered that the L and L Ron Hubbard stands for Lafayette do you know
the way yeah I thought it was literally just eat owl this is an L okay it's just you know
Lafayette Ron Hubbard yeah that name does not flow yeah anyway I [ __ ] did
it again like I live in Los alos and didn't know the history of it so super embarrassed I'm the worst I'm an [ __ ]
is my thing so Rancho Los Feliz was 6647 Acres it was
given in 1795 by Spanish governor Pedro fahis to Jose Vincente fleece like it
was that's his name after a person he was a member of the 1775 to 1776 Ansa
Expedition that brought the first Spanish settlers to California um in 1781 he was one of the four
soldiers who guarded the settlers they founded the settlement El Pueblo de Nuestra Sonora La Reina De Los Angeles
which means the town of our Lady the Queen of Angels which literally became Los Angeles oh wow so like
what so Jose Vicente Feliz was one of the founding fathers of Los Angeles and then
he had this Ranch called the Los Villas Ranch okay so a mixing chronology it
sounds like the land grant was for Los Feliz territory yeah that was later
that that happened later so Los Angeles was founded first okay
so Los Angeles on first so I kind of skipped around a little bit but anyway so this is more about the the land that
Griffith ends up getting so the land remained in the Los Feliz family until the 1800s when they sold it and then
Griffith got 4 000 Acres of it in 1882. so that's how it works um I know I said this already but like I
[ __ ] love it there I know we've talked we just talked about it I love where I live look at this is where where
I live in Joshua Tree I love it here but I loved living in New York City that was amazing it would be a dream to have an apartment there that was like nice but
at my absolute dream house would be in like the hills of those feelings like I um it's so beautiful there's that murder
house there's a there's the Frank Lloyd Wright house that was used in Vincent Price's House on Haunted Hill and in an
S Club 7 video and there's one by his son that shark house where the Black Dahlia may have been murdered that one's
so cool and um when I had both of my kids I got like you know three months off with them and we would just go on
walks just through those Hills by those like beautiful houses I listened to a lot of Korean Karina longworth's haunted Hollywood so you know I was just like
right right it sounds so Charming it's so Lush it's so green it feels weirdly private
given the fact that it's a part of Los Angeles you are a street away from some
of the best hiking trails mountainous regions possible it's our Hill technically but still absolutely
gorgeous in Griffith Park and then little Doms was like my favorite
favorite restaurant it is so old tiny classic Italian
[Music] I went there the day the day that Prince died um I had dinner with friends there and
they had like a purple cocktail you could buy it was spicy yeah they have a wonderful Zoo the LA Zoo is in that area
now it's great my kids love that Zoo there's that terrifying old Zoo do you ever look at that yeah because that's
where the haunted hayride always was it went through the old Zoo remember and it was like
yeah I totally forgot about that one that was so if I would do that a couple times yeah the zoo has like really small
enclosures because it was like yeah it was like the zoo before they had like animal rights so you can you can go
visit it and like sit in the enclosures which is crazy also you remember Florence had her birthday party there well over that bouncy house and one of
the carousel so the carousel was actually built in San Diego but it was moved there in 1937. so do stuff right
so it's a lot of cool stuff there it's great it's a dream so now it belongs to it's 1880s it belongs to Griffith J
Griffith and he wants to be very popular in La Society he's Rich he wants to you know
be the guy but people think he's annoying they're a little bit like he's new money he's kind of like I don't know
like they don't love him so he's having a hard time like getting into these circles so in comes the massmer family
of California they are from France um like the also Lorraine area which is where my people are from between France
and Germany the patriarch was Louis Messmer he was another founding father of La you could say something like that
like he was he laid the first sidewalk he built hotels so another like prominent man in Los Angeles so
La was indigenous and Spanish then had the Ranchos and now then it was American then it was like a post-world War II
boom and then now it is now but this is sort of the American part and Lewis Mesmer is in the top ranks
um he has a daughter named Mary Agnes Christina Messmer her name is Tina she was born February 29 1864. so Tina you
know grew up in Los Angeles she had money from her parents but she actually had her own fortune because they had a
family friend Andre spritzwalter and he left her money in his will so she's independently wealthy as well
for what it's worth she was Catholic and griffith was Protestant so I wrote A Tale As Old As Time
like obviously that's gonna be yes yes which is capulets and the montagues yeah
so there are rumors that some of her family and friends were like this dude's new money he's kind of annoying like he
really wants to be rich everyone can tell like I don't know if he's like the one for you but Tina marries him anyway so Griffith and Tina get married they
have one son his name is vandal he will eventually be on the police commission in La so he does pretty well
for himself there isn't a lot about him but find a grave says that he ran away from home at certain points which I
think is fair because I don't know why I'm sorry I'm sorry what were you referencing just there kind of grave
what does that mean it's like a website where you can well this is that's the only place that I had sought information
about him but you can go to findagrave.com and put in like anyone who has a grave and they'll tell you where it is or I guess it's probably
maybe not anyone but like fantasy ball wow I've never heard of this oh my God Aaron Morin died on this day
in 2017. she played um oh my God Ron Howard's sister and um
Joanne in Happy Days yeah and Happy Days Joni yeah Tony yeah it's on the website
I don't know why whatever you can spend a lot of time with find a grave apparently do that later yeah
so Tina angry friends are married they're doing rich people [ __ ] in Los Angeles the mining is essentially
passive income so just have a lot of money December 16 1896 Griffith and his wife
Tina gave 3015 Acres of the ranch Los Feliz to the city of Los Angeles for use
as a public park he called her Christmas present and after accepting the donation the city
passed an ordinance to name the property after him so that's why it's called Griffith Park you also can see a there's a statue of
him still outside outside of it as well yeah I remember so here's what he said about it quote
it must be made a place of rest and relaxation for the masses a resort for the rank and file for the plain people
I consider it my obligation to make Los Angeles a happy cleaner and finer City I wish to pay my debt of Duty in this way
to the community in which I have prospered that's great I love it thank you I'm definitely a plain person and I
loved it yeah um yeah it's great and he also like put in the stipulations that like if they
ever tried to make it into anything else besides the park that his family could take it back so like he really wanted to keep it apart which is great but it's
still a park so even all this has happened he still doesn't feel as popular as like he wants to feel and that's sort of like one of the red flags
is he just like needs the social status like more than normal people even though he has the money he wants the fame and
now he doesn't feel like he's being like treated the right way after giving all this land so he starts to kind of go
insane like he starts to get really really paranoid and mostly it's because he starts drinking probably comes a big
part of it so he drinks like so much whiskey every day and it's like
things people are trying to poison him he thinks people trying to kill him he thinks the pope wants to kill him he
thinks his family wants to kill him he's just like having all these paranoid delusions and he's in like a really terrible place
and I'm sure he's just like jostling around a giant empty cavernous living room as well yes exactly so he's
like living in a mansion you know and just like thinking that everybody's out to get him it's definitely like a nightmare in that house because he's a
yelling and accusing everybody of everything you know he's probably just be happy being rich you know you don't
be famous sounds kind of annoying just like that so many famous people say like I miss the moment when I could just go
get like a coffee in public yeah yeah over like staring at you totally
but he still wants it that's his thing in September on September 3rd 1903 so
Vandal their son is 15 they've been married for a while they are vacationing in Santa Monica at the Arcadia hotel
which doesn't exist anymore but they're in Santa Monica like on vacation Tina was alone in the room when Griffith came
in with a loaded gun and he's definitely drunk definitely like losing his mind he made her get on
her knees and he had a note card with some questions written down like pre-written down and he asked them to
her he said he asked her if she had been involved in killing Andre Ritz
um the person that she had inherited the money from and she was like no of course not I would never have done that like if she she asked her yes or she had
poisoned him she was like no he asked her if she had been poisoning him and she was like no I would never hurt you
like of course I haven't been doing that during this she's praying because he's like got a gun pointing at her head and
then he asked her if she'd been faithful and she said yes of course I've been faithful and then he shoots her in the head and she does not die
the bullet hit her eye socket shattered uh part of the bone and then part of the bone and the bullet went up into her
skin and ended up under her skin between her skin and her skull her eye was destroyed she asked him why
he shot her and it's confusing and he doesn't know she's still awake oh yeah she jumps out the window because they're
on the second floor she jumps out the window lands on like the roof of like the Portico underneath her breaks her
shoulder crawls along the roof and then goes into the window of another room
that happened to be open crazy I know crazy so the hotel called
the doctor they couldn't even bring her to a hospital that day because it was like 1903 so she was like in like they sedated her took her to a hospital they
weren't sure if it's gonna survive but she survived she had obviously like a lot of facial scars but she survived
Griffith was arrested for attempted murder his lawyer claimed that he was insane because of the drinking and that
seems kind of fair because he was definitely like losing his mind and the paranoia had
been getting like worse and worse and worse Tina testified that everything that had happened when she did she had a
black veil over her face it was a really great Court drawing of it she had a veil hiding her face and then she had to go
to each member of the jury and lift the veil and show them what he had done to her yeah so each person like saw her
like weird eye socket he ended up being charged with assault with a deadly weapon sentenced to five
years in prison and a five thousand dollar fine that seems light I know but he didn't he was charged with attempted
murder but got or whatever but they ended up getting a solid deadly weapon wow okay in 1904 Tina was granted a
divorce and full custody of Vandal Griffith sell to pay for his education like child support and stuff she went in
to get the divorce and the judge was like why do you want a divorce and she was like well he shot me in the face and the judge was like done and it was like
a record it took four and a half minutes for the judge to to get for that yeah
she goes on like lives with a family she died in 1948 at the age of 84. so they never they never had contact again
Griffith served two years and then was released he has the world's best mug shot I don't know if you want to Google
it I'll put it in the thing it's like it's so good he came out sober and was
like well I'm still Rich so he still tried to like be a part of La Society he
tried to give money to LA to build an observatory and a Greek Theater the city accepted the money but the park
commission was like no like you can't I don't want to build those things under your name because you tried to kill your
wife so let's stop taking money from this guy but of course this mug shot is incredible it's incredible but he looks
like so annoyed he looks like a lobotomy patient he looks like Elmer Fudd yeah
you think yeah they all kind of look like that back then right yeah yeah it's pretty great so he tried to give the
money to the city they said no but of course there is a Griffith Observatory and there is a Greek Theater so he
willed the money to the city to build them so after Griffith died on July 6 1919 of liver failure he willed the
money to the city and the city did build the observatory which is awesome and the
Greek Theater which is also awesome he is interned at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and if you stand at his grave
you can see the Griffith Observatory that's very cool I love the observatory it's such an iconic piece of La
architecture that's it that is really interesting
obviously obviously people had a handle all this stuff it's just like yeah it's weird I mean I lived there seven years I
never once thought of it because it's interesting because the character of Los fleas is so
vastly different than Echo Park Silver Lake or all these other places the reason I think it's so different is the
park is there the park is so because I mean Silver Lake has Silver Lake but
it's different it just doesn't have the same yeah Park is like isn't even the right word like you said like it's a kills like
it's 4 000 Acres it's not like it's huge you know there's there's tons
of like hiking trails and stuff to do there's horses and there's like oh there's a little cafe and like it's just
like such a beautiful a beautiful space and it's not it's not like flat like Central Park it's like
Hills you can go on like hikes and you can also drive it for the top and the observatory is awesome we went with our
daycare one time and the kids all saw like a um show about the Stars like inside of it
um Leonard Nimoy is the um the narrator of that yes yes I saw the fireworks
there on Fourth of July we were like up halfway up the hill and we could see them like all over the city it was beautiful so it's such a great place so
super grateful that it's there but pretty wildlife of the Griffiths and while that we like know we know his name
from the park but we like don't know that he also tried to kill his wife and like kind of went crazy and yeah I've
only almost died twice while hiking and one of those times was in 20 19 in Griffith Park
die well because I shouldn't I was Ill prepared so I didn't take enough food with me I didn't take enough I I got
those goo packs it was like they just stuffed them on my um in my backpack and I was like I'm never gonna have these
they were in there for like a year I literally ate all of them on that one hike because I was just I'm gonna die if I don't get down soon this is awesome
I'm glad you survived I know I'm glad I survived too everything's going swimmingly well Taylor thank you for
sharing that story I'm gonna transition us over to the True Crime side of today's stories and through the power
and magic of audio editing nobody's gonna know that I totally screwed up the original link for the for this call
perfect so I uh I'm heading back into spousal death
territory today right it'll be a really exciting one so this one's a pretty Infamous one it's
kind of long ago enough to where you know I don't know it doesn't hit as hard as some of the more recent ones I do I'm
gonna cover someone that gets confused with somebody else I covered already in the past so you know it's California and
you know it this guy gets confused with somebody else in the past Taylor do you know who I'm talking about is that Peterson yeah
the cool guy himself the coolest coolest dude in the world that blonde the blonde cool dude yeah I'm ready
this case like I said it's while ago this case is from 2002 but it received renewed attention recently when Some
Dream misconduct during the during Scott's original trial was discovered yeah and the sentence was appealed it's
like literally just happened yeah like five six months ago so it's
pretty recent but spoiler alert Scott is still in jail so the latest attempted Freedom also didn't work so the best
let's get into our main characters starting starting with the man himself Scott Peterson at the time of these
crimes Scott was 30 years old he was originally from San Diego his parents had six kids in total but Scott was the
only one they had together so a lot of halves oh okay siblings I feel like
that's okay yeah totally yeah because I mean what two three and then there's one that you have together
so Scott one thing to his credit is he was a born golfer he was incredibly
incredibly good at golfing he consistently ranked near the very top of golfers in his age bracket and even won
a golf scholarship eventually to Arizona State University cool okay so here's
where I'm gonna start in on my editorial stance on my pains of this guy
right off the bat with like two things that annoy me okay Arizona State University
[Laughter] and being exceptionally good at golf at
a young age oh my God that's so funny tell me why
okay so during this time period when Scott would have been at ASU Playboy
magazine ranked it as a top party school in the country I knew that about it yeah okay
I just picture fraternities frap Bros I picture a lot of popped collars
yes you know yeah I feel I mean I I it it was always
portrayed as a place to me that you don't necessarily go to to learn
I don't know if that's really true but that was the reputation and probably because of that article you mentioned
well it's also self-selecting right so like if if Playboy says it's a party school then who goes to that school
exactly yeah there's not a lot of Einsteins graduating from ASU oh maybe look if you went to ASU God
bless you maybe it's turned into a good school now but it's just like when I think about it I just think of like girls in bikinis and guys pouring
terrible beer on them I don't think about like academics and rigor of that sort yes when it comes to the golf bit
I will admit a I don't play golf I've tried it I don't like it
and I will admit that I'm actually really impressed by people who are really really good at golf because it is so difficult to get good at it is
deceptively hard to golf have you ever golfed Taylor um I have like mini golf I've never like
actually golfed it's so hard it's like yeah you're you're using a stick to hit a tiny ball
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of yards towards a tiny tiny little hole with like a bunch of [ __ ] in the middle of it with trees and like sand traps and
lakes that usually have alligators in them like it's crazy difficult so it's actually really impressive when someone's really good at it my issue is
he was his that was really good too he was beating his dad at golf by the time he was 14 years old which
it's just weird is it is it is that
is that boy it can be grown-up sized I don't know I feel like but like like I
don't know if I I don't so again I don't have kids so I don't know what this is like but I'm like go go wrestle go go play baseball go play
basketball go to theater school like golf why why why is your socialization
activity in your athletic endeavors putting you in the same category as 67
year old dentists like I go hang out with your own type like hang out with your own type that sounds
really bad I have to edit that out oh my God So Okay Tiger Woods term professional by
the age of 20. so I feel like you know he was obviously I mean I didn't watch the movie but like obviously he was like
very stressed out his whole entire life but he um definitely did it his whole life this Serena and Venus Williams
turned Tennis Pros at the age of 14. like but you don't think that tennis is
different than golf tennis and golf are both very Posh Sports has ever been to a tennis match
have you you've never been to a tennis match no okay do you know who like some of the better tennis players are yeah
okay are any of them 68 years old no okay so you're saying everybody's old
in golf yeah well but that gives them a long time to be that means I don't care this
isn't it's been a hell to die on it I get it I get it to me though to me though it's just like there's something about him where it's like you tie ASU
and the golf thing you're just like I mean if you already don't like him then like that's gonna yes that might put you
over the top indeed okay I'm Gonna Keep hopping on the golf thing because he was crazy good at this so when he was at ASU because again he
got a scholarship to ASU for golfing and he was in the same golf team he was on
the same golf team as Phil Mickelson who if you don't know is probably one of the most famous and recognizable golfers in
the country yeah he's like it's Tiger Woods Phil Mickelson basically
Scott got kicked off the team because he took a kid named Chris couch who was also on the team drinking when Chris was
underaged and Chris's dad complained because you know he complained to the coach of the golf team and got Scott
kicked off the team because he was just a helicopter dad right he was like my kids trying to become good at golfing
and you have another golfer on this team who's just taking a kid out getting him hammered he's a bad influence kicking this guy out of the team which he did
yeah Chris was actually really good so he also ended up becoming a professional golfer on the PGA tour Scott was in the
same ranks as these two professional golfers wow I mean that's impressive
despite all the show I literally just talked well that's what I mean
nobody said I'm right I can I can talk [ __ ] so later he would bounce around to a few
other universities because at that point he got kicked out of ASU because the golf scholarship went away when he got kicked off the team he eventually would
graduate with a degree in agricultural business that was what he focused on while he was in college Scott worked at
a restaurant and while working at that restaurant he met a girl named Lacey Denise Roca I think it's Roca it's
r-o-c-h-a Rocha oroka it's Roca right yeah okay she was also called sooner
this time and she was studying Horticulture horticulture the two would get friendly and eventually start dating they'd move in
together and in 1997 got married it was pretty quick turnaround time yeah and they're really young and
they're really young super super young Scott would take a job selling fertilizer and well I I'm sorry I wrote
I think he took a job for a company that manufactures fertilizer I don't maybe he
was like back of half back of a house doing pnl statements or he was selling fertilizer I'm not 100 sure
he made good money it sounds like he made about five thousand dollars a month and that was in like 1997 money so it that's probably like ten thousand
dollars a month now yeah totally uh Lacey took up substitute teaching and that was kind of their their lives
around this time they would also buy a house in Modesto California and two
years later Lacey would get pregnant with a due date that will become relevant later on of February 10 2003.
in November of 2002 Scott would meet his future mistress do you remember her name
no Amber Frye fried yeah who he told was single he
told her he's single when they met so obviously December 23 2002 would be the last time
anyone would see Lacey alive we know that we know that she was alive up till
8 30 p.m on December 23rd of that day because her mom in her spoke on the phone and her sister
saw her in person in the hair salon she worked at so December 23rd 2002 8 30 PM last time
she's ever heard of again so I'm going to get into what Scott's versions of the events are
but let's start with what we know for sure because Scott's version is a little wishy-washy
on April 13 2003 so just under four months from her disappearance a couple
was walking near the shores of San Francisco Bay when they stumbled on the decomposing body of a late term male
fetus on the shore I know I know I read that and was just like oh like it's so
clinical you know it just I don't know it sounds worse saying it that way it does that's awful
the next day so April 14th someone else found the body of a woman woman washed
up about a mile from where the fetus was discovered her head and her limbs were missing oh
four days later DNA testing would confirm that these were the bodies of Lacey Peterson and the son that they had
decided to name Connor they were obviously autopsy to mostly everything came back inconclusive
they've been in the water for so long you know it's tough to nail things down how did he get out of her
yeah so this is this is the part that's kind of gross um
during the autopsy it was clear that her cervix was intact so something ripped her stomach open
and the baby was extracted that way like an animal or like an animal or like
maybe there's like underwater water flow happening that like just smash her against a rock and then it's severed
like I mean look this is the ocean there's like 80 million ways to be killed by it and so it could have been
an animal it could have been just currents and rocks and things like that oh my God but they the only thing that
they do know for sure is the baby died in utero so Lacey died
baby dies they go in the water somehow some way definitely not through natural
birth her the baby is extracted from her body wow her body was really badly
messed up her body was really messed up so like she had all kinds of broken everything like I said her limbs were missing yeah there was no assumptions
that the person who killed her took her limbs or did this themselves this is all natural like well natural it was all
nature that did this oh that's like is that the beach that where like feet always come on I'm sure I I so it is the
same Coast it's the same Coast but I think that that beach is actually in Canada so then you got it a little further north and it's up there near BC
area Vancouver area that makes sense yeah yeah and that's just because of the same thing because like people die in
the water and then like their whole body gets ripped apart with their feet stay in their shoes is that what happens yeah
it's because like the shoe that kind of protects your foot so while like the rest of your body is getting eaten by
animals and like busted along rocks and stuff like eventually your ankle will break off but your foot will stay in
your shoe and the shoe will float away yeah there was so many clinical things that were going on here so apparently
the reason the kid wasn't so messed up was because it didn't it was still
wrapped around the um the sack and everything the sack
we're so scientific here whatever it's called that was still there placenta yeah so the baby was actually weirdly I
mean this even been dead for like four months in the ocean and it would they could still figure out all the details of it Lacy they couldn't like that was I
mean she was just goo at that point yeah not good yeah Scott told police so here we're getting
into his side of it so Scott told police that the morning of December 24th remember last year was heard of was the
23rd he left to go golfing and Lacey was watching a Martha Stewart show
he said he came home later that afternoon found the house empty and Lacey's stepfather would ultimately
be the one that ends up reporting Lacey missing to the police so Scott isn't even the one who did it also like
isn't it Christmas plans it was Christmas Eve yeah I said
people must be like expecting her to come over for Christmas or something yeah well so I'm gonna get into there's
um the Peterson Family does a lot of bending over backwards to try and find justifications or wise innocent that
your point you're raising is one of those points that they all sort there's a whole separate section about this
I also have some various look into new yeah I would love to hear them because it is it is the lack of evidence here is
very very interesting yeah so two lead detectives Alan Brock
brockini and John Bueller went to the house and immediately suspected Scott they would you know obviously they're
going to spread the spouse initially but they would say that he didn't seem very concerned he seemed kind of
disinterested like he was kind of aloof like he didn't seem like someone was like my eight-month pregnant wife is
gone and tomorrow's Christmas right you should be worried you should be more worried it gets so gross the story gets
so gross later on uh Scott would say that he wasn't golfing he was actually fishing that day so his story changes
which is suspect interestingly Lacey's parents initially
defended Scott on all this stuff they had they had his back on all this they're like there's no way Scott did it
it took a while for them to slowly change their tune one of the reasons they changed their tune is that it was uncovered in mid-January about a month
after The Disappearance so like maybe three weeks after disappearance that Scott had engaged in three extra marital
Affairs including Amber fry so he was constantly cheating on her basically totally
you're gonna say something uh I'm just thinking like if you are like if you are telling the
truth your story doesn't change because it's the truth you know and if you're like saying a
bunch of stuff that contradicts itself and is weird like it's a it's probably because you can't freaking remember when
what you were gonna say you know what it's funny because I I sort of agree with you but there's there's something consistent about Scott
which is hey he had whatever job he had was very leisurely because this guy
right he's constantly either fishing or playing golf raise up doing white people
activities it's weird it's like he's just bouncing between those two like he I read at some point in his adult life
he'd owned five boats like he was just constantly doing these activities and and I mean so I and part
of me is like I don't know was I fished under it was like golfing I don't know part of it is that too
so again as with the mistress from our Chris Watts story she is kind of the
unsung hero the second this story got attention because of course it did because a lacy
and Scott are good looking white people wait uh yeah you can say it and she's missing and she's pregnant and
there's no evidence of anything so like it immediately went into national attention territory yeah at which point
Amber went to the police and basically pointed out three things said I'm dating Scott
told me is single Scott even told me two weeks before Lacey disappeared that he
is a widower not good yeah yeah which I think Drew Pearson did too
if I remember currently I think Drew Peters also said that his living wife was dead
so Amber agreed to let the police record phone conversations with Scott during one of these calls this is crazy and I
remember this from when it originally happened and they called it I was like oh my God I remember this during one of these romantic calls they
had with each other this is like days after Lacey is missing Scott told Amber that he was in Paris for the holidays
with friends do you remember this yes he was at Lacey's Candlelight vigil
like she's not gonna [ __ ] see that on TV so crazy like what are you talking about
like she's going to find out dude like this one this is what I always say when
in any situation the cover-up is almost always worse than the crime oh my God so stupid because
because it is it is these little spots of details that the jury strung together
to say like because we'll we'll find this out later on there's actually no direct evidence that he did anything to
Lacey it is all you know little things that he did him being an idiot like just
a thousand little things that they tied together like what um it's just so stupid to be like ah I am
in Paris like oh I'm looking at the Eiffel Tower like what a weird thing to say like oh I
decided last minute to fly to Paris with my buddies for Christmas
it's late here well bonjour like whatever an idiot this is something yeah yeah because
given time zones she would have she would have thought it's like 3 A.M for him because I can't like vigil isn't
held at like noon no it's only Candlelight and at that time it's yeah it's just man not good did you ever
watch the show Alias with Jennifer Garner no it was like it's like countdown but very like 90s action show
but she was a spy but she would pretend that she was going to go to San Diego for business but like really she'd like go to China and like do spy things and
come back and I'm like why don't you just say you're going to China for business because you're still trying to have them like call people and
make stuff up like why wouldn't you just be like I have to go China so they would they would think of the time zone I thought that was dumb she was always in
San Diego when like why don't you just tell them where you are or like I don't understand it's funny when you initially said that I thought I'd
probably prefer to say I'm in San Diego than the same in China because you got to answer a lot more questions when you
go to China than when you go to San Diego I guess that seems fair but then it's
hard to keep the truth up anyways Scott isn't an Espionage professional so
he did yeah very few which is another part of our yeah themes yeah so after
the bodies were discovered police put a tracker on Scott's car because they thought he was going to run away to Mexico this is Modesto California he he
was raised in San Diego and he's in the La Jolla area he could easily just hop over to Mexico and just disappear if he chose to that's what they were worried
about I think I mentioned Scott's arrest in one of the previous episodes it might
have been the Chris Watts one but the day of the uh Lacey and Connor's autopsy
so or sorry the days after that autopsy happened Scott decided to go play a round of golf
in La Jolla and it was here this at this round of golf game is when he was arrested
this is so funny to me he dyed his brown hair he'd never dyed his hair he had
never in his childhood teenage years or adulthood died his hair but he did this time he dyed his hair blonde he had
fifteen thousand dollars in cash in his car he had survival gear camping gear a ton of extra clothes multiple cell
phones two IDs he had his own ID and his brother ID and his brother looks kind of like him
and he went golfing this is all found in his car and he goes golfing which is just
phenomenal that's all all stuff that innocent people do yeah exactly it's like it's like
you're obviously not gonna get out on what is it what is it when they give you when they let you out on cash Bill Bond
parole Bond yeah because like you you clearly have all the signs of someone who's about to start about to make a run
for it he ends up getting charged with two counts of first-degree murder and pleads
not guilty his trial started on June 1 June 1st 2004 which would have made it one of the
first major TV trials so this would have been seven years ahead of Casey Anthony and nine years ahead of Jodi Arias other
two massive TV trials it's again worth noting there is absolutely nothing
directly tying Scott to the deaths of Lacey and Connor nothing like there's no
camera footage there's no confession there's no he told me hearsay Alabama
none of that which is crazy he was just acting weird about it the whole time but we don't but
there's no like here's what happened which is like like is he a genius
no but what happened that's crazy we don't
know what happened yeah we really don't know what happened we have we have a lot of different pieces of puzzle we can put
together so process the prosecution said Scott created four homemade cement
anchors and tied those to Lacey's body and dumped her in the ocean again her body was discovered four months after
she was in the ocean probably the bottom of the ocean until her
until her limbs came off and then she floated the top so there's nothing left there's nothing left to like oh she died
of asphyxiation like what she's cut oh she's wide open
so they don't know they don't even know have a cause of death for really wow the defense had a host of arguments uh they
said that sonar equipment used to find the anchors couldn't find the anchors they said that some random prostitute
killed Lacey they said that the baby found was full term which would have meant that she had been kidnapped and
that she'd been held by somebody which would have precluded Scott they're basically throwing whatever they
could Coulda trying to defend him like there really wasn't much to it The Prostitute thing was somebody who was
stealing their mail but that started happening like two months after Lacey disappeared and Scott reported eventually whatever he reported that
yeah I didn't report Lacey exactly and yeah like I said my contrast prosecution really couldn't tie him to
the murders in any way uh they just had all his circumstantial evidence that pointed to him having some involvement
there are some things that he did that indicated he knew she wasn't going to come home so for example days after she
disappeared he added porn channels to his home cable setup
which would indicate well nobody's gonna know this is here because nobody's coming home he sold her car the car that
she had she had like basically a generic mom car he sold them bought himself a pickup so he was like well we're not gonna need this car that has room for
back seat in it so let's get rid of that one and then to see recordings of Amber Fry were also played out in court which
definitely did not make him look good no so find myself the start of his trial Scott would be convicted of first-degree
murder for Lacey's death and second-degree murder for Connors who was ultimately sentenced to death by lethal injection
in 2020 Scott appealed his sentence due to a number of proclaimed heirs with his
trial including improper jury handling and allowing of evidence that should not have been admitted this went up to the Supreme Court of
California which I've held as a conviction but they overturned the death sentence because there was basically a
death penalty question during the jury selection period that the trial judge allowed in with without proper follow-up
and they said that that could have been enough to get him the death sentence if
it wasn't for the judge not asking proper follow-up questions basically it doesn't really matter but
like during during the sentencing phase they'll ask the jury like or during the
jury selection phase they'll ask the people on the jury hey how do you feel about the death penalty and somebody says I'm opposed to it no then you're
supposed to follow up with that and say does does that mean that you would be in incapable of rendering the verdict or
the the sentence if the law proclaims that's just and you're supposed to ask
that and if they say no I wouldn't be able to do what the law says because that's how I feel about it then they kick you off but he didn't do that you
just stopped with like I don't believe exactly kicked him off so so basically they only got Pro death Advocates so it
makes sense the conclusion makes sense sure obviously there's more uh appeals
that are flying through all this there's another one that went to the California Supreme Court in 2015. it was based on the fact that a jury a juror lied during
jury selection with the court decided that wasn't enough and so they basically said that yeah the juror did not tell
the full truth but it was immaturely the case anyways so he's still in prison they they took
away his death penalty and rendered a sentence of life imprisonment so he's gonna stay there he's not up for parole
ever and that's probably where he's gonna end up for the rest of his life so on the Scott Peterson is innocent
side of the aisle really it's mostly his family though I'm curious to hear your theories on this as well
they launched an org and a website that's called Scott Peterson appeal.org
which like makes you wonder what is Scott peterson.org because did was that already taken
that's a great question I see it Seeking Justice for Scott Lacey and Connor
yeah so they they described their version of events
and things the state kind of failed to prove the website's actually pretty thorough it's a pretty sizable amount of
content on there and they've actually uploaded the entire his entire trial to a Dropbox folder that you can download
and watch yourself some of the facts they point to are kind of indisputable and do seem odd but
don't necessarily Point towards innocence so to your earlier point
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