The Reel Review
Following a 2004 trial that made headlines around the world, Scott Peterson of Modesto, California was convicted of the shocking 2002 Christmas Eve murder of his eight months pregnant wife Laci and unborn son, Connor. This three-part Netflix crime docuseries recaps the events of the double murder and subsequent trial that quickly grew into a media sensation reminiscent of the 1995 OJ Simpson trial.
Award-winning documentary director Skye Borgman (Abducted in Plain Sight, The Girl in the Picture) thoroughly captures the key facts of this case, presenting them in a concise, fact-based format that also remains sensitive to Laci’s family and friends as well as the Peterson family, which still maintains his innocence. The series accurately portrays Laci as a bubbly, outgoing homebody with lots of close friends and Scott as an increasingly uncooperative suspect, even more so once the traveling fertilizer salesman’s affair with Amber Frey is discovered.
As it turns out, it was Frey, whom the news media initially and incorrectly labeled his mistress (he had actually lied and told her he was single when they started their relationship), whose testimony was critical in securing a guilty verdict. She gets a deservedly sympathetic edit as she relives those unsettling events of more than two decades ago. Borgman also avoids the all-too-often Netflix pitfall of series that are overly drawn out, telling the tale in three succinct episodes, and making it one of, if not the best of the many Peterson docuseries done over the years.
REEL FACTS
• The newly-released Peacock docuseries Face to Face with Scott Peterson includes the first televised interview with Scott Peterson since his 2004 conviction and focuses on his family’s so far unsuccessful efforts to get his conviction overturned.
• In 2024, Scott Peterson was granted a status hearing in response to a request by LA Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization which stated that it had new evidence to support his claims of innocence.
• Documentary director Skye Borgman, owner of Top Knot Films, won numerous film festival awards for her 2019 documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, about an Idaho family terrorized by their pedophile/next door neighbor in 1974.
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