Laci Peterson’s Best Friend Says Scott ‘Love Bombed’ Her at Beginning of Relationship

Laci Peterson’s best friend, Heather Adams, opened up about the early stages of Scott Peterson’s relationship with her late friend, revealing he showed some questionable tendencies at the beginning of their romance.

“When Scott first meets someone, he has to be very showy,” Heather explained during episode 1 of American Murder: Laci Peterson. “Just constant showering of love and affection and gifts and I think the term today would be ‘love bombing.’”

Heather, who met Laci while studying at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, explained that Laci was very “giddy” upon meeting Scott, 49, at a local restaurant and had visited his job multiple times before striking the courage to write her phone number on a napkin.

“I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know about this guy,’” Heather admitted. “You know, flowers all the time, dinners, taking her places. I think very early in their relationship, he took her to Mexico.”

Although Heather admitted “love bombing” wasn’t a term that was used back then, she added, “I don’t think we knew that’s what it was called, but he definitely did that to her, and it worked.”

Sharon Rocha, the mother of Laci, also expressed uneasiness when initially hearing about her late daughter’s new love interest.

“I remember, before I met Scott, Laci was telling me all these things about him,” the matriarch recalled in another scene. “And I remember saying, as her mother, ‘I hope he’s not filling her with crap.’”

Sharon has since reflected on the situation, telling producers that she’s now “learned to go with her gut feeling.”

Laci was eight months pregnant with the couple’s son, Conner, when she disappeared at 27 years old on Christmas Eve 2002. Initially, Scott assisted in the search for his missing wife, but he quickly became the primary suspect in the investigation when it was revealed that he had begun an extramarital affair with a woman named Amber Frey just one month before his wife’s disappearance.

Laci and Conner’s bodies were found four months later in the San Francisco Bay and Scott was arrested four days later on April 18, 2003.

Scott has maintained his innocence throughout the investigation, claiming he was fishing at the time Laci went missing. Following a high-profile trial, Scott was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in 2004 and was sentenced to death row one year later.

Nearly two decades later, the case continues to make its way through the justice system as Scott achieved two significant legal victories in 2020. The California Supreme Court overturned his death penalty sentence in August 2020, citing jury selection errors by the trial judge and granted him the opportunity for a new penalty phase trial. Two months later, the California Supreme Court directed a lower court to reexamine his case to determine whether his guilty verdict should be overturned.

Scott’s death sentence was officially revoked during a 2021 hearing and he was resentenced to life in prison. The convicted murderer is set to break his silence for the first time in nearly twenty years in the Peacock docuseries, Face to Face With Scott Peterson, which is scheduled for release on August 20.