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Police to Spend Second Day Searching Peterson House
Aired February 19, 2003 - 10:07 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: There are new developments this morning in the search for Laci Peterson. Authorities today are again returning to the home that Peterson shared with her husband to look for clues in the case. It is the third such search since the mother- to-be disappeared eight weeks ago.
CNN's Rusty Dornin joins us now from Modesto, California with more on the investigation. Rusty, is Scott Peterson, the husband, officially a suspect? Because it looks like the police are treating him as one.
RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're still saying, Carol, and maintaining all along that he is not a suspect, but they keep saying he has not been eliminated from the investigation. Scott Peterson, of course, did not spend the night at his house last night. The police did seal it off yesterday. You can see that a police car parked in the driveway. That patrol car has been parked there all night long. And in front of that, you can see a pickup truck. Now, that is the new pickup truck that was bought about five weeks after his wife disappeared, but police did impound that briefly yesterday, took it to the station, apparently searched it, but did return it sometime last night.
Now, investigators spent about ten hours at the house yesterday, gathering bags and bags of evidence from both inside and outside the house. They wouldn't say what they were looking for, or what they had collected, although we could see from the outside of these brown paper bags, there were a few labels that said photo albums and phone books and things like that.
Now, police say that they -- although they had a ten-hour search, they're just not quite finished.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOUG RIDENOUR, MODESTO POLICE: You never know when you get into a search warrant, so it just -- you have to go into the search warrant, depending on what you find, and how fast things go during the search. All those are factors on how quick a completion of a search warrant occurs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DORNIN: Now, investigators did bring Amy Rocha, Laci Peterson's sister, to the house midday yesterday. She spent about two hours inside, emerged very grim faced, did not talk to reporters. Police would only say that she was there to help investigators but would not say why.
Now, meantime, Jackie Peterson, Scott Peterson's mother, has been calling news organizations complaining. She claims that police are harassing her son. Modesto Police say this is all the course of their investigation, and that she, of course, has a right to say anything she wants.
Meantime, of course, the focus is again on Scott Peterson. Reporters have been gathering here basically since about 3:00 a.m. Pacific time. We were here also at 3:00 a.m. Pacific time, waiting for investigators to show back up, and as I said, we are expecting them to show up in a little over an hour -- Carol.
LIN: Rusty, do you have any sense at all where this story is going to go? I just want to get your gut feeling on it.
DORNIN: It's very hard to say, Carol, because they're gathering evidence. They want to be very careful because they've been giving the same line all along that Scott Peterson is not a suspect, been giving that line for months. And they are going to proceed very slowly, because whatever they get, they still have to take to the district attorney to make a case. So it really depends on what they're going to find here, whether they are going to be able to make a case. I mean, it could be weeks, it could be months.
LIN: All right. Thank you very much, Rusty Dornin.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired February 19, 2003 - 10:07 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: There are new developments this morning in the search for Laci Peterson. Authorities today are again returning to the home that Peterson shared with her husband to look for clues in the case. It is the third such search since the mother- to-be disappeared eight weeks ago.
CNN's Rusty Dornin joins us now from Modesto, California with more on the investigation. Rusty, is Scott Peterson, the husband, officially a suspect? Because it looks like the police are treating him as one.
RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're still saying, Carol, and maintaining all along that he is not a suspect, but they keep saying he has not been eliminated from the investigation. Scott Peterson, of course, did not spend the night at his house last night. The police did seal it off yesterday. You can see that a police car parked in the driveway. That patrol car has been parked there all night long. And in front of that, you can see a pickup truck. Now, that is the new pickup truck that was bought about five weeks after his wife disappeared, but police did impound that briefly yesterday, took it to the station, apparently searched it, but did return it sometime last night.
Now, investigators spent about ten hours at the house yesterday, gathering bags and bags of evidence from both inside and outside the house. They wouldn't say what they were looking for, or what they had collected, although we could see from the outside of these brown paper bags, there were a few labels that said photo albums and phone books and things like that.
Now, police say that they -- although they had a ten-hour search, they're just not quite finished.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOUG RIDENOUR, MODESTO POLICE: You never know when you get into a search warrant, so it just -- you have to go into the search warrant, depending on what you find, and how fast things go during the search. All those are factors on how quick a completion of a search warrant occurs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DORNIN: Now, investigators did bring Amy Rocha, Laci Peterson's sister, to the house midday yesterday. She spent about two hours inside, emerged very grim faced, did not talk to reporters. Police would only say that she was there to help investigators but would not say why.
Now, meantime, Jackie Peterson, Scott Peterson's mother, has been calling news organizations complaining. She claims that police are harassing her son. Modesto Police say this is all the course of their investigation, and that she, of course, has a right to say anything she wants.
Meantime, of course, the focus is again on Scott Peterson. Reporters have been gathering here basically since about 3:00 a.m. Pacific time. We were here also at 3:00 a.m. Pacific time, waiting for investigators to show back up, and as I said, we are expecting them to show up in a little over an hour -- Carol.
LIN: Rusty, do you have any sense at all where this story is going to go? I just want to get your gut feeling on it.
DORNIN: It's very hard to say, Carol, because they're gathering evidence. They want to be very careful because they've been giving the same line all along that Scott Peterson is not a suspect, been giving that line for months. And they are going to proceed very slowly, because whatever they get, they still have to take to the district attorney to make a case. So it really depends on what they're going to find here, whether they are going to be able to make a case. I mean, it could be weeks, it could be months.
LIN: All right. Thank you very much, Rusty Dornin.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
