John Marks, the producer of A&E’s The Murder of Laci Peterson, which was made with the cooperation of members of Scott’s family, insisted the series wasn’t an attempt to argue the possibility of Scott’s innocence.
“I just want people to say, ‘What actually happened here?” he says. Amy Savitsky, A&E Senior Vice President of Development and Programming, told People the show “really does give this kind of fascinating full picture, not just of the case itself but set against the backdrop of what was happening in our culture at the time.” And no, she reiterated, they were not trying to exonerate Peterson.
Detectives told NBC News for The Laci Peterson Story: A Dateline Investigation, which aired in April 2017, that, despite there not being DNA or other forensics to explicitly tie Scott to the murder, circumstantial evidence plainly pointed to his guilt.
“He was just calm, like he always was, after they put the handcuffs on him,” Detective Buehler told People about Peterson’s arrest. “When we got him back to the offices, and he had his pool-dyed hair or whatever he said it was, we sat him down. He was not angry. He didn’t ask a whole bunch of questions. The only thing he said was, ‘Is that my wife and son?’ At that point it was sort of like, ‘Come on, Scott.’ So I said, ‘You know the answer to that question.’ Then he did fake sniffles.”