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Laci Peterson’s Story Is ‘Still Relevant,’ American Murder Director Says“I want people to walk away from this thinking about [intimate partner violence] in a deeper way.”
“I’m not particularly interested in looking at stories that are very black-and-white,” says Skye Borgman. The award-winning director (Girl in the Picture, Abducted in Plain Sight) has earned a reputation for exploring the nuances of harrowing true crimes that are anything but straightforward. “I like to be able to look at stories with various different layers and not necessarily give answers to things, but rather present a nuanced and a flawed perspective,” she says.
Borgman’s latest docuseries American Nightmare: Laci Peterson applies this impartial gaze to one of the most high-profile cases of the early aughts. On Dec. 24, 2002, Laci Peterson disappeared from her home in Modesto, California. She was eight months pregant at the time. Her husband, Scott Peterson, reported her missing, claiming he’d gone fishing at the Berkeley Marina that morning — Scott said when he returned home, Laci was gone. A massive search effort unfolded in the months following, involving countless volunteers, a headline-hungry media circus, and law enforcement growing increasingly skeptical of Scott’s claims.
Tragically, Conner Peterson’s body was found on April 13, 2003, and Laci’s remains were found nearby the next day. Both were discovered in the San Francisco Bay — less than two miles from the marina. Scott Peterson was arrested five days later and charged with two counts of murder. On Nov. 12, 2004, Peterson was found guilty of first-degree murder for Laci’s death, and second-degree murder for Conner’s death. Scott Peterson was sentenced to death in 2005, but in 2020 the California Supreme Court overturned his death sentence, citing errors in the jury selection process. The court left Peterson’s conviction intact, and he was resentenced to life without parole.
And whether you’re unfamiliar with Peterson’s story or followed along as it unfolded, American Murder: Laci Peterson presents a clear-eyed reexamination of the case.
“Crime has all of these different facets of human nature,” Borgman says. “That’s what really draws me to some of these stories — the opportunity to paint that picture in all the different shades we’ve got in our box of crayons.” Here, the documentarian tells Tudum how she worked with friends and family of both Laci and Scott to craft a series that allowed both sides to share their truths.
How has your interest in Laci Peterson’s disappearance evolved over the years?
At the time, in the early 2000s, I was very interested in it and was following along with it quite closely, and then it kind of went away. I didn’t hear so much about Scott and Laci. It started sort of rumbling and infiltrating the news in the past two or three years, I think — I was seeing things about appeals for Scott, and that’s when I started paying attention again. Then, when the opportunity to do this series came up, I started looking and diving a little bit deeper into research.
True crime continues to grow with each passing year. What are the elements of a case that make you want to create work examining it?
I’m always fascinated by women’s issues. Issues that are specific to women can sort of bleed over with men, too, but women’s issues are always very important to me. I also like really layered stories. I’m not particularly interested in looking at stories that are very black-and-white. I don’t know that those stories really exist — I always think there’s a history that brings a story to a certain place or something that isn’t being told.
There are so many series and documentaries about the Laci Peterson case. How did you think about positioning your work within that broader landscape?
You know, I’m honestly not thinking about how mine stacks up to other documentaries that are out there. I’m really looking … to find something that is compelling to me. I want to find the story and what it is that speaks to me about it. In this particular case, I feel like Laci, and Conner to an extent, have kind of been overshadowed by a lot of the stories that are out there, and I really wanted to have Laci be in the forefront of this story.
I’m always approaching participants from a baseline of being truthful with them. I never want to go in, promise something, and then deliver on something else, because I feel like that’s totally [the] opposite of everything I try to do with the work I do. I also feel like my approach to documentaries is to really hear all of the facts from all of the different sides and put those facts out there. I’m never trying to do “gotcha” interviews. I’m always trying to put forward what would be good about telling their side of the story, how it’s going to impact the documentary, how it’s going to sort of work into the storyline. That’s how I talked to potential participants about what their participation means to the story.
There’s a moment in the docuseries when Laci’s mother, Sharon Rocha, stops speaking mid-statement and seems to be overwhelmed with emotion. When those things happen, what does it look like between those pauses and the next shot?
It’s always different, and it happens a lot. It happens a lot that people just need to take a break. Usually what I find when people need to take a break or step away is that the emotions are just there, sort of overpowering them. They need to do something to kind of feel centered again, and so I just give them the space to do that. Especially with Sharon, I wanted her to feel good about sitting in the chair and what she was telling us. What ended up happening that day is she stepped away, we took a 20- or 30-minute break. We talked to her a little bit, and then she was ready to come back and tell the rest of her story.
Did you originally plan to include Scott Peterson in the series?
It’s interesting, because I was on the fence about whether or not we wanted to have Scott in there. We absolutely reached out to him, and we were in communication with him. He ultimately decided not to participate in the documentary, but I was always kind of like: “Do we want his voice? Do we not want his voice?” And so when he decided not to participate, it wasn’t a big blow to us in any sense. I was perfectly happy with it.
In the series, it’s mentioned that a number of women escaped cycles of intimate-partner violence because of learning about what happened to Laci Peterson. As true crime grows in popularity, there’s a tension between the potential harm of dwelling on these stories versus the potential benefits of continuing to share them. How do you think about the push and pull of telling stories like Laci’s?
Gloria Gomez talks in the film about the media circus and our role in it. It’s my role, too. It’s your role in doing this interview, in telling these stories. I think it’s always a matter of calibration, and I think it’s always a matter of not tipping the scales to a point where it’s an unethical or a Wild West sort of approach, but rather looking at them in a journalistic way and keeping journalism at the forefront of how we tell these stories, being really truthful to the facts and being truthful to the participants — and to an extent, being truthful to ourselves. The Laci Peterson story, it’s incredibly relevant to today’s audience, because this is something that continues to happen. It’s a very, very detailed, evidence-based look at how Laci Peterson disappeared and how Scott Peterson was convicted.
What do you hope audiences take away from American Murder: Laci Peterson?
There’s this statistic that is shocking to me every time I hear it — homicide is the No. 1 cause of death for pregnant women. Every time I say that to people, they tell me absolutely that can’t be true, but it is. And I think we’re able to forget that. Intimate partner violence is something that’s really overwhelming. I want people to walk away from this thinking about that in a deeper way.
Watch American Murder: Laci Peterson on Netflix now.
