Poking Holes In Peterson's Story

Scott Peterson spun an elaborate web of lies after he carried out a plan to kill his pregnant wife and dispose of her body — all while carrying on a relationship with his mistress, according to a prosecutor.

Prosecutors revealed in their opening statement that one of the main witnesses they are going to use against Scott Peterson, is Scott Peterson himself, reports CBS News Correspondent John Blackstone. They intend to play wiretapped phone calls, and interviews Peterson did with both the news media and police to show his frequent lies.

Assistant District Attorney Rick Distaso spent much of his opening statement Tuesday laying out the lies Peterson told his family, friends, reporters and his mistress, Amber Frey — in the weeks after his wife's disappearance.

Distaso closed his daylong presentation to the jury of six men and six women with graphic autopsy photos of Laci Peterson and her fetus, a boy the couple planned to name Conner.

Wednesday, the defense will take center stage, reports CBS News Correspondent Steve Futterman. Peterson's attorneys are expected to accuse the Modesto police of conducting a shabby investigation, of ignoring tips that might have led police to other suspects and never considering anyone else as a suspect.

"The defense will have an opportunity to dismantle some of that and say, 'Wait, there's an innocent interpretation for a lot of these things, let's not get carried away, this man is not guilty,'" said Court TV's Beth Karas on CBS News' The Early Show.

Prosecutors allege Peterson killed his wife and dumped her body in the San Francisco Bay — just weeks after buying a boat he told no one about — because of the affair.

The former fertilizer salesman also gave conflicting accounts of his whereabouts and brushed off in-laws who were helping to search for Laci Peterson.

"It shouldn't be enough to prove that he is a killer, but it can be enough to make the jury dislike him," University of San Francisco criminal law professor Robert Talbot told CBS News.

Distaso wants jurors to connect those dots and conclude it was the behavior of a man who killed his wife.

"Ladies and gentleman this is a common sense case," Distaso told jurors. "At the end of this case, I'm going to ask you to find the defendant guilty."

From the moment Peterson called his mother-in-law on Christmas Eve 2002 and said he returned from a fishing trip to an empty house, things didn't make sense.

"He says, 'Mom, Laci's missing,'" Distaso said. "Right then, Sharon Rocha knew that things were very seriously wrong."

By nightfall, family members joined police to investigate a missing person report that turned into a case that captivated the nation.

Their search first focused on a park near the couple's Modesto home, where Laci Peterson, eight months pregnant, used to walk the family's golden retriever before a doctor recommended she stop because of recurring dizziness.

Distaso ticked off what he implied was double-talk that exposed Peterson's duplicity.

Peterson told Rocha he was fishing on San Francisco Bay, but later told Laci Peterson's uncle and two neighbors he had been golfing. He also was unable to tell police what he had been trying to catch.

Defense attorney Mark Geragos has countered that authorities unfairly targeted Peterson from the start, ignoring important leads that didn't fit their theory.

Geragos objected several times to Distaso's presentation, including when the prosecutor said that a hair found on pliers in Peterson's fishing boat irrefutably belonged to Laci. After speaking with Judge Alfred A. Delucchi in chambers, Distaso conceded that DNA results didn't prove the hair was a definite match.

It was a small illustration of how prosecutors struggled with their own challenges: the absence of a murder weapon, a cause of death or an eyewitness to the alleged crime.

The bodies of Laci Peterson and her fetus, a boy the couple planned to name Conner, washed onto a bay shore in April 2003, near where Peterson says he set out on a solo fishing trip the morning his wife vanished.

Distaso said investigators found a loaded .22-caliber handgun in Peterson's truck, but did not say how he thought Peterson killed his wife.

Peterson, 31, could face the death penalty or life without parole if convicted in a case that is expected to last six months.

Geragos has offered innocent explanations for the behavior of his client, who was carrying nearly $15,000 cash and his brother's driver's license and had dyed his hair blond at the time of his arrest near the Mexican border. Geragos has suggested that many men have affairs but don't kill their wives.

Prosecutors closed Tuesday's statements with multiple pictures of the decomposed bodies.

"It didn't even look like a torso. You had to be told what part of the body you were looking at," said Karas, who was in the courtroom when the pictures were shown. "There was an audible gasp in the courtroom from the gallery and elsewhere."

Several jurors winced and rubbed their heads. Laci Peterson's family members looked away when the photos were displayed on the large wall screen.

"You really ratchet up the emotions when show those autopsy photographs," said Talbot. "You have a person who is dead and the reality of death does hit home to the jury."

It took nearly three months to find 12 jurors and six alternates in this county just south of San Francisco, where the trial was moved because a judge didn't think Peterson could get a fair hearing in the couple's hometown.