Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Not smart, just lucky!

I frequently see the Medina burglars called too stupid to be able to get away with abducting Laci, keeping her hostage, murdering her, and disposing of her in the Bay. Really?  Just how smart does one have to be?

Not very smart when the police have their sights steadfastly trained on another suspect.  Not very smart at all when the cops don't even check out your made-up alibis when you're arrested for the burglary that precipitated Laci's demise.  Not very smart at all when the cops cease all efforts to find your 3 accomplices to the Medina burglary and identify the van used.  Not very smart at all when the cops make it clear that people should keep their mouths shut about Todd and Laci.  Not very smart at all when the cops don't even check out Laci sightings.

These burglars weren't under surveillance like Scott was -- they didn't have their phones tapped, or their girlfriends taping their calls, or their friends spying on them, or their homes under video surveillance, or teams of undercover agents following them everywhere they went.  They didn't have police searching their homes and vehicles with cadaver dogs.  They were under the radar; no one was paying any attention to them.

Another thing I frequently see is the claim that burglars don't commit murder.  Just what code of ethics do burglars live by that they won't do harm to another person?  Certainly not the one that allows them to rob and steal and to use drugs.  And I often see, Why would they keep her hostage?  Folks, get over the notion that these are nice people.

Where did they keep her hostage?  The park and the Covena neighborhood were searched in those early hours and days, but the airport district certainly wasn't.  When the cops did go into the airport district, it wasn't until January 2, and they only searched Pearce's shack and trailer and the house across the street where Todd was.  What about the homes of the 3 accomplices?  What about the homes of friends?  What about having moved her already -- ah, maybe Tom Harshman did see Laci after all.  Yea, right out in broad daylight, and he reported it, and no one followed up on it for months.

Maybe they moved her to Tracy.  We know what effort was put into following up on that tip -- what a joke!  The MPD left it up to the San Joaquin Sheriff's deputies, and when Mears wanted to go into the compound, he was told it was too dangerous.  And that even after the FLIR sensors detected human life in the out buildings.

They didn't get away with abducting Laci and keeping her hostage because they were smart -- they got away with it because the MPD was too glued on Scott.  That's luck, not brains.

As for disposing of her body, How smart do they have to be to know where to put Laci once they offed her?  Or perhaps she died of neglect.  By that time, as determined by Conner's age at death, they would have had to have been blind, deaf, dumb, and severely challenged mentally to not know where Scott went fishing and where they were searching in the Bay.  TV stations regularly carried footage of the cops searching at the Bay;  and the Modesto Bee had detailed coverage. They had vehicles -- Pearce had a car and a van was used in the burglary.  Anywhere in the vicinity of the Berkeley Marina would have done just fine, and the east shoreline has several places of access by vehicle along the shoreline at nighttime.  If you don't believe me, just use maps.google and see for yourself.

So get over the notion that the burglars are too stupid to pull this off -- it didn't take smarts; it just took luck -- the good luck of having the MPD instantaneously fixate on another suspect, Scott Peterson.

The very sad thing about tunnel vision is that it prevents cops from seeing what is right under their nose.

6 comments:

Bruce Dombrowski said...

yet someone made one phone call and ratted them out for the burglary..and they were found with the goods right in their place...one person found out about the burglary, yet the same person heard nothing about them kidnapping laci, or anything afterwards either...and i guess they were lucky, they were lucky enough that the cops had tunnel vision, and got all kinds of help from other members of law enforcement to help them, help them to save face...got fbi guys to help, got lab workers to help, got witnesses to lie....all to help a few detectives from lil ol modesto keep from looking bad......oy vey....anybody ou there want to buy the brooklyn bridge? i got it for sale? vandersloot is innocent, jeff mcdonald is innocent, manson is innocent...oh wait charlie is innocent, he wasnt even there, the real killers even said so..it's late, been a long day...anybody watch the little league world series tonight? what a game!!! go pennsylvania!!! congrats to montana..a thriller!! 1-0

Bruce Dombrowski said...

and another thing....if the cops were so hell bent on scott as the only one, why even arrest the burglars? just let them be and take no chance that one of them might spill the beans that laci was being held somewhere else, or being carted around town, letting pee by the side of the road for all to see...just let it go..."what? someone called in to rat on the covena burglars?" "oh, it's nothing" "lets not even go over there, we might find laci and our whole plan will be blown"

have a greta night everybody!! :0

Marlene Newell said...

Excuse me, Bruce, but you are wrong about the informant not knowing about Laci. The informant specifically said that he was concerned for the welfare of Laci Peterson.

Marlene Newell said...

To answer another of your points, Bruce -- you suggested they would have just ignored the burglar altogether, and not even arrested Todd and Pearce. It's not likely they could have done that. Jackson's sighting was well-known and repeated in the media. Many people were anxious to know if there was a connection between the burglary and Laci's disappearance. And the Medina's wanted their stuff back.

So, it wasn't a simple matter for them to just ignore the burglary and not "solve" it -- they had to solve it, and they did very quickly -- by just taking what the burglars said at face value and not checking anything out.

The media is a lot to blame in this -- if even one of those reporters had done just a little tiny bit of investigative reporting, the whole thing would have been resolved correctly. But the media was just as blinded as the MPD -- and it's a shame, because the reason we have a free press is to keep the government in line, not be their patsies.

Lon Winters said...

I've always been non-plussed with that argument, the intellect of a burglar. The intellect of a criminal can be just as varied as anyone else. In fact, in their particular area of expertise, they are likely to be smarter from their experience.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the average criminal population are MENSA candidates, but to pull off what they may have done doesn't mean they need to be.

To be fair, the same argument has been made in Scott's favor. For example, some have said that Scott was smart enough to put the leash on the dog, but not close the gate - therefore it points to his innocence because if he was setting up an alibi, why didn't he make it more convincing?

I give very little weight to this type of rationale as to how much it indicates guilt or innocence. A persons behavior in either case is inconsistent at best, and trying draw conclusions from it is in my opinion not a good method of determining facts.

That's why the criminal justice system is established on evidence and not speculation, or at least it should be. The burglars had all they needed to be able to commit the abduction and murder, and dispose of the bodies. Probability was on their side, not the other way around. For them to have been caught or noticed during any phase of the caper would have been way more improbable.

The lack evidence that would actually link them to the crime is a travesty. But there was evidence that was never flly explained, such as the Aponte tip, the Tracy tip, everything surrounding Diane Jackson and the videos of the bridge that were confiscated by the FBI. We don't know for sure whether any of this information means anything, or would have implicated the burglars - but there were just too many instances of such evidence that were never fully explained.

Bruce Dombrowski said...

Well, I guess it was just one big, giant conspiracy, perpitrated bt many different arms of law enforcement, county and state personell, just to help out several cops who made a "rush to judgement" and targeted scott as their man from the start...and lord know, once a cop targets their man, there is just no way to go back....the embarrassment would just be too much to handle....