The Netflix Doc about Laci Peterson is part of the disturbing and intriguing new trend

In the past few years, there have been several documentaries and docuseries that revisit important cases long after the fact: Lorena Bobbitt (“Lorena”), The Menendez Brothers (“Menendez & Menudo: Boys Betrayed”), JonBenét Ramsey (“JonBenét”) Ramsey: What Really Happened?”), Casey Anthony (“Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies”), Jared Vogel (“Jared from Subway: Catching a Monster”), boy band creator Lou Perlman (“Dirty Pop”), Brian Peck (“Quiet on the Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV”), Sherri Papini (“The Perfect Wife”) and Gypsy Rose Blanchard (“The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard”), to name a few. And the trend isn’t limited to docs — Todd Haynes’ 2023 feature May December delivered a fascinating fictional version of the Mary Kay Letourneau story more than 20 years later.

The latest entry in the cycle is the Laci Peterson story, which marked the 20th anniversary of the trial this month with two docu-series, “American Murder: Laci Peterson” on Netflix and “Face to Face with Scott Peterson” on Peacock. Both shows revisit the 2002 disappearance of the beautiful and beloved Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant when she disappeared on Christmas Eve. Her search was a media sensation, exposing her husband Scott’s adultery. After the bodies of Laci and the baby, Conner, were found in San Francisco Bay, Scott was arrested and eventually convicted, although he maintains his claims of innocence. If you weren’t involved in the case while it was unfolding, you may know the fictional version told in “Gone Girl.”

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The Netflix series, directed by true crime veteran Skye Borgman, is a well-crafted and moving account of the case, featuring new material from Laci’s mother and friends, Scott’s then-girlfriend Amber Frey, and excerpts from Laci’s diary . She makes it clear why the family and the police have come to believe Scott was found guilty after defending him. Peacock series directors Shareen Anderson and Po Kutchins also made the 2016 feature-length documentary “Trial by Fury: The People v. Scott Peterson” and produced the 2017 docu-series “The Murder of Laci Peterson,” so they’re well- familiar with the story. Despite the face-to-face title and some running interviews with Scott in prison, most of Peacock’s series is more about the supposed holes in the original investigation than explaining it. While the show claims there are several grounds for reasonable doubt, the biggest doubt comes from the shocking fact that the Innocence Project in Los Angeles has taken over Scott’s case.

It won’t hold up in court, but the most compelling argument that Scott did it comes from the feeling that he just doesn’t seem to react appropriately. Casey Anthony, Menendez-Menudo and Lorena Bobbitt’s documentaries highlight how strangely people who have been sexually abused will respond to massive trauma when they have learned how to hide their feelings and pretend nothing is wrong as a survival mechanism. Whether those claims of abuse change your mind about the guilt of the accused, by the end of those shows, you can’t help but understand how that kind of trauma TO it results in tearless and inappropriate reactions that we are confused by. Scott Peterson makes no claims of past trauma or offers any other convincing explanation for his lack of emotional response to the disappearance of his wife and unborn child, much less to their murders, so his behavior remains an unsettling mystery.

Much of the confusion in big cases is caused by incessant media coverage, which can become a circus that obfuscates as much as it reveals. However, after 20 years, much of the dust has settled and new truths tend to emerge. On one end of the spectrum, Lorena Bobbitt was fully redeemed by the “Lorena” series, which brought to light her husband’s many deep-rooted and ongoing issues. On the other end of the spectrum, who among us could have realized how dark Subway’s Jared had been until the show explained the allegations and how he was caught? Somewhere in the middle falls the late Lou Perlman. He certainly wasn’t innocent of the devastating Ponzi scheme, but the big surprise of “Dirty Pop” was that even some of the victims really liked him and still have some good things to say.

Some of these true-crime docs bring incredible revelations to a wider audience, such as that David Berkowitz most likely did not act alone (“Sons of Sam”), that John Wayne Gacy may not have always acted alone either (“The Clown and the Candyman”) and that Henry Lee Lucas may never have killed someone (“The Confession Killer”). These Peterson documentaries are not of that sort, so what is the appeal of them and other shows that re-examine cases so much after the fact? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that these national news cases traumatize not only the families and friends of the deceased, but the entire country that followed and became emotionally invested. Whether the documentary reinvestigations are revealing or not, they serve as a form of therapy in the way they clearly synthesize and allow us to process a story that was cumbersome at the time, then suddenly stopped at the end of a process that could not necessarily. tell us everything

In his novel The Outsider, Stephen King tells the story of a horrific child murder that cannot be solved because it involves a killer who is supernatural in two places at once. David Lynch also attributed a supernatural cause to his fictional true-crime story about the murder of Laura Palmer in “Twin Peaks.” These are artistic expressions of cases like that of Laci and Scott Peterson, where the whole truth is so unknown that you begin to question reality itself. However, the Netflix series leaves us with a demonstrable and terrifying fact: not only does pregnancy increase a woman’s chances of being victimized, but the number one cause of death for pregnant women is murder.

“American Murder: Laci Peterson” is now streaming on Netflix.

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