Still Missing
THE PARKING LOT outside the Contra Costa County Office of the Sheriff was packed with TV vans, camera equipment and shivering reporters on Tuesday morning. To the public, we probably looked like vultures, ghoulishly itching to feast on what factual remains we could scavenge from two corpses that had washed up on the Richmond shore over two days, corpses that might be of Modesto resident Laci Peterson and the unborn baby whom she planned to name Connor.
Many don't think the Peterson story deserves the media attention it has garnered. If it weren't for cable news, this would be a local story -- local for Modesto, not for California, not for the nation.
Why is Laci Peterson a big story while countless other missing people rate a back-page story, if that? A reporter from a rival publication lists the traits he thinks helped to inflate her story: white, very pregnant and from Modesto, home of the late Chandra Levy. And she disappeared on Christmas Eve, another newspaper reporter added.
I don't think the story would be as big as it is if Laci Peterson weren't so cute, and so, well -- at least we thought -- happily married.
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Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Kansas @ 1:32 PM
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