On March 16, Scott Peterson was sentenced to death for the 2002 murder of his pregnant wife, Laci. Peterson isn't going to die anytime soon, however, and thanks to the media's gigantic murder boner, neither will the coverage of his story.
As Peterson begins the long, statutorily mandated grind through the bureaucratic purgatory of California's appellate courts, Matt and Katie, Nancy Grace, US Weekly, Court TV, cable news and the rest will be there every excruciating, boring, overwrought step of the way. And so will Amber Frey.
Most of us know who Amber Frey is, even if we wish we didn't — the media coverage of the Peterson saga was pervasive to the point of being unavoidable. Laci had been missing for a few weeks when Amber made her splashy TV debut. Flanked by her attorney, accomplished media whore Gloria Allred, Frey held a press conference to announce that she had been having an affair with Scott Peterson in the weeks leading up to Laci's disappearance, but claimed she did not know he was married. At that moment, countless reporters, editors and TV producers began to salivate and desperately clamor for a piece of the Amber action.
By the time the trial finally drew to a close, just about everyone in the country knew Amber's story in uncomfortable detail. Amber, however, was just getting warmed up. She could finally tell her story in "her own" words, accept the longstanding, tantalizing offers of soft-focused, rose-filtered "exclusives"
with Matt Lauer and, at long last, make some money off of her dalliance with a murderer.
And so, in January, Regan Books predictably vomited forth Frey's tell-all book, "Witness: For the Prosecution of Scott Peterson." Released less than a
month after Peterson's initial sentencing hearing, "Witness" is every bit as slapdash as its computer-generated title suggests. The book was reportedly penned by an uncredited ghostwriter, who, if the depth and quality of the writing is any indication, is an eighth grader of average intellect and skill.
Reading "Witness" is a lot like listening to someone reminisce at length about all the sweet, romantic things her ex-boyfriend used to do and all the good
times they had, oblivious to the fact that he was a jerk who smacked her around and slept with her sister. Or murdered his pregnant wife, or something.
Frey seems more than a little wistful as she describes her brief courtship with Scott Peterson. Disconcertingly, her account lacks any evidence of 20/20 hindsight. And it isn't just that Amber is trying to accurately portray her feelings at the time in the early days of their relationship. Even after she knows about Laci and the thousands of other lies Scott has told her, and even after he knows that she knows, she seems to have affection for Scott. When he calls and tells her that he's left her a birthday present under a particular bush outside an area hospital, Amber doesn't think twice about retrieving it.
I went. How could I not go? I was curious. [...] Tucked deep inside the bush was a paper bag from Trader Joe's with several items in it. The first was a small silver box with the moon and sun on the lid; there was a silver and amber necklace inside. The box also contained a copy of the Norah Jones CD, Come Away with Me, and a package of "Butterfly" wildflower mix. It was obvious that Scott had put a lot of thought into each choice.
There was a note in the box: "These seeds as your life are soon to bloom. Bliss, joy, beauty will spring forth as warmth touches each. Your soil is not a stony place you have tilled good ground. You deserve wondrous ecstasy in all aspects of your life. All these things will be yours soon."
[...] I sat in my car in the hospital parking lot with all my lovely gifts, and I cried.
Although this passage affords us the opportunity to enjoy Scott Peterson's hilarious poetry, it also illustrates the creepy persistence of Frey's romantic
feelings. And here, as throughout the book, it is difficult to decide what is more embarrassing: Scott's incredibly cheesy and shopworn game, or the fact that
Amber eats it all up with a spoon. At the beginning of their first date, Scott asks Amber if she'd mind going up to his hotel room so he can shower prior to dinner.
Sensing that Scott is trustworthy, Amber agrees. Upon entering the room, Scott suavely pulls a bottle of champagne from his "duffel bag" and pours them each a glass.
Then he seemed to remember something. He reached into the duffel bag again and pulled out a box of strawberries, and dropped one into each of our glasses.
Amber swoons and readers cringe. All of Scott's moves and lines seem threadbare and rehearsed, honed through years of repeated use, but Amber doesn't seem to notice. Even after all that has happened, she remembers these encounters and everything Scott said to her in loving, excruciating detail. She raves about
how sincere and wonderful and sophisticated she thought he was without a hint of remorse or sheepishness.
Because the story was so heavily covered in the media, the amount of new information revealed in the book is negligible. In fact, one of the only truly shocking facts to come to light is that Amber and Scott only hung out four times. Her prominent role in the coverage of the scandal made it seem like she and Scott had carried on for years, or at least months, but we learn that is not the case. Each of their four encounters is lovingly recreated in "Witness," in
full, romantic, idealized, pathetic detail.
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The specific detail doesn't end with the accounts of Amber's hot Scott liasons. Amber has an near preternatural skill for remembering, verbatim, compliments that people have paid her. About every two pages, someone commends Amber on her looks, her beautiful singing voice, her courage, her selflessness, her independence, her very perfection — and almost always, Amber faithfully recounts for the reader her humble response.
I thought I was losing my mind, and [Detective] Buehler was understandably concerned. "You know what, Amber? You've done enough; more than enough. I'm worried about you. Maybe we should stop this now."
"But we haven't' found Laci," I said, snapping out of it and pulling myself together. "I want to keep trying."
"You amaze me," Buehler said. "I don't know too many women who could handle this. I'm grateful for your strength."
"It's not me," I said. "It's God — God is giving me the strength."
Isn't that big of her? But it isn't just the grateful cops lavishing Amber with effusive praise, Scott Peterson is also a fan.
When Scott called later that day, I was a complete mess. I felt so alone [after a fight with my sister] that I started sobbing. [...] Before I knew it, he was comforting me, and for a moment I forgot that I was talking to the Scott Peterson who was about to become the prime suspect in his wife's disappearance.
"Can I tell you how wonderful you are?" he said. "That's pretty easy to do. How thoughtful you are and amazing... It's an amazing combination of attributes that you have.... And I need a bigger better word than 'special' to describe it.... That's what I was thinking about today. I need a better vocabulary or a book or thesaurus or something to find the right words to describe you."
He went on at length, and he was very convincing: "If you cross the words eclectic and special and thoughtful and caring... (you get) the word used in the Bible for love: Agape."
But apparently he still didn't think he was doing me justice. "(I)t's like I'm drawing a stick figure," he said. "I'm that far removed from being able to describe you."
The most hilarious example of Amber-recounted praise comes in Chapter III, (entitled "We have been praying for someone like you to come forward") as she
discusses Moises, her high school boyfriend.
Moises was a vegetarian, and I began to cut back on meat, and under his influence I became a bit of a hippie. I grew my hair long and stopped shaving my legs and once again reverted to being a ragamuffin. Many years later, I ran into someone I'd known in those days, and she insisted that I'd been a real trendsetter. I was surprised to hear this, but when I thought back on it I realized that in some ways she was right. I guess I really did have my own fashion sense, though the word "fashion" probably wasn't part of my vocabulary. I guess I was just being myself — funky, crocheted hats, thrift shop dresses, etc. — but to some people I must have seemed stylish and chic.
After reading a paragraph like that, you don't know whether to laugh at Frey's self-absorbed idiocy, feel sorry for her for being such a clueless, embarrassing dimwit, or simply scream in futile, frustrated anger and throw this piece of shit book across the room as hard as you can. That decision — whether to laugh, cry or fly into a blind rage — is one that readers of this book are forced to make approximately once a page.
The main reason that "Witness" strikes such a sour note throughout is the way Amber has inserted herself into the very center of the story. Granted, this is her book and so, naturally, it tells her side of things, but she takes the Ambercentrism too far. Everything that happens, including the murder of Laci
Peterson and her unborn son, is interpreted and given meaning solely through its effect on Amber's own life, faith and personal growth. It's as though Frey believes God orchestrated the whole horrible, bloody, tragic ordeal for her benefit — part of an elaborate obstacle course that He set up to test her and make her stronger; a sort of spiritual boot camp designed to help her achieve self-actualization.
When I got off the phone, I remember gazing out the window and thinking that God had been preparing me for this. Young as I was, I'd had more than my share of drama and heartache, and it had made me a stronger person. And, strange as it sounds, I was thankful. I didn't know why God had chosen me for this ordeal, but I was somehow suited to it and knew that I would see it through to the end.
Speaking of ordeals: It's tempting to blame the state of America's media culture for the wrist-slittingly unpleasant experience of reading "Witness." The story goes a little something like this: our sensationalistic TV, newspaper and publishing industries put compellingly dramatic personal stories ahead of serious political and social issues.
But here's the catch with Amber Frey — all she did was fuck a murderer and talk about it. Her story is about as compelling and dramatic as a coiled dog turd baking in the summer sun. It slips entirely beyond the "personal interest versus serious news" dichotomy and into another category entirely: naked commercial greed. Unless God has personally prepared you for the ordeal of reading "Witness," the rankest fruit of the publishing industry's hunger for a quick buck, your best move is leaving this malodorous raspberry on the shelf.
— Alissa Rowinsky Wright (alissa@flakmag.com)
Witness: For the Prosecution of Scott Peterson