MODESTO, Calif. — Scott Peterson is supposed to be cradling his infant in the baby blue nursery he renovated for the boy. Instead, he sits in a drab jail cell charged with murdering his pregnant wife and their unborn son.

The happy life Peterson, a handsome 30-year-old fertilizer salesman, seemed destined to have will never come. His vivacious wife is dead, the child he appeared eager to raise is gone, and Peterson's future may include death row.

Prosecutors say Peterson killed his college sweetheart wife, Laci, a 27-year-old substitute teacher who was about a month away from delivering their first child, dumped her body in the ocean and then told her family and police detectives that she had simply vanished from their home. The district attorney has said he intends to seek the death penalty.

Laci Peterson

Peterson insists he is innocent and has no idea what became of his wife. His supporters maintain that the police investigators decided early on that he was the culprit and refused to examine other leads in the case.

Media outlets across the country were drawn to the story of the pregnant woman with the bright smile who vanished on Christmas Eve. Even during the war in Iraq, the search for her and the ultimate arrest of Scott Peterson led the news.

From the start, public suspicion fell on her husband.

Scott Peterson told detectives that he had last seen his wife on Dec. 24 at 9:30 a.m. when he left their home in the La Loma neighborhood of Modesto for a solo fishing trip in Berkeley, about an hour and a half drive away.

Laci, he said, had plans to go grocery shopping and then walk their golden retriever in nearby East La Loma Park. But when he returned home that night, she was gone. Her cellphone and purse were still in the house, and a neighbor said she had spotted the couple's dog running loose at 10 a.m. and locked him in the Peterson's gated backyard.

Police searched the park, but saw no sign of Laci Peterson. Meanwhile, relatives and friends posted fliers and organized search parties. Volunteers joined with officers in helicopters, on horseback and in boats. Thousands of concerned citizens combed the city of Modesto and then fanned out across central and northern California, looking in drainage ditches, rivers and farms for any sign of the missing woman. Within days, the family had raised a $500,000 reward, but there was still no sign of Laci.

Police search and rescue team prepares to dive in waters off Berkeley, Calif., searching for Laci Peterson.

"Christmas is over for us," Laci's older brother, Brent, said after three-days of fruitless searching. "We all feel empty and want our sister returned."

Police were convinced early on that Laci Peterson had met with foul play. A bloodhound's handler told authorities that his dogs were indicating she left her home in a vehicle, not on foot.

And Laci's mother, Sharon Rocha, ruled out any voluntary departure. She had talked to her daughter by phone the evening of Dec. 23 and said Laci seemed fine. She would never just walk away from her life, she assured officers. She was too excited about the baby, which she and Scott had already named Conner, and too happy in her marriage.

Scott Peterson rarely spoke publicly about his wife's disappearance. He was too upset, Laci's brother explained at the time. In many early television interviews, Scott Peterson's parents stood with Rocha, her husband and other children. Together, they dismissed any suggestion that Scott was involved.

"There's no possibility that he would be involved," said Peterson's mother, Jacqueline. "They were like honeymooners even after being married five years. They doted on each other. We all wanted to be like them."

But even if relatives did not consider Peterson a suspect, the police had not eliminated him. Just two days after Laci vanished, crime scene investigators searched the couple's home. The next day, they searched the warehouse Scott Peterson used for his business and took two computers from the family home. They also seized the SUV Laci drove and Peterson's pickup truck.

Scott Peterson's pickup truck and boat trailer were confiscated by police.

On Jan. 2, they asked for the public's help to verify Peterson's alibi. He had produced receipts related to his trip, but police asked anyone who had seen him fishing or at the marina to contact them.

About three weeks into the investigation, police shared suspicions with Laci's mother, siblings and stepfather that fractured the relationship with Scott Peterson and his family. Peterson, the detectives told the Rochas, had been having an affair with another woman and had taken a $250,000 life insurance policy out on his wife.

Peterson gave a rare interview to call the allegations "a pack of lies," but a massage therapist from Fresno named Amber Frey stepped forward and identified herself as the other woman. She told reporters that Peterson presented himself as single when they met the previous November.

"When I discovered he was involved in the Laci Peterson disappearance case, I immediately contacted the Modesto Police Department," said Frey, a 28-year-old single mother of a 2-year-old.

In the wake of Frey's disclosure, there were more damaging reports. The Modesto Bee noted that Scott Peterson had laughed and smiled during a vigil for Laci. He had traded in Laci's SUV to pay for a truck to replace the one seized by police, and there were reports he was contacting real estate agents about selling the house.

One neighbor reportedly told police she had seen Peterson loading something heavy into his truck around the time Laci vanished. Another said she found it strange that the Petersons' drapes remained closed Christmas Eve morning.

Days later, Peterson broke his virtual silence with several television interviews acknowledging the affair, but denying it had anything to do with his wife's disappearance. He said the couple had a "glorious" marriage, and his wife knew about Frey and had made her peace with the relationship.

"It wasn't anything that would break us apart," he told Diane Sawyer on ABC.

He also offered explanations for some of the reports implicating him. He said he and Laci bought life insurance policies on each other two years before she went missing. He claimed that Laci left the drapes pulled Christmas Eve morning because the house was cold, and said the items a neighbor saw him loading into the back of his truck might have been umbrellas he used for work.

Laci's delivery date, Feb. 10, came and went without any news of her whereabouts. About a month later, authorities said the missing person investigation had become a homicide case.

On April 13, the body of a full-term baby washed up on the shore of San Francisco Bay near Richmond. The next day, a dog walker found the badly decomposed body of a woman. The area where both bodies were found was about three miles from the marina where Peterson said he was fishing.

The coroner could not determine the cause of death, but DNA tests proved the bodies were Laci Peterson and her son. The child, experts said, could have been pushed from his mother's body by gases created in the decomposition process.

Before the DNA test results were even announced, police arrested Scott Peterson at a golf course near his parents' home in San Diego County.

Law enforcement officials noted that Peterson had lightened his brown hair to a reddish-blond, grown a goatee and was carrying $10,000 in cash, the maximum amount of cash that can be brought across the nearby Mexican border without notifying officials.

He pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder, one for his wife and one for his son. Under California law, a fetus over the age of seven weeks can be considered a murder victim . The double-murder charge means Peterson could face the death penalty if convicted.

Other than saying that the murder took place on Dec. 23 or 24, prosecutors in the case are keeping a tight lid on their case. During the investigation, police took biological samples from Scott Peterson, sent materials to the state crime lab for testing, and seized 90 bags of evidence from his home alone, but precisely what police were looking for is being kept under seal. Still, California Attorney General bill Lockyer called the case a "slam dunk."

Peterson's lawyers have said little about their still nascent case, but his parents have suggested the police department was blind to other suspects or theories.

"They worked strictly on a theory that was dreamt up by this lead detective within the first eight hours, and they've pursued it backward from there and they have neglected so many good leads," Peterson's father, Lee, told Time.

His parents say that among the 9,000 tips police fielded in the case were sightings of Laci Peterson long after Dec. 23.