PETERSON TRIAL Prosecution casts doubt on testimony

Amber Frey didn't record all of her phone conversations, a lawyer said.
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REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Amber Frey was suspicious.
Her one-time boyfriend apparently had lied about his marriage. Scott Peterson had told her weeks before Laci Peterson disappeared that he had "lost" his wife, she has testified.
But Frey was also the subject of suspicion, jurors in Peterson's double-murder trial learned Monday. Police suspected she had failed, after coming forward Dec. 30, 2002, to record all of her calls with Peterson, defense attorney Mark Geragos said.
It was, however, untrue, she said.
"I turned over all calls that I tape recorded," Frey said.
In his first day of cross-examining the prosecution's star witness, Geragos zeroed in on phone calls between the Fresno massage therapist and Peterson before, during and after their brief affair. Nearly 250 calls passed between the two from mid-November 2002 until Feb. 19, 2003.
Untaped conversations
Frey recorded about 11 hours of those conversations, most which have been played for jurors over the past two weeks. Referring to police reports, however, Geragos suggested there were more tapes that were never turned over, ones that perhaps could have benefited his client.
"Since the arrest, has anybody told you police believed that wiretap records showed calls were being made that you were not recording?" Geragos asked.
Frey said she had recorded all but six minutes of Peterson's calls.
"That's not what I'm talking about," Geragos said. "Did you ever make or receive calls from Scott Peterson that you didn't immediately tell the detectives about?"
"No," she replied.
Frey's responses to questions seemed guarded at times. She repeatedly said she did not recall certain phone calls or conversations that had occurred.
Peterson looked on with a straight face for most of the day.
Frey said she was unaware police were secretly listening in on Peterson's phone calls until after he was arrested April 18, 2003. Modesto police detectives had asked her, she said, to record her conversations with Peterson after she told them about her affair six days after Peterson's pregnant wife vanished Dec. 24, 2002.
Geragos suggested logs of police wiretaps on Peterson's phones could show Frey made more calls than she had told investigators about.
Unraveling connections
Geragos also used Frey's phone records to cast suspicion on her story about when she learned Peterson was married.
Frey has testified Peterson told her Dec. 9, 2002, that he had lost his wife. She learned Dec. 13, 2002, that her friend Shawn Sibley, who met Peterson and set up her best friend with him, had known for a week that Peterson was married.
Frey last saw Peterson in person Dec. 15, 2002.
Before Laci disappeared, Frey had talked with her friend Richard Byrd, a Fresno police official, who suspected Peterson was married.
"He didn't say he was going to do anything," Frey said. "It was more like: 'So, when do you want me to check this guy out for you?' He was more persistent in feeling that there was something not right in what Scott had told me."
Frey said Monday that she became suspicious of Peterson on Dec. 23, 2002, after he gave her a post office box address to send him mail. That was a day before Peterson reported his wife Laci missing after returning to an empty house following a day of fishing on the San Francisco Bay.
The bodies of Laci Peterson and her unborn son, Conner, were found in April 2003 near the spot where Peterson told police he had been fishing that day.
Byrd and his roommate, David Perez, a state Justice Department investigator, helped Frey search the Internet for information on Peterson, she said. They informed her Dec. 30 of what they believed was a link between Peterson and the missing Modesto woman whose story was being broadcast all over the airwaves at that point, she said.
Frey immediately called police, she said.
Geragos is expected to finish his cross-examination of Frey today.