Amber's Story

Thursday November 13, 2003 11:49 AM EST

In the mountains near her Fresno, Calif., home last month, Amber Frey joined some of her church girlfriends for a weekend retreat. The women played bingo, attended Bible study, prayed and spent a lot of time just talking. To the other participants, Frey seemed surprisingly relaxed. Perhaps it was because there, in the cocoon of her church group, she knew nobody would mention the names that have come to haunt her over the past 10 months: Laci and Scott Peterson. "What happened to (Frey) could have happened to anyone," says close friend Angela Caglia, who was at the retreat. "She started to date someone she thought was special, and then this whole tragedy turned her life upside down."

The question now is whether it is Frey, 28, who will turn the Peterson case upside down. As the preliminary hearing in Modesto, Calif., moves into its third week, the Fresno massage therapist has clearly assumed a key role in the prosecution's case against Peterson, 31. Not only is she the Other Woman, who may provide a motive for Laci's murder, she is also an intimate witness to the defendant's state of mind. As such, her testimony could go a long way toward determining her former lover's fate. Meanwhile, her notoriety has already left her feeling hounded and exhausted. "This is what happens when you come forward," says her father, Ron Frey. "They beat the daylights out of you."

Daylight is exactly what the prosecution hopes Amber will shed on the events surrounding the murder of Laci and her unborn son, Conner. Though she has yet to take the stand in the preliminary hearing, some of her tale has been recounted, primarily by Det. Al Brocchini. In his testimony on Nov. 6, Brocchini described how he happened to be at the Modesto Police Department tip desk when a call came in from Frey on Dec. 30, less than a week after Laci had gone missing. He quickly went out to interview her, and she told him she was romantically involved with Peterson. (She had met him at World Sports Café in Fresno on Nov. 20 and had started seeing him soon thereafter.) But on Dec. 9, according to Brocchini, she had asked Peterson if he was married. He had responded with a lie that was as bald-faced as it was chilling. He said he had "lost his wife" and that "this would be his first holiday without" her.

Frey evidently accepted that sob story at face value. Friends say that at a Christmas party in Fresno she showed up with Peterson and ebulliently went around introducing her new beau. "Amber was very excited about him," says one of her friends, who wishes to remain anonymous. "They looked really happy together, like any other couple in love." It appears that Peterson shared her ardor. According to Brocchini, Frey told him that in the days after Laci's disappearance Peterson called her repeatedly, assuring her that they would soon be together. Peterson told Frey that "he was out of the country and would be able to be with her more exclusively after Jan. 25."