Documentarian Skye Borgman tackles one of the most famous murder cases of the 2000s with her new Netflix docuseries American Murder: Laci Peterson. Though the 2002 murder is seared into the minds of many people of the Millennial generation and older, it may be the first time that Gen Z audiences are learning of it.

20 years ago, Scott Peterson was convicted of murdering his 26-year-old wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn child, Conner. Their bodies were discovered washed up on the beach in the San Francisco Bay four months after they went missing on Christmas Eve, 2002. Since his murder conviction, Scott Peterson has been in prison, but he continues to maintain his innocence and appeal his case. Now, their story is being re-examined in the new three-part docuseries, out on Netflix Wednesday.

Borman — the director behind such popular docuseries and documentaries as the 2017 Netflix true crime documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, the 2021 true crime doc Dead Asleep, and the 2022 documentary Girl in the Picture — says that rather than telling the story differently in light of a potential new audience, she instead stuck close to facts.

“It’s just going back to the facts, going back to police reports, going back to the people who lived through it, and putting the information out there without really doing much else to it,” Borgman says.

Whether or not viewers have heard of Laci Peterson before didn’t concern her. She leaned into the universal themes of the story instead.

“One thing that’s pretty eternal, no matter what generation you are, is that this story is one that absolutely deals with family — the good and the bad and everything in between that could be associated with family. This is very much about that. I think that’s something that’s timeless, really,” she says.

“It’s about a family that was torn apart. It was about a family, in a way, that’s come together. It’s about families that are created, that aren’t necessarily blood-related, but because of a terrible trauma or tragedy. That’s something that speaks to every generation.”

Below, Borgman tells us about why now is the time to re-examine the Laci Peterson case, the conversation she had with Scott Peterson from prison, and the most challenging part of working on a murder docuseries.

American Murder: Laci Peterson is now streaming on Netflix.

Skye Borgman on American Murder: Laci Peterson

Laci Peterson and her mom Sharon Rocha, Netflix

MovieMaker: Why is now a good time to reexamine this more than 20-year-old case that has been covered so many times before?

Skye Borgman: There are a couple of reasons why the timing is right. First of all, I think that it became increasingly clear to me throughout the making of this how intimate partner violence is something that has existed forever and is something that continues to be such a concern for women.

I thought that telling the story of Scott Peterson and Laci Peterson was a good way to get that across, and it was also something that was very much a part of my life in that I’m about the same age as Scott and Laci, and I grew up in Oregon, and around this time, I was in the process of living in California, and heard about them on the news all the time.

So I went through that, and as I started researching, I really knew, or started to figure out at least, what I had forgotten or what I didn’t know. And so I thought that there were a lot of details to their story that are incredibly relevant today.

MovieMaker: How did you convince people to be involved in the docuseries that haven’t spoken out in years, or who might have experienced some emotional fatigue about speaking to the press, like Scott’s ex-girlfriend Amber Frye and Laci’s mom Sharon Rocha?

Borgman: It’s been a lot of time, and I think that many of these people have figured out how they deal with this, and have figured out how to cope. Certainly, doing documentaries is probably not part of that process for them normally, but we wanted to tell a balanced story, and we wanted to approach this without an agenda, and we wanted to bring Laci forward as much as we could. We wanted her to be the spotlight, really, of this documentary series. I think a lot of people really wanted that for Laci.

I know it’s certainly true for Sharon, that she wanted Laci to be more than just a murder victim. She wanted her to be full of light and full of life and smiling and laughing and happy, and wanted to to be able to share that part of Lacey with an audience. I have an incredibly talented team of people, and they’re incredibly dedicated to this story, and we all worked very hard to put feelers out in many different directions to many different people. We wanted to get everybody from every different facet of this story that we could and to get all of the different perspectives included.

Also Read: 7 Chilling Details From Phil Spector’s Murder of Lana Clarkson

MovieMaker: Did you try to get in touch with Scott Peterson?

Borgman: Yeah, we talked to Scott a couple of times. He knew about the project and we spoke to him in prison. Ultimately, he decided not to do the project, but he spoke to us a few times.

MovieMaker: What were those conversations like?

Borgman: They were very, very top-level sort of conversations. We didn’t ask him any questions really about the crime. It was more sort of like, how are you doing? What’s it like? Conversations like that.

MovieMaker: What are your thoughts on the other documentary, Face to Face with Scott Peterson, about efforts to get him exonerated that’s coming out later this month on Peacock?

Borgman: I don’t know what it is, honestly, how these two shows ended up coming out at the same time. I don’t know much about the other project, but it seems to me, from watching the trailer, that they take a slightly different perspective than we take. But I think it’s going to be an interesting watch. I’m curious to see what it’s about, but I don’t really know that much about it.

MovieMaker: How important was it for you to tell a balanced story and offer both sides — those who think Scott killed Laci and those who think he’s innocent?

Borgman: It was very important for me to have the Peterson side and people who believe in Scott Peterson’s innocence represented in the documentary. Because I want everybody to have a voice. I don’t want to take anybody’s voice away ever, and I wanted to hear their perspective, and I wanted to see how it all fits together. I wanted to be able to lay the facts out, to lay what we had learned out from both sides of this argument, and in a way, let the audience know exactly what’s going on and allow them to have a conversation.

MovieMaker: What was the most challenging part of telling this story?

Borgman: I think the most challenging part is always just the reality of a woman and her unborn child’s death, that that’s always such a traumatic thing. To approach something like this, you have to distance yourself a little bit, but there are just these moments where you kind of sit with it and realize the gravity of what their murders meant, not just to her immediate family, but to so much of the country.

I mean, Laci’s death and Conner’s death were devastating to many people, and the depth and the breadth of that is hard to take in sometimes. I sometimes distance myself a little bit so that I can do the practical things. I figure out how an edit is going and distancing sometimes helps, but sometimes it’s a little bit hard, too. So every time that it would really sort of come full force, I think that’s always the most difficult part of it.

Main Image: Laci Peterson pictured in American Murder: Laci Peterson courtesy of Netflix