Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson

Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson
Keith Ablow, M.D.
St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0-312-35205-0
Non-Fiction, Biography, True Crime
Reviewed by Jennifer Brown

Behind the media hype, the public debates, the controversies and warring talk show “experts,” there is something else. When the courtroom reporters sign off for the night and the bailiffs escort the accused back to his cell, there is something lingering behind. Behind the familiar face – the changing face – with its winning smile or its cold stare, there is murder and one lingering question.
And after all the news about the Scott Peterson trial has been digested, after he has been found guilty of murdering his wife and infant son, after he has been sentenced to death, that one question remains: Why did he do it? Dr. Keith Ablow’s book, Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson, attempts to answer that question by carefully analyzing Scott Peterson through family history and interviews with first-degree relatives as well as with Amber Frey’s attorney and a police profiler who worked on the Peterson case.
Dr. Ablow uses information gleaned through these “people in the know” to reconstruct Scott Peterson’s upbringing and, from that reconstruction, make guesses as to what his actions and reactions might be in adult life, as well as what thought processes might lead him to kill.
To hear Dr. Ablow tell it, it just makes sense that the man raised in the way that Scott Peterson was raised would grow up to be a murderer – a “mask” of a man, but not a real man at all.
Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson is not so much about juicy details surrounding the murder or the investigation of Laci and Conner Peterson, but is a psychological evaluation of a man found guilty of that murder. While I find it suspect that Dr. Ablow is able to make bold statements about the psychological makeup of a man he never actually interviewed, the result is a fascinating study of the evolution of a killer by reaching into time three generations back.
Much of the book is repetitive and Dr. Ablow makes his opinions crystal clear for the reader and, while the book is not uninteresting, the first half of it is a little “gentle” for a high-profile murder case. When looking at a title, Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson, the reader may expect a much darker, more sinister view into the psyche of an evil man than what they get with Ablow’s book, which is much more clinical than sensational.
Where the book really gets interesting, and where Dr. Ablow truly shines, is in his deconstruction and analysis of various (talk show) interviews and telephone conversations between Amber Frey and Scott Peterson. This, in conjunction with an analysis of Scott Peterson’s actions in the weeks after Laci’s “disappearance,” make for a mesmerizing read.
All in all, Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson is well written and interesting, especially to those with a proclivity for psychological analyses anyway. A die-hard follower of true crime generally and/or the Peterson case in particular would be missing out to miss this book.