Man began affair before his wife was murdered

SCOTT PETERSON’S one-time mistress Amber Frey testified yesterday that her first blind date with him culminated in a hotel room tryst, revealing the first details of an affair the government says led Peterson to murder his pregnant wife.

Frey, the government’s star witness, held a black bag in front of her face to block the cameras as she was driven to the courthouse, and then spoke so softly on the witness stand that the judge had to ask her to get closer to the microphone.

With short, clipped answers to questions from prosecutor Dave Harris, Frey said she didn’t know Peterson was married that night, November 20, 2002, a little more than a month before Laci Peterson vanished.

She said they danced in a karaoke bar before going to a nearby hotel. She said he went to some lengths to court her, pouring champagne and putting a strawberry in her glass.

They had sex later that night, she said. The next morning, he left her with his cell number, not his home number.

Prosecutors have spent much of their case trying to establish that Peterson’s affair with the massage therapist, and hopes for financial gain, were his motives for killing his pregnant wife.

Frey’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, said Frey will probably be on the stand for “a considerable amount of time.”

Defence lawyers do not deny the affair or even that Peterson was a “cad.” But they say that Peterson’s cheating did not make him a murderer.

Prosecutors allege Peterson killed his wife in their Modesto home and dumped her body from a boat in the bay nearby.