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May 18, 2005
TV movie tells Amber Frey's story
BY MIKE HUGHES
Asbury Park Press
As Amber Frey's image reached newspapers and TV screens, people made quick judgments about Scott Peterson's "other woman.''
After all, she slept with Peterson in the months before his pregnant wife, Laci, disappeared.
People made negative assumptions. They were wrong, says Janel Moloney, who stars in "Amber Frey: Witness For the Prosecution,'' airing 9 p.m. May 25 on CBS.
"I think she intuitively did the right thing,'' Moloney says. "She endured and became strong.''
That's portrayed in the movie and in Frey's book, "Witness: For the Prosecution of Scott Peterson (ReganBooks, $25.95). For Moloney (''The West Wing") this was fresh.
''I wasn't following the case," she says. ''I saw her once on 'Oprah,' because I always Tivo that show."
Blonde, slim, and attractive, the single mom and professional masseuse had no idea Peterson was married. When she discovered his wife was missing, ''her instincts were very moral," Moloney says. ''She called the police right away."
In her book, Frey writes of a tough childhood after her parents' divorce. She graduated from the two-year Fresno City College with degrees in child development and general studies; she became a massage therapist and started her own business.
She also had bad luck with guys. One, the father of her daughter, left when she was in her first trimester. Another dated her after separating from his pregnant wife.
Then, she writes, a friend met a guy at a convention and a blind date with Frey was set for Nov. 20, 2002. ''Scott Peterson sounded absolutely perfect ... Scott was intelligent, good-looking and very funny, and he seemed eager to settle down."
Frey's story impressed Moloney. It's the opposite of her ''West Wing" role as Donna Moss, Josh Lyman's former aide. ''Josh and Donna would never rush into anything," she says.
Frey rushed into a romance with Peterson, who said he lived in Sacramento and had never married. She hadn't intended to have sex on their first date, she wrote, but did.
A friend heard a rumor that Peterson had a wife. But he had told Frey he was a widower.
Soon, Frey asked a policeman friend to check on him. He came back with the news: This was apparently the same Scott Peterson of Modesto whose wife had disappeared a few days earlier, on Christmas Eve - 34 days after he'd met Frey.
Even after Laci Peterson disappeared, Frey wrote, he had phoned her, claiming to be in Europe.
''The lies never stopped," she wrote. ''His wife was missing - and eight months pregnant - and Scott had been on the phone with me almost every day. He had been talking about his feelings for me and about our future and about that big, lonely house in Sacramento, just waiting for the right woman."
She agreed to a police request: Feigning naivety, Frey continued the phone conversations; she recorded them and tried to get information from Peterson. She also avoided friends and family.
''She was completely isolated," Moloney says. ''The only person she was able to talk to was Scott."
Moloney, 35, jumped into the four-week filming as soon as ''West Wing" ended its season. The relatively unknown Nathan Anderson plays Peterson, with Paget Brewster as Frey's friend and ''SNL" alum Nora Dunn as Gloria Allred, her lawyer.
It was late in the project by the time Moloney met Frey.
''We have a lot of physical similarities," she says. ''She has a very specific look ... she's a very nice young woman. She's got a lightness, an upbeat nature I hadn't expected."
Frey is now 30, a mother of two who quotes Bible verses. She testified in the successful prosecution and wrote that she's found peace:
''Scott Peterson had charmed me. He was good at that ... but there was nothing on the inside. He was an empty vessel."
Posted by Jo at May 18, 2005 10:19 PM