I am the photographer who took the nude photos of Amber Frey,
the “other woman” in the Scott Peterson murder case, in 1999. I
was also called in as a character witness during the famous
trial, where it was revealed that she had been seeing Peterson
during the period of time when he murdered his wife Lacy and his
unborn son Conner.
Some background on me: having been a promising athlete in every
sport possible in high school, setting several school records
and being a high point man, I finally also became a member of
the PBA, the Professional Bowlers Association, in 1991. I won 17
nationally awarded honors. I was a league bowler in 1998 and
have averaged 220 for the last three seasons. Bowling is more
than a mere hobby to me, but my real passion is photojournalism
and the fine art of taking celebrity images, at which I’ve been
found to be excellent.
My professional career as a paparazzi is not lengthy, but it has
become vastly extensive and I have taken images of every kind of
celebrity imaginable, including some of the most high profile
personalities in politics, sports and entertainment. President
George W. Bush, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Michael Jordan, Dan Marino, Steve Young, Kobe Bryant, Britney
Spears, George Strait, Elton John, KISS, Aerosmith, Toby Keith,
the Eagles, Shania Twain, Van Halen, and practically every other
musical act on tour recently have strutted before my camera.
I’ve been published in national magazines and books, and my
images of people have been seen on pretty much every major TV
news network in America and the UK, and potentially other places
worldwide.
The pictures of Amber Frey have been especially widespread,
appearing in The National Enquirer, The Globe, The Star, People
Magazine, In-Touch Magazine, New York Daily News, and The New
York Post, as well as the book “The Murder of Laci Peterson.” My
images, albeit not myself, have also made brief appearances on
Entertainment Tonight, Inside Edition, “E” Television, A & E TV,
“On the Record” with Greta Van Susteren, Hannity and Colmes,
Foxnews, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. The above is only what
I’m aware of, and I know that Amber’s photos have been seen in
dozens of other publications and on many other TV networks.
And yet, I haven’t said much about the actual, real life
perverse truth behind those infamous photographs until now. I
have only made spartan statements and have gone very little into
the stories behind them, which involve many colorful characters
and particular circumstances which, after some time, I have
finally decided to disclose to the general public. I have
decided to reveal that I actually knew Amber Frey as a close
acquaintance for about a decade, and much about her personal
life and struggles, as well as the many other peculiar people
involved in the Scott Peterson case. For example, I’ve known
Amber ever since I first met her in 1993 when she was a cashier
at our local Thrifty’s, a chain store similar to WalMart. The
fact that the store went under in the late 1990’s is what led to
Amber needing to make another living and appearing in my studio
as a model. My story involves the ruthless, seductive, immoral
and often illegal activities and relationships of the people
surrounding Amber, and how she may not have been as innocent as
people thought.
My career in photography is a short study on a quick rise to an
overwhelming spurt of fame, not of me, but of my photographs. I
briefly attended Fresno State University, majoring in Mass
Communications and Theater Arts, with dreams of one day becoming
a TV anchorman. I started professionally photographing people
out of my apartment in 1994, and after I became published I was
“hooked” on the juice of artful photography, opening up my first
studio in Clovis, California in 1998. This studio was quite
small and permeated with the smell of a nearby manicurist’s
office, with hideously poor ventilation. Numerous times my
clients left me because of the extremely strong odor. I began to
move out and take more of my photos “in the field,” doing
weddings, proms, anything that would pay the bills.
My big break happened when I became the photographer for “Dirt
Road Productions” in 1998, taking headshots of aspiring actors
for Alan Autry, who played Bubba from the hit TV show “In the
Heat of the Night,” starring Carroll O’Connor. I then began
snapping models for portfolios for their acting and modeling
careers, and placed an ad in a local paper. I couldn’t help but
notice that the best way to snap women was by posing them in
sexy lingerie, as there was plenty of enthusiasm on the part of
both my mostly female models and the venues of advertising which
bought my photos. One day an old friend from my past showed up,
and as several of the female models I had shot had been very
aggressive on camera, to the point of removing some of their
clothing, I was able to talk her into doffing her clothes on
camera. Amber Frey was apparently more than happy to do so, as
she’d lost that job at the Thrifty’s and clearly wanted to get
ahead, perhaps becoming a part of my special destiny as well,
soon after October of 1999.
I began to take an interest in freelance work such as billboard
photography and working on CD projects with musical acts in the
Central Valley area of California, entering numerous contests
and shows. My work won many awards, and I ventured into more of
the gallery world of photography, covering many high profile
events in Fresno and on the West Coast. I was finally a broadly
acclaimed photojournalist. I also continued my relationship with
Amber Frey during this period of time, and of course she was an
honest pleasure to be with, as she had a charmingly unassuming
manner.
And now I have a choice, tell-all book about Amber Frey and
David Hans Schmidt to offer the world, as I advance into the
field of writing with the help of a professional ghost writer
who has been widely published. One of her recently rewritten and
edited books has appeared on the New York Times best seller
list. The story of Amber Frey and the nude photographs,
including their special relationship to one of the worst murder
cases and acts of betrayal in recent American history, needs to
be told. It sort of begins as the story of a pornographer, a
photographer and the “other woman.”
On January 24th of 2003, Amber Frey presented herself to the
media and the world as Scott Peterson’s girlfriend, and was
immediately dubbed “the other woman.” I had to get up early the
next morning, and my best friend, my roommate, knocked on my
bedroom door. I grabbed something to wear, and he said, “Your
old friend you took some pics of awhile ago is on TV. I think
she’s involved with a murder.” Little did I know then how
important those nude photos would turn out to be, and how
extensively involved in the Scott Peterson case I would become,
meeting David Hans Schmidt, a guy from Arizona who was a
self-proclaimed “celebrity porn seller.” He said he had brokered
deals with Tanya Harding, Katarina Witt, and Paula Jones. He
wanted to buy the rights to my images of Amber Frey, and he had
a deal with Penthouse magazine for $325,000.
Now my real first big break had finally arrived. David kept
saying he could see me becoming a major player in the
photographic world, riding on big jet airliners and meeting a
lot of beautiful hot women, and all this would happen in just a
few short days. But to my great and utter disappointment, this
would eventually turn out to be a lot of hot air. The deals with
David, colorful and exotic of a character as he was, all fell
through. I ended up returning to an agency I had signed on with
earlier in New York City to handle the displaying of the images,
which had already been appearing on the magazine shelves of
venues in the US and internationally for a total of ten straight
weeks. What had happened to me up until then had seemed like a
dream straight out of Van Gogh’s wildest paintings. Now I didn’t
know what to expect, or what further misadventures might await
me.
After my roommate had banged on the door and made his startling
announcement, suggesting The National Enquirer, I called them on
Monday just to see what they’d do, and before I could say
“whoa,” they had an editor fly from Florida to meet me in
Fresno. We met at Chevy’s restaurant in the self-same shopping
mall where Amber had met Scott for the first time. I have a lot
of friends from that area. It’s named Riverpark, and that’s
where I was introduced to David Wright from the Enquirer. After
we came to terms, he left for Modesto to cover the story of the
case, which was being touted as “the first true crime of the
century,” although a lot of people were booing the concept due
to their sympathy for the two dead people in the story.
Two weeks later, my photos were plastered all over the cover of
the Enquirer. I went into a surreal state of shock when I saw my
work in their full page spread in the center of the magazine,
one of the most popular and controversial papers in the entire
world. Then the extensive news and television coverage began,
and my images were consistently second nature to everyone on the
TV. My pictures were everywherein a way, I was famous at last.
And yet I did not come forward, in spite of offers to do so by
every major newspaper, magazine and TV station in the United
States, and elsewhere.
The chief photo editor from the Enquirer had suggested that I
get an agency to represent me, and that’s when I found the one
in New York. After that, I met David Hans Schmidt, and the rest
is a history of betrayal, money going down the drain, and what a
weirdo berserk character David was. His story was played widely
in the news, and I actually spent a lot of time with this guy,
taping our conversations and talking about his insane exploits,
such as how he was going to bang Tanya Harding and the very
infamous Paris Hilton tape, which he had a copy of, plus the
Jessica Lynch nude images that he sold to Larry Flynt, one of
which I still posses a copy of and the legal rights to it.
Everything with David was a drug to do or a deal fallen through.
It took some time, and I actually spent a kind of year in a
weirdo wacked out version of hell combined with the nuisance of
waiting for money that never came. Like the poor stressed out
Kato Kailan had been during the OJ Simpson trial, I had been a
Sidebar to the Witness, which is the working title of my book.
And yet it was clear that in spite of holding the “images of the
century,” I was not going to see a further penny to my name,
which also was not well known yet.
But I finally quit on him and headed back to my New York agency.
I’ve been there ever since, slowly putting it all together, how
all the actors in this play interrelate, writing about my
relationship with Amber Frey, her own relationship with Scott
Peterson, everything.
At last, now I’m willing to tell the world my true and shocking
story.
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