What Happened To Scott Peterson's Mistress Amber Frey

If there's one thing that America's love of true crime podcasts has shown, it's how tragedy can captivate a nation –- and thrust unsuspecting folks into the limelight. Just a few examples include internet sleuths dissecting every tragic detail about JonBenet Ramsey's family after her murder or latching onto lawyer Leslie Abramson's rumored relationship with Erik Menendez.

One person who knows the impact of being involved in a headline-making murder case first-hand is Amber Frey. At just 27 years old, Frey was thrust into the headlines as she helped prosecutors convict Scott Peterson of the murder of his wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn eight-month-old son. Frey, a massage therapist and single mom, had unknowingly become Peterson's mistress after her best friend set them up on a blind date. As Frey would later recount, they met on November 20, 2002 in Fresno, California, and started the night with champagne and strawberries in his hotel room. Dinner, dancing, and karaoke followed, quickly blossoming into what she believed to be a serious relationship. Frey believed her new boyfriend to be single. However, when Laci was reported missing on Christmas Eve, Frey connected the terrifying dots and went to the police to offer her help.

Ultimately, Scott was convicted in November 2004 and since then, Frey has tried to get her life back to normal. Even so, she hasn't totally disappeared from the spotlight. Here's what Scott Peterson's headline-making mistress, Amber Frey, has been up to in the past two decades.

When Amber Frey met Scott Peterson, she thought he was perfect. "He was easy to talk to," Frey testified in 2004, per SFGate. "He made me feel comfortable." However, cracks soon began appearing in his story. A 32-year-old Peterson initially told Frey he had never been married before changing his story to say he had recently lost his wife. Soon after, on December 29, 2002, Frey made a life-shattering connection. As she said in court, a friend called to tell her Peterson was the man whose pregnant wife had been reported missing on Christmas Eve. Wasting no time, Frey got in touch with police and met a detective at the Modesto Police Department the following day. She told them everything and agreed to secretly tape hours of phone conversations with Peterson, pressing him about his wife in the hopes of getting a confession.

After initially trying to keep her identity secret, Frey revealed herself as Peterson's mistress in January 2003 to squash rumors that she had been involved in the disappearance. That April, the bodies of Peterson's wife and unborn child were found and he was finally arrested. The trial began in June 2003, but Frey wasn't called to testify until August 2004. After spending several days in the witness stand, she was dubbed the star witness for the prosecution and helped them convince the jury that Peterson committed the crime to be with her. On November 12, 2004, Scott was convicted of first-degree murder of his wife and second-degree murder of their baby and sent to death row.

Scott Peterson did the unthinkable to his first and only child, but when he met Amber Frey, he portrayed himself as perfect father material. Frey was a single mom at the time, and Peterson was introduced to her toddler daughter, Ayiana Frey, almost immediately. About two weeks after their first encounter, Peterson and Frey had their second date and this time, Peterson met a 22-month-old Ayiana. As Frey would later testify, per CBS News, they picked her up at school, then went hiking as a family. During the excursion, Peterson was allegedly happy to carry Ayiana along the trail and he even gifted her a kids' book. The next day, Frey asked her new beau if he could pick up her daughter from daycare. "He said he would be honored," she recalled. That evening, they bought and decorated a Christmas tree together and Peterson reportedly told Frey he had never come close to having kids himself.

Despite the legal drama she soon found herself embroiled in, Frey grew her family, giving birth to a baby boy named Justin Dean in April 2004. The father was her then-boyfriend, a Fresno chiropractor and her longtime friend, Dr. David Markovich. Just four months later, she was on the witness stand, testifying against Peterson. Her famous attorney, Gloria Allred, praised a 29-year-old Frey for balancing her civil duty with motherhood, proudly telling reporters how her client was breastfeeding Justin during breaks.

Given all the attention she received, it was no real surprise when Amber Frey was offered a book deal. What was surprising, though, was just how quickly she published it. Less than two months after Scott Peterson was convicted in November 2004, Frey's 210-page account of the ordeal hit store shelves in January 2005. Titled "Witness for the Prosecution of Scott Peterson," the book offered new insight into her personal life, from growing up in a Baptist household to her secret abortion in college. Frey also put a lot of emphasis on her faith, even including Bible verses at various moments throughout the book. "Witness" then traced her relationship with Peterson from start to finish but, as many critics noted, it didn't offer much new insight. "Frey book sheds little new light on Peterson case," NBC News concluded, while the Columbia Missourian proclaimed, "Witness lacks revelations." As the latter pointed out, Frey mainly relied on widely available information about Peterson and the trial, perhaps because she was so rushed to get the book done.

Even so, Frey was proud of the result, telling SFGate, "It allows me to tell my story in my voice." She added, "This is a way for me to set the record straight." True crime fans seemed content enough, as the tome hit the No. 2 spot on both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble bestseller lists the week it was released.

Despite the mediocre reviews that "Witness for the Prosecution of Scott Peterson" received from major media outlets, CBS quickly snapped up the rights to turn the book into a TV movie. The same week that "Witness" hit store shelves, Bela Bajaria, a CBS senior vice president, told Today it was a real coup to land the deal. "Having the rights to her life story, as well as her book, provides an opportunity to tell new dimensions of the story and give viewers a personal look into one of the most notorious crimes of the past decade," Bajaria enthused.

Within months, the made-for-TV movie was released with Janel Moloney (who is perhaps best known for 'The West Wing') playing Amber Frey. Despite the potential for a cheesy end product, the flick was actually praised by many viewers who were surprised by the high caliber of acting and how faithful the script was to the book. "The most astonishing fact is how much all the actors really looked like the people they were portraying," wrote one viewer on IMDb while another praised, "It portrayed the truth with amazing precision." Others, though, took issue with how the film portrayed one of America's most infamous mistresses. "Amber Frey comes across more sympathetically than she probably has any right to be," critiqued Variety. "No one need preserve 'Amber' for posterity."

When Amber Frey met Scott Peterson, she was working as a trained massage therapist in Fresno, California. In the months that followed, her everyday life was thrown upside down, but as she told SFGate in January 2005, she wasn't planning on giving up her career. Admitting she would do her best to sell as many copies of her memoir as possible, she told the outlet that once her press tour was done, she was going straight back to running her massage business.

Jump to June 2007, and a 32-year-old Frey was expanding said business with her own spa. As CBS News reported at the time, Frey was getting ready for the grand opening of the Escape Day Spa in a Fresno suburb called Clovis. "It's something I've wanted to do since I went to massage school," Frey told the outlet, sharing that she had decorated the place in a style reminiscent of Tuscany in Italy. "It's exciting setting goals and moving forward with them," she added.

As of mid-2008, the spa was up and running, but it eventually closed, although the exact timing is unclear. In 2015, Frey penned an essay for Today in which she gave an update on her life with a focus on the hardships. "I've dealt with my share of personal tragedy, losing my home during the real estate crisis," she began before offering an insight into the spa. "I ventured into opening my own business and had to pick up the pieces when it failed," she revealed.

Amber Frey was back in the headlines a year after Scott Peterson's sentencing, but this time, the scandal was all about her. As NBC News reported in September 2005, a DNA test had just confirmed that the man paying child support for her daughter, Ayiana Frey, wasn't actually the child's biological father. The 29-year-old hairstylist, named Anthony Flores, had been giving Frey $175 a month for four years and didn't discover the truth until he went to court seeking visitation rights.

Frey's attorney, Gloria Allred, who has faced off against A-listers like Alec Baldwin, told the public it was an honest mistake. "Amber, in good faith, always believed that Mr. Flores was her child's father," she argued. However, Flores told Daily News he felt like a fool for trusting Frey. "She was very convincing when she told me I was the only person who could be the father," he mused. "I want an apology." 

Interestingly, Flores wasn't exactly an upstanding individual. In 2023, he pleaded guilty to nine felony charges after stealing $2.7 million from an ailing doctor for whom he was supposed to be a caregiver. As for Ayiana's actual father, he was named as Christopher Funch, the owner of Porky's Rib House, a Fresno restaurant and bar that was eventually torn down in 2019.

Just over a decade after Scott Peterson's sentencing, Amber Frey revisited the ordeal and offered a life update during a 2015 interview with Today. "I don't regret anything," she told Matt Lauer before admitting that the experience had forever changed her life, as well as her kids' lives. "It's not really ever gone away in that sense, that recognition," she reflected. Even so, a 40-year-old Frey added that she and her two children, 14-year-old Ayiana and 11-year-old Justin, were doing well, all things considered.

However, despite all the downsides of her surprise fame, she proclaimed, "I would do it all over again because it wasn't about me." Frey was adamant that she had no regrets about doing everything she could to help Laci Peterson and her unborn baby, which is exactly what she did. Indeed, as People reported during the trial in 2004, Peterson's guilty verdict was very much Frey's doing. The prosecution had spent three months trying to convince jurors of Peterson's guilt and had completely failed. It seemed that he would be set free, then Frey took to the stand. Her five-day testimony, which included 12 hours of secretly recorded phone calls with Peterson, made all the difference, according to legal experts. "We were in the seventh inning and the score was 5-0 for the defense," defense attorney Daniel Horowitz told People. "Now, it's 5-5 and the bases are loaded."

Amber Frey wasn't kidding when she told Today in 2015 that, were she forced to, she would be willing to relive the trial all over again in order to help get justice for Laci Peterson and her son. In fact, it seemed that it might be necessary when, in October 2020, the California Supreme Court ordered a lower court to assess whether or not a 47-year-old Scott Peterson merited a retrial. The headline-making news came just two months after the same supreme court reversed Peterson's death penalty conviction and ordered a new sentencing trial. Ultimately, though, Peterson received a new and updated prison sentence. First, he was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2021. Then, in 2022, California Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo ruled that his guilty conviction should stand and a new trial would not go ahead.

Fox News reached out to Frey a day after Massullo's decision to get her reaction. "It's relieving to hear Scott Peterson will not get a new trial," she said via her attorney, Gloria Allred. Even so, she reiterated the fact that she would have been willing to testify all over again. "If I were called to testify, I would give truthful testimony again, for the truth doesn't change over time," she concluded.

2024 marked the 20-year anniversary of Scott Peterson's conviction, and Netflix marked the milestone with a new documentary titled "American Murder: Laci Peterson." In it, Frey again opened up about her brief relationship with Scott, offering new insights into their courtship and the horrific way it ended.

"I thought he was handsome, he had a really nice smile, he had a good head on his shoulders," Frey recalled of their early interactions, per the Daily Mail. "He was interested in my life and my daughter, and he was sweet with her." According to Frey, they often spoke of a future together and even when he admitted to lying, she didn't make much of it. Scott initially told Frey he had never been married, but later visited her, crying, to confess that it wasn't true. "He said he had 'lost' his wife and this would be the first holidays without her," Frey shared. "I remember just comforting him."

After that, the relationship continued and they even attended a Christmas party together on December 14 -– the same night Laci Peterson went to their friends' holiday bash alone. Somehow, Scott's two separate realities didn't cross paths, then everything changed on Christmas Eve. Shortly after Laci's disappearance made news, Frey realized she had been completely deceived. "I was definitely in shock," she told viewers. "I couldn't stop crying."

In an unexpected turn of events, Amber Frey used her notoriety to become somewhat of an influencer. More specifically, she signed on to work as a brand ambassador for Bucked Up, a fitness supplement brand founded in 2016. The company sells a wide array of products, from energy drinks to supplements, testosterone boosters, and vitamins. It even has an entire range aimed at female fitness enthusiasts which it calls Babe and which Frey often promotes on her social media channels.

It seems their partnership began around 2023, with Frey posting snaps of herself using Bucked Up products at the gym to her personal Facebook page. As of this writing, her Instagram bio also has links to free Bucked Up samples and affiliate links in an effort to earn some extra cash. What's more, she's created TikTok clips in which she raves about the products, like in one in which she told fans, "I am caffeine sensitive, and the non-stim has been a GAME changer!" Taken up the ante even further, Frey has also created a separate "Amber Frey Bucked Up Ambassador" Facebook page to try and sell more items, although she claims it's not about the money. "I've been working out for 30yrs," she explains in the page's bio. "Joined Bucked Up Brand Ambassador to help others in their journey!"