Few in the horde of journalists covering the Laci Peterson murder case in Modesto, California, have ever set foot in Gervasoni’s bar, though it is just a few blocks from the Stanislaus County Courthouse, but this friendly, 50s-style saloon has become the hangout of choice for two of the story’s most prodigious propagators, David Wright and Michael Hanrahan of The National Enquirer. By liberally spreading cash all over this community of 203,000, the dapper, silver-haired operators, both in their 60s, have broken many of the scoops claimed by better-known reporters and newscasters weeks, even months later. In an increasingly frenzied and downscale tabloid-news era, Wright and Hanrahan finally see everything coming their way, for, if the weekly tabloids were once considered beneath contempt by the Establishment press, today they are must-reads for everyone in the media. Conversely, the highly organized pageants of grief and speculation that big criminal cases have become, particularly on cable television, are the perfect petri dish for Wright and Hanrahan to develop their stories in. “Every morning you wake up and think, What can I turn today?,” Hanrahan, a former reporter for the New York Daily News, tells me as we sit in Gervasoni’s on May 29. Wright, a Brit and a 27-year Enquirer veteran, adds, “The Peterson story has broken perfectly. The tabs kept Laci going during the Iraq war, and as soon as the war finishes, her body washes up.” Wright says he hopes that Judge Al Girolami will issue a gag order on the case, for then the tabloids would be in an even stronger position to offer money to entice information out of local people. “We love gag orders—they’re the best we can hope for.”

So far money has definitely talked in Modesto, and even if someone turns it down, there’s usually somebody else already in line. Willie Traina, for example, the previous owner of the Petersons’ ranch-style house, told me that he had twice been told that the tabloids were willing “to pay me $150,000 at a minimum” for pictures of the interior of the three-bedroom dwelling, in which Laci was allegedly murdered, but that he had refused. No problem: the Enquirer, which has local private investigators on its payroll and keeps at least two reporters in Modesto at all times, found another source and published the pictures in May. Laci’s father, Dennis Rocha, sold his story along with family pictures to the Enquirer’s sister publication Globe—which outbid the Enquirer—for $12,000. Wright and Hanrahan also do the old-fashioned kind of legwork that younger reporters often shun in favor of downloads from the Internet, and both of their methods have paid off, so to speak. According to Steve Coz, editorial director of American Media, Inc., which publishes The National Enquirer, Globe, and Star, every Laci Peterson cover has increased sales of each of the three weeklies by as many as 300,000 copies. After the Enquirer gleefully reported in May that it had “penetrated the ongoing investigation,” the Modesto Police Department began an internal scrutiny of the force. But, as Hanrahan explains to me, “if you say there are a half-dozen cops working on this . . . which one speaks to us, that’s not the way it works. Cops all have girlfriends, sisters, uncles, mothers.”

While giant satellite trucks outside jockey for curb space to broadcast every last tidbit of leaked evidence in the case, Hanrahan greets owner Gary Gervasoni as an old friend and orders his first vodka-and-soda at four p.m. This is a popular spot with locals; before the murder, Laci’s stepfather, Ron Grantski, used to drop in. And since the Peterson case, like the O. J. Simpson and JonBenét Ramsey cases before it, has everything to make it the No. 1 human-interest reality-TV soap opera in America—the pretty, young, pregnant wife goes missing on Christmas Eve, her handsome husband’s girlfriend reveals the affair they’ve been having, he heads south, the wife’s body and that of her unborn baby are later discovered a few miles from where her husband claims he was fishing when she disappeared, he dyes his hair and is arrested carrying $10,000 in cash—Gervasoni’s is just the sort of connected place the Enquirer reporters favor to find out which doors to knock on. They also trawl certain restaurants and churches. Today a tough-looking construction worker in shorts and sneakers pops in to ask whether something he has come across is worth anything. Hanrahan says the man has contacted the Enquirer, which routinely pays $500 per tip, because he believes he has uncovered a satanic mural in a house he is remodeling. Hanrahan leads him over to a booth, pulls a notebook out of his back pocket, and starts writing.

Anything smacking of satanic cults is big in Modesto these days, ever since Mark Geragos, Scott Peterson’s high-powered Los Angeles lawyer, not only promised to find the “real killers” of Laci and the baby she planned to name Conner but also announced that he was looking for a brown van seen in Laci’s neighborhood that had some connection to a satanic cult. He said he was also trying to locate a reluctant female witness who had valuable information. Whether the woman was part of the van story was not made clear at first. The Enquirer reporters, who are convinced of Scott Peterson’s guilt, tell me that Geragos is “all smoke and mirrors.” Globe had run a story earlier saying that the police had already checked out the brown van. As for the mysterious woman, she had contacted Globe as well as the police, and her ex-husband had told that tabloid that she had a history of mental illness and suffered from multiple-personality disorder. Nevertheless, because the prosecution has played the case so close to the vest, the defense has had ample opportunity to cast doubt on Peterson’s guilt by filling the void with alternative scenarios, and the strategy has worked, particularly since cable news channels have to fill the air 24-7.