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

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 everywhere--in 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.

About the Author

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole-Peralta writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com/ is a world renowned freelance writing, copyediting, ghostwriting, graphics and CAD, search engine optimization, publishing helpers, internet marketing, free professional services, and supercheap dedicated web host and website development corporation.