Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft asks an interesting question: “Why is Laci Peterson more important than Lisa Eatmon?”

Eatmon, 33, was 8 months pregnant when her body was discovered in the Hudson River earlier this month. Yesterday, the father of Eatmon’s unborn child was charged with her killing:

Mr. Glinton, a sanitation worker, was arrested on Friday after a grand jury returned an indictment against him. Two weeks earlier, the prosecutor contended, he had planned to flee to the Bahamas with $20,000, but was arrested after driving away from officers at speeds up to 100 miles per hour on the Belt Park.

TalkLeft’s Merritt notes that Glinton’s defense echoes Scott Peterson’s. Two pregnant women. Two seemingly similar murder cases. So why hasn’t there been more media coverage of the Eatmon case? Some of Merritt’s readers jump to the knee-jerk conclusion that the reason the case hasn’t gotten the 24/7/wall-to-wall Laci-style coverage is due to race. Laci was white; Lisa is black. Ergo, it’s media racists who are burying the story. A commenter writes:

In America, regardless of who’s in charge, white lives are always valued more highly than black lives. There are exceptions, of course, but that’s the general rule.

Well, not so fast. Laci went missing on Christmas Eve 2002 and the mystery lasted until the following spring, when she and her unborn son Connor’s bodies were discovered washed up on the shore of the East Bay outside Richmond, Calif. The twists and turns in the case, the holiday melodrama, and the compelling pictures and video of Laci and her relatives and Amber Frey, etc., etc., provided irresistible fodder for the cable news networks and crime shows.

By contrast, Eatmon hadn’t been reported as missing. Relatives had spoken to her two days before her body was found and suspected nothing before the discovery. Since the body was recovered, the New York Times has run six Metro section stories on the case, including this alarming piece on how Glinton’s children believe may have gotten away with murdering a previous wife. In addition, the New York tabloids and wire services have published a total of 31 stories on Lisa Eatmon’s murder.

Not exactly the silent treatment.