About me
Peter Van Sant is an award-winning correspondent for 48 HOURS, where his true-crime and justice reporting is featured across multiple CBS News broadcasts and platforms. In addition, Van Sant hosts the top-ranking podcast BLOOD IS THICKER.
Over a career spanning nearly five decades, Van Sant has covered many of the most significant events of our lifetime, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Boston Marathon bombings, the Virginia Tech shootings, the killings of five Dallas police officers, and the first Gulf War.
Since joining 48 HOURS in 1998, Van Sant has reported on issues including human trafficking, the murder of four Idaho college students, a murder-for-hire ring on the dark web, and the disappearance of a woman in Panama. He has also conducted countless unscheduled interviews with suspected murderers.
In 2006, Van Sant served as writer and producer of Three Days in September, a searing documentary on terrorists seizing and destroying a school in Beslan, Russia, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Van Sant’s work has earned virtually every major broadcast journalism award, including multiple Emmy Awards, three Edward R. Murrow Awards, a Sigma Delta Chi Award, an Overseas Press Club Award, a Columbia University–Alfred I. duPont Award, an American Women in Radio and Television Award, a New York Press Club Award, and a National Headliner Award.
Before joining 48 HOURS, Van Sant was a correspondent for Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel (1997–1998). He was the first television journalist to report on the devastating famine in North Korea and was part of a CBS News undercover investigative team that located and filmed an indicted war criminal in Bosnia.
From 1995 to 1997, Van Sant was a correspondent for the CBS EVENING NEWS. He also contributed to three primetime specials for Smithsonian Fantastic Journey, reporting on a study of lions in Africa, efforts to save cheetahs in Namibia, and the plague of brown tree snakes in Guam.
Earlier in his career, Van Sant reported for the CBS newsmagazines STREET STORIES (1991–1993) and AMERICA TONIGHT (1994).
From 1989 to 1991, Van Sant was assigned to the London bureau, where he reported extensively on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first Gulf War, the reunification of Germany, famine in Africa, and other major stories across Europe and the Middle East.
Van Sant joined CBS News in 1984 as a correspondent for the CBS EVENING NEWS in Atlanta, covering the Southeast, the space program, and the aviation industry.
Van Sant is the co-author of the book Perfectly Executed (Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books).
Before joining CBS News, he was a reporter for WFAA-TV in Dallas (1982–1984), a weekend anchor and reporter at KOOL-TV in Phoenix (1978–1982), and a reporter for KETV in Omaha (1977–1978) and KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids (1976–1977). He began his television broadcast journalism career in 1975 at KMVT-TV in Twin Falls, Idaho, and started in radio at KAPY in Port Angeles, Washington.
A native of Seattle, Van Sant graduated cum laude with a degree in communications from Washington State University in Pullman.
