October 2024

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. Additionally, Van Sant hosts the top-ranking podcast BLOOD IS THICKER.

During a career that spans 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 shootings of five Dallas police officers and the first Gulf War.

Since joining 48 HOURS in 1998, he’s reported on such issues as human trafficking, the murder of four Idaho college students, a murder-for-hire ring on the dark web, the disappearance of a woman in Panama and conducted countless unscheduled interviews with suspected murderers. In 2006, he was the writer and producer of “Three Days in September,” a searing documentary on terrorists seizing and destroying a school in Beslan, Russia, that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Van Sant’s work has earned virtually every broadcast journalism award available, 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. Van Sant was also part of a CBS News undercover investigative team that found and taped 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,” which included reports on a study of lions in Africa that scientists hoped would lead to a cure for AIDS, efforts to save cheetahs in Namibia and the plague of brown tree snakes in Guam.

Earlier, 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. There, he reported extensively on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first Gulf War, the reunification of Germany, famine in Africa and a variety of significant stories that took him across Europe and the Middle East.

He joined CBS News in 1984 as a correspondent for CBS EVENING NEWS in Atlanta, where he covered the Southeast, the space program and focused on the aviation industry.

Van Sant is the co-author of the book Perfectly Executed (Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books).

Before joining CBS News, Van Sant was a reporter for WFAA-TV in Dallas (1982-1984). He worked as a weekend anchor and reporter at KOOL TV in Phoenix (1978-1982) and as a reporter for KETV in Omaha (1977-1978) and KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids (1976-1977). Van Sant began his television broadcast journalism career in 1975 at KMVT-TV in Twin Falls, Idaho. His first broadcast news experience came at KAPY radio in Port Angeles, Wash.

He is a native of Seattle. He graduated cum laude with a degree in communications from Washington State University in Pullman.