- Craig Peyer
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Craig A. Peyer California Highway Patrol Place of birth California, USA Service branch United States Years of service 1980 - 1986 Rank Sworn in as an Officer - 1980 Craig Allen Peyer was a rogue California Highway Patrol officer convicted of the 1986 strangulation murder of 20-year-old motorist Cara Knott, a student at San Diego State University.
Contents
Murder of Cara Knott
Scene of the crime.
On the night of December 27, 1986, Cara Knott was driving south on Interstate 15 from her boyfriend's home in Escondido to her parents' home in El Cajon, California, when Peyer, on duty in a marked CHP patrol car, signaled Knott to pull off the freeway on an isolated offramp. It later came to light that the officer had been previously harassing a number of women drivers in the same area, pulling them over on the same isolated offramp and apparently trying to pick them up as dates. It is believed that the situation with Knott escalated to physicality when she threatened to report Peyer for unprofessional behavior. Peyer then bludgeoned her with his flashlight and strangled her with rope. He then threw her body off an abandoned bridge into the brush below.
Ironically, two days later, while covering the investigation of the murder, a reporter for KCST-TV interviewed Peyer during a ride-along segment about self-protection for female drivers. At the time of this interview Peyer had scratches on his face which, as details of the case unfolded, were believed to have been inflicted by Knott during her struggle with the officer. He tried to explain them away by saying he fell against a fence on the CHP parking lot, but the fence was found to be too high to be consistent with Peyer's facial scratches.
Investigation
Just after the KCST broadcast, nearly two-dozen telephone calls, mostly from women, were received by authorities, with the callers reporting that Peyer was the officer who pulled them over on that same off-ramp, although in none of these cases was Peyer hostile or violent towards them. They said that while he may have been friendly and nice to them, he made them feel uncomfortable. Moreover, there had been complaints about him prior to the murder by several women but were dismissed due to his reputation within the department.
Another witness said he saw a patrol car accompanying a Volkswagen Beetle, believed to be Knott's, in that area at about the time the murder was known to have occurred. Cara Knott had been last seen alive at a Chevron gas station two miles from the murder scene. The attendant remembered seeing a CHP patrol car making a U-turn on the road just after Knott had driven off.
Peyer's own work logbook showed a hasty erasure about that time as well as a change made to a traffic ticket that he had actually written some time later. A rope found in his patrol car seemed to match the rope marks around the victim's neck. Gold fibers found on Knott's dress matched the gold braid on Peyer's CHP uniform shoulder patch. He had tried to minimize fiber transfer by probably placing her body on the hood of his patrol car but did not notice that the fibers on his shoulder patch stuck to her dress. Furthermore, a drop of blood was found on one of Knott's boots which was found to be consistent with Peyer's blood type (AB negative, the rarest type) and other genetic markers, although conclusive DNA testing was not available at the time of the investigation.
Peyer's fellow police officers, including one female San Diego police officer who spoke out against one "of their own," testified to the defendant's strange behavior following the murder, with his continuous requests regarding the investigation's status and his attempts to justify the perpetrator's crime as a mistake. An internal investigation showed that while he stopped many drivers for various legitimate violations, most were females driving alone. Moreover they were of the same age group and physicality of Cara Knott.
Trials
The first trial resulted in a hung jury. Upon retrial, testimony regarding a potential second suspect and a hearsay explanation for the defendant's scratches was ruled inadmissible, and Peyer was found guilty of murder, the first-ever conviction of murder by an on duty CHP officer.[1] In 1988, Peyer was sentenced to 25 years to life.
After conviction, Peyer continued to claim his innocence. In 2004, Peyer was asked if he would contribute a sample of his DNA to a San Diego County program that was designed and initiated to use DNA samples to possibly exonerate wrongfully imprisoned persons, since at the time of his trial and conviction such testing was not yet available. Peyer refused to provide any DNA for the test. When asked at a subsequent parole hearing why he had refused to provide a sample, Peyer remained silent.
Peyer was denied parole in both 2004 and 2008,[2] and will receive another parole hearing in 2012.[3][4]
Media
The Craig Peyer case has been covered in the books True Stories of Law & Order: SVU by Kevin Dwyer and Juré Fiorillo (Berkley/Penguin 2007. ISBN 0425217353); You're the Jury by Judge Norbert Enrenfreund and Lawrence Treat (Holt Paperbacks 1992. ISBN 0805019510); and Badge of Betrayal: The Devastating True Story of a Rogue Cop Turned Murderer by Joe Cantlupe and Lisa Petrillo. (Publisher: Avon Books (Mm) December 1991.)
The case was also the subject of a 2003 episode of the television show City Confidential, titled "Badge of Dishonor," as well as documented on the TV show Forensic Files.
See also
- Cara Knott Memorial Bridge
References
- ^ "Timeline 1986". http://timelines.ws/20thcent/1986.HTML. Retrieved November 14, 2009.
- ^ Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety (TiPS) - Former CHP Denied Parole Four More Years
- ^ http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080131-1539-bn31peyer3.html
- ^ Marshall, Scott (January 8, 2004). "Panel denies parole for ex-CHP officer, murderer". http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/article_fc073c85-e2f9-5647-8f10-2230111cde0f.html. Retrieved November 14, 2009.
External links
Categories:- American murderers
- California Highway Patrol
- Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by California
- American police officers convicted of murder
- Living people
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