Craig Alan Peyer was a California Highway Patrol officer convicted for the 1986 strangulation murder of 20-year-old Cara Knott, a student at San Diego State University. On the night of December 27, 1986, Knott was driving from her boyfriend's home in Escondido to her parents' home in El Cajon, California on Interstate 15 when Peyer, on duty in a marked CHP patrol car, signalled Knott to pull off the freeway on an isolated offramp.
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- Craig Alan Peyer was a California Highway Patrol officer convicted for the 1986 strangulation murder of 20-year-old Cara Knott, a student at San Diego State University. On the night of December 27, 1986, Knott was driving from her boyfriend's home in Escondido to her parents' home in El Cajon, California on Interstate 15 when Peyer, on duty in a marked CHP patrol car, signalled Knott to pull off the freeway on an isolated offramp. It later came to light that the officer had been previously harassing women drivers in the same area, pulling them over on the same isloated offramp and apparently trying to pick them up as dates. It is believed that the situation escalated when Knott threatened to report Peyer for unprofessional behavior, and that he killed her by bludgeoning her with his flashlight and then strangling her with rope and then he threw her body off an abandoned bridge into the brush below in an attempt to avoid disciplinary action. 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 the scratches. Just after the broadcast nearly two dozen calls, mostly from women, called to complain that Peyer was the officer who pulled them over on that same offramp, although in none of these cases was Peyer hostile or violent towards them. Another witness said he saw a patrol car going off that area with a Volkswagen Beetle believed to be Cara's about the time the murder was known to have occurred. Peyer's own log showed a hasty erasure about that time and change to a ticket he had actually written some time later. A rope found in his patrol car seemed to match the rope marks around her neck. Gold fibers on Cara's dress matched the gold braid on his CHP uniform shoulder patch. He had tried to minimize fiber transfer but did not notice that the fibers on his shoulder patch stuck to her dress. Peyer's fellow officers 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. 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. In 1988, Peyer was sentenced to 25 years to life. Though continuing to claim his innocence, in 2004 Peyer was asked if he would contribute a sample of his DNA to a county program that was designed to use DNA samples to possibly exonerate wrongfully imprisoned persons. Peyer refused to provide any DNA for the test. There was a reason for this request. Spots of blood were found on the bottom of Cara's dress and on her shoe. Subsequent pre-DNA testing found it to be Type AB negative, Peyer's blood type. When asked, at a subsequent parole hearing, why he had refused, Peyer remained silent. Peyer was denied parole, again. The Craig Peyer case was covered in the book True Stories of Law & Order: SVU by Kevin Dwyer and Juré Fiorillo. This case was included in the book You're the Jury by Judge Norbert Enrenfreund and Lawrence Treat (Holt Paperbacks 1992. ISBN 0805019510). This case was also covered in the book Badge of Betrayal: The Devastating True Story of a Rogue Cop Turned Murderer. by Joe Cantlupe and Lisa Petrillo. (Publisher: Avon Books This case was also the subject of an episode of the TV show "City Confidential", and was documented on "Forensic Files".
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- Sworn in as an Officer - 1980
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- Craig Alan Peyer was a California Highway Patrol officer convicted for the 1986 strangulation murder of 20-year-old Cara Knott, a student at San Diego State University. On the night of December 27, 1986, Knott was driving from her boyfriend's home in Escondido to her parents' home in El Cajon, California on Interstate 15 when Peyer, on duty in a marked CHP patrol car, signalled Knott to pull off the freeway on an isolated offramp.
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