Ken McElroy: Killed in Broad Daylight

McElroy. Town bully and general POS

From the beginning of his life, on June 1, 1934, Ken Rex McElroy seemed destined for a troubled, cruel life.  He was the fifteenth of sixteen children born to a poor, migrant tenant farming family that moved between Kansas and the Ozarks before settling outside of Skidmore, Missouri.  His formal education ended when he was fifteen and in the eighth grade. Ken dropped out, at which time he already had a reputation as a raccoon hunter, castle rustler, thief and a womanizer.

Over the next two decades, McElroy would be suspected of the thefts of grain, gasoline, alcohol, antiques and livestock, arson, assault, child molestation, and statutory rape, resulting in charges being brought against him twenty-one times.  Amazingly, he was never convicted, mostly because the witnesses were afraid.  McElroy was known to have intimidated witnesses, mainly by parking outside their homes and stalking them.

In between his many felonies and intimidation tactics, McElroy fathered ten children with different women and married four times.  He met his fourth wife, Trena, when she was twelve years old.  By the age of fourteen, Trena was pregnant and had dropped out of school.  McElroy divorced wife number three and married Trena in order to escape statutory rape charges.  Before the divorce and marriage, he moved the pregnant teenager into his marital home with wife number three.  Yeah, this guy had zero boundaries.

Two weeks after Trena gave birth, she and wife number three fled to Trena's parents' home. McElroy tracked both down and brought them back to his home.  He wasn't done; he returned to Trena's parents' home while they were away, shot their family dog and burned down the house.

This led to McElroy being indicted in June of 1973 for arson, assault and statutory rape. He was arrested but then released on $2,500 bail.  Trena and her baby, meanwhile, were put into foster care. After getting bail, McElroy located where his child wife and baby were and committed his usual M.O. - - parking in front of the home and telling the foster parents that he would abduct their daughter and then "exchange" her for Trena. He strengthened his threat by telling the parents that he knew what school their daughter went to and her schoolbus route home.

No surprise that additional charges were filed against McElroy.  As per usual, though, he got away with it.

On July 27, 1976, McElroy shot a Skidmore farmer by the name of Henry twice after McElroy was challenged for firing weapons on Henry's property.  Henry survived and McElroy was charged (again) with assault with intent to kill.  He denied he was on the property or fired shots.  Henry would state that during the case, McElroy parked outside the Henry residence 100 times, in an attempt to intimidate.  Boy, this guy never changed, did he?

During the trial, McElroy had two fellow raccoon hunters testify that he was with them during the time Henry was shot.  While on the stand, Henry was forced to admit that he had neglected mentioning his own petty criminal record from thirty years earlier.  McElroy was acquitted.

Bo Bowenkamp

Fast forward to 1980.  One of McElroy's children gets into an argument with a grocery store clerk, after the child was accused of stealing candy.  Imagine that -  a McElroy child is a chip off the old (cell) block.  The child denied it (of course) and McElroy likely took the child's side.  Stealing does run in the family, after all.  McElroy began stalking the Bowenkamp family  - the owners of the grocery store. He would eventually confront Ernest "Bo" Bowenkamp in the back of the store, resulting in Bo being shot in the neck.

Bowenkamp survived his wound and McElroy was arrested once again and charged with attempted murder.  He would be found guilty of assault at trial but was out on bail pending an appeal.   Once out, McElroy headed to a local bar, the D&G Tavern, armed with an M1 Garland rifle.   He made violent threats about what he was gong to do to Bowenkamp once he found him, terrifying bar patrons.  The patrons, it seemed, had begun to have enough of McElroy and asked a county sheriff how to handle the matter of McElroy.  The sheriff advised them to form a neighborhood watch.

McElroy's appeal hearing was delayed.  What was it with the court system in this place?

On July 10, 1981, the townspeople of Skidmore met in the center of town with the local sheriff to discuss how to protect themselves from their town bully. During the meeting, McElroy showed once again at the D&G Tavern, with Trena, and began to drink.  Word got out that he was once again in town. The sheriff warned his citizens not to get into any type of confrontation with McElroy but, inexplicably, left town.  The citizens decided there might be safety in numbers and headed to the D&G, filling the bar.  McElroy finished his drink, bought a six pack and left with Trena.  He climbed into his pickup truck and was shot at several times, being hit twice.  Trena escaped unharmed.

None of the some sixty witnesses, including Trena, bothered to call for an ambulance or help.  McElroy, 47, was dead at the scene.  Only Trena claimed to have been able to identify a trigger man.  The other witnesses claimed an inability to know who did what.  The DA would wisely decline to press charges.

In 1984, Trena filed a wrongful death suit against the town of Skidmore, Nodaway County, the sheriff of Nodaway County, the mayor of Skidmore and Del Clement, seeking $6 million in restitution. Trena accused Clement of being the actual shooter.  The case would be settled out of court for $17,600 with no party admitting guilt.  Trena would remarry and move out of the Skidmore area.  She died on her 55th birthday in 2012 of cancer.

Murder is never acceptable but if anyone had it coming, it was Ken McElroy.  This man held the town of Skidmore hostage for years. He bullied and intimidated, took what he wanted, whether it was property, money or sex. The authorities seemed incapable or unmotivated to prevent him from intimidating and bullying witnesses, allowing him to continue his felonies. What the townspeople did was a crime but after years of being abused by McElroy and disappointed by authorities, they were victims themselves. These folks must have lived in fear of what McElroy might do.  In my opinion, they were given no choice but to take matters into their own hands. It was only a matter of time before McElroy killed someone.  The townspeople of Skidmore did everyone a favor by putting Ken McElroy down, the way you would a rabid animal.

No charges were ever filed against Del Clement, nor anyone else for the murder, despite three grand jury investigations and an FBI probe.  Clement died in 2009.  Interestingly, Clement, along with his brother Greg, was owner of the D&G (for Del and Greg) Tavern.  McElroy had supposedly scared customers away over the years, as well as threatened to shoot Del's horses (he was a rancher) and it was these facts that allegedly led Clement to shoot and kill McElroy.

Since McElroy's death,  a story surfaced that he placed a man on railroad tracks in order to watch him be killed.  The murder allegedly occurred in St. Joe but has not been proven.

On February 3, 1991, a miniseries titled "In Broad Daylight," inspired by the McElroy case, was shown on tv.  It starred Brian Dennehy (who also portrayed serial killer John Wayne Gacy) and was based on a book of the same name .

Skidmore residents inspect the crime scene

Lita McClinton: A Deadly Flower Delivery

Friday, January 16, 1987 was a foggy, rainy day in Atlanta, Georgia.  Inside Lita McClinton's townhome, she and her best friend, Poppy Marable, who had stayed the night at Lita's, were discussing the day ahead.  For Lita, it was going to be a momentous one - - that day, a judge was scheduled to decide her divorce settlement.  After eleven years of being legally wed, she was ready to begin the new chapter of her life.

The doorbell rang shortly after 8 a.m. and to Lita's delight, it was  flower delivery man with a box of pink roses.  Still wearing her nightgown and bathrobe, she went downstairs to accept the flowers.

The foyer, bloodstained

The delivery man had a 9 mm gun hidden within the roses. He fired several shots at her, with one striking her in the head.

Upstairs, Poppy Marable heard the gunfire. Terrified, she grabbed her 3 year old daughter and hid in a closet. She wouldn't come out until the police arrived. A neighbor heard the gunfire and found Lita on the entryway floor, still alive but mortally wounded.  Lita was quickly taken to the hospital but died of her wounds. When news of her death got out, her friends and family were convinced that her soon to be ex-husband, James Sullivan, was behind her murder, even though he was residing  a state away, in Palm Beach, Florida.

The McClintock-Sullivan wedding

Lita, the beautiful daughter of a U.S. Department of Transportation official and a Georgia state representative, had met Sullivan in 1975, after she had graduated from Spelman College and was working in a boutique. He had been a customer, was 34 years old to her 23, divorced with four children and white.  She found him charismatic and was beguiled by how the older man courted her.  Lita's parents, however, found him arrogant, maybe even a pathological liar, and worried about how an interracial couple would fare socially, especially in the south. Lita was in love and, ultimately, her parents did not interfere.  She and Sullivan married in December of 1976.

The newlyweds settled into married life in Macon, where Sullivan ran Crown Beverage, Inc., a company he inherited from his uncle in 1975, while Lita worked in a department store.  In 1983, he sold the business and the two moved to the ritzy Palm Beach area and into a prestigious oceanfront mansion. If the Sullivans hoped that an exclusive community like Palm Beach would be more tolerant and accepting of their relationship, they would be disappointed. Sullivan was desperate to climb the social ladder, becoming a regular on the town's social circuit, but he simply wasn't accepted to his liking. While on the surface it appeared they were living the glamorous dream, Lita's friends would later say she was miserable.  Sullivan blamed her and her race for his lack of social status.

Lita discovered that he had begun having affairs. She discovered blonde hairs and women's undergarments in her own bed.  She was a traditional woman at heart and these betrayals stung her deeply.  She wanted her marriage to work and fought desperately to keep it afloat.

Sullivan was also stingy. Despite his immense wealth, he was a terrible skinflint with his wife, often leaving her financially strapped.

Lita went to counseling. She even signed a post-nuptial agreement, giving her $2,500 per month in alimony should the marriage fail. She was willing to do anything in order to make her marriage a success but when she found out that Sullivan was picking up prostitutes, she finally decided to call it quits. After over 8 years of marriage, Lita packed her bags and returned to Atlanta, moving into a townhome they owned in the upscale Buckhead area. She filed for divorce and requested half of his $5 million estate. She threw herself into charity work and even began dating again.

Sullivan became suspect number one when the police began their investigation. It was clear that Lita was the target, she was so obviously assassinated. Who else would want her dead but James Sullivan, who she was in the midst of a fierce financial battle with?  Unfortunately, as far as the police were concerned, not only could Sullivan prove he was in Palm Beach but witness descriptions mentioned three men running away from Lita's townhome that morning and none of them matched Sullivan's description.

Still, the police believed Sullivan had to be involved. They determined that he had received a phone call from a rest stop outside of Atlanta on the morning of Lita's murder, one they believed was a signal to him to let him know his wife had been killed.  Sullivan denied any such thing and told the cops he believed that Lita's death was due to botched drug deal.

In February,  a telephone conversation between Sullivan and a friend was picked up and recorded via a police wiretap. Sullivan spoke about Lita's murder and the ongoing investigation, mentioning that she had been killed with a 9mm gun - - a bit of information that had not been released to the public.  However, with no gun or gunman, the district attorney felt it wasn't enough to indict Sullivan.

Sullivan with Suki

Eight months after Lita's death, Sullivan married Hyo-Sook Choi Rogers, a socialite who was 13 years his junior. He also continued his life of socializing and playing tennis.

There would finally be a break in 1990.  It started with Sullivan being pulled over for a traffic violation. Wanting to avoid any attention and the continuing investigation into Lita's murder, Sullivan did not appear in court and instead Suki showed up and claimed that she was driving and the ticketing officer had made a mistake.  Yeah, because a police officer could surely misidentify the younger and female Suki for the older asshole Sullivan. The judge was clearly no dummy and Sullivan was given house arrest for perjury and weapon possession (for the four guns found in his residence.).  Ha.

Things got worse though. Suki decided that maybe she might not want to continue hitching her wagon to a lying piece of shit like Sullivan and a divorce might be a better alternative. Keeping true to character, he was none too pleased with the little woman packing her bags. Suki, however, got the last word. She told cops that he had confessed to her that he had Lita murdered. Why hadn't she spoken up sooner?  Because she had feared for her own life.

Sullivan, naturally, denied the claim. Investigators felt that since the claim was made during a nasty divorce battle, it may not have enough legs to warrant an indictment.

A year later, a federal grand jury did indict Sullivan for conspiracy to commit murder based on the phone calls to and from his Palm Beach home at the time of Lita's killing. The case would be dismissed by the judge for lack of evidence.  Once again, James Sullivan skated by.

For Lita's parents, who never liked Sullivan, and who had waited patiently for seven years for justice to be served for their daughter, the dismissal was too much. In 1994, they filed a wrongful death claim against Sullivan in civil court, attesting that he had hired the hit man who shot and killed Lita. Sullivan, ever the genius, acted as his own attorney. He may have been delighted to torment the McClintons by cross-examining them but the jury found him liable and awarded them $4 million. He would not pay, claiming he was broke.

Harwood

The McClintons would not give up, vowing to continue to fight for Lita. Their persistence paid off. In 1998, a tip led the Atlanta police to a man in North Carolina who confessed that Sullivan paid him $25,000 to murder his wife. The man, Tony Harwood, would agree to testify against Sullivan in exchange for a 20 year prison sentence.

It seemed that finally there was enough evidence to charge James Sullivan with Lita McClinton's murder.  But James Sullivan had vanished.

He had been living in Costa Rica but went on the run once he heard that Harwood was talking. The FBI put him on their Ten Most Wanted list. Authorities were told that Sullivan had traveled through Venezuela and Panama but no leads panned out.

It would take four years and the television show "America's Most Wanted" before James Sullivan was found. A tip led authorities to Thailand, where Sullivan was living in a beachfront condo with a girlfriend. In 2004, he was extradited back to the U.S.

On February 27, 2006, nearly twenty years after Lita's brutal death, the case of the State of Georgia versus James Sullivan began. Prosecutors would call Lita's divorce attorney to testify as to Sullivan's excessive desire to limit the amount of money Lita' might win in court. They explained that the date of her murder - - January 16, 1987  - - was highly significant. The divorce hearing scheduled for that day would decide whether Lita would be awarded $250,000 or $1 million.  No Lita meant no divorce hearing and that would mean that rather than paying her a minimum of a quarter of a million dollars, Sullivan wouldn't have to give out a cent.  That was the motive in a nutshell - - greed.

Lita's grieving parents

Lita's neighbor, Bob Christiansen, testified as to seeing the man approach Lita's front door. He got a good look at him and identified Tony Harwood from a photo lineup.

Tony Harwood testified to meeting Sullivan in November of 1986, two months before Lita's murder. Harwood worked for a moving company and had delivered a piano to Sullivan's Palm Beach mansion. Despite only being the mansion for two hours, in that brief period of time, Sullivan and Harwood birthed the plan to murder Lita. Hardwood stated he believed that Sullivan was kidding about needing someone to "take care of" his wife, until he received $12,500 in the mail.  He testified that Sullivan had wanted Lita done away with by Christmas but the murder scheme would have to wait until Hardwood and two friends could drive up to Georgia. Because obviously you need friends to support you when you knock off someone for some coin.

The trio's first attempt to destroy Lita McClinton did not work when they realized that a woman likely wouldn't answer the door to three strangers, especially at 5:30 in the morning.  They suspected she would, however, to a flower delivery man at a more decent hour.  That plan, sadly, succeeded. Harwood stopped at a rest stop on the way back to Florida to call Sullivan and deliver a disgustingly simple and chilling message: "Merry Christmas."

The unopened flower box, with Lita's blood

Amazingly, Harwood's former girlfriend Belinda Trahan was the informant who tipped the police off as to his involvement in Lita's homicide. She testified that Harwood had told her about meeting Sullivan after moving a piano and that he had wanted his wife taken out because he didn't want her to get anything in their divorce. She hadn't believed his tale at first, even when he took a trip to Georgia in January of 1987 and told her that the plan had failed because the woman wouldn't answer the door. It was Trahan who had told him the way to get a woman to answer the door was to show up with flowers.  Sigh.  Unfortunately Trahan could not be charged with being a dumbass. Honestly.

Trahan testified that even after Harwood told her the hit had been a success, she still hadn't believed him.  It was James Sullivan delivering an envelope full of cash to Harwood, in Trahan's presence, that convinced her.  Well, duh.

Still, from a legal standpoint, the case wasn't a slam dunk. There was no murder weapon. There was no proof in banking records or any other paper trail that supported the case that Sullivan had paid Harwood (or anyone else) for killing Lita. And Tony Harwood was a problem witness.

For parts of his testimony, he seemed to flounder. When asked if he agreed to participate in the murder of Lita McClinton, he answered no. Contradicting Belinda Trahan's tale of Sullivan paying him at a restaurant table, Harwood stated that he and Sullivan had exchanged the money in the men's restroom. He admitted that he had a history of lying to the authorities and that he had given his girlfriend a different account of who had ordered him to kill - - not Sullivan but the Mafia. So shaky was his testimony, the defense elected not to cross examine him.

Lita

The defense did cross Belinda Trahan, who was not without her own problems. She could not recall what restaurant Sullivan met her and Harwood in, nor how far it was from their home.  While she easily identified Sullivan in the courtroom, she could not and did not do so eight years earlier in a photo lineup. The defense put forth that Trahan now identified Sullivan in order to claim the hefty reward that Lita's parents had put up for information on their daughter's murder.

After nearly two weeks, the case went to the jury of nine women and three men. An informal vote was taken at the start and it was nearly evenly divided.  Later some jurors would say that while they had difficulties with Harwood and Trahan, they took no such issues with Bob Christiansen.  Christiansen was Lita's neighbor and an eyewitness to the man who rang Lita's doorbell and an ear witness to the gunshots that killed her. They could not dismiss the phone calls between an Atlanta area motel and Sullivan's home and the call Sullivan received from a rest stop payphone, despite the defense's efforts to invalidate them.   They did wish there was more direct evidence, as the case was highly circumstantial, but it was enough for them to render a unanimous verdict.

Guilty! 

On March 13, 2006, James Sullivan was found guilty of malice murder.

The prosecution argued for Sullivan to pay for his crime with the ultimate punishment - - death. The defense, without any family or close friends to speak on behalf of Sullivan, begged for mercy. Ultimately the jury showed far more compassion and consideration to James Sullivan than he ever did to Lita.  They spared his life and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

An interesting side note . . . while James Sullivan was awaiting trial in early 2005, Bibb County District Attorney Howard Simms ordered the body of Frank Bienert exhumed. As you may recall, Bienert was Sullivan's uncle, the uncle whose business Sullivan inherited and sold at a great profit. Simms, among others, believed Bienert might have been murdered by Sullivan. Tests conducted on tissue samples would indicate no presence of poison.

As late as 2015, Lita's parents were still attempting to locate Sullivan's fortune, money they believed he had hidden in Switzerland and Liechtenstein (Sullivan's criminal defense attorney had been paid from a Swiss bank account.). A Palm Beach County judge lifted the twenty year limitation, allowing them to continue to seek to collect on their judgment, which had ballooned from $4 million to more than $13.5 million with interest.

Also in 2015, Tony Harwood made the news again when he was one of four notorious Georgia criminals found with illegal cellphones within prison walls. (The other three inmates were Wayne Williams, Eddie Lawrence and Curtis Rower.)  Harwood, true to form, denied having a cellphone or knowing anything about anything.

He is due to be released from prison in May of 2018.

The 1986 Murder of Cara Knott

In 1986, Cara Evelyn Knott was a 20 year old San Diego State University student, with her life ahead of her, just waiting.  She was a vivacious, bubbly young woman and the stereotypical southern California girl - - blonde hair and a wide, beaming smile.

She was also responsible.  So, on the night of December 27, 1986,  when she didn't return home from her boyfriend's residence, her parents were immediately alerted.  Cara's father, Sam, drove between the Knott family home in El Cajon and her boyfriend's place in Escondido, searching for his daughter's white VW.  In the early morning hours of December 28, he spied her car off Interstate 15, on the old Highway 395 bridge, near the Mercy Road exit. 

Police were called and Cara was discovered 65 feet below the bridge, in a dry creek bed. She had been strangled and then tossed from the roadway above.

Cara's boyfriend was investigated as a potential suspect but quickly cleared.  She appeared to have no enemies and seemed to have been a victim of opportunity for someone.

Two days after her murder, local station KCST-TV was covering the homicide and a reporter from the station was interviewing a CHP officer during a ride-along segment on self-protection for female drivers.  After the broadcast, two dozen callers, mostly women, contacted authorities about the officer in the segment - - 38 year old Craig Peyer. Peyer, the callers said, had pulled them over in the same general area where Cara had been found and while he was not violent, he detained them for an inordinate length of time (up to an hour), asked them questions about their personal lives, requested dates and/or stroked their hair and shoulders.  These women bore an uncanny resemblance to Cara Knott.

It was also discovered that not only had a mother contacted authorities a month before Cara's murder to complain about Peyer pulling her daughter over at the Mercy Road exit off I-15 for no apparent reason but that Peyer had visible scratches on his face during the KCST-TV segment.

The picture of Craig Peyer began to change drastically.  Instead of the loyal, 13 year officer, it was revealed that he had a reputation for following young female drivers and pulling them over on the pretext of a citation or ticket and then becoming overly friendly with them.

One of Peyer's two ex-wives would reveal that he became "Mr. Macho" after joining the CHP, using the badge to flirt.

Witnesses came forward about the night Cara died.  She had last been seen alive at a Chevron gas station, roughly two miles from where she was found. The attendant at the station recalled seeing a CHP patrol car making a U-turn on the road just after Cara had pulled out.  Another witness recalled seeing a patrol car accompany a Volkswagen Beetle, thought to be Cara's, in that area at the time the murder occurred.   Perhaps the best witness was an off-duty San Diego cop, who noticed a disheveled and scratched Peyer drive in at high speed.  Peyer would claim he got the scratches from falling against a chain link fence in the CHP parking lot but the off-duty officer noted them a full hour before Peyer claimed to have gotten them.

Peyer attempted to falsify his logbook, trying to show that he had issued tickets in a different location at the time of Cara's murder but the ticketed motorists disputed his claims.

Physical evidence too would tie Craig Peyer to Cara Knott.  Gold fibers found on the dress she wore matched the gold braid on the shoulder patch of Peyer's uniform.  A drop of blood found on one of her boots was typed as AB negative - - Peyer's blood type.  AB negative blood is the most rare type of blood in persons - - only one percent of the population has it.  A rope found in the trunk of Peyer's patrol car had a pattern that matched that found on Cara's neck.

POS Peyer under arrest

On January 15, 1987, Craig Peyer was arrested and charged with the murder of Cara Knott.  In May of 1987, he was officially fired from the CHP.

There would be two trials in the case of the State of California versus Craig Peyer.  The first would end in a hung jury in February of 1988, with a deadlock of 7 to 5 for conviction.  Peyer did not testify.

In the second trial, his third wife Karen testified.  She mentioned that Peyer had returned home from work shortly after 11 pm on the evening of December 27, 1986 with scratches on his face and "a little tired."  The scratches, she said, were fresh but not dripping blood and she did not ask him how he had gotten them.  She insisted he exhibited no unusual emotions on that day.

Cara's parents during the trial

Peyer did not testify in his second trial either but this jury did not deadlock. They found him guilty of first degree murder - - the first ever conviction of murder by an on-duty CHP officer.  The judge, Richard Huffman, who presided over both trials, praised the CHP for working diligently to restore its damaged reputation following Peyer's arrest but also noted they had to share some blame for Cara's death, regarding their failure to act when a complaint about his behavior came in a month before the murder.  "I can't fix anything," Judge Hoffman stated. "I can only punish."

He sentenced Craig Peyer to 25 years to life.

Craig Peyer continued to declare his innocence in the murder of Cara Knott.  His wife, Karen, believed in her husband's innocence.

In 2004, Peyer was asked to contribute a sample of his DNA to a San Diego County program that was designed to use DNA samples to possibly exonerate wrongfully imprisoned persons.   Such testing was not available at the time of his trial and conviction.  Peyer refused.  When asked at a 2004 parole hearing why he would not provide such a sample, he would not answer the question.  At that time, he was denied parole due to his lack of remorse as well as his refusal to explain why he was innocent and yet not allowing any testing that could prove that innocence.

Peyer was denied parole again in 2008 and 2012.  In 2012, he was given a 15 year denial, making his next parole hearing in 2027, when he will be 77 years old.  He is currently serving his sentence at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo.

After his daughter's death, Sam Knott became an advocate for crime victims, campaigning tirelessly for law enforcement agencies to construct a way to monitor the locations ad activities of their officers at all times. He also pressed for agencies to ease the standard 48 hour waiting time before issuing a missing persons bulletin to officers in the field.

He and his family created a memorial garden in honor of Cara and other victims of crime underneath the bridge where Cara was found - - renamed in 1995 as the Cara Knott Memorial Bridge in her memory - - and planted oak trees and other beautiful plants and flowers in remembrance. Sam would often go there to tend the garden and pay respects to his daughter.

On December 2, 2000 he was at the garden when he suffered a fatal heart attack and died only feet from where Cara was found.

In the years since Cara's murder, some individuals have come forward to say that the Mercy Road exit off I-15 has strange or bad energy. Some claim it is haunted, hearing cries and screaming and even seeing spirits roaming the area.

As a result of Craig Peyer murdering Cara Knott, police now allow solo drivers to maintain driving until reaching populated, or safer, areas before pulling over during patrol stops.

What happened to Craig Peyer?  While some of his fellow officers reported him as "strange," others stated he was a good officer.  Perhaps there is truth to both.  He did act inappropriately with females and he did seem to target young blonde women, like Cara, who were driving alone.  He had apparently never been violent with one, though, before December 26, 1986.  So what would cause him to strike Cara with his flashlight (as the prosecution alleged), strangle her with a rope from his car and toss her body over the side of a bridge?   Only Craig Peyer knows for certain but it's possible that Cara threatened to report him for his behavior, whether that was questioning her about her personal life, asking for a date or touching her.  For Peyer, an alpha male who may have been aware that a complaint about him had been made a month earlier and who could have envisioned his 13 year career going up in flames, such a threat could have made him snap.

We will likely never know, as Peyer continues to maintain his innocence.

Memorials left at Cara's garden