Craig Peyer
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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's believed that the situation escalated when Knott threatened to report Peyer for unprofessional behavior, and that he killed her and 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.
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. When asked, at a subsequent parole hearing, why he had refused, Peyer remained silent.
The Craig Peyer case was covered in the book True Stories of Law & Order: SVU by Kevin Dwyer and Juré Fiorillo (Berkley/Penguin 2007. ISBN-10: 0425217353).
This case was included in the book You're the Jury by Judge Norbert Enrenfreund and Lawrence Treat (Holt Paperbacks 1992. ISBN-10: 0805019510).
