09x18 - Badge of Betrayal

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NARRATOR: A young college girl was driving alone late at night

on a California freeway, and something went terribly wrong.

Investigators found several tiny clues.

But none was more telling than a single gold fiber, so rare

that it could only have come from one source.

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NARRATOR: year old Cara Knott was

a junior at San Diego State University.

She was a budding environmentalist and track star

who was studying to become a teacher.

-I can't tell you that I heard one thing about Cara

that you would not have wanted your daughter to be like.

-She ran.

She helped animals.

She worked at the zoo.

She was just always active.

And she had this boyfriend who was just,

I mean-- together they would've stopped traffic.

NARRATOR: Over the Christmas holidays,

Cara's boyfriend Wayne Bautista was sick with the flu,

so Cara drove to Escondido, California to see him.

-She called two or three times and asked

me things about her-- nursing type things.

You know, the thermometer and-- I don't know, whatever.

She'd really never been in that role before.

NARRATOR: Around : PM, Cara called her father

to say she was on her way home.

But several hours passed, and Cara

still had not arrived home.

-It was about o'clock, and Sam just

suddenly had this horrible feeling.

And he said-- he kind of got up from his chair.

And he said, I'm going to go find Cara.

-I mean, he physically felt it.

He said-- he called it later, a call to my soul.

NARRATOR: Wayne Bautista told Cara's family he hadn't heard

from her since she left, and he had no idea where she was.

-He had no explanation.

I mean, he-- no more than the rest of us.

We were all just so puzzled.

NARRATOR: Members of the Knott family

searched for Cara along the nearby freeways and off ramps.

-We just kept looking all night long.

I went through the phone book, calling the hospitals

and the different police agencies between here

and Escondido, and nobody knew anything.

NARRATOR: At daybreak, Cara's family

drove down the Mercy Road exit ramp off of interstate .

-It was a dead end.

Underneath, it was dark and desolate.

I've even gone down there as an officer, and later

as a supervisor to write reports and didn't stick around.

It was an eerie location.

-We commonly refer to that area as the tomb, because of the way

it appeared from underneath the roadway.

NARRATOR: Underneath the main highway, hidden from view,

was Cara's abandoned car.

The driver's side window was opened halfway.

The keys were still in the ignition,

and Cara's purse was on the seat.

Investigators from the San Diego police department

searched the entire area.

feet below a nearby bridge, they

discovered what appeared to be a woman's body.

Cara's father Sam was at the scene,

and he knew from the Sheriff's reaction that the news was bad.

-Sam walked over to the officers,

looked them in the eye, man to man, and said,

did you find my daughter?

And the officers turned away and said,

yes we did, and I'm sorry, she's dead.

Sam's response to that has always stuck with me.

What would a father say under those circumstances?

Sam's response was, I wish you could have known her.

She was an angel.

NARRATOR: The m*rder of year old Cara Knott

was a complete mystery.

-The motive wasn't obvious, because there didn't seem

to be any rhyme or reason for her

to even be in that location.

NARRATOR: During Cara's autopsy, the medical examiner

found no signs of sexual as*ault.

The cause of death was strangulation.

There were ligature marks around her neck

and a mysterious bruise on her face.

The only evidence inside Cara's car

was a receipt from a Chevron gas station, which

was about miles from the crime scene.

-We went to that gas station, of course.

And we talked to the people.

They remembered her.

And there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

She wasn't approached by anybody.

She filled her car up. She paid for it.

And she left by herself.

NARRATOR: On the bridge near Cara's body,

investigators found two suspicious skid marks.

-I was unsure whether they were breaking skid

or whether they were acceleration skid,

but they were protected and measured very carefully

and photographed extensively.

NARRATOR: The distance between the marks

was inches, indicating a large vehicle.

Since it appeared that Cara drove off the highway

willingly, investigators believe there

must been a reason for doing that.

-Whoever stopped this young lady,

it had to be somebody she trusted.

And again, I suspect the boyfriend

because she's not going to let anyone-- she's careful.

NARRATOR: Cara's boyfriend, Wayne Bautista,

was the last known person to see Cara alive.

-He was a person of interest.

He had spent a considerable amount of time

with her because he was ill, and she

was up there taking care of him.

And we only had his word that she had left, and at what time

she had left.

NARRATOR: Bautista said he was home all night after Cara left,

and his sister confirmed his alibi.

-: PM on Saturday, December th, Cara Knott

telephoned her parents to tell them

that she was on her way home.

NARRATOR: In a search for information,

police asked the local television station

to feature Cara's story on their Crime Stoppers program.

The producers reenacted what they believed

were Cara's last moments alive in the hope

that someone had seen something and would come forward.

And Rory Devine, a local news reporter,

joined forces with Craig Peyer, a California highway patrolman

for a segment on driver safety.

-Being a female, you could be r*ped.

Robbed if you're a male.

All the way to where you could be k*lled.

-He said, if somebody should come up to your car and offer

help, just ask them to call the CHP.

Don't get out of your car and walk up the freeway.

Because once you get in the car with someone,

you are at their mercy.

NARRATOR: The first lead in the case

came from numerous telephone calls

to police responding to their pleas for help.

-There was about calls made to Crime Stopper.

There was about women who had been stopped,

had been taken off down at Mercy Road, talked to, detained.

NARRATOR: They all said that a California Highway patrolman

instructed them to drive to the same deserted location

where Cara was m*rder*d.

Some said the patrolman sat in the passenger seat of their car

and questioned them.

Several said the questions were inappropriate and sexual

in nature.

The officer was year old Craig Peyer, a veteran

on the force.

Interestingly, this was the same patrolman

who appeared on television telling

them what to do to remain safe.

-He had done stories with the media for years.

And he seemed so concerned.

And he seemed so upset about the fact

that this young woman had been k*lled.

We both expressed how upset and how sad it was.

-If there was a man who was more proud of being a CHP officer,

I don't know that I've ever met him.

NARRATOR: Craig Peyer was working the night Cara was

m*rder*d, but his log book provided an alibi.

It showed he was miles away from the crime scene

writing a traffic ticket at :,

the approximate time Cara Knott was k*lled.

-I said, I don't think there's any way in the world Craig

could have possibly committed this crime,

but it still needs to be looked in to.

NARRATOR: And look into it they did.

A week after Cara Knott's m*rder,

authorities still had no real suspects.

But different women called police

to complain about a California Highway patrolman, Craig Peyer,

who they say improperly stopped them along the same stretch

of highway to interrogate them.

When Peyer was questioned, investigators

noticed several suspicious marks on his face.

-He had scratches on his forehead.

He had trauma to one arm.

It sounded like he had been in a fight.

NARRATOR: Peyer said he accidentally

fell against a fence at the police barracks

on the same night Cara was k*lled.

-The fence was higher than the level of the blacktop

that his car was parked on, and it was about feet away.

In our eyes, he would have had to take a running leap

to hit his the face on the fence.

NARRATOR: And a closer inspection of Peyer's logbook

for the night of Cara's m*rder showed an erasure mark

for the entry at :, the suspected

time frame of the m*rder.

-What it meant to me was is that to make it look like he had

something going on during that period of time.

-And I still didn't believe, at this point,

that he could have possibly committed that crime.

NARRATOR: Craig Peyer denied any involvement in Cara's m*rder,

and he willingly turned over the uniform

he was wearing the night Cara was k*lled.

Interestingly, there was a golden edged shoulder patch

on the uniform, which criminalist John Sims examined

with a polarized light microscope.

-The visual appearance of those gold fibers from the highway

patrol patch was so distinguishable and memorable

that I immediately remembered that there was something

in the Cara Knott clothing that I

had seen that looked just like that.

NARRATOR: The single gold fiber that Simms found

on Cara's sweatshirt was microscopically

consistent with the gold fibers from Craig

Peyer's shoulder patch.

-Now it's become a real sick, bad feeling.

This was my first bout with high blood pressure.

NARRATOR: But simply because fibers and look

the same doesn't mean they are the same.

So investigators sent the gold fibers

to forensic microscopist, Skip Palenik.

Under high magnification, Palenik

discovered both fibers were made of rayon,

but it was something unusual.

The fibers had not been colored with a dye,

but with a pigment, a relatively outdated process.

-You hardly ever find rayon fibers, or acetate rayon

fibers that are pigmented anymore.

It's just, it's just a process which simply isn't used.

NARRATOR: Next, Palenik compared the color

of the pigments in both fibers.

A tiny piece of each fiber was placed in a solvent, which

separated the pigment from the fiber.

The pigment granules from both fibers

were then studied with a spectrophotometer.

It sends light through the pigment

to measure how much of it is absorbed

and how much passes through.

-It actually builds up a little chart that looks like a curve.

And what you physically really do

when you're comparing two fibers,

is to compare these two curves.

NARRATOR: The fiber from Cara's sweat shirt

and those taken from Peyer's shoulder patch

were not just similar.

They were an exact match.

-I hadn't seen fibers like that up to that point,

and I haven't seen them since.

JOHN MCDONALD: I produced three or four other jackets which

the threads were compared with the patch that he wore.

And they were different.

-To see a piece of evidence that was, in my eyes,

from the microscope's eyes, a physical link

between the victim and the suspect in this case,

it was a scary feeling actually.

NARRATOR: Purple fibers were found

on Peyer's police boots and his g*n.

When these fibers were tested in the same way

as the gold fibers, they were found

to be an exact match with fibers from Cara's sweat pants.

-We had a cross transfer taking place.

We had some of Cara Knott's physical clothing material

on Craig Peyer.

We had Craig Peyer's physical clothing

material on Cara Knott.

Not a lot, because this contact was

what I would call basically, a flash contact.

It was quick and it was over almost immediately.

NARRATOR: Investigators sprayed luminol in the trunk of Peyer's

police cruiser and found nothing,

but they noticed a small piece of yellow rope

underneath the spare tire.

Police asked forensic odontologist Skip Sperber

to compare the rope from Peyer's police car

to the ligature marks on Cara's neck.

-On measuring the rope and finding

there was a distance of / of an inch from the center

of each coil to the next coil, and seeing the same distance

on the coils on Miss Knott's neck, which were all /

of an inch, that demonstrated to me

that very likely that rope may have caused that injury.

NARRATOR: Also, on Cara Knott's shoe,

scientists found a tiny drop of blood.

-And at the time of Miss Knott's death,

we were not using DNA with any great amount.

And so at that time, we relied basically on blood time.

NARRATOR: Tests revealed the blood was

type AB, the rarest type in the United States.

It also happen to be officer Craig Peyer's blood type.

days after the m*rder of Cara Knott, Craig Peyer,

a year veteran of the California Highway Patrol

was charged with first degree m*rder.

-His exact statement was something very similar to,

I'm not saying that I did this, and I didn't do this,

but what would happen to me if I did do this?

-I remember just being stunned, in shock.

It was unbelievable.

You know, you've got to be mistaken.

NARRATOR: Craig Peyer was once considered

one of the California Highway Patrol's finest.

-He wrote a lot of tickets.

He was considered a hot pencil.

He'd answer the radio on the first call.

You could count on him.

His whole life was the highway patrol.

-He would shine his badge, crease his pants,

and, and that was his identity.

It was a big part of who he was, perhaps

the biggest part of who he was.

And clearly something went radically wrong.

NARRATOR: There was an overwhelming amount

of forensic evidence that tied him to Cara Knott's m*rder.

The skid marks found at the crime scene

were inches apart, the same width

as the tires on Peyer's police car.

-They proved to be precisely, and I mean precisely,

the width of a police cruiser.

NARRATOR: The size and shape of the bruises on Cara's face

were similar to those caused by a police flashlight.

-It was my hypothesis that he grabbed the flashlight

at this point, swung it in a back hand fashion, which ended

up with the bell of the flashlight

hitting her on the forehead, and with the handle

of the flashlight hitting her just on the cheekbone.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors believe Craig Peyer first

noticed Cara Knott at the Chevron station

as she was pumping gas into her car.

Then he followed her along the highway

until she was just a short distance away

from his favorite interrogation spot.

Based on stories from other women, Peyer pulled over.

Prosecutors think Peyer turned his lights on and used

his loudspeaker to tell Cara to follow him

down the highway to the next exit.

Cara probably didn't know the area would be deserted.

And once there, Peyer may have tried to get into Cara's car,

as he had done before with the other women, but Cara refused.

This may have resulted in Peyer demanding

that Cara get out of her car.

At some point, Cara felt threatened and fought

back, scratching Peyer's face.

Peyer struck Cara in the face with his flashlight,

knocking her unconscious.

Now, realizing he had gone too far

and that Cara would be able to identify and testify

against him, Peyer took some rope from his trunk

and strangled her.

It appeared that Peyer put Cara's body

on the hood of his car to drive to the bridge

so that her hair and clothing fibers wouldn't get inside.

But the fiber transfer had already occurred.

It was evidence that even a foot fall couldn't dislodge.

That little, little piece of gold, which he could never know

was being transferred between him

and Cara Knott proved to be his undoing.

-There's a lot of irony in that, that that fiber

from that particular patch that was apparently

so meaningful to him was what was found on her that, really,

was instrumental in conviction.

NARRATOR: Craig Peyer was convicted of first degree

m*rder and was sentenced to years in prison.

-It's a major embarrassment to me

that he wore the same uniform I did.

-He had everything.

What an idiot.

What was he doing?

And those power games he was playing.

NARRATOR: Peyer continues to maintain his innocence.

But when asked if he wanted the blood on Cara's boot tested

using the latest in DNA technology, Peyer declined.

-His iceberg that he's living on in planet Craig Peyer

is very, very much shrinking.

And if he would give his DNA, that would be great.

-He didn't want the blood tested.

And that tells us all I need to know about that.

An innocent man would have the blood tested.

NARRATOR: In November of , Cara's father

Sam suffered a heart attack and died

just a few yards from where Cara was k*lled.

He was tending the garden the Knott

family created on that site.

-I really believe that Sam wouldn't

have chosen another place to die.

I think that's where his connection with Cara was.

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