Neighbors, Officers Are Shocked by Arrest

By their words--and their stunned silence--those who know Craig Alan Peyer expressed disbelief and shock that the veteran California Highway Patrol officer could be accused of killing a 20-year-old college student.

Some neighbors, their eyes puffed and moist from tears, shooed reporters away. Others talked of how Peyer was the neighborhood good guy. Fellow officers talked of how Peyer was the epitome of a highway patrolman, one of the best. And reporters pondered the irony that, in the wake of Cara Evelyn Knott’s death on Dec. 27, Peyer served as the CHP spokesman on motorist safety.

But relatively little could be learned Friday about the 36-year-old San Diego native, largely because San Diego homicide detectives would not talk about the murder suspect, the CHP brass issued a statewide “no comment” on the background of their officer and neighbors erected a protective shell around the Peyer family home in Poway.

One CHP officer, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said he had been one of Peyer’s partners in San Diego County when they worked the overnight shift--when CHP dispatches two-man patrol cars--and that “of all the guys I worked with, he was one of the best.”

“You could always count on him. He wasn’t a guy to screw around,” said the officer. “He was a real hard-working officer, but he was real easygoing at the same time. He was good with people. He was real professional. He’d be the last one . . . “

Peyer’s 13-year law enforcement career has all been spent with the CHP, coming after a two-year stint with the Air Force. He attended the mandatory 16-week patrol academy in Sacramento and worked there before being transferred to the Malibu office of the CHP, northwest of Los Angeles. Eight years ago he transferred to San Diego, where he had grown up.

Other CHP officers said Peyer worked primarily graveyard or afternoon-evening shifts, and he often was paired up by his CHP bosses with the media for ride-alongs and for interviews on how disabled motorists could protect themselves from assault. He was articulate and presented a good, fit and mature image for the patrol, they said.

When Monica Zech, an air traffic reporter for the Automobile Club of Southern California, asked to ride along with a CHP officer in 1985 to better familiarize herself with local freeway traffic problems, she was assigned to ride with Peyer.

“He was super professional and very proud of his job,” Zech recalled Friday. “We talked about how he was pleasantly surprised by how well the media and law enforcement cooperated down here compared to where he was up in Los Angeles.”

Rory Devine, a reporter for KCST (Channel 39), interviewed Peyer two nights after the killing, riding along with him as he discussed how women could protect themselves from being assaulted if their cars break down on the freeway.

“He was glib,” Devine recalled. “He seemed like an expert on the issue. He was very confident in what he was saying and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh, he’s going to be good (for the interview).’ ”

She said the only discussion about the killilng was when “he asked if this interview was because of the Cara Knott thing, and I said yeah, that we were doing a thing about women and safety.”

Peyer has been married three times. The first marriage ended in divorce in 1978, before Peyer transferred to San Diego. The couple had a daughter who was in her mother’s custody and who was doted on by Peyer during weekend visits with him in Poway. Neighbors speculated that she is 10 to 12 years old.

He lived about six years in an attractive tract home on Via Stephen in Poway. While living there, he married Karen Jean Muehleisen in May, 1983--and separated from her six months later. The couple was divorced in August, 1984, at the behest of Muehleisen, who cited “irreconcilable differences.” There were no children by the marriage, and Peyer did not contest it, according to San Diego County court records.

Muehleisen, an office worker in La Jolla, could not be reached for comment Friday, and her father, Bud Muehleisen, told the Escondido Times-Advocate newspaper that he would not discuss the case on the advice of homicide detectives.

Residents on Via Stephen said Peyer was a popular neighbor, and parents commonly instructed their children that if there was a problem at home in their absence, they should seek Peyer’s help because he was often home during much of the day.

Peyer then was married a third time, to his next-door neighbor. The wedding attracted a bevy of neighbors to the celebration. Then, in the summer of 1985, the newlyweds moved to a new home in the Rancho Arbolitos subdivision of Poway. His wife, Karen, who had a child by a previous marriage, recently gave birth to their own child, neighbors there said.

But most residents on Treecrest Drive in Poway refused--some politely, some curtly--to talk to reporters. “We’d rather wait until the family issues their own statement,” said one woman.

And, at Peyer’s home, family and close friends--some from as far as Orange County--gathered for support. A woman who answered the door politely accepted a reporter’s business card, but declined comment.

Children’s sandbox toys were scattered across an unlandscaped portion of the yard next to the driveway; Christmas lights still hung from the two-story house.