Jury Deadlocks in Murder Trial of Former CHP Officer

A Superior Court judge here, faced with a deadlocked jury, declared a mistrial Thursday in the prosecution of a former California Highway Patrol officer accused of murdering a college student in 1986.

Craig Peyer, a 13-year CHP veteran, is accused of strangling Cara Knott, a 20-year-old Cal State San Diego student who was thrown off a bridge in an isolated area near a freeway off-ramp in northeast San Diego.

The jury had taken three votes and could come no closer to a verdict than 7-to-5 for conviction, and it announced in the packed courtroom of Superior Court Judge Richard Huffman that further deliberations would be fruitless.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph Van Orshoven, the prosecutor in the case, said the case will be retried. The trial took one month and the jury had spent seven days deliberating.

Peyer, 37, showed no emotion after the jury announcement. He was escorted out of the courtroom through a rear exit by about a dozen bailiffs.

“I have always thought he was innocent. It’s in God’s hands. It always will be,” Peyer’s wife, Karen, said outside court.

The judge urged jurors not to talk to reporters, but a few did.

Juror Victor Dingman, who said he voted for acquittal, said the panel unanimously agreed that Robert Calderwood, a key prosecution witness, lied in his testimony. Calderwood testified that he saw a CHP car stop a Volkswagen on the Mercy Road off-ramp about the same time that Knott was killed.

Dingman said the jurors who voted to acquit Peyer also discounted the testimony of Michelle Martin, another prosecution witness, who testified that she saw Peyer stop a light-blue Volkswagen at the same off-ramp. The testimony of Martin was instrumental in convincing the seven remaining jurors to vote for conviction, Dingman added.

Were it not for Martin’s testimony, the outcome would have probably been different, Dingman said.

“If she had not testified, there is no doubt that he (Peyer) would be walking a free man,” Dingman said.

The prosecution’s failure to show a clear motive for the killing also weighed heavily on the jury’s decision, Dingman said.

“I think he’s guilty,” said juror Gregory Cadice, 62. “I say that Peyer was seen. I say that Cara (Knott) was there at that point in time. I say that she was taken down, under the bridge. . . . Something occurred. And all I know is the girl stayed down there dead and Peyer came up with scratches on his face. If he was innocent, then who in the hell did it? Because that girl was brutalized.”

Alternate juror Gregary Dunbar, 40, who did not take part in the verdict, said he questioned parts of the prosecution’s case, such as the testimony of more than 20 women who were pulled over by Peyer at the same off-ramp.

Some of the women said Peyer engaged them in lengthy conversation, but none said they were molested in any way.

“They (the prosecution) selectively picked out all the women Peyer stopped. They could have just as easily picked out the men,” Dunbar said, adding that he did not find Peyer’s conduct with the motorists incriminating.

“He’s a safety expert. I got the feeling he was a good cop,” Dunbar said of the officer.

Peyer was arrested on Jan. 15, 1987, three weeks after Knott’s murder and was fired by the CHP four months later.

$1-Million Bail

Peyer had been free on $1-million bail, the money for which had been provided by family and friends. Judge Huffman set next week for a bail review hearing.

According to San Diego police, Knott was strangled on Dec. 27, 1986, on the old U.S. 395 bridge near Interstate 15 and the Mercy Road off-ramp. After the murder, her body was thrown 65 feet into a dry creek bed, where it was discovered by police the next morning.

Her car was found parked half a mile from the off-ramp on a dirt road that parallels the freeway, and about three-tenths of a mile from where the body was found.

Police investigators alleged that Knott was strangled with a 48-inch rope that was later found in the trunk of Peyer’s CHP car. Prosecutors said that Peyer hit Knott over the right eye with his police flashlight.

A major piece of evidence against Peyer, or so prosecutors said, was a gold fiber that was one of six microscopic fibers found on items worn by Knott and Peyer on the night of the murder.

Fiber Match

Fiber experts testified for the prosecution that the gold fiber, which was recovered from Knott’s blood-stained white sweat shirt, matched the gold thread found in the CHP shoulder patches taken from Peyer’s jacket.

Two tiny blood spots found in a crease in Knott’s left white leather boot and on the left sleeve of her sweat shirt matched Peyer’s Type A blood, prosecution experts testified. Sophisticated tests that check for genetic markers determined that Peyer was probably the source of the blood spots.

Both prosecution and defense witnesses portrayed Peyer as a conscientious officer who took great pains to maintain a neat uniform appearance.

After his arrest, about two dozen young women called police investigators and prosecutors to say that they had been stopped by Peyer at night on Mercy Road and detained for long periods of time. Most of the women were stopped for minor equipment violations, such as faulty lights.

Defective Light

Knott’s Volkswagen automobile had a defective license plate light when it was recovered by police.

The women said that Peyer, who is married, never touched them or asked them for a date, but several said that the incidents at the darkened off-ramp frightened them.