Defense Rests Without Peyer Testimony

The defense in the retrial of Craig Peyer concluded its part of the celebrated murder case Friday without placing the former California Highway Patrol officer on the witness stand.

Defense attorneys called 27 witnesses over less than four days in an effort to cast doubt on the prosecution’s contention that Peyer killed college student Cara Knott on a deserted frontage road 17 months ago.

Although defense attorney Robert Grimes sought to challenge virtually every piece of evidence in the prosecution’s case, his task was made markedly tougher by a series of judicial rulings that excluded key testimony allowed before the jury in Peyer’s first trial.

Among the decisions issued by Superior Court Judge Richard Huffman was one excluding evidence pointing to an unidentified hitchhiker as a suspect in the slaying. Huffman also limited the scope of allowable testimony from a defense fiber expert and barred Grimes from calling a psychologist who believes the memories of some prosecution witnesses were influenced by media coverage.

The last witness to testify for the defense was Peyer’s wife, Karen, who said her husband had fresh scratches on his face the night Knott disappeared while driving home on a stretch of freeway on the former patrolman’s beat.

Last of Rebuttal Witnesses

Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Pfingst said he plans to present the last of a handful of rebuttal witnesses Monday. Pfingst and Grimes will then deliver their closing statements on Tuesday, after which the six-man, six-woman jury will begin deliberations.

Peyer, 38, is accused of pulling 20-year-old Knott over at the Mercy Road exit on Interstate 15 as she was on her way home to El Cajon from Escondido. Prosecutors say Peyer strangled Knott and tossed her body from an abandoned highway bridge near the off-ramp. The young woman’s body was found Dec. 28, 1986, in a dry creek bed below the old U.S. 395 bridge. Her Volkswagen Beetle was parked nearby with the keys in the ignition and the driver’s window partly rolled down.

In February, jurors in Peyer’s first trial deadlocked 7 to 5 in favor of conviction after seven days of deliberations. A new prosecutor--Pfingst--was assigned by Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller to handle the patrolman’s retrial, which has featured 17 days of testimony.

Karen Peyer, a substitute teacher who has sat through both murder trials with Peyer’s parents, looked self-assured as she took the stand Friday. Before the questioning began, she gave her husband, seated just a few dozen feet away at the defendant’s table, a wink and encouraging smile.

On the night Knott disappeared, Mrs. Peyer testified, her husband came home for dinner at between 5:30 and 6 p.m., as was his habit when he worked the 2-to-10 p.m. shift. She said there was nothing unusual about his demeanor that evening and that the couple and their three children had a typical meal at their Poway house. About 40 minutes later, Peyer returned to his beat after the couple kissed and said goodby.

The next day, Karen Peyer said, her husband showed her a blood spot on his uniform pants and asked her if she thought it would come out. She said she took the pants to the dry cleaners but could not recall if she ever got the pants back.

Mrs. Peyer also testified that she and her husband had decided by late November, 1986, to leave San Diego County for a small town as soon as the opportunity arose. She said the family was tired of the traffic and crowded conditions and that Peyer was eager to “be the town sheriff” in a place where residents knew him by name.

Under cross-examination, Karen Peyer said her husband arrived home a little late the night of Knott’s death and his face bore fresh scratches. She also said that Peyer had a bleeding spot the size of a dime on his hand, which she believed to be an old wound he had reopened.

The scratches are a central issue in the case. Prosecutors maintain that Knott, who was trained in self-defense to gouge at an attacker’s eyes, inflicted the scratches during a struggle with Peyer.

Slipped on Gas Spill

During Peyer’s first trial, witnesses testified that the patrolman said he received the injuries when he slipped on a gas spill at CHP headquarters and scraped his face on a chain-link fence. His supervisor even wrote out an injury report on the wounds and said they were consistent with falling against a chain-link fence.

But, before the retrial began, Judge Huffman granted a motion by Pfingst to exclude testimony about the chain-link fence on grounds that it constitutes “hearsay evidence”--or statements somebody said Peyer made to them. Huffman ruled that, if the defense wanted to present Peyer’s explanation for the marks, they could put the patrolman himself on the stand.

Because Peyer did not testify, the jurors have been given no alternative explanation for the scratches.

Another defense witness Friday contradicted testimony from a prosecution witness who said he talked with Peyer the day Knott’s body was found. The prosecution witness, Curtis Voiles, testified that Peyer stammered and acted startled when Voiles told him he was a friend of the Knott family. Voiles said he recognized Peyer because he had met him several times through his father, also a former CHP officer. Voiles said his father worked with Peyer in El Cajon about 16 years ago.

But CHP Lt. Joseph Phillips testified Friday that employment records show Peyer only worked in El Cajon between March and August of 1984. Peyer had not yet been sworn as a patrolman 16 years ago, Phillips testified.

After the defense rested, the prosecution presented six rebuttal witnesses. Two were called to challenge testimony from Susan Lambert, a surprise defense witness who testified Tuesday that she saw a blond woman apparently jousting with a man in a white Volkswagen in the Mercy Road area the night Knott disappeared.

Lambert said she remembered her observations occurred the night Knott died because she watched “L.A. Law” on television after arriving home. But Penny Martin, program director for KCST-TV, said “L.A. Law” airs on Thursday night and would not have been playing on the Saturday in 1986 that Knott was killed.

Lambert’s mother, Lillian, also took the stand Friday, but her statements did little to cast doubt on the account provided by her daughter. In conversations with police detectives, Mrs. Lambert said Susan had told her she may have dreamed the events she observed. But Friday Mrs. Lambert said she had suggested her daughter may have imagined the episode.

Mrs. Lambert also first told detectives that her daughter was sure the observations were made the night “L.A. Law” was on TV--which likely would have been Thursday, Dec. 25. But on Friday she said that a conversation with defense attorney Diane Campbell had clarified her memory and that the observations could not have been made that night because her daughter went to the movies the night of the 25th.

A third prosecution witness, a professor of forensic science from UC Berkeley, testified that a microscopic purple fiber found on Peyer’s left boot matched fiber samples taken from Knott’s purple cotton pants. That testimony by John Thornton contradicted statements by a defense fiber expert, John Reffner, who said he could draw no conclusions about whether the purple fibers matched.

Thornton also said that the fiber on Peyer’s boot does not match those taken from a coat in the Peyer home. Reffner, who testified Wednesday, said those fibers were similar.