Peyer Neighbors React With Shock and Relief

Those who say they know Craig Peyer best--his wife, one of his closest friends and some of his neighbors in Poway--reacted with disbelief and shock Wednesday to the jury’s finding that the former highway patrolman is a first-degree murderer.

Yet others who live near the Peyers said they believed all along that he was guilty and were relieved the matter is finally resolved.

The trial of one of their neighbors for the murder of college student Cara Knott turned “a passive neighborhood into a divisive one with stress and anxiety,” one woman said.

‘Real Hard Time for Us’

Karen Peyer herself met individually with reporters who approached the family home in the upscale Poway neighborhood where they have lived for three years.

“I have always believed in my husband’s innocence, and I still believe my husband is innocent,” said Peyer, her eyes red with tears.

“This is a real hard time for us,” she said, “but we’ll all take it one step at a time. We’re united as a family and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our faith is in Him.

“I love my husband. I stand by him, and will always be married to him,” Peyer said, standing alone outside the front door as family members and close friends gathered inside.

She acknowledged the support she and her husband have received from others, including “a prayer network throughout the entire country.”

“We’re united,” she repeated. “Our faith is in Him. I will always stand beside Craig.”

Among those rallying around Karen Peyer, her parents and Craig Peyer’s parents inside the home were Bruce and Ty Johnson of Escondido. The Johnsons have known the Peyer family for years and, in the face of adverse publicity, hired Craig Peyer to assist in their pool and spa electrical business after his arrest and dismissal from the California Highway Patrol.

“We feel terrible,” said Bruce Johnson. “Injustice has been done, and one of my good friends is in jail, probably for the rest of his life. It’s excruciating.

“What can we say and do?” he said. “We’ll maintain and stick together. We’ll regroup and try to go with the flow.

“I sat through the first trial, and I think he’s totally innocent,” Johnson said. “I worked side by side with him for a year, and I got to know the inside of the man. I’m totally shocked.”

Johnson blamed the conviction on court rulings he said gutted the defense’s theory and aided the prosecution’s.

“And I think they had a good talker on the jury who sold the others a bill of goods,” he added.

“The verdict is what San Diego wanted. Between the Highway Patrol and the DA’s office, this was rammed through. We were even persecuted by the media.”

Others who know Peyer well said they, too, were stunned by the verdict and were trying to come to grips with the reality of it.

“There was a tremendous amount of evidence against him,” conceded Gordon Kerr, who was a neighbor of the Peyers in a different neighborhood in Poway before the family moved to its current residence. Kerr, more than any other neighbor, had publicly come to Peyer’s defense, even serving as a spokesman for Peyer supporters at a rally for him a week after his arrest in January, 1987.

“Our jury system is the best thing around, and they found him guilty,” Kerr said. “But it’s still hard for us to believe he could do it. We accept the facts, but it’s hard.”

Neighbors Lloyd and Sandy Rhea have known the Peyers since 1979, and Sandy Rhea has cut both Karen and Craig Peyer’s hair in a beauty salon she operates in her converted garage.

“Knowing the man, it’s still hard to believe this,” Lloyd Rhea said. “We discussed the trial with him when he’d come in for a haircut, and I never asked him point-blank if he was guilty. But the conversation was always that he was innocent, and he talked in terms of when he’d be released. He talked like an innocent man.

“Either he’s an awful good actor or he’s innocent,” Rhea said. “If I didn’t know the man, I’d probably say, ‘Hang the sucker.’ But I know him as I do, and I can’t believe he’s a murderer.”

Several others who live near the Peyers said they were not bothered by the guilty verdict.

“Ninety-eight percent of the people on this street think he’s guilty and deserves this,” said one woman who, like others, asked for anonymity. “Craig Peyer is probably one of the nicest guys on the street, but he got into a situation he didn’t know how to handle, and he handled it badly.”

A neighborhood man said he was “satisfied” with the verdict, and harbored a lingering bitterness toward the family, which received gifts of food from neighbors in the wake of Peyer’s arrest.

“If they had been more open to the community, or appreciative for our support and dinners . . . but we never got a thank-you for what we did,” he said.