Love and Sunrise

Little things don’t matter much anymore to Peter Knecht, like the flu or making money or getting cut off by some hot-rodder on the freeway. Once you’ve looked death in the face, a hangnail isn’t even worth thinking about.

“Life,” he said to me the other day, “that’s what’s important. We should celebrate it every waking hour.”

He hosted a party to life not long ago and plans on doing so every year, acknowledging the gifts of love and sunrise almost taken from him last May with the single slash of a knife across his throat.

Life.

He says it with almost reverential feeling in the living room of his home in the Hollywood Hills, undoing a tie to expose the scar of a 10-inch cut that creases the front of his neck from ear to ear.

It is a symbol of both stunning savagery and remarkable courage.

A criminal defense lawyer for 30 years, Knecht fell victim to the kinds of men whose rights he had often upheld in court. A former client who had allegedly orchestrated the attack has been arrested along with four others.

Knecht was left to rise from a pool of his own blood into a life of new values and hard memories of an attack that lasted less than 10 minutes.

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It happened late on the afternoon of a gentle spring day. Knecht had driven into the garage of his home. Before he could close the door, two men bolted in from a van parked at the curb. One held a .45 to his head.

They took the expensive jewelry he wore and a client’s payment of $4,000 in cash he carried in a briefcase. Then they demanded that he lead them into the house.

“I knew if I did it would be a losing proposition,” Knecht said. He’s a solemn man with a lawyer’s precise manner of reciting facts. “Neither man wore a mask or gloves. Without a doubt, if I let them into the house they would have killed us all.”

Inside, unaware of the drama being played out a few feet away, were Knecht’s wife, his housekeeper, his 87-year-old mother and his mother’s nurse. Two children weren’t home at the time. In an act of valor rare among victims, Knecht pulled away from the two men, faced them and said calmly, “You’re not going into the house, gentlemen. It ends here.”

Later Knecht would recall his slasher’s face. “He enjoyed what he was doing,” the attorney said. “You could see it in his eyes. He loved the thrill and the power of dominating me.”

The would-be killer shoved him to his knees, jerked his head back and cut his throat. Oddly, there was no pain, but when he inhaled he felt air rush in through the opening in his neck. When he exhaled, he felt blood pouring out.

Knecht hesitates as he re-creates the nightmare, then adds, “I said to them, ‘Why did you kill me?’ ” He pauses. “I just wanted to know.” They fled without answering.

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He staggered into the house where his wife called 911 and staunched her husband’s bleeding with a towel. It saved his life, even as he had saved hers. Knecht was hospitalized for 13 days, then released. The cut had miraculously missed both his jugular vein and his carotid artery.

A description given by Knecht, an artist’s sketch and witnesses who had seen the van drive away helped catch the suspects. Three others were arrested in the plot in addition to the two who had entered the garage. A woman is still at large. No court date has been set for their trial.

Police investigators agreed that Knecht saved the lives of the four people inside by refusing to let the suspects enter the house. Knecht says it flashed through his mind that he would never see his family again, but he was prepared to die so that they might live. At the edge of the abyss, he held firm.

Last month, he celebrated life with those who had been involved in saving his and in arresting the men who had attempted to kill him. He promises to continue the celebration every year from now on and to include as guests some who have faced death from either crime or medical diseases.

“I have different values today,” he says, weighing his brush with darkness. “I am more sensitive to the needs and tragedies of others.”

It took a chilling moment at the very edge of life for Knecht to appreciate the full value of love and sunrise. It took an act of amazing courage for him to preserve them for four other human beings.

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Al Martinez’s column appears on Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com