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“The only thing that was comparable was Son of Sam back in New York.” “I have been in this business for 44 years, and I have never seen a case affect a community like the Craig Peyer case,” Pfingst said Thursday. The verdict was such a big deal that the San Diego Tribune ran a rare extra edition. He remembers, as the verdict came in, Joyce Knott was crying. And when they were all called back to the courtroom, the verdict about to be read, time seemed to suddenly slow down. On Thursday, Pfingst spoke of sweating it out, waiting as the jury deliberated for days. Pfingst suggested that Peyer and Knott had some sort of altercation, then Peyer, fearing she would report him, strangled her then tossed her body off the bridge. The San Diego Tribune reported that Pfingst argued to the jury that Peyer had a “predatory nature” that involved stopping young women and ordering them down the secluded Mercy Road off-ramp near where Knott was killed. Pfingst, a New York transplant, was tapped to take the case.
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Peyer’s first trial ended with the jury split 7-5, leaning toward conviction. There was other evidence, including a witness who saw Knott get pulled over. And women who’d been similarly pulled over by Peyer also came forward. Within a week, homicide investigators turned their focus to the 13-year CHP veteran with a clean record.īlood and fiber evidence linked Peyer to the crime.
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(As it would turn out, he had scratches on his face that were immortalized in the TV interview.) Authorities unwittingly sent her to Peyer. The day after Knott’s body was found, a TV reporter asked to talk to a CHP officer about how women could protect themselves when traveling alone at night. Her father, Sam Knott, was there when officers made the grim discovery. Police soon found her body, dumped from the bridge to the ground about 75 feet below. The next morning, her brother-in-law spotted her 1968 Volkswagen Beetle abandoned by a bridge on a frontage road just below I-15 at Mercy Road. The family reported her missing and started to search. 27, 1986, Cara Knott called her family and said she was heading home to El Cajon from her boyfriend’s place in Escondido.
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“I think of the dates that have to do with her,” she said, “not that have to do with the trial.” Two trials, a rapt regionĪbout 9:45 p.m. Cara Knott’s mother, Joyce Knott, said Thursday she “had not realized it was 30 years” since the guilty verdict, handed down on June 22, 1988.