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NARRATOR: A young college girl
was driving alone late at night on a California freeway, and
something went terribly wrong.
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Investigators found
several tiny clues. But none was more telling than
a single gold fiber, so rare
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that it could only have
come from one source. [theme music] NARRATOR: 20 year
old Cara Knott was
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a junior at San Diego
State University. She was a budding
environmentalist and track star
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who was studying to
become a teacher. -I can't tell you that I
heard one thing about Cara
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that you would not have wanted
your daughter to be like. -She ran. She helped animals.
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She worked at the zoo. She was just always active. And she had this
boyfriend who was just,
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I mean-- together they
would've stopped traffic. NARRATOR: Over the
Christmas holidays,
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Cara's boyfriend Wayne
Bautista was sick with the flu, so Cara drove to Escondido,
California to see him.
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-She called two or
three times and asked me things about her--
nursing type things.
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You know, the thermometer
and-- I don't know, whatever. She'd really never been
in that role before.
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NARRATOR: Around 8:00 PM,
Cara called her father to say she was on her way home.
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But several hours
passed, and Cara still had not arrived home. -It was about 10
o'clock, and Sam just
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suddenly had this
horrible feeling. And he said-- he kind of
got up from his chair.
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And he said, I'm
going to go find Cara. -I mean, he physically felt it. He said-- he called it
later, a call to my soul.
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NARRATOR: Wayne Bautista told
Cara's family he hadn't heard from her since she left, and
he had no idea where she was.
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-He had no explanation. I mean, he-- no more
than the rest of us. We were all just so puzzled.
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NARRATOR: Members
of the Knott family searched for Cara along the
nearby freeways and off ramps.
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-We just kept looking
all night long. I went through the phone
book, calling the hospitals
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and the different police
agencies between here and Escondido, and
nobody knew anything.
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NARRATOR: At daybreak,
Cara's family drove down the Mercy Road exit
ramp off of interstate 15.
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-It was a dead end. Underneath, it was
dark and desolate. I've even gone down there
as an officer, and later
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as a supervisor to write
reports and didn't stick around. It was an eerie location.
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-We commonly refer to that area
as the tomb, because of the way it appeared from
underneath the roadway.
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NARRATOR: Underneath the main
highway, hidden from view, was Cara's abandoned car.
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The driver's side window
was opened halfway. The keys were still
in the ignition,
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and Cara's purse
was on the seat. Investigators from the San
Diego police department
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searched the entire area. 70 feet below a
nearby bridge, they discovered what appeared
to be a woman's body.
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Cara's father Sam
was at the scene, and he knew from the Sheriff's
reaction that the news was bad.
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-Sam walked over
to the officers, looked them in the eye,
man to man, and said, did you find my daughter?
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And the officers
turned away and said, yes we did, and I'm
sorry, she's dead. Sam's response to that
has always stuck with me.
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What would a father say
under those circumstances? Sam's response was, I wish
you could have known her.
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She was an angel. NARRATOR: The murder of
20 year old Cara Knott was a complete mystery.
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-The motive wasn't obvious,
because there didn't seem to be any rhyme
or reason for her
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to even be in that location. NARRATOR: During Cara's
autopsy, the medical examiner
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found no signs of
sexual assault. The cause of death
was strangulation. There were ligature
marks around her neck
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and a mysterious
bruise on her face. The only evidence
inside Cara's car was a receipt from a
Chevron gas station, which
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was about 15 miles
from the crime scene. -We went to that gas
station, of course.
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And we talked to the people. They remembered her. And there was absolutely
nothing out of the ordinary.
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She wasn't approached
by anybody. She filled her car up.
She paid for it. And she left by herself.
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NARRATOR: On the bridge
near Cara's body, investigators found two
suspicious skid marks.
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-I was unsure whether
they were breaking skid or whether they were
acceleration skid,
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but they were protected
and measured very carefully and photographed extensively.
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NARRATOR: The distance
between the marks was 53 inches, indicating
a large vehicle.
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Since it appeared that
Cara drove off the highway willingly, investigators
believe there
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must been a reason
for doing that. -Whoever stopped
this young lady, it had to be
somebody she trusted.
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And again, I suspect
the boyfriend because she's not going to
let anyone-- she's careful.
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NARRATOR: Cara's
boyfriend, Wayne Bautista, was the last known
person to see Cara alive.
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-He was a person of interest. He had spent a
considerable amount of time with her because
he was ill, and she
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was up there taking care of him. And we only had his word that
she had left, and at what time
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she had left. NARRATOR: Bautista said he was
home all night after Cara left, and his sister
confirmed his alibi.
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-9:00 PM on Saturday,
December 27th, Cara Knott telephoned her
parents to tell them
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that she was on her way home. NARRATOR: In a search
for information, police asked the local
television station
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to feature Cara's story on
their Crime Stoppers program. The producers reenacted
what they believed
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were Cara's last moments
alive in the hope that someone had seen something
and would come forward.
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And Rory Devine, a
local news reporter, joined forces with Craig Peyer,
a California highway patrolman
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for a segment on driver safety. -Being a female,
you could be raped. Robbed if you're a male.
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All the way to where
you could be killed. -He said, if somebody should
come up to your car and offer
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help, just ask them
to call the CHP. Don't get out of your car
and walk up the freeway.
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Because once you get in
the car with someone, you are at their mercy. NARRATOR: The first
lead in the case
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came from numerous
telephone calls to police responding to
their pleas for help.
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-There was about 300 calls
made to Crime Stopper. There was about 30 women
who had been stopped,
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had been taken off down at
Mercy Road, talked to, detained. NARRATOR: They all said that
a California Highway patrolman
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instructed them to drive to
the same deserted location where Cara was murdered. Some said the patrolman sat in
the passenger seat of their car
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and questioned them. Several said the questions
were inappropriate and sexual in nature.
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The officer was 36 year
old Craig Peyer, a veteran on the force. Interestingly, this
was the same patrolman
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who appeared on
television telling them what to do to remain safe. -He had done stories
with the media for years.
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And he seemed so concerned. And he seemed so
upset about the fact that this young woman
had been killed.
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We both expressed how
upset and how sad it was. -If there was a man who was more
proud of being a CHP officer,
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I don't know that
I've ever met him. NARRATOR: Craig Peyer was
working the night Cara was
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murdered, but his log
book provided an alibi. It showed he was miles
away from the crime scene
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writing a traffic
ticket at 9:30, the approximate time
Cara Knott was killed. -I said, I don't think there's
any way in the world Craig
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could have possibly
committed this crime, but it still needs
to be looked in to.
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NARRATOR: And look
into it they did. A week after Cara
Knott's murder, authorities still
had no real suspects.
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But 30 different
women called police to complain about a California
Highway patrolman, Craig Peyer,
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who they say improperly stopped
them along the same stretch of highway to interrogate them.
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When Peyer was
questioned, investigators noticed several suspicious
marks on his face.
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-He had scratches
on his forehead. He had trauma to one arm. It sounded like he
had been in a fight.
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NARRATOR: Peyer
said he accidentally fell against a fence
at the police barracks
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on the same night
Cara was killed. -The fence was higher than
the level of the blacktop
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that his car was parked on,
and it was about 10 feet away. In our eyes, he would have
had to take a running leap
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to hit his the
face on the fence. NARRATOR: And a closer
inspection of Peyer's logbook
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for the night of Cara's
murder showed an erasure mark for the entry at
9:30, the suspected
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time frame of the murder. -What it meant to me was is
that to make it look like he had
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something going on during
that period of time. -And I still didn't
believe, at this point,
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that he could have possibly
committed that crime. NARRATOR: Craig Peyer denied any
involvement in Cara's murder,
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and he willingly
turned over the uniform he was wearing the
night Cara was killed.
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Interestingly, there was a
golden edged shoulder patch on the uniform, which
criminalist John Sims examined
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with a polarized
light microscope. -The visual appearance of those
gold fibers from the highway
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patrol patch was so
distinguishable and memorable that I immediately remembered
that there was something
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in the Cara Knott
clothing that I had seen that looked
just like that. NARRATOR: The single gold
fiber that Simms found
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on Cara's sweatshirt
was microscopically consistent with the
gold fibers from Craig
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Peyer's shoulder patch. -Now it's become a
real sick, bad feeling. This was my first bout
with high blood pressure.
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NARRATOR: But simply
because fibers and look the same doesn't mean
they are the same.
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So investigators
sent the gold fibers to forensic microscopist,
Skip Palenik. Under high
magnification, Palenik
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discovered both fibers
were made of rayon, but it was something unusual. The fibers had not been
colored with a dye,
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but with a pigment, a
relatively outdated process. -You hardly ever find rayon
fibers, or acetate rayon
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fibers that are
pigmented anymore. It's just, it's just a process
which simply isn't used.
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NARRATOR: Next, Palenik
compared the color of the pigments in both fibers. A tiny piece of each fiber
was placed in a solvent, which
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separated the pigment
from the fiber. The pigment granules
from both fibers were then studied with
a spectrophotometer.
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It sends light
through the pigment to measure how much
of it is absorbed and how much passes through.
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-It actually builds up a little
chart that looks like a curve. And what you
physically really do
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when you're
comparing two fibers, is to compare these two curves. NARRATOR: The fiber
from Cara's sweat shirt
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and those taken from
Peyer's shoulder patch were not just similar. They were an exact match.
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-I hadn't seen fibers like
that up to that point, and I haven't seen them since.
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JOHN MCDONALD: I produced three
or four other jackets which the threads were compared
with the patch that he wore.
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And they were different. -To see a piece of evidence
that was, in my eyes, from the microscope's
eyes, a physical link
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between the victim and
the suspect in this case, it was a scary feeling actually.
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NARRATOR: Purple
fibers were found on Peyer's police
boots and his gun. When these fibers were
tested in the same way
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as the gold fibers,
they were found to be an exact match with
fibers from Cara's sweat pants.
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-We had a cross
transfer taking place. We had some of Cara Knott's
physical clothing material
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on Craig Peyer. We had Craig Peyer's
physical clothing material on Cara Knott. Not a lot, because
this contact was
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what I would call
basically, a flash contact. It was quick and it was
over almost immediately.
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NARRATOR: Investigators sprayed
luminol in the trunk of Peyer's police cruiser
and found nothing,
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but they noticed a small
piece of yellow rope underneath the spare tire. Police asked forensic
odontologist Skip Sperber
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to compare the rope
from Peyer's police car to the ligature
marks on Cara's neck.
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-On measuring the
rope and finding there was a distance of 7/16
of an inch from the center
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of each coil to the next coil,
and seeing the same distance on the coils on Miss Knott's
neck, which were all 7/16
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of an inch, that
demonstrated to me that very likely that rope
may have caused that injury.
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NARRATOR: Also, on
Cara Knott's shoe, scientists found a
tiny drop of blood. -And at the time of
Miss Knott's death,
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we were not using DNA
with any great amount. And so at that time, we relied
basically on blood time.
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NARRATOR: Tests
revealed the blood was type AB, the rarest type
in the United States.
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It also happen to be officer
Craig Peyer's blood type. 21 days after the murder
of Cara Knott, Craig Peyer,
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a 13 year veteran of the
California Highway Patrol was charged with
first degree murder.
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-His exact statement was
something very similar to, I'm not saying that I did
this, and I didn't do this,
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but what would happen
to me if I did do this? -I remember just being
stunned, in shock.
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It was unbelievable. You know, you've
got to be mistaken. NARRATOR: Craig Peyer
was once considered
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one of the California
Highway Patrol's finest. -He wrote a lot of tickets. He was considered a hot pencil.
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He'd answer the radio
on the first call. You could count on him. His whole life was
the highway patrol.
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-He would shine his
badge, crease his pants, and, and that was his identity. It was a big part of
who he was, perhaps
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the biggest part of who he was. And clearly something
went radically wrong. NARRATOR: There was
an overwhelming amount
00:16:31
of forensic evidence that tied
him to Cara Knott's murder. The skid marks found
at the crime scene
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were 53 inches
apart, the same width as the tires on
Peyer's police car. -They proved to be precisely,
and I mean precisely,
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the width of a police cruiser. NARRATOR: The size and shape
of the bruises on Cara's face
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were similar to those caused
by a police flashlight. -It was my hypothesis that
he grabbed the flashlight
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at this point, swung it in a
back hand fashion, which ended up with the bell
of the flashlight
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hitting her on the forehead,
and with the handle of the flashlight hitting
her just on the cheekbone.
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NARRATOR: Prosecutors
believe Craig Peyer first noticed Cara Knott at
the Chevron station
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as she was pumping
gas into her car. Then he followed her
along the highway until she was just a
short distance away
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from his favorite
interrogation spot. Based on stories from other
women, Peyer pulled over.
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Prosecutors think Peyer
turned his lights on and used his loudspeaker to
tell Cara to follow him
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down the highway
to the next exit. Cara probably didn't know
the area would be deserted.
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And once there, Peyer may have
tried to get into Cara's car, as he had done before with the
other women, but Cara refused.
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This may have resulted
in Peyer demanding that Cara get out of her car. At some point, Cara felt
threatened and fought
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back, scratching Peyer's face. Peyer struck Cara in the
face with his flashlight,
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knocking her unconscious. Now, realizing he
had gone too far and that Cara would be able
to identify and testify
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against him, Peyer took
some rope from his trunk and strangled her. It appeared that
Peyer put Cara's body
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on the hood of his car
to drive to the bridge so that her hair and clothing
fibers wouldn't get inside.
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But the fiber transfer
had already occurred. It was evidence that even a 70
foot fall couldn't dislodge.
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That little, little piece of
gold, which he could never know was being transferred
between him
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and Cara Knott proved
to be his undoing. -There's a lot of irony
in that, that that fiber
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from that particular
patch that was apparently so meaningful to him was what
was found on her that, really,
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was instrumental in conviction. NARRATOR: Craig Peyer was
convicted of first degree
00:19:50
murder and was sentenced
to 25 years in prison. -It's a major
embarrassment to me
00:19:57
that he wore the
same uniform I did. -He had everything. What an idiot. What was he doing?
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And those power
games he was playing. NARRATOR: Peyer continues
to maintain his innocence.
00:20:09
But when asked if he wanted
the blood on Cara's boot tested using the latest in DNA
technology, Peyer declined.
00:20:20
-His iceberg that he's living
on in planet Craig Peyer is very, very much shrinking.
00:20:25
And if he would give his
DNA, that would be great. -He didn't want
the blood tested.
00:20:31
And that tells us all I
need to know about that. An innocent man would
have the blood tested.
00:20:39
NARRATOR: In November
of 2000, Cara's father Sam suffered a heart
attack and died
00:20:45
just a few yards from
where Cara was killed. He was tending the
garden the Knott
00:20:50
family created on that site. -I really believe
that Sam wouldn't have chosen another
place to die.
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I think that's where his
connection with Cara was. [theme music]