Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 18 - Badge of Betrayal - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

The body of a young woman was found under an isolated ramp of the Interstate, and a tiny, unique fiber on the victim's clothing led San Diego police straight to the most unlikely of killers.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Cara Knott's murder leads to the arrest of CHP officer Craig Peyer through forensic evidence and eyewitness accounts.

Key points

The Mysterious Disappearance of Cara Knott. Cara Knott, a promising college student, goes missing after visiting her boyfriend.
The Discovery of Evidence. Investigators find a gold fiber linking Cara's murder to a California Highway Patrol officer.
Craig Peyer's Arrest. After extensive investigation, officer Craig Peyer is charged with Cara's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I wish you could have known her. She was an angel.

Sam's heartbreaking response to the news of his daughter's death.

4:09WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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