Craig Peyer
| Cara Evelyn Knott | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
February 11, 1966 Ventura, California, U.S. |
| Died | December 27, 1986 (aged 20) San Diego County, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Strangulation |
| Body discovered | December 28, 1986, near Mercy Road bridge on Interstate 15 |
Cara Evelyn Knott (February 11, 1966 – December 27, 1986) was an American student at San Diego State University who disappeared on December 27, 1986 while driving from her boyfriend's home in Escondido, California back to her parents' home in El Cajon. The following day, on December 28, her car was found below a 65-foot bridge at the bottom of a ravine, near an abandoned off-ramp in San Diego County.
Her killer, Craig Allen Peyer (b. March 16, 1950), was a police officer and 13-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol. At Peyer's trial, it was revealed that he had been targeting women along the Interstate, and had made predatory sexual advances on multiple female drivers. He was convicted of Knott's murder in 1988.
On the night of December 27, 1986, 20-year-old Cara Knott was driving south on Interstate 15 from her boyfriend's home in Escondido, California to her parents' home in El Cajon, when Peyer, who was on duty in a marked CHP patrol car, directed Knott to pull off the freeway on an isolated, unfinished off-ramp. It was later discovered that Peyer had also been harassing a number of other female drivers in the same area and pulling them over on the same off-ramp and was supposedly trying to pick them up as dates. In the Knott case, it was thought that the situation escalated to physicality when Knott threatened to report Peyer for his inappropriate actions. When he attempted to grab her, she slashed and scratched at his face. Peyer then bludgeoned her with his flashlight and strangled her to death with a rope. He then threw her body over the edge of an abandoned bridge where she fell into the brush below.
Ironically, two days later, while covering the investigation of the murder, a reporter with KCST-TV interviewed Peyer during a ride-along segment about self-protection for female drivers. At the time of the interview, Peyer had scratches on his face which, as details of the case unfolded, were thought to have been inflicted by Knott herself during the struggle with Peyer. He tried to explain that they were caused when he fell against a fence in the CHP parking lot, but the fence was found to be too high to have caused the scratches on Peyer's face. Moreover, witnesses at a gas station roughly an hour after the murder was thought to have occurred observed a disheveled Peyer drive in at high speed. One of them, who actually happened to be an off-duty San Diego police officer, reported seeing the scratch marks an hour before Peyer claimed he got them.
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