Cara Knott

Case background and investigation

Cara Evelyn Knott was a 20-year-old student at San Diego State University, known as a responsible and cautious young woman. On the night of December 27, 1986, she was driving home from her boyfriend's house in Escondido to her parents' home in El Cajon, traveling south on Interstate 15 in San Diego County. She never arrived. Her family reported her missing, and the next day her Volkswagen was found abandoned near the Mercy Road offramp, a dark, seldom-used exit. Her body was discovered at the bottom of a roughly 65-foot ravine beneath a nearby bridge. She had been strangled. The daughter of a devoted family, Knott was careful and reliable, and the idea that she would pull over on a deserted stretch of freeway for anyone other than a uniformed officer struck investigators as significant from the start.

Suspicion soon fell on Craig Alan Peyer, a 13-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol. Peyer had a habit of pulling young women over at the isolated Mercy Road offramp, the very spot where Knott's car was found. Investigators theorized that Peyer stopped Knott under the pretext of a traffic violation, and that when she resisted his advances or threatened to report him, he strangled her and threw her body into the ravine. A striking break came days later when Peyer appeared in a local television news segment about roadside safety and was seen with fresh scratches on his face, prompting numerous women to call police and report unsettling stops by the same officer at the same offramp.

The physical evidence built a compelling case. A distinctive gold fiber matching the shoulder patch of Peyer's CHP uniform was found on Knott's clothing, and blood and fiber evidence further tied him to the crime. Prosecutors also pointed to inconsistencies in his account and altered records. Peyer's first trial ended in a mistrial in February 1988 when the jury deadlocked 7-5 in favor of conviction. He was retried, and in June 1988 a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.

On August 4, 1988, Craig Peyer was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The case, one of the first in which a uniformed officer was convicted of murdering a motorist he had stopped, shook public trust in law enforcement across San Diego. Peyer has repeatedly been denied parole, in part for refusing to provide a DNA sample and for showing a lack of remorse, and he continues to maintain his innocence. Cara's father, Sam Knott, became a prominent advocate for crime victims and helped establish a memorial park near the site of his daughter's death, planting a tree for Cara and others for additional victims of violent crime. The case remains a landmark example of an officer abusing the authority of the badge, and it prompted lasting scrutiny of how the CHP conducted solo nighttime traffic stops of lone female drivers. Peyer remains incarcerated more than three decades later.