A Checklist for Murder (23 page)

He did not claim to know exactly what had happened after that. Either the operatives who had been sent to silence him had come into the house looking for him but encountered the two women, kidnapping them in a hastily contrived plan, or they had staked out the house and simply followed the women when Claire and Natasha took Robert’s Cadillacs and drove off to some unknown destination.

Whatever had happened next, Robert sent motion after motion through the court system, pleading for the chance to be allowed to show that these operatives had either caused the car wreck or, after following Claire and Natasha up until the time that the drunken Claire wrecked the car on her own, had callously taken advantage of it. Robert repeatedly claimed that in Claire’s drunken state, which the coroner confirmed as a blood alcohol level nearly three times over the legal limit, she had wandered lost into an unfamiliar part of the county and finally passed out at the wheel, sending the car into the telephone pole. Either that, or that she and Natasha had been too incoherent to resist being kidnapped and were later placed inside a staged wreck. In either case, the wreck had provided the operatives with a perfect chance to affix primitive explosive devices under the car and thereby assure Peernock’s rapid arrest.

Claire Peernock—family and friends prefer to remember her upbeat nature and playful sense of humor, not as Robert left her in the wreckage.

Tasha at the time of her confirmation. She already feared her father deeply.

Natasha Peernock—this is one of the last known photos of Tasha taken before the night of the crimes.

Robert Peernock complained of being brutally beaten in his arrest. Yet in the booking photo taken on the same night, Peernock shows only a few tiny dots of blood on the left side of his collar, resulting from a torn face-lift stitch behind his ear.

Robert Peernock’s vise.

Close shot of the vise’s gripping plate.

Magnified view of flaws in the vise’s gripping plate.

Comparison microscope views of gripping plate’s flaws shown in marks made by the soft-lead specimen on the left side compared to the marks shown on the cutter bar, on the right.

Craig Richman brought his Air Force Academy background of discipline to the case research and a radio announcer’s knowledge of drama to his handling of courtroom presentation.

Victoria Doom worked for years as a legal secretary before she was able to attend law school. This is her graduation photo.

Rear view of the Cadillac shows the towing hitch.