“You’re worried about him getting hurt?”
“Well, it’s just that …” After a moment she continued as quietly as ever. “It’s good news anyway.”
Fisk asked if she’d mind if he got to be the one to call Victoria Doom and tell her about the arrest.
“Now?”
“Gee, I thought I’d get some sleep first. Maybe I’ll call her after she gets to her office. How about that?”
“Good idea.”
“So anyway, now you can get some decent rest.”
“It’s still early.”
“Uh-huh. Good night, Natasha.”
“You too. Oh, and hey, I just—Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Natasha. You’re welcome.”
She hung up the phone and told her friends the good news. They made a lot more fuss about it than she did, because they thought that the news meant that it was all over now. They had no way of knowing that for Natasha it only meant that she had been given the chance to begin the fight for the Peernock family women. Tasha had grown up in that house; prior to receiving this news of his arrest she had already spent thirty-one days of her life in various hospitals, recovering from things that her father had done to her.
She knew, perhaps better than anybody, that Robert John Peernock had absolutely no intention of taking all this lying down.
There’s many a beast then,
in a populous city,
And many a civil monster.
—Othello, Act IV, Scene I
CHAPTER
15
“Ms. Doom?”
“Yes.”
“This is Detective Fisk calling. Good news and bad news.”
“Great. Make it a double on the good news and hold the bad news, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, the good news is we finally got Peernock.”
“Oh! Oh, thank God! That is great …. That’s great.”
“Yeah. Arrest went pretty smooth.”
“Does Natasha know?”
“Oh, yeah. Called her right away. Also got word to her little sister’s foster parents.”
“Okay, then. All right …. I guess I can’t stand it after all. What’s the bad news?”
“We subpoenaed his bank accounts. The ones we can find so far, anyway. There was some $240,000 in cash that we know of, but it looks like a lot of it is already gone. It’s been spent since he went on the run.”
“What? Like hell! That money belongs to those kids! At least half of it, anyway. And maybe more once we shake everything out. All right, that does it. Peernock’s had his share. I’m going to find some way to lock up the rest right now until we see what’s going on with all the estate and probate work.”
“Um, yeah. But that wasn’t the bad news.”
“… It can be worse?”
“Think so. Thing is, you can’t get at the rest of the money right now. Whether any of it belongs to Natasha or not.”
“Sure I can, I just—Why not?”
“He’s given his girlfriend power of attorney. Everything has been put in her name. And she’s used another sixty thousand dollars to hire a lawyer named Bradley Brunon, supposed to be one of the top criminal defense attorneys in the state.”
Victoria hung up the phone feeling as if she had just stepped over a cliff. If this Brunon guy was really that good, then Natasha would, in effect, wind up paying for the lawyer who had managed to put her father back out on the street. Free to finish off his disobedient daughter once and for all.
Before the month was out, Victoria had synchronized her efforts with those of the police as much as possible, to avoid retracing their steps. Fisk stayed busy on the Peernock case despite the cascade of fresh, real-life murder mysteries that landed on his desk each week. This one still burned at him.
As for Robert Peernock, as soon as he was arrested he immediately began denying guilt and accusing the detectives of beating him up, stealing his money, and furthering the government’s plot against him. Peernock had his story straight in such detail that Fisk knew any bit of evidence the police could uncover might be the final key needed by the prosecution. So Fisk set to work using subpoena power to gain fast access to whatever paper trail Peernock might have left behind while he was still at large.
Meanwhile Victoria was busy obtaining temporary letters of administration allowing Natasha, through Victoria’s office, to protect what was left of the family estate. She was successful by the second week of September. Next, on September 20, she obtained a court order granting an injunction to completely freeze any estate money. The following day she obtained a lis pendens to prevent any of the Peernock houses from being sold by anyone until the chaos around the case could be settled. But these actions marked the end of any relatively easy law work on the case.
Robert Peernock had begun to generate copious amounts of paperwork of his own, writing from within his jail cell.
LETTER TO NATASHA
From Robert Peernock,
Booking No. 9269283, L.A. County Jail
September 29, 1987
Dear Natasha,
It is so sad what has happened. I had nothing to do with Claire’s death or your injuries….”
Natasha stood mute with shock as she scanned the rest of her father’s letter to her. It had arrived by regular mail, addressed in his own handwriting. Despite all of the police protection and the secrecy surrounding her presence there, it had been sent directly to the home where she was hiding to recuperate.
In his letter he spoke to her just as if she had not been present for the nightmare of torture they’d shared as their final father-daughter activity. He went on to insist that Claire had driven away with Natasha around 11:30 on the evening of the crime. He lamented that the story Natasha had told the police would likely leave him to fight the gas chamber. Although he promised to defend himself “no matter what it costs,” he reminded her that by the time all of the lawyers involved were finished, there would nothing left of the family estate for the two girls.
Natasha’s blood hammered under her struggle to believe the impossible words in her hands. Her father claimed that he did not know the extent of her injuries because the hospital would not allow him to see her, and that the police would not even provide him with that small amount of personal information. He claimed that the police first told him that she had struck her head on the steering wheel, but that they were now saying that he was somehow involved. In the same paragraph, he went on to remind her that even though they had suffered their share of arguments over innocuous things such as her schoolwork and getting a job, he would not deliberately do anything to harm her.
Natasha’s hands began to shake as she read these words, in her own father’s handwriting, completely disowning any knowledge of a night she would remember with agonizing clarity for the rest of her life.
The worst part came next, when he spoke to her in the grave tones of a hurt and concerned father. He reminded her that he used to give her swimming lessons and bike-riding lessons and that as a little girl she had been his constant companion, riding around everywhere on his shoulders. He reminded her that he had always supported her and had done what was expected of a father. He pointed out to her that this horrendous story she had told the police was going to put him on trial for his life.
Still, he encouraged her to use his insurance to get plastic surgery (even though he had just claimed to know nothing about her condition).
He returned to his description of Victoria Doom as a money-grabbing attorney who would do nothing more than dream up excuses to drain the family finances, leaving little or nothing behind as he fought to pay for lawyers for himself and his girlfriend.
He added another paragraph reminding her of his long fight against the state and told her that in the past, state authorities had dreamed up charges against him but that he “sued the state and won.” Though he hoped to win this case as well, everyone was going to come out ahead except for the Peernock family.
He told her that the po
lice had beaten him and described the county jail as “the worst place in the world.” He claimed that people inside there get beaten or killed frequently, and said that she should hurry up and get her plastic surgery because his insurance wouldn’t cover it if he died while awaiting trial.
Then again—he repeated that he’d had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder or her torture and bludgeoning. “It is,” he lamented, “like a nightmare, what has happened to our family.”
He concluded by asking her to write to him and assuring her that he missed her very much.
It was signed tenderly, “Love, Dad.”
She did not break down emotionally. The invisible wall had already slid into place inside her. She knew that it was more important than ever for her to remain calm and get the letter to the police right away. After that, it would be all the more important for her to remain alert, even in this protected environment.
Because now she knew for certain that he was never going to give up.
Letters were not the only form of writing that Robert John Peernock was doing inside his isolation cell. Working with the stub of a pencil that he sharpened by rubbing the tip back and forth over the cement floor, he filled legal tablets with notices to judges. He repeatedly voiced his fears that because he was a target of a state-orchestrated murder charge, he would never be given adequate representation from state-appointed counsel. Serving as his own attorney, he began to exercise his knowledge of the court system to file civil suits and draft his own motions. Fighting his lack of formal schooling, he pressed his high intelligence to the task of mounting his best legal resistance to the events overwhelming his life.
As he tried to stop the seizure of his funds and his household possessions, he simultaneously battled the juvenile court system’s forced placement of his youngest daughter in the government’s foster care.
And Peernock offered a much different picture of the night of the crimes.
He talked of a long struggle that he and his late wife had both waged in attempting to stop Natasha from using drugs. He claimed that Natasha frequently came home drunk, and that her behavior in this regard was an emulation of Claire’s own drinking problem. He explained that while Claire often avoided alcohol for quite a stretch, she always fell back into her addiction sooner or later. He stated that after a couple of drinks she was completely unable to stop herself from going on an alcohol binge.
He appealed to the court system, over and over again, to allow him enough access to his funds to hire investigators. He assured the courts if they let him do that he would be able to gather plenty of information to prove his story. He claimed that on the night of the crimes, a hopelessly addicted wife had fallen back into her alcohol cravings and had gotten into an argument with Natasha, who was only slightly more sober. He explained that at this point he left the house in disgust and returned to a shelf-painting project that he was working on in the backyard.
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.
Police Impound photo of Robert Peernock’s Datsun shows the front mounts for a tow bar.
The vise found in Peernock’s Datsun and the toolbox holding the guns are seen here through the rear-hatch window.
Guns and ammunition were in the toolbox. The top pistol matched the description Natasha gave the detectives.
CRIME SCENE PHOTOS: The force of the big Cadillac’s impact splintered the telephone pole.
The inside of the car was relatively undamaged, given the extreme head trauma of both women.
The sharpened steel-cutter bar after fire inspectors removed the rope wick and pulled it away from the gas tank.
Claire’s bloody fingerprints were on the liquor bottle, but not on the steering wheel. She had no gloves on.
Attorney Donald Green only could look on helplessly as Robert Peernock was dragged out of court in hysteria. Peernock did not display his teenage daughter’s ability to remain composed in the face of disaster. (CREDIT: GENE BLEVINS, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS)
Peernock was ordered bound and gagged after repeated screaming fits during his sentencing hearing. Here he slumps to the table with his head wrapped in duct tape, while Judge Schwab sentences him to 22 years and 4 months, to be followed by life, then life without possibility of parole. (CREDIT: GENE BLEVINS, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS)
Robert Peernock revisited five years after the crimes, at the time of his transfer out of Pelican Bay’s isolation unit to the California Medical Facility. Peernock’s hair had gone gray. The face-lift appeared to be holding up nicely.
He ridiculed the devices as unbelievably crude and ineffective, especially for a man known to be an expert in pyrotechnics. He pleaded for someone to notice that the devices were not merely primitive, but were phony and could never have worked as detonators. This alone, he asserted, should tip off an impartial observer that the crimes were not of his doing.
He also pointed out that the missing underside of the Cadillac’s dashboard had caused stereo mounting brackets to be exposed, and that these had most likely been the source of the severe head wounds to both his wife and his daughter. The dashboard was supposedly stored in his garage, but police failed to find it. All this did was to convince Peernock that Victoria Doom had stolen it and that she’d gotten rid of it somehow in order to help the police make the case against him. He wasn’t clear on why it would occur to her to get rid of a single dashboard cover out of a garage stuffed with belongings, or how doing so would help rig the case against him.
He explained his initial attempts to avoid arrest as having been made in the hope of establishing
these and other facts prior to turning himself in, to prevent the very situation he found himself struggling with now. He knew the courts would not help him prove his innocence. He had recognized the wreck as being a staged fake from the very beginning.
Authorities agreed with him that the wreck had been a staged fake.
And as Robert John Peernock himself was loudly predicting from within his tiny cell, the courts would indeed have an entirely different scenario to describe that awful night.
CHAPTER
16
By the beginning of October, before Peernock had been in custody for a month, Victoria found herself beginning to founder under the abundance of legal action being directed at her office from several different sources. She had to work in cooperation with the attorney for Natasha’s sister, who was fighting Peernock’s attempt to reach out from behind bars and attach custody of the child to Robert’s girlfriend or to his elderly parents. At the same time she was fighting Sonia Siegel’s attorney, who was attempting to dispute Victoria’s attempts to regain control of the bank accounts.
Worst of all, she had been enjoined in a civil court battle on behalf of Robert Peernock by the Century City law firm that loyal Sonia had hired to defend him. The high-powered outfit was known as Dern, Mason and Floum. Through this firm Peernock was vehemently protesting having Natasha assigned as administrator of the probate actions, citing a clear conflict of interest on her part about handling “his” money. Victoria responded that Natasha was properly appointed administrator because Probate Code defines the order in which administrators are to be selected as being the surviving spouse, then the children. Since Robert had been a fugitive with a murder warrant outstanding at the time of the appointment, Natasha was clearly next in line.
A Checklist for Murder Page 17
