A Checklist for Murder

by Anthony Flacco

  “So she agrees. She signs the contract and she sends it to Doom. Ask yourself one thing: how many times do you think that the defendant looked through that house for that contract? He’s got all these pieces of paper that he doesn’t have any right to have in his house. How many times do you think he looked through the house looking for that contract? It reminds me of those old movies, not necessarily old movies, but the movie where the victim, right before they’re being held at gunpoint or something like that, and they go, you know, ‘If anything happens to me I sent a letter to the DA that says if I turn up dead, you did it.’ Kind of reminds me of this. She outsmarted him. She didn’t keep the contract in her house.

  “She sent it to Victoria Doom.

  “Safekeeping? It turns out that was the letter to the DA, ‘If anything happens to me, the defendant did it.’ She turns up dead ten days before this contract was supposed to expire. Coincidence or circumstantial evidence? You look at all the circumstantial evidence, coincidences are no longer coincidences. They become evidence to indicate that he did it. The order to show cause [in the divorce] was taken off calendar as a result of this contract.

  “The next date that we have, or the next thing that indicates some sort of planning, is again a handwritten note by the defendant. It’s dated April 22, 1987. Here’s the date up on top. Now, remember, he’s bought a little time, so he’s got all the way till August now, so it seems that things have cooled off after a little bit for a while, but again on April twenty-second, we have ‘FIND LOC.’

  “… And this ‘location,’ old San Fernando Road and Tux-ford, it’s like the perfect place. It’s got the freeway overpass where you could beat somebody without somebody seeing. You’ve got these abandoned cars there, where if someone drove by and saw a car or two they wouldn’t think anything about it. We’ve got the cement wall at the end of the road. So when the car hits the cement wall it’s going to drive [the cutter bar] right into that gas tank. The fuse, gasoline rope, is going to light the gas on fire. All the evidence is going to be destroyed at the murder.

  “‘Find location.’

  “Mr. Peernock actually was kind of entertaining. [He holds up a chart] I don’t know if you can read that, but that is actually an excerpt from the transcript that we have in this particular trial:

  “Question: ‘I ask you, is that your writing?’

  “Answer: ‘It looks like it.’

  “Question: ‘So you’re not questioning that portion as being authentic, are you?’

  “Answer: ‘I don’t know if I’ll question it or not, depending on what you’re going to come up with.’

  “If that’s not a commentary as to his credibility coming out of his own mouth, I don’t know what is. This—you know I talked about a prosecutor dreaming of cross-examining a defendant on the stand; I don’t even dream of answers this good. You can’t ask for anything better. This shows that Mr. Peernock is totally incredible and will do anything to lie his way out of it. If that doesn’t show a consciousness of guilt on his part, then there is nothing that will.

  “… Where do you think Mr. Peernock got the idea for this elaborate scheme on how to cover up his murdering Claire and Natasha for the money? He sat there at Network Electronics and tested those cutter devices for three years and watched those devices cut into vessels and cause those explosions, and that’s exactly what People’s 27 [the cutter bar] was supposed to do.

  “… This isn’t just something that was thought of on the spur of the moment, this was based upon Mr. Peernock’s years of experience and patience in testing at Network Electronics, and months of at least planning on how to kill and cover up the killing of Claire Peernock and Natasha Peernock, planning that began, by evidence that we have, in December of 1986. Who knows when it started before that? That’s all paperwork.

  “… She [Natasha] was conscious; she just doesn’t remember. But does that surprise you that she doesn’t remember it? Common sense and what you know out of life. Does it surprise you that she doesn’t remember? And if she’s making this up, if she’s making this whole thing up because the—whoever has gotten their hooks into her, as the defendant has testified to, why doesn’t she just say, ‘The defendant beat me. He took the tire iron and he beat my mom once, twice, three, four times in the head right between the eyes while she was just lying there and I cried, “Daddy, don’t do it, don’t do it,” and then he turned and he did the same thing to me?’

  “She’s making this up? Why didn’t she just go that extra step? How much more difficult would it have been? But she didn’t, because she’s telling the truth.”

  [And regarding Peernock’s whereabouts through the day after the crimes, before he came home to Soma’s that evening] “Where was he during that entire period of time? Is he hiding? Is he scrambling? Is he cleaning up the house? I don’t know. He knows, but he never let me ask him. Consciousness of guilt on his part. Remember that. He says he tried to get hold of Detective Fisk. [But] Sonia says, ‘It wasn’t Detective Fisk who called me. It was Detective Castro.’ Why did he change [and] what does it matter?—Why did he lie about when those notes were written, if it didn’t matter?

  “… The next morning, they wake up, Sonia says, ‘Don’t forget to call Detective Castro.’ He calls and speaks to Detective Ferrand and they make an appointment. Detective Ferrand testifies that he gave him directions on how to get to the Foothill Division, but he doesn’t show up.

  “Where does he go? He goes to the bank.

  “… Claire’s Grand Am tire. It was flat. Why was the tire flat? There was no reason for the tire to be flat. Was that to create an apparent justification as to why Claire Peernock was driving the Cadillac that evening? Probably. Who flattened the tire? The defendant

  “… Mr. Peernock is crazy like a fox. Don’t feel sorry for him because he seemed to be nuts on the stand. He knew exactly what he was doing on the witness stand. He knew exactly when he was getting into a position that he couldn’t get himself out of, so he figured he’d go nuts so he could get out of it. And there he is, somewhere out in never-never land. Don’t feel sorry for him. He killed Claire Peernock. He tried to kill Natasha Peernock … attempted, premeditated, deliberate, and willful murder. It has the same elements of murder, first degree murder, except that it has to be a direct but ineffectual act toward committing the murder …. A direct but ineffectual act is something beyond mere preparation. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, her head was beaten in. How much more direct, but luckily ineffectual, can you get? He tried to kill her. He tried eight times to kill her, at least, but he didn’t succeed.

  “… Did he lie to Sonia because he didn’t go to the hospital and he was trying to satisfy Sonia? I don’t know. Or is he lying here because he wants to make it seem like he had reason to be fearful? That there was this Grand Illusion that was referred to in the opening statement. Or is it a Grand Delusion on the part of the defense—on the part of the defendant? Illusion, delusion, it’s a fine line. But ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Peernock sat up here and he showed you. If I hadn’t called any witnesses, you could look at Mr. Peernock and say, ‘This is an evil man who will do anything he wants to kill anybody and get what he wants.’ He showed it to you.

  “How close was he to violence up on that witness stand? How close was he to hitting me? You can use that to decide whether Mr. Peernock is credible, whether he is exhibiting consciousness of guilt. Look at all the facts and you cannot possibly come up with any conclusion but that Mr. Peernock is guilty of all these crimes.

  “… And in the whole scheme of things, when all the circumstances are added up, you might as well have had somebody at the scene of this crime saying, ‘Mr. Peernock did it,’ because Mr. Peernock did it.

  “There is not doubt.”

  The defense goes last. But as Victoria Doom had noted back in Judge Rimmerman’s chambers two years earlier, you can’t fight a case on air. Not only had Donald Green taken no money for himself in the defense of Robert Peernock, he had watched the defense d
issolve in front of his eyes the moment his client was pulled off the stand.

  Green made his closing remarks with passion, even though it was like trying to tap-dance on thin ice wearing heavy boots.

  Still, he carefully and methodically went through each piece of evidence and offered explanations as to why they might deserve to be doubted. He emphasized the slightly confused or conflicting testimonies of various people who were testifying to what they had seen in the dark at 4:30 A.M. months or years before their testimony was given.

  He wondered out loud if the police still thought Sonia was somehow involved, saying, “You have to ask yourselves why Sonia testified in court under a grant of immunity.” But in the long run he was stuck with the task of creating reasonable doubt against the prosecution’s scenario by trying to imply that some variation on one of these other explanations must be true:

  1. One of the passersby who was at the scene for a short time after the car crashed and before the police arrived must have decided to take two women who were already unconscious and to smack them repeatedly in the head with a heavy metal bar, then pour gasoline over them, then rig up a wick under their car and light it, but not bother to rob them, and Natasha simply decided to take advantage of the situation following all of this by lying about everything that had happened in order to “get” her father; or

  2. This had really all been set up by Fisk, Doom, and the police. Claire and Natasha were followed out there and the wreck was caused somehow by the cops and then rigged to look like Robert Peernock’s doing, but Natasha somehow isn’t aware of all that, even though she remembers everything that happened up until the moment her beating began; or

  3. Natasha has been intimidated into lying and is only doing so because the crooked police have her too terrified to tell the truth.

  Today Natasha laughs out loud at the very suggestion of number three. There is not a trace of humor in her laughter.

  Thus the jury was left to wonder whether one of those bizarre scenarios could offer any sort of doubt that was, in fact, reasonable.

  It took them less than six hours to review the many pages of detailed jury instructions, consider the hundreds of pieces of evidence, and convict Robert John Peernock on every single count.

  By the time the convictions came in, Tasha was supporting herself by working in Hollywood. She had gotten a job passing out fliers for underground nightclubs with roving locations. It didn’t pay much, but the people she ran around with were all pretty low key. Best of all, none of them were tuned into the big murder trial going on across town.

  The word about Robert’s conviction didn’t reach her right away; she had learned to make herself difficult to find. It made her feel safer just in case Daddy had any more surprises for her.

  When someone finally tracked her down with the news, she felt relieved but not really surprised. She had thought of him as evil since before her early teens. Once she knew that he had revealed himself to the rest of the world, it just didn’t seem that they could really let him go. After all, they would have to walk the streets with him too.

  She went out dancing that night, but not because of the conviction. Tasha had already had four years to work at putting it all behind her. She went out dancing because she’d already had plans to go. “I was busy at the time,” she says. “I had a lot of other things to think about.”

  Better things.

  Out in New Mexico, Victoria’s rural telephone line had been down for most of the day. She paced the floor, fretting over the Peernock case, knowing it had gone to the jury but unable to find out whether or not there was any news.

  Finally her fax line fired up and began rolling out paper. A letter was coming in on district attorney stationery.

  It was from Craig Richman.

  Hey, your phone isn’t working. Hope you get this.

  Robert Peernock was just convicted on all counts.

  The Donkey of Justice strikes again ….

  CHAPTER

  30

  Craig Richman got a call at home a few days after the conviction. It was the watch commander at the L.A. County Jail, informing him that a search of Robert Peernock’s cell had revealed that the newly convicted murderer had somehow come into possession of a new checklist. This one had the names, addresses, phone numbers, and workplaces of every one of the jurors in his case. There were two copies.

  Peernock also had the address of the place where Craig’s wife worked.

  Craig Richman’s blood ran cold as he recalled sitting with Steve Fisk and playing the jailhouse tape recording over and over, listening to Robert Peernock discussing the price of contract killings.

  Craig later learned that Robert Peernock had obtained the list after he contacted a private investigator, using the fact that Peernock was still representing himself in some of the civil actions surrounding his estate and probate issues. But he used the investigator to cull through public records to obtain other, darker information, even getting unlisted home phone numbers for several of the jury members.

  Peernock’s explanation was that he simply wanted to poll the jury and find out whether or not the authorities had intimidated them into convicting him.

  The public is left to wonder if Peernock also intended to poll Mrs. Richman.

  • • •

  Readers’ Personal Protection Tip: In the judge’s chambers, the private investigator was forced to reveal his method of obtaining the private information. He said that he searched the county’s voter registration records, which is legal. But he added that when many people sign the voting list at their polling place they inadvertently add their home phone numbers along with their name and address, even though the phone number is not required in order to vote. However, once that phone number is written into the voting record it becomes public information—whether the phone number is unlisted or not. All good PI’s know this.

  The sentencing hearing did not take place until October 23, seven weeks after the September 4 conviction, because Peernock once again managed to delay the inevitable through careful use of the system.

  As soon as he was convicted, he filed a motion for mistrial based upon his theories about tainted evidence and a rigged prosecution. He also challenged Howard Schwab’s impartiality, accusing the judge of also being a direct and deliberate conspirator in the Grand Illusion to destroy Robert Peernock for the crime of daring to care so very deeply about the well-being of the taxpayers of California. Peernock did not mention that those taxpayers also included Claire Peernock, Victoria Doom and Robert’s bludgeoned daughter.

  When the day of the sentencing hearing finally arrived, Tasha decided at the last minute that she would go. Throughout the trial she had been quite content not to be allowed to attend any portion except for her testimony. Now, however, it was time to see the four years of fear for her life and struggle to survive finally come to fruition. It was time to perform her last act of witnessing in this case as some small measure of reprisal come home to the Peernock family women against the man who had destroyed their household.

  That was pretty much the only way she thought of him anymore: as the man who had destroyed their household. Although Tasha had barely glanced at him during the course of her trial testimony, she could not help but notice that four years of jail had changed him far beyond the prior work of the plastic surgeon. For reasons both physical and emotional, the man toward whom she had cast furtive glances during the trial no longer appeared anything like her father.

  He was just some awful stranger with the same last name.

  She took a seat in the front, not realizing that the empty table before her was the place where her father would be seated. When the deputies finally brought him in, she was shocked to find herself only a few feet from him.

  He glared at her as they sat him in his chair, but he did not speak a word. This time he didn’t try to mouth anything to her either.

  She began to have a sick feeling inside and wondered if it had been a big mistake to come. All these seri
ous people going through their grim duties. What did she need to see it for? She had done all she could to avenge her mother, to give herself and her little sister some measure of justice. What good would it do to watch her father being crushed and humiliated? It was going to happen now, with her or without her. She considered getting up and leaving. But the show had already started.

  Peernock tried again to speak out forcefully as soon as he was brought in. But Judge Schwab just as quickly demanded silence.

  “Sir,” Schwab called out, “let me tell you this right now. If you are disruptive today I’m going to have you bound and gagged. I’m not going to just have you put in the lockup, I’m going to have you remain in the courtroom, because at this time I feel you should be present to see the result of your foul crimes.”

  “Sir,” Peernock began, undaunted, “I’m innocent of these crimes and I have a right to speak in court. If you check the law you’ll find out that I do have a right to speak and Mr. Green hasn’t represented my interests. I fired him a month before the trial began.”

  “Listen to me—” Schwab began. But Peernock was already interrupting.

  “I am asking for a sixty-day continuance and that I be given the transcripts so I can prepare a motion for new trial. Green is not my attorney!”

  “Sir, I did not have you bound and gagged because, one, I wanted to guarantee you a fair trial—”

  “You did not give me a fair trial!” Peernock shouted. “Green purposely prevented me from calling witnesses!”

  “Mr. Peernock, if you are not quiet I will have you bound and gagged!”

  But Robert was rolling and was not about to stop now. This was his last chance to be heard in this court and he clearly had no intention of being silenced.

  “You have in your hand right now a declaration by Bobby Adams—” he bellowed.