A Checklist for Murder (37 page)

Green asked him all about his various bank accounts. This at least was the one part of the testimony that no one questioned, since it was all a matter of record. That was when the explanation came up for the suitcase Peernock had purchased just after 9:00
A.M.
on the morning after the crimes, at the time when he was supposed to have been on his way to the police station to meet with Detective Ferrand.

Peernock claimed that Claire had agreed earlier in the week to accept $50,000 to settle their divorce. She wanted the money in cash because she was afraid of Victoria Doom, who claimed he was trying to use Claire at that time to get at Robert’s money. So he bought the suitcase to hold the cash, which Claire wanted in small bills, because he did not yet know she had been involved in the wreck. Thus when he had gone to the bank a few hours after Claire’s murder, it had simply been to withdraw cash to put in the suitcase that he would later buy so he could give a pile of small bills to Claire as a divorce settlement to avoid a drawn-out court battle.

Green took Robert through each of the events as Natasha had described them: the choking, the handcuffs, the face mask. Robert denied that any of it had ever happened. The truth, he swore, was that Claire had come home that evening and gotten into an argument with Natasha over the fact that Natasha had gone to a party where marijuana had been used the night before. Later that evening, Claire and Natasha had sat at the kitchen table and spent several hours drinking hard
liquor together, which disgusted Robert so much that he went out to the backyard to paint his new bookshelves. During that time, Claire and Natasha decided to steal his car because, as he had overheard, they wanted to go out and meet some drug dealers and purchase drugs.

He then went through some of the items on the infamous “To-Do” lists which both he and Donald knew were going to be the highlight of Craig Richman’s coming cross-examination. Each item, he claimed, was a harmless detail on a host of reminders based upon his maintenance work on the rental properties that he and Claire had owned jointly right up until the moment somebody bashed her skull in with a heavy metal bar.

Judge Schwab had to call Green and Richman up to the bench for sidebar conferences every few minutes as matters of strategy kept popping up. Peernock would not stop editorializing, and Richman objected strongly to allowing him to sit there and preach. But Green was unable to prevent it. When he would ask his client a simple question requiring only a yes or no answer, Peernock would launch into another long explanation and continue despite Green’s instructions, despite Richman’s objections, and finally despite the orders of Judge Schwab himself.

Donald Green was determined to keep Peernock’s conspiracy theory from being blurted out for the jury, because he felt sure that his client’s credibility would go straight out the window and a conviction would immediately follow; Craig Richman also wanted to keep it out for tactical reasons of his own. But Robert Peernock was determined to tell the story of his many years spent tilting at the windmills of state bureaucracy and the heavy cost it had laid upon his life once the dark forces inside the government buildings had singled him out for neutralization with a trumped-up murder charge.

So after Peernock explained the suitcase and his trip to the bank, Donald Green ended the initial questioning period
before Peernock could do heavy damage to his case. But Green knew that Craig Richman was stomping at the starting gates and that the real test of Peernock’s ability to stay cool under fire had not yet come.

Green had done what he could. Now he could only have a seat and cross his fingers.

Although Craig Richman had initially resisted the idea of having Peernock enunciate his conspiracy theory, he switched his strategy once he saw Peernock’s adversarial performance on the stand under the softball questioning of his own attorney. Now Richman went straight for the jugular, beginning with Peernock’s statement on the night of his arrest when he said that they might as well kill him and save the taxpayers a lot of money.

Peernock immediately asserted that it had never really happened. He said that his sworn declaration had been faked to make it look as if he’d signed it to acknowledge that the statement was true.

“Why would it be a fake?” Craig asked innocently, offering the bait he was now sure that Peernock would take. Peernock snatched it right up.

Donald Green, Peernock explained, had tricked him into signing a blank piece of paper and later typed in the declaration itself. Green had done that because he was trying to assist the state in rigging a conviction.

Craig Richman began to prompt Peernock for more detail, goading him to tell the giant conspiracy theory and all of its countless dark connections. It wasn’t hard to pull the story out of him; it was hard to get him to talk about anything else. Ultimately Peernock’s entire conspiracy saga was trotted out and paraded in front of the courtroom, stamping and snorting and switching its tail while the stunned jury looked on.

The “famous Foothill police,” as Peernock called them in
reference to the Rodney King videotape case, had acted through their homicide detectives to join in the statewide conspiracy to silence Robert Peernock the whistleblower.

Every one of his six attorneys, whether they had been privately retained or court appointed, had joined in on the conspiracy against him.

All of the seven judges involved in four years’ worth of hearings concerning the night of Claire’s murder and Natasha’s torture had also joined in on the conspiracy to convict this innocent man.

Natasha was lying.

Patricia was lying.

Victoria Doom was lying.

The neighbors were lying.

The prosecution’s seven weeks’ worth of witnesses had been bribed or threatened into lying.

The jailhouse informant who swore that Peernock tried to use him to hire the death of Natasha and Victoria was lying.

Peernock’s own signed statement admitting that he had said that the police might as well kill him and save the taxpayers the money on the night of his arrest was a completely falsified statement.

The deputies who took him to and from jail were beating him regularly and lying about it.

Detective Steven Fisk had somehow arranged the murder at the behest of Victoria Doom and both of them were lying to cover their tracks.

Craig Richman: “Mr Peernock, before we recessed you criticized me for my phraseology [that we ‘celebrate the fourth anniversary’ of the death of] Claire Peernock during the course of this trial. Do you remember that?”

Robert Peernock: “Yes.”

Question: “And you indicated that you were quite saddened by the occasion or the event. Is that—”

Answer: “Of course.”

Question: “Of course. It was your wife; is that correct?”

Answer: “Yes.”

Question: “You wouldn’t want anything to happen to her; is that correct?”

Answer: “Of course not.”

Question: “And if something happened to her you would have wanted to cut off your arm to prevent that from happening. Wouldn’t that be a fair statement? Or maybe kill yourself instead; is that correct?”

Answer: “Certainly I did not want anything to happen to her.”

Question: “Tell me, Mr. Peernock, what’s the
JUBILEE!
show?”

Answer: “I don’t understand the question.”

Question: “What’s the
JUBILEE!
show at Bally’s?”

The Court: “In Las Vegas?”

Mr. Richman: “In Las Vegas.”

The Defendant: “I don’t recall.”

Mr. Richman: “Do you recall going to the
JUBILEE
! show at Bally’s in Las Vegas?”

Answer: “Yes. But I certainly wasn’t paying attention ….”

The next day, Craig Richman turned his verbal laser beam onto the lists found inside Peernock’s car when it was impounded near the L.A. Airport. The time had come to probe the defendant regarding the checklist for murder.

Question: “Do you remember being shown several documents by Mr. Green?”

Answer: “Yes.”

Question: “Handwritten documents written by you?”

Answer: “Yes.”

Question: I’d like to show them to you if I could, please … initially, the preliminary question: Is that your writing?”

Answer: “Yeah, it looks like it is. It may be—some things may have been changed on it, I cannot tell. Some of it looks like it’s my writing, some of it may not be my writing.”

Question: “What’s been changed?”

Answer: “I cannot tell at this time. Do you have a magnifying glass so I could look very carefully?”

Question: “Well, the other day when you testified to it, you looked at the ‘FIND LOC’ part of it, the FIND L-O-C.”

The Court: “Mr Peernock, a magnifying glass, sir.”

Mr. Richman: “Oh, thank you, Your Honor.”

The Defendant: “Thank you. You’re talking about the ‘FIND LOC’ and beneath that it says, ‘See Linda for address’?”

Question: “Correct.”

Answer: “See Linda for address.”

Question: “No, ‘FIND LOC.’ I don’t care about Linda. Do you see that?”

Answer: “Yes.”

Question: “Was that changed?”

Answer: “No, it doesn’t look like it is—well, it looks a little bit different. It may or may not be.”

Question: “It may or may not be; is that what your testimony is?”

Answer: “Yes.”

And later in the day
—Question: “You admit it’s quite a coincidence that the date July twenty-first is on this second piece of paper, you have to admit that?”

Answer: “No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all. It’s very easy to put the pieces of paper together like that and have somebody staple it.”

Question: “Well, whether it’s stapled or not, July twenty-first [the day Natasha’s torture began], it’s quite a coincidence that that date is on this piece of paper?”

Answer: “Only in your mind.”

Question: “Yeah, that’s my job.”

The Court: “Mr. Richman, please.”

Mr. Richman: “Sure, Your Honor.”

And later in the day
—Question: “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 upon what you’re going to come up with.”

Question: “That’s a good response, Mr. Peernock. Thank you.”

And later in the day
—Question: “How about the lock cutter part, which is the part that you know I’m going to concentrate on. Was that changed?”

Answer: “Probably not. I believe that was some sort of a wrench I was using to put in some piping underneath the sink. I don’t recall exactly, but some sort of a device. Above, it [the list] had a red large wrench. I have “RED LARGE WRENCH,” and then underneath it I have “LOCK CUTTER.”

Question: “Now, you’ve heard the expression, haven’t you, being an engineer—you are an engineer; is that correct?”

Answer: “Yes. I worked as an engineer; that’s correct.”

Question: “Of locking something into place. Have you heard of that, into place?”

Answer: “Like locking a car, locking a door?”

Question: “Locking a loan into place, have you heard that expression?”

Answer: “Of course I’ve heard that expression. Now we’re going to hear your interpretation of it in your imagination. Go ahead.”

Question: “You’ve heard the expression before of locking a part into position. Haven’t you heard that expression before?”

Answer: “I guess everybody has at one time or another.”

Question: “All right. Thank you. That’s fair enough.”

During the
P.M.
recess, before the jury was brought back in
:

Peernock was too intelligent to have failed to realize that by this point his case was in deep trouble. If he was going to pull his testimony out of the fire, he would have to act fast. He was running out of opportunities to make some kind of saving move.

The Defendant: Your Honor, I want to be allowed to explain to the court. Every piece of paper has been taken from me. I’m prevented from putting on any defense whatsoever. All my papers have been taken away, all my papers. All my legal materials have been taken from me.”

The Court: “The record should reflect that you have full access to any papers Mr. Green has.”

The Defendant: “Mr. Green does not work for me. I fired him long ago. He isn’t putting on any defense. I want to be able to have access to my materials and be able to introduce some documents.”

The Court: “Anything you wish to bring up this time out of the presence of the jury?”

Mr. Green: “Not from the defense, Your Honor.”

The Defendant: “See, he doesn’t in the least defend me at all.”

The Court: “Anything, Mr. Richman?”

Mr. Richman: “Nothing, Your Honor.”

The Defendant: “This is all a plot. The whole thing is rigged.”

The Court: “Mr. Peernock.”

The Defendant: “He does not represent me, Your Honor. I want the record to be very clear on that. I have very important documents to introduce to prove I’m innocent.”

The Court: “Mr. Peernock, please be quiet.”

The Defendant: “He will not introduce any documents or
anything. He does not represent me, and the jury should know that he does not represent me in the least.”

The Court: “Mr. Peernock, sir.”

The Defendant: “This whole trial is rigged! It’s a farce, it’s a sham! All my papers have been taken away from me, everything. I cannot prove I’m innocent because they won’t let me!”

The jury was brought back in and testimony resumed. Later
:

Mr Richman: “Now, there were several documents found in [Sonia’s condo] that had nothing to do with you, but had to do with your wife and your daughter; isn’t that correct?”

The Defendant: “I don’t know, because the Foothill police—the Foothill detectives went in there and did anything they wanted to with my property. They nearly took over my houses, they nearly took over the condominium, and also threw Sonia Siegel in jail for eight days.”

Question: “Interestingly, there was a document from Amex Life Assurance Company dated December 1, 1986, which deleted you from coverage on her insurance policy that was found in your possession. Do you remember that?”