A Checklist for Murder (40 page)

Robert Peernock was just convicted on all counts.

The Donkey of Justice strikes again ….

CHAPTER

30

C
raig 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 serious 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.

“Bailiff,” Schwab called out over Peernock’s voice, “have him bound and gagged!”

As the defendant was being dragged out, he continued shouting all the way down the aisle.

“I want a sixty-day continuance so I can prepare a motion for new trial!”

Tasha could feel her heart slamming inside her chest. The atmosphere in the room took on an out-of-control, nightmare quality.
My God
, she wondered in a sudden panic,
what if he’s managed to hire some cohort to come in here in a deputy’s uniform and toss him a gun? How much power does he really have outside his cell, anyway
? She held her breath, half convinced that an explosion of violence would go off in the next second.

There was stunned silence among all the witnesses in the courtroom. A number of them, having testified at trial and
therefore not having been allowed to see any other part of it, had never witnessed one of his outbursts before. They had just had their first look at something Tasha knew all too well: the way Robert Peernock could go from dead-eyed calm to hot rage in split seconds. The crimes that she had described instantly became easier for everyone else to visualize.

When he was brought back a short time later he was gagged; the entire bottom half of his head was wrapped in duct tape. His hands were cuffed behind him as Natasha’s had been four years before.

Now Judge Schwab ordered that all the sealed portions of the transcript should finally be unsealed, so that future courts and the attorney general of California could have the benefit of reading the many accusations that Donald Green and others had had to endure from Robert Peernock during sealed proceedings over the course of the trial. They are now public record. They are there for anyone who chooses to take the trouble to read page after page of every imaginable accusation of corruption and bribery, all leveled by Robert Peernock against anyone who would not do as he ordered.

Still, Green had continued to file one motion after another on Peernock’s behalf and to argue passionately for him at the trial.

Later that day, just before Peernock’s fate was read to him, Green pleaded for the lightest sentence possible. He asked the court to view Peernock’s behavior not as consciousness of guilt but as the actions of a desperate man. He ended his pleas for leniency with a historical reference that was right in the domain of Howard Schwab’s personal interest.

“One hundred and thirty-one years ago,” Green began, “in a hot August summer in Washington, D.C., there was the famous Andersonville trial. This was the trial of Captain Henry Wirz, who was the Confederate commandant of the Sumter County prison camp for Union soldiers during the Civil War. And during his command between 1863 and the
end of the war, some twenty thousand Union soldiers were starved, beaten, or otherwise killed.

“But there was not one person, not one person, who could actually say that Captain Henry Wirz killed any of those people …. There was one person who came in, in the middle of the trial. That person didn’t even have a name. He was named by his cohorts in prison. His nickname was Chickamauga, and Chickamauga was the name given to him because of a famous battle in the Civil War, at which time he lost all his memory of everything that occurred before the battle. But everything that occurred after the battle he remembered in excruciating and lurid detail.

“And when Chickamauga was on the stand he couldn’t remember anything about what happened before he got to Andersonville prison, but he did remember that one time when he was released on a work detail to go outside of the prison camp to gather firewood, to gather blueberries so that they could have additional foodstuffs, he remembered seeing Captain Henry Wirz on a horse and saying, ‘Kill that union soldier son of a bitch.’

“And one of the Confederate soldiers shot him …. The moral of the story is, your honor, that Captain Henry Wirz was ultimately hanged in the decision of the court martial which sat in his judgment. And judgment was pronounced by General Lew Wallace, who later came to be the first territorial governor of the state of New Mexico—”

“And the author of
Ben Hur
,” Schwab added with a smile, not missing a beat.

“And the author of
Ben Hur
, a religious novel.”

“However,” Schwab interrupted, “with all due respect, Mr. Wirz did not flee to Las Vegas and see a girlie show on the night of the homicide ….”

Green never really wrapped up the end of his story. Perhaps it is safe to assume that, with Howard Schwab’s interruption, Green knew that he was watching the stern of the
Good Ship
Peernock
sink beneath the waves for the final time.

However, just as Judge Schwab was preparing to dole out the sentences, he expressed his admiration for Donald Green’s work, performed under a vise grip of pressure and without support of his client.

“I would note for the record that I find, Mr. Green, that you are an outstanding lawyer. You are a man of high integrity and you have defended your client to the best of your abilities, which are considerable. But I look at this case as a very, very strong case against Mr. Peernock. The evidence is overwhelming with and without Natasha Peernock’s testimony. And I find here a man who murdered his wife and tried to murder his own daughter, his own flesh and blood, a most unnatural act, for nothing less than greed and money.

“To take your own future and cast it away for money.” Schwab sighed, then continued. “As I’ve said before during the trial when Mr. Peernock was disruptive, I had him removed from the court for two reasons. One, I wanted to ensure Mr. Peernock a fair trial. That was very important to me… Second, I felt it was unseemly that Mr. Peernock should be bound and gagged in front of the jury. But today I felt that if in fact the motions for a new trial were to be denied, that Mr. Peernock should be present in court to be able to see for himself the results of his foul crimes.

“And what he has done is inexcusable and inhuman. I find him to be one of the most dangerous men that has ever appeared before me in this court. I find him to be one of the most dangerous men that I have ever had to deal with in my career as an attorney, and I have dealt with many very dangerous and severe homicides. And as such I make the following sentence ….”

All those in the room held their breath for an instant. People often do at this point. It is the moment of justice boiled down to its smallest component.

Consequence.

“The motion for new trial is denied on all grounds,” Schwab began. “Now I also notice—” He stopped, looking at Peernock.

Peernock slumped forward, as if passing out. But his nose was not covered by the tape gag. Was this, perhaps, a last little trick? Sentence cannot be pronounced on an unconscious defendant.

“Is Mr. Peernock having a problem? I notice he has placed his face underneath the desk. This is a court of law, I will not have him act like an animal in this court.”

Schwab ordered a recess as Peernock was removed once again so deputies could see if there was a real problem. But moments later Peernock was brought back in, still bound and gagged.

“Probation is denied, of course,” Schwab began once more, “the grounds being that Mr. Peernock is a tremendous danger to the community ….”

Then Schwab issued the first sentence, for the solicitation of a hired hit on Natasha and Victoria after Peernock’s arrest. “The sentence will be twenty-two years, four months in prison.”

The length of that sentence was Natasha’s exact age at that time. The tone of irony that had begun the case years before, with Peernock claiming that he was guilty of nothing more than too deep a loyalty to society, now grew to a peak. Robert would serve the length of his daughter’s life for having tried to have that life extinguished.

Judge Schwab further ordered that after Peernock had served the twenty-two years and four months for soliciting Natasha’s murder, he would then begin a life sentence for his attempted murder and assault upon Natasha during the night of the crimes. And after he had served the twenty-two years and four months followed by the life sentence, if he were still alive due to some mediating factor of sentence
reduction for good behavior, then whatever remained of Robert John Peernock would begin serving a term of life in prison
without possibility of parole
for the murder of Claire Peernock.