Twisted Listers Presents TCC #4 The Murder of Cara Knott

To listen to these episodes a week early, check us out at True Crime California (Cindy's new podcast)!

This week we take a look at yet another murder from the 1980's, this time from 1986 in San Diego County. This story is about the tragic murder of 20 year old Cara Knott, a bright young woman with her whole life ahead of her until she meets an unlikely killer while driving home one night. The case takes many twists and turns in the short time it is investigated, and the first trial for her killer ends in an unexpected way. This case is groundbreaking for many reasons, and the legacy left by this young woman and her family continues to help the lives of victims everywhere. Tune in to hear all about it, and don't forget to like, rate, and review! Indie podcasts rely on word of mouth, so tell everyone you know to give us a listen! 

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Sources:
https://amysterlingcasil.com/i-was-pulled-over-by-chp-killer-craig-peyer-and-lived
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-02-06-me-582-story.html
https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/cara-knott-family-seeks-public-help-block-parole-chp-officer-craig-peyer-convicted-sdsu-students-mur
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Cara_Knott
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-dec-02-me-60177-story.html

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
and I'm glad you're here. Hey, guys, we're back with

(00:20):
episode four. I can't believe we're already four episodes in,
so I redid episode three last week because it wasn't
how I wanted it to be. And now it sounds
really good, but the volume is really low, so you know,
it's a learning curve recording. I used to do it
with Diva on our other podcast, and it took us

(00:40):
forever to get the sound good, and even then we
would have like hiccups. So I'm kind of feel like
I'm starting over again on my own, but hopefully overall
it's a better experience. It sounds better. I'm just really
hoping that, you know, I can figure out how to
make it loud without having it pick up every single
time I sniffle or make a weird noise, which right

(01:02):
now I have not mastered that, so hope you guys
can just hang in with me. But anyway, Hi, welcome back.
This is episode four of True Crime California. I'm Cindy,
your host, and I'm going to talk about another case
from the eighties and I know you guys have probably
had your fill of eighties cases, but there's just a
lot of good ones. But at least this is a

(01:22):
little later on in the eighties. This case takes place
in nineteen eighty six, and this is the really tragic
murder of Kara Not. As I said, this story takes
place in nineteen eighty six in the San Diego area.
This story might be a little bit shorter than some
of the other ones that I have done and will do,

(01:43):
but it's a pretty wild story, so I still want
to cover it. It's definitely been covered by like forensic
files and you know, a bunch of other sort of
like true crime TV shows, So it's definitely like an
intriguing and interesting story. It just doesn't have quite as
much information at this point as some of the other stories.
I don't think it was quite as big in the news.
And then also obviously the age of the case makes

(02:04):
it harder to find information. Anyway, let's just get into it. So.
Karen Not was born February eleventh, nineteen sixty six, in Ventura, California,
which is about seventy miles or so north of Los Angeles.
She was the third of four siblings. And she and
her family moved to El Cahone, which is sort of
like it's a city but almost kind of considered like
a suburb in San Diego County, almost like a suburb

(02:27):
of San Diego. They moved there when she was pretty young.
Her father, Sam, was a stockbroker. Her mother worked at
a hospital, like in a nursing setting, I think, but
also may have taken some time off of work to
care for the kids. The family was very very close.
They were a really tight family, and from photos of
Sam and Kara you can tell that she was like

(02:48):
very special to him and they were like especially close.
Kara graduated from El Cahoone High in nineteen eighty four
and decided to get her teaching credential at San Diego State,
which is great because she could stay living with her
parents and just make the drive. Kara was a really
pretty young woman. She had like the fara faucet blonde hair.

(03:09):
You could tell that she like dressed in a trendy way.
She was super cute. She had a boyfriend, Wayne, who
lived in nearby es Candido, and Wayne was also really handsome,
like he looks like, oh my god, what's his name?
Eric Estrata from Chips. Now that ages me because that
show was even too old for me. But like when
I saw the picture of him, I was like, wow,

(03:29):
he looks straight up like an eighties heart throb. Like
just they were like a beautiful couple. Now, for those
who don't know, San Diego County has a lot of
sort of like like I was saying, like not really suburbs,
but like separate cities that all sort of butt up
to each other, and they all kind of use San
Diego as the catch all when explaining like where people
are from. So like for Los Angeles, if you live
in like Torrents or Van Eyes, you'll probably just tell

(03:52):
people you live in LA So it's kind of like
the greater Los Angeles area. This is like the greater
San die area. And because a lot of people went
to you know, the same big college, San Diego State University,
people from these smaller towns would end up knowing each
other and dating each other. And that's sort of the

(04:12):
case here where Wayne lived about thirty three miles from Kara,
but because they both went to San Diego State University,
they started dating and like the distance between them wasn't
considered to be that big of a deal or that
out of the ordinary, you know, for them to still
date and live in different cities sort of in the
same general area. So anyway, before heading off to college,
Kara was a star student at alcohol in high really

(04:35):
well liked, popular, and again very close with her family.
She was a track star who loved animals and even
worked at the zoo for a time. She was really
really into like conservation of natural habitats for wild animals
and was therefore also a bit of an environmentalist. So
just a really wholesome, sweet and also very driven person

(04:58):
who wanted to make a difference in the world and
always was trying to do her best to make things better,
which is probably why she was going to school or
to college to get her teaching credentials so she could
be a teacher and you know, change the lives of
young people, which is great now. As I mentioned, she
was really close with her dad, and Sam always instilled
in his children not so much a fear of the world,

(05:19):
but a clear understanding of it as well as its
potential dangers. He taught Kara and her siblings to be careful,
not accept rides from strangers, keep their wits about them
when they're out alone, you know, just all the smart things.
And he also taught Kara or he also had Kara
take self defense classes so she would know how to
defend herself should she ever be attacked. So really just

(05:42):
trying to make sure that his children know how to
take care of themselves, make good choices, and just generally
stay safe. Now, Kara and her boyfriend Wayne were really close.
They spent a lot of time together and they'd been
together for a while. So when Wayne got sick over
Christmas in nineteen eighty six, Kara went to take care

(06:04):
of him for a few days. She wanted to get
back home as soon as she could, and she had
told her sister she wanted to spend time with the
family over the holidays as well, but she just kind
of felt obligated to care for Wayne because he was
actually sick on Christmas with the flu, which is just
depressing and sad. So it's really sweet that she went
over and took care of him. All of the kids
in Kara's family, including her youngest brother, were now out

(06:27):
of the house, either away at college or living and
working away from the parents' home, and Kara was worried
that this year would be the last they had together
as a family at Christmas. Apparently the family were well
known for being really over the top during the holidays,
but like in a really good way, with like decorations
and parties and like tongues of family time together. Kara

(06:48):
in particular loved this and she was really sad that
it was coming to an end, so she didn't want
to miss it because she thought, you know, this is
the last year this is going to happen. But she
also loved Wayne and she wanted to be there to
take care of him. So either on Christmas Day or
the day after, she left her parents home in Alcoholne
and I think she was still living there and went
to see Wayne in Escondido. While with Wayne, Kara called

(07:11):
her mother Joyce a few times for advice on how
to take care of him, including how to use a thermometer,
which is like really cute and also shows that despite
being officially an adult, Kara was still young and innocent
and like learning how to be in the world as
an adult person, which I thought was endearing and just
says a lot about her, like even though she wasn't

(07:31):
sure what she was doing, she was determined to be
a caretaker and be there for her boyfriend. So anyway,
on de Summer twenty seventh, Wayne said he was feeling better,
so Kara decided to go back home and spend the
rest of the holiday with her family. She called her
parents around eight pm from Wayne's house to tell them
she was on her way. Now, this is something she
did regularly, as again, her father had taught her to

(07:54):
always let someone know where she's going, where she is,
so if anything happened, people would know right away, which
is very very smart, and especially back in the eighties
when there weren't cell phones or tracking devices. So she
called and said, I'll be home in about forty five minutes,
which is about exactly how long it should take. Her
family was all together, like I said, so they kept

(08:15):
kind of going on with the night. They watched Sleeping Beauty,
they did a puzzle together, and her mother, Joyce, said
they sort of lost track of time. It wasn't until
around ten pm, two hours after Kara called that her
father Sam sat up in bed and told Joyce something
was terribly wrong. They called the police, but the police

(08:35):
were not helpful. They basically said, we're not going to
do jack shit. For at least forty eight hours, and
that that was the amount of time someone had to
be missing before they'd even start looking for them. So Sam,
who we will learn is like a hell of a
go getter and never took no for an answer, got
his family together along with Wayne, Kara's boyfriend, and started
looking for her themselves. They searched through the night, taking

(08:57):
the route Kara always took home, which was along the
Eye fifteen Freeway. They searched off ramps, gas stations everywhere,
and they didn't sleep or stop at all that night. Finally,
around six am or so, Kara's older sister Cindy and
her husband Bill passed an off ramp for the second time,
and this time they decided to take a closer look.

(09:19):
This off ramp was probably ignored at first because it
went to a quick dead end with no houses or
facilities nearby. It basically just like backed up to a
construction site with a fence around it, so like why
would Kara pull off there? Like why would her car
be there? But even so, they decided to check it
out because it was one of the few places they
hadn't really looked, and there they did, in fact find

(09:40):
Kara's car, which was a small WHITEVW Bug. When they
looked inside the car, they found it empty, so they
began yelling and screaming Kara's name, hoping to find her nearby.
When that didn't work, they immediately went and called the police,
who took a full forty minutes to arrive on the scene.
Following literally behind them was Sam, who saw the police

(10:04):
speeding down the highway. Now he was still out looking
for Kara, and when he saw this, Sam later said
he quote just knew, so he followed behind. Just around
the corner from where her car was found, there was
an abandoned bridge about seventy five feet above a a
ditch filled with brush. Police searched the area, and Sam
said that after they'd been gone a few minutes, he

(10:25):
saw them come back, go into the trunk of one
of their patrol cars and put on gloves before going
back to the area under the bridge. When they came
back some time later, they approached Sam, and one officer
began to cry while they told him they had found
Kara and that she was dead. That officer, while interviewed,
later said he would never forget Sam's response, I wish

(10:48):
you had known her, she was an angel. This is
really really sad, just terrible. So police began to secure
the area and take evidence in muting tire tracks near
her body, They took molds of the tires and continued
their investigation. Of course, as we could all imagine, Wayne
was their number one suspect at that time. Not only

(11:11):
was he the last one to see her, but it's
always the boyfriend, right, It's always a boyfriend, it's always
the husband, it's always the significant other. Also, police had
concluded pretty quickly that Kara had willingly driven off the
freeway down that off ramp. There was nothing wrong with
her car, no evidence of an accident or anything mechanically wrong,
and so police knew that, especially with a father like Sam,

(11:33):
Kara would have never pulled over for someone unless it
was somebody that she trusted or someone she knew. They
interviewed Wayne, they were really like thinking it was him,
but he had an alibi. He was home, still sick,
and his sister was there with him and confirmed he'd
been there all night. Police obviously were like, it's his sister,
she could just be covering for him. So they still

(11:55):
thought it could be Wayne, but they did keep looking
for other suspects. They weren't super convinced. I think they
got a good vibe from when they realized, you know,
he's probably telling the truth. So they kept looking for
other suspects, kept doing their investigation, and meanwhile, the people
of San Diego are completely terrified. Who was this murderer
out there on the loose? How did he kill this

(12:16):
woman who was simply driving home. So to help quell
people's fears, a local news reporter asked the CHP in
the area if they could do a segment about how
to stay safe while driving alone, especially at night. The
CHP tapped a thirteen year veteran of the force to
do this interview and sort of like a ride along.
This man's name was Craig Pyre. Now, Craig got a

(12:39):
spotless record over his thirteen years on the force, and
he had also done TV interviews and other media requests
for the department previously. Why am I tripping on my words?
In addition, the area where Kara was killed was his beat,
and in fact, he had been on duty that night,
so it made sense that he would do this interview
because he knew the area, so not only could he

(13:00):
talk in general terms about safety, but he also had
a specific knowledge that likely made the interview more interesting
for the general public. Now. During the interview, which I
noted ended up being a ride along, Craig talked about
how dangerous it was to get out of your car
if you have car trouble. He said it's best to
just lock your doors and wait for help, or wait
until it's light out. He said, never get into the

(13:21):
car with a stranger, and that if anybody pulls over
to offer assistance, just ask them to call the CHP
and leave it at that, because you know, as soon
as you're in the car with that person, you are
at their mercy and they can do whatever they want
to you. And he said that for women especially, this
could lead to being raped or even killed. Also, you
can find this segment on YouTube to this day, so

(13:41):
you can go watch this interview where he's like talking
about safety. It's very like eighties. It's very old school.
They like pull a motorist or they pull up to
a motorist who's on the side of the road he
ran out of gas and is like putting gas in
his car. So it's very like new segmentee from the eighties.
If that's something you guys are interested in. Oh yeah,
it's on YouTube. You can find it really easily now.

(14:02):
This segment aired only two days after Kara's body was found,
and during this time police had had a number of
calls in about the case via Crimestoppers. After the segment aired,
another three hundred or so calls came in, and around
thirty of those were from young women in the area.
As it turned out, many of these women looked like
Kara and were around her age. Most of them drove

(14:25):
similar cars to Kara, with two of the women driving
the exact color and year VW Bug that Kara had.
All of these women called in for the same reason
to complain about CHP officer Craig Pyre. That's right, they

(14:45):
all called in to complain about the officer in the video.
They all had similar stories about how he had pulled
them over on that same road, Mercy Road under the
abandoned bridge. Many said he quote detained them for up
to ninety minutes and would sit in the front seat
of their car and ask them wildly inappropriate, sexually charged questions.

(15:10):
The women were all terrified during this ordeal, and many
were too afraid to complain after the fact that being said,
a few did in fact call in about this officer,
and the CHP completely ignored them. And I don't think
I need to explain why. We all know they don't
give a shit. They don't care about the public, they
don't care about women. They definitely weren't going to listen

(15:31):
to a few women complaining about a man with a
spotless record. But now we know exactly why it was spotless,
which is absolutely ridiculous, And as it turns out, he
had been doing this for years and years. There is
a woman named Amy Sterling Cassil or Castle. I don't
know Casil, who recounts on her website how she was

(15:53):
pulled over by Craig Pyre in either nineteen eighty one
or nineteen eighty two, and I'll remind you Kara was
killed in nineteen eighty six. Now, Amy said that he
tried to make her get out of her car, which
was a white VW Rabbit, which is very close to
Kara's car, and that when she didn't immediately comply, he

(16:13):
attempted to pull her car door open when she said
to him while he's jiggling her car door, that her
grandfather was a CHP officer who told her if a
cop ever asked her to get out of her car,
he was probably not actually a cop. Pyre quickly changed
his tune and started lecturing her on safety while driving
alone at night. He then let her go. So he'd

(16:36):
been doing this for at least four years before Kara
was murdered, which is insane to me because according to CHP,
he didn't have a thing on his record. That being said,
it's also not that surprising, as we know. Beyond these
women calling in, there were quite a few people who
called in to say they noticed Craig had visible scratches
on his nose and forehead during the interview, and that

(16:57):
they looked pretty fresh, maybe only a couple of days old.
When asked about the scratches, Pyre said he fell into
a fence at the police station. But when police looked
into this, they noticed that the fence was about eight
feet high, so he would have had to jump up
and fly into it face first for this to even
be slightly possible, which is obviously just fucking silly. No

(17:20):
way did that happen. So anyway, these calls created the
first real lead for the police, though they later said
that's not really why they looked into Craig Pyre. Whatever
the reason, they started looking into him, and he cooperated
fully with the investigation. He even turned over the uniform
he'd been wearing the night of the murder so that
it could be tested, and while looking over his uniform,

(17:42):
investigators found a gold edged shoulder patch on the uniform
and the threads from that patch matched those found on
Kara's body, and apparently they were a very specific type
of thread that was super unique and microscopically consistent with
the threads on the patch. So what was on her
body match the patch and it wasn't just like you know,

(18:02):
CVS brand thread. It was like a very particular type
of thread with a very particular way of being colored,
and it was very very rare. So they were like,
this is like almost for sure from his patch to
her clothing. To be sure, they sent the fibers in
for further testing, which only furtherfirmed that they were a match.
As for Craig, he turned over his log book because

(18:24):
this was in the eighties when they didn't necessarily have
like tracking for police, and in it police found that
while he had a timestamp for where he was at
all points during the night, including when the murder occurred.
They also found that there was a clear eraser mark
on one of the logs with the time changed to
around nine point thirty, which is the time police expected

(18:45):
Kara had been killed. So he was attempting to create
an alibi for himself, but he didn't do a very
good job because you could see the eraser marks. When
searching his car, police found a rope inside, and this
was very significant because Kara, it was found, and hadn't
actually died from being thrown over the bridge as originally thought.
And it was thought that because it did create a

(19:06):
lot of trauma to her body, including like crushed bones.
But what it was found is she had actually been
strangled to death with a ligature and when they investigated further,
they found that the ligature marks on her neck matched
the rope perfectly, so like the size and the spacing
of the rope matched the ligature marks on her neck.

(19:27):
They also found a bruise on her forehead as if
she'd been hit by something, which police later determined was
likely a police flashlight. Now going back to the uniform,
they also found fibers from Kara's sweatpants on Craig Pyre's uniform,
and when looking over Kara's clothing, they found a speck
of blood on her white boot. Now, while DNA testing

(19:49):
wasn't great back then, they were able to type the
blood and found that it was AB, which is the
rarest type of blood type in the United States and
was also Craig Pire's blood type. So even though they
didn't have like good DNA testing at the time, it
was about as damning as evidence of that nature could be. Lastly,

(20:09):
the skid marks found at the murder scene perfectly matched
the distance between the wheels of a police cruiser. So
there's a lot of evidence here, circumstantial, anecdotal and forensic,
that all pointed to Craig Pyre and threes twenty threes.
Twenty three days after the murder, he was arrested and charged.

(20:31):
Craigpyre went to trial in February of nineteen eighty eight,
and during the trial, witnesses were called forward who had
said they'd seen Kara that night and had also seen
a police officer following her. Apparently, Kara had stopped to
get gas just about a mile or so from where
she was killed, and the attendant there said they saw
her getting gas and also saw a CHP officer flip

(20:53):
a bitch and start following her as she left the station.
Police from that surmised that Pyre had seen Kara at
the station, turned around to follow her and planned to
do what he always did, which was pull her over,
harass her, and likely eventually let her go, they said
at some point, I guess prosecution said this at some
point after pulling her over to his favorite deserted off ramp,

(21:15):
Kara likely got scared, as many women before her had obviously,
but unlike the under the other women, she fought back,
and as a result, Pyr attacked her, likely knocking her
unconscious with his flashlight before getting rope from his car
and strangling her to death. The scratches on his face
were from her fighting back, either before or while he
was strangling her. Police said. He then tied her to

(21:37):
the hood of his car so that her hair and
other DNA would not get inside the car, and drove
her the short distance to the bridge, where he threw
her body over, then went on with his night as
if nothing happened. So pretty fucked up now, As I noted,
he went to trial just two years after the murder.

(21:57):
The prosecution called a ton of witnesses. Most of them
are pretty helpful to the case, though a few had
their time wrong, like the timing of things wrong, or
would like, oh, I think it was eight thirty, maybe
it was nine fifteen, and they kind of said as
such when examined by a cross examined by the defense.
This was particularly important because the defense mostly relied on
the timeline to prove that Pyre wasn't actually the killer.

(22:20):
They thought that if they could prove he was elsewhere
during like doing cop stuff, when she died, they can
cold mince the journey that he didn't do it. Forensic
science at the time, like the scientists didn't really give
a good time of death for whatever reason, so they
had to use her liver temperature to determine when she died,
and unfortunately that's very much not an exact science, so
it showed she could have died as early as one

(22:41):
PM that afternoon, which gave a really wide time frame
for her death and made it really hard to prove
that it was him, that he was there, because it's like, well,
if it could have happened anytime within like twelve hours,
it could have been anyone. Obviously, there were ways to
show this wasn't true, like time stamps on the phone
call to her parents from her boyfriend's house. But you know,

(23:01):
nobody could prove any of this. Like even if Wayne
called her parents, her parents could be saying, oh, yeah,
it was her, but it really wasn't. You know. I'm
saying like there was just there were some inconsistencies and
it was difficult to really really prove it. Also, like
I said, when the gas attendant gas station attendant changed
the time he saw her from around eight thirty to
nine fifteen, it made the case look really shaky. Also,

(23:25):
there were multiple charges Pirate could be found guilty of,
ranging from like first degree murder to like I don't know,
there was second degree, there was something else that was
like another option. I feel like the options were a
little bit different back then, so I don't really recognize
all of the charges. But in any case, you know,
there were multiple things he could be found guilty of,
but prosecutors were going for first degree murder. They argued

(23:47):
that even though he killed Carot in the heat of
the moment, it was still first degree in nature because
of what he was doing that put them in the
situation in the first place. Essentially, the prosecution was saying, like,
don't start, none, won't be none, which is fair I think. Unfortunately,
the trial came off as disorganized and despite their being
forensic evidence, jurors really ultimately didn't understand the weight of
that as far as it being proof, because it's not

(24:09):
how it is now where everybody knows about DNA, and
the witness testimony being wishy washy really threw a wrench
into things. In the end, the jury deadlocked seven to
five in favor of conviction for first degree murder, and
the judge declared a mistrial. Craigpyre was free on bail
before his second trial, which took place in June nineteen

(24:30):
eighty eight, so not a long time, but the fact
that he was free is kind of crazy. He had
definitely been fired, he was no longer a highway patrol officer.
I don't even know that he had a job. Maybe
he took on like some part time work. But he
was free during this time and like probably murdered somebody.
It's kind of crazy that they just like set his
bail and were like have a nice day. So whatever. Anyway,

(24:51):
The trial goes back in June nineteen eighty eight, and
this time the DA appointed a younger prosecutor who brought
in new witnesses and really drove home the science part
of the case really focused on the DNA, really focused
on well, maybe not DNA, but the forensic evidence, the
fiber evidence, the blood evidence, like kind of what they
had there, because that really really is like irrefutable, like

(25:14):
you can't say that that's not what it is. You know,
there's too much transfer between their clothing types for that
to not for that to be ignored. Craig Pire refused
to testify in either of his trials and maintained his
innocence throughout. So he was like, I'm innocent, but I'm
not going to testify now. This trial wasn't without its

(25:34):
own little bit of drama. Halfway through the trial, a
juror was dismissed because he had been so his coworker
called the courts and was like, hey, just so you know,
we were watching the first trial and when Craigpire got off,
he told me he agreed with that because he thought
that he didn't do it. He was getting a bad

(25:55):
rap because people don't like cops et cetera, et cetera.
So when this was found out, they interviewed the juror.
At first they weren't going to dismiss him, and obviously
the defense didn't want him dismissed, but in the end
they dismissed him and replaced him about halfway through the trial.
So there was always like there's always these little bits
of drama in this case, and like it's just crazy
to me, like reading about it, researching it, how it

(26:17):
seems so clear that he's guilty, but there's all of
this back and forth and all of these different opinions,
which always gives me pause because it's like, maybe we
don't know, you know, after the fact, it can be
presented however, but in that moment, it's very obvious that
it wasn't clear what it happened. However, finally, in late
June nineteen eighty eight, Craig Pyre was found guilty of

(26:40):
first degree murder. To this day, he proclaims his innocence
and has actually been denied bail two or three times
now because of his refusal to take responsibility for the murder. Now,
where I just said, oh, maybe it wasn't obvious one
way or the other. Here's where to me, this case
is like open and shut. He very tellingly refused to

(27:03):
submit his DNA to clear his name back in two
thousand and four when the prosecutor's office, who was working
with some sort of innocence project, offered to do that
for him. So what does that tell you? So he's
like still saying he's innocent, but he's got an opportunity
to prove it and he's not taking it. So I'm
gonna just call him not only a murderer but also
a big fat liar. Now we could end the story here,

(27:25):
but again, I have an opportunity to talk about something
really amazing that came out of all this terribleness. And
that amazing thing is the endless work done by Sam,
not Kara's father, after her death. And I don't know
that I want to say that it's like good because
I believe the reason Sam did everything he did was
sort of to find a way to cope and to
keep Kara alive in a way. And I know that

(27:46):
Kara's death tortured and haunted him for the rest of
his life, but regardless, he made sure to turn his
pain into something good for other families. So after Kara's death,
and I mean like the week of her death, Sam
started his crusade to get laws changed, multiple laws which
he thought were wrong and contributed to her death. So
the first thing he did is find the captain of

(28:06):
the police unit that he and his family called when
Kara was missing and complained about their handling of things.
He said that not only did they refuse to take
a report, they said dismissive and hurtful things to him
at like if I had a dollar for every time
someone called in a missing person, I'd be rich. So
really dismissive, really shitty, and ultimately very unprofessional things for

(28:27):
anyone to say, and definitely a public servant quote unquote
like this is not the type of thing people should
be saying. He also said that forty eight hours is
far too long to wait to look into a missing person,
even if they're over the age of eighteen. At first,
the captain agreed, you know, I'll talk to my staff
make sure they handle things differently. But eventually this department,

(28:48):
along with many others, as we probably know, shortened the
time for reports to twenty four hours after a person
goes missing, which many people still believe is too long,
but it's a lot better than forty eight. Sam also
went to Caltrans and demanded they close the off ramp
where Kara was killed, saying it had no purpose except
to hide rapists, murderers, and drug users, which is what

(29:11):
that off ramp was basically full of. Within a few weeks,
it was closed. On February fifth, nineteen eighty seven, Sam
picked up his local newspaper to see the full details
of Kara's autopsy splashed across the pages. I cannot even
imagine what that's like. He was enraged, and it's fair

(29:35):
to be rightly so, and wrote a letter to chairman
of the county Board of Supervisors, a guy named Bill
I think, or Brian. Anyway, the policy surrounding the release
of this information was promptly changed because his family wasn't
even notified this was going to happen, so they changed
the policies, thank god, all based on Sam, and he

(29:55):
didn't stop there. After the mistrial, he was so upset
that he and I did seven jurors to his home,
presumably the ones who voted guilty, and got information from
them regarding what went wrong with the case. He then
contacted the DA. And remember how he said they used
like a new prosecutor. What I didn't mention is that
Sam was directly responsible for that. He demanded that they

(30:16):
have somebody else prosecute the second time. He was angry
that they bungled the case. He wanted a fresh start,
and even got the DA's office to agree to open
sort of like an information pipeline between them and the
Not family, and the Knot family gave them all of
the information they got from the previous jurors to help
the prosecution have a more rock solid case the second
time around, and as we know, that worked. He also

(30:39):
spearheaded the nation's first federal grant for a university forensics
lab specializing in DNA analysis. He worked with the Washington
bureaucracy until he found who he needed, the person responsible
for the grants, and he told the man, quote, I
need this technology for the blood evidence against the monster
that murdered my daughter. Let me bring my family to

(31:01):
Washington to plead my case. After speaking with this person,
he ultimately did not have to go to Washington because
the grant for the sexual assault center was approved October first,
nineteen eighty seven. That is how influential and how much
he got done. Sam was not going to take no
for an answer. He tried to get a tracking system

(31:21):
in place for police officers. Ultimately, this didn't really happen
until a lot later. I don't even know that it's
official now, but we are all tracked all the time
at this point, so they can pretty much do it.
But that was like a really big thing for him
because he's like, if there was tracking of this officer,
we could have immediately proved that he was there. There
would have been no question. It wouldn't have been a
penciled in logbook that we're using as proof of his,

(31:43):
you know, location, which is a completely fair point. The
other thing that he did that was of a more
personal nature was he had the area where Kara was
murdered dedicated to her memory, and he and his family
turned it into a memorial garden. Sam tended this garden weekly,
sometimes multiple full times per week, and including November thirtieth,

(32:03):
two thousand. We know he was there that day because
very unfortunately, he was found in his car, slumped over
his steering wheel. He had died of a heart attack
just feet from where Kara had died fourteen years earlier.
Many people say that Sam died of a broken heart.
It's really sad and tragic. You know, it's a terrible

(32:26):
ending to this overall terrible story. But I did want
to call it out because this man dedicated every breath
he took to his daughter after her death, and his
work is really inspirational and long lasting, like he made
a permanent change in the world based on you know,
what happened to his daughter. His wife, his widow, Joyce,
continued his legacy and also make sure to attend every

(32:47):
parole hearing for Craigpyre. Although it's painful, she and her family,
you know, they read their impact statements in the hopes
that it's going to keep him in jail, and so
far it's worked. Joyce, I believe at this point is
well into her eighties. I looked, I can't really find her,
but there's no obituary either, so I think she's still alive,
you know, hopefully will be for his next parole hearing,

(33:08):
which is in twenty twenty seven, when he will be
seventy seven years old. If he doesn't die before then,
I do not feel confident he will be released because
he's still never admitted to the murder which he clearly committed.
So you know, hopefully he stays in prison until the
day he dies, fooling absolutely nobody about his guilt and
wasting away as he deserves. So that is the slightly shorter,

(33:32):
but definitely very interesting and sad case of the murder
of Kara not and the trial of Craig Pyre. I
did want to also note he was the first officer
ever convicted of a murder while on duty, which is
crazy if you know anything about the police, police brutality, murders,
things of that nature. The fact that this took place

(33:54):
in nineteen eighty six and was the first one is crazy.
It's also crazy that he was convicted, because it's pretty
hard to get a cop convicted. But I think in
a case like this, especially she's like a young white
woman from a good family with money, it's gonna be
viewed in a different way than a lot of other
cases that may come up where a cop murders an
innocent person. Also, this wasn't like an altercation in the

(34:17):
line of duty. This is just straight up like sexual
harassment gone wrong. So pretty interesting in any case, Thanks
everybody for listening. Once again, I know this is a
little bit of a shorter episode, but this case has
always interested me, so I wanted to cover it because
I found it compelling and strange and notable for a
number of reasons. So I hope you guys all enjoyed.

(34:39):
Please like, rate, review, share with all your friends and family,
Let everybody know. It's very sad. Twisted Listeners doesn't exist anymore,
but we have True Crime California. I'll be back next
week with a new episode, and until then, everybody's stay safe.