Latest / True Crime California / TCC #4 The Murder of Cara Knott

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TCC #4 The Murder of Cara Knott · True Crime California

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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
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and I'm glad you're here. Hey, guys, we're back with
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episode four. I can't believe we're already four episodes in,
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so I redid episode three last week because it wasn't
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how I wanted it to be. And now it sounds
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really good, but the volume is really low, so you know,
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it's a learning curve recording. I used to do it
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with Diva on our other podcast, and it took us
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forever to get the sound good, and even then we
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would have like hiccups. So I'm kind of feel like
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I'm starting over again on my own, but hopefully overall
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it's a better experience. It sounds better. I'm just really
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hoping that, you know, I can figure out how to
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make it loud without having it pick up every single
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time I sniffle or make a weird noise, which right
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now I have not mastered that, so hope you guys
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can just hang in with me. But anyway, Hi, welcome back.
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This is episode four of True Crime California. I'm Cindy,
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your host, and I'm going to talk about another case
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from the eighties and I know you guys have probably
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had your fill of eighties cases, but there's just a
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lot of good ones. But at least this is a
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little later on in the eighties. This case takes place
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in nineteen eighty six, and this is the really tragic
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murder of Kara Not. As I said, this story takes
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place in nineteen eighty six in the San Diego area.
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This story might be a little bit shorter than some
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of the other ones that I have done and will do,
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but it's a pretty wild story, so I still want
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to cover it. It's definitely been covered by like forensic
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files and you know, a bunch of other sort of
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like true crime TV shows, So it's definitely like an
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intriguing and interesting story. It just doesn't have quite as
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much information at this point as some of the other stories.
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I don't think it was quite as big in the news.
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And then also obviously the age of the case makes
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it harder to find information. Anyway, let's just get into it. So.
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Karen Not was born February eleventh, nineteen sixty six, in Ventura, California,
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which is about seventy miles or so north of Los Angeles.
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She was the third of four siblings. And she and
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her family moved to El Cahone, which is sort of
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like it's a city but almost kind of considered like
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a suburb in San Diego County, almost like a suburb
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of San Diego. They moved there when she was pretty young.
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Her father, Sam, was a stockbroker. Her mother worked at
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a hospital, like in a nursing setting, I think, but
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also may have taken some time off of work to
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care for the kids. The family was very very close.
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They were a really tight family, and from photos of
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Sam and Kara you can tell that she was like
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very special to him and they were like especially close.
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Kara graduated from El Cahoone High in nineteen eighty four
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and decided to get her teaching credential at San Diego State,
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which is great because she could stay living with her
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parents and just make the drive. Kara was a really
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pretty young woman. She had like the fara faucet blonde hair.
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You could tell that she like dressed in a trendy way.
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She was super cute. She had a boyfriend, Wayne, who
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lived in nearby es Candido, and Wayne was also really handsome,
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like he looks like, oh my god, what's his name?
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Eric Estrata from Chips. Now that ages me because that
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show was even too old for me. But like when
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I saw the picture of him, I was like, wow,
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he looks straight up like an eighties heart throb. Like
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just they were like a beautiful couple. Now, for those
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who don't know, San Diego County has a lot of
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sort of like like I was saying, like not really suburbs,
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but like separate cities that all sort of butt up
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to each other, and they all kind of use San
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Diego as the catch all when explaining like where people
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are from. So like for Los Angeles, if you live
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in like Torrents or Van Eyes, you'll probably just tell
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people you live in LA So it's kind of like
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the greater Los Angeles area. This is like the greater
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San die area. And because a lot of people went
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to you know, the same big college, San Diego State University,
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people from these smaller towns would end up knowing each
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other and dating each other. And that's sort of the
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case here where Wayne lived about thirty three miles from Kara,
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but because they both went to San Diego State University,
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they started dating and like the distance between them wasn't
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considered to be that big of a deal or that
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out of the ordinary, you know, for them to still
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date and live in different cities sort of in the
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same general area. So anyway, before heading off to college,
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Kara was a star student at alcohol in high really
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well liked, popular, and again very close with her family.
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She was a track star who loved animals and even
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worked at the zoo for a time. She was really
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really into like conservation of natural habitats for wild animals
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and was therefore also a bit of an environmentalist. So
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just a really wholesome, sweet and also very driven person
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who wanted to make a difference in the world and
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always was trying to do her best to make things better,
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which is probably why she was going to school or
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to college to get her teaching credentials so she could
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be a teacher and you know, change the lives of
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young people, which is great now. As I mentioned, she
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was really close with her dad, and Sam always instilled
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in his children not so much a fear of the world,
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but a clear understanding of it as well as its
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potential dangers. He taught Kara and her siblings to be careful,
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not accept rides from strangers, keep their wits about them
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when they're out alone, you know, just all the smart things.
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And he also taught Kara or he also had Kara
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take self defense classes so she would know how to
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defend herself should she ever be attacked. So really just
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trying to make sure that his children know how to
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take care of themselves, make good choices, and just generally
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stay safe. Now, Kara and her boyfriend Wayne were really close.
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They spent a lot of time together and they'd been
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together for a while. So when Wayne got sick over
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Christmas in nineteen eighty six, Kara went to take care
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of him for a few days. She wanted to get
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back home as soon as she could, and she had
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told her sister she wanted to spend time with the
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family over the holidays as well, but she just kind
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of felt obligated to care for Wayne because he was
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actually sick on Christmas with the flu, which is just
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depressing and sad. So it's really sweet that she went
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over and took care of him. All of the kids
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in Kara's family, including her youngest brother, were now out
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of the house, either away at college or living and
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working away from the parents' home, and Kara was worried
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that this year would be the last they had together
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as a family at Christmas. Apparently the family were well
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known for being really over the top during the holidays,
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but like in a really good way, with like decorations
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and parties and like tongues of family time together. Kara
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in particular loved this and she was really sad that
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it was coming to an end, so she didn't want
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to miss it because she thought, you know, this is
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the last year this is going to happen. But she
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also loved Wayne and she wanted to be there to
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take care of him. So either on Christmas Day or
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the day after, she left her parents home in Alcoholne
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and I think she was still living there and went
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to see Wayne in Escondido. While with Wayne, Kara called
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her mother Joyce a few times for advice on how
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to take care of him, including how to use a thermometer,
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which is like really cute and also shows that despite
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being officially an adult, Kara was still young and innocent
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and like learning how to be in the world as
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an adult person, which I thought was endearing and just
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says a lot about her, like even though she wasn't
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sure what she was doing, she was determined to be
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a caretaker and be there for her boyfriend. So anyway,
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on de Summer twenty seventh, Wayne said he was feeling better,
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so Kara decided to go back home and spend the
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rest of the holiday with her family. She called her
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parents around eight pm from Wayne's house to tell them
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she was on her way. Now, this is something she
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did regularly, as again, her father had taught her to
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always let someone know where she's going, where she is,
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so if anything happened, people would know right away, which
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is very very smart, and especially back in the eighties
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when there weren't cell phones or tracking devices. So she
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called and said, I'll be home in about forty five minutes,
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which is about exactly how long it should take. Her
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family was all together, like I said, so they kept
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kind of going on with the night. They watched Sleeping Beauty,
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they did a puzzle together, and her mother, Joyce, said
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they sort of lost track of time. It wasn't until
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around ten pm, two hours after Kara called that her
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father Sam sat up in bed and told Joyce something
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was terribly wrong. They called the police, but the police
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were not helpful. They basically said, we're not going to
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do jack shit. For at least forty eight hours, and
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that that was the amount of time someone had to
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be missing before they'd even start looking for them. So Sam,
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who we will learn is like a hell of a
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go getter and never took no for an answer, got
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his family together along with Wayne, Kara's boyfriend, and started
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looking for her themselves. They searched through the night, taking
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the route Kara always took home, which was along the
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Eye fifteen Freeway. They searched off ramps, gas stations everywhere,
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and they didn't sleep or stop at all that night. Finally,
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around six am or so, Kara's older sister Cindy and
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her husband Bill passed an off ramp for the second time,
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and this time they decided to take a closer look.
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This off ramp was probably ignored at first because it
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went to a quick dead end with no houses or
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facilities nearby. It basically just like backed up to a
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construction site with a fence around it, so like why
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would Kara pull off there? Like why would her car
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be there? But even so, they decided to check it
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out because it was one of the few places they
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hadn't really looked, and there they did, in fact find
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Kara's car, which was a small WHITEVW Bug. When they
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looked inside the car, they found it empty, so they
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began yelling and screaming Kara's name, hoping to find her nearby.
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When that didn't work, they immediately went and called the police,
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who took a full forty minutes to arrive on the scene.
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Following literally behind them was Sam, who saw the police
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speeding down the highway. Now he was still out looking
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for Kara, and when he saw this, Sam later said
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he quote just knew, so he followed behind. Just around
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the corner from where her car was found, there was
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an abandoned bridge about seventy five feet above a a
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ditch filled with brush. Police searched the area, and Sam
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said that after they'd been gone a few minutes, he
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saw them come back, go into the trunk of one
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of their patrol cars and put on gloves before going
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back to the area under the bridge. When they came
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back some time later, they approached Sam, and one officer
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began to cry while they told him they had found
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Kara and that she was dead. That officer, while interviewed,
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later said he would never forget Sam's response, I wish
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you had known her, she was an angel. This is
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really really sad, just terrible. So police began to secure
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the area and take evidence in muting tire tracks near
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her body, They took molds of the tires and continued
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their investigation. Of course, as we could all imagine, Wayne
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was their number one suspect at that time. Not only
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was he the last one to see her, but it's
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always the boyfriend, right, It's always a boyfriend, it's always
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the husband, it's always the significant other. Also, police had
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concluded pretty quickly that Kara had willingly driven off the
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freeway down that off ramp. There was nothing wrong with
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her car, no evidence of an accident or anything mechanically wrong,
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and so police knew that, especially with a father like Sam,
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Kara would have never pulled over for someone unless it
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was somebody that she trusted or someone she knew. They
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interviewed Wayne, they were really like thinking it was him,
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but he had an alibi. He was home, still sick,
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and his sister was there with him and confirmed he'd
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been there all night. Police obviously were like, it's his sister,
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she could just be covering for him. So they still
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thought it could be Wayne, but they did keep looking
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for other suspects. They weren't super convinced. I think they
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got a good vibe from when they realized, you know,
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he's probably telling the truth. So they kept looking for
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other suspects, kept doing their investigation, and meanwhile, the people
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of San Diego are completely terrified. Who was this murderer
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out there on the loose? How did he kill this
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woman who was simply driving home. So to help quell
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people's fears, a local news reporter asked the CHP in
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the area if they could do a segment about how
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to stay safe while driving alone, especially at night. The
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CHP tapped a thirteen year veteran of the force to
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do this interview and sort of like a ride along.
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This man's name was Craig Pyre. Now, Craig got a
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spotless record over his thirteen years on the force, and
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he had also done TV interviews and other media requests
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for the department previously. Why am I tripping on my words?
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In addition, the area where Kara was killed was his beat,
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and in fact, he had been on duty that night,
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so it made sense that he would do this interview
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because he knew the area, so not only could he
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talk in general terms about safety, but he also had
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a specific knowledge that likely made the interview more interesting
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for the general public. Now. During the interview, which I
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noted ended up being a ride along, Craig talked about
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how dangerous it was to get out of your car
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if you have car trouble. He said it's best to
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just lock your doors and wait for help, or wait
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until it's light out. He said, never get into the
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car with a stranger, and that if anybody pulls over
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to offer assistance, just ask them to call the CHP
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and leave it at that, because you know, as soon
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as you're in the car with that person, you are
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at their mercy and they can do whatever they want
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to you. And he said that for women especially, this
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could lead to being raped or even killed. Also, you
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can find this segment on YouTube to this day, so
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you can go watch this interview where he's like talking
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about safety. It's very like eighties. It's very old school.
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They like pull a motorist or they pull up to
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a motorist who's on the side of the road he
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ran out of gas and is like putting gas in
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his car. So it's very like new segmentee from the eighties.
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If that's something you guys are interested in. Oh yeah,
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it's on YouTube. You can find it really easily now.
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This segment aired only two days after Kara's body was found,
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and during this time police had had a number of
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calls in about the case via Crimestoppers. After the segment aired,
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another three hundred or so calls came in, and around
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thirty of those were from young women in the area.
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As it turned out, many of these women looked like
14:21
Kara and were around her age. Most of them drove
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similar cars to Kara, with two of the women driving
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the exact color and year VW Bug that Kara had.
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All of these women called in for the same reason
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to complain about CHP officer Craig Pyre. That's right, they
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all called in to complain about the officer in the video.
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They all had similar stories about how he had pulled
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them over on that same road, Mercy Road under the
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abandoned bridge. Many said he quote detained them for up
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to ninety minutes and would sit in the front seat
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of their car and ask them wildly inappropriate, sexually charged questions.
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The women were all terrified during this ordeal, and many
15:13
were too afraid to complain after the fact that being said,
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a few did in fact call in about this officer,
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and the CHP completely ignored them. And I don't think
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I need to explain why. We all know they don't
15:26
give a shit. They don't care about the public, they
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don't care about women. They definitely weren't going to listen
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to a few women complaining about a man with a
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spotless record. But now we know exactly why it was spotless,
15:37
which is absolutely ridiculous, And as it turns out, he
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had been doing this for years and years. There is
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a woman named Amy Sterling Cassil or Castle. I don't
15:49
know Casil, who recounts on her website how she was
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pulled over by Craig Pyre in either nineteen eighty one
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or nineteen eighty two, and I'll remind you Kara was
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killed in nineteen eighty six. Now, Amy said that he
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tried to make her get out of her car, which
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was a white VW Rabbit, which is very close to
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Kara's car, and that when she didn't immediately comply, he
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attempted to pull her car door open when she said
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to him while he's jiggling her car door, that her
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grandfather was a CHP officer who told her if a
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cop ever asked her to get out of her car,
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he was probably not actually a cop. Pyre quickly changed
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his tune and started lecturing her on safety while driving
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alone at night. He then let her go. So he'd
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been doing this for at least four years before Kara
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was murdered, which is insane to me because according to CHP,
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he didn't have a thing on his record. That being said,
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it's also not that surprising, as we know. Beyond these
16:50
women calling in, there were quite a few people who
16:52
called in to say they noticed Craig had visible scratches
16:54
on his nose and forehead during the interview, and that
16:57
they looked pretty fresh, maybe only a couple of days old.
17:02
When asked about the scratches, Pyre said he fell into
17:05
a fence at the police station. But when police looked
17:08
into this, they noticed that the fence was about eight
17:10
feet high, so he would have had to jump up
17:14
and fly into it face first for this to even
17:16
be slightly possible, which is obviously just fucking silly. No
17:20
way did that happen. So anyway, these calls created the
17:23
first real lead for the police, though they later said
17:25
that's not really why they looked into Craig Pyre. Whatever
17:29
the reason, they started looking into him, and he cooperated
17:32
fully with the investigation. He even turned over the uniform
17:36
he'd been wearing the night of the murder so that
17:38
it could be tested, and while looking over his uniform,
17:42
investigators found a gold edged shoulder patch on the uniform
17:46
and the threads from that patch matched those found on
17:49
Kara's body, and apparently they were a very specific type
17:53
of thread that was super unique and microscopically consistent with
17:57
the threads on the patch. So what was on her
17:59
body match the patch and it wasn't just like you know,
18:02
CVS brand thread. It was like a very particular type
18:05
of thread with a very particular way of being colored,
18:08
and it was very very rare. So they were like,
18:11
this is like almost for sure from his patch to
18:15
her clothing. To be sure, they sent the fibers in
18:17
for further testing, which only furtherfirmed that they were a match.
18:21
As for Craig, he turned over his log book because
18:24
this was in the eighties when they didn't necessarily have
18:26
like tracking for police, and in it police found that
18:30
while he had a timestamp for where he was at
18:32
all points during the night, including when the murder occurred.
18:35
They also found that there was a clear eraser mark
18:39
on one of the logs with the time changed to
18:42
around nine point thirty, which is the time police expected
18:45
Kara had been killed. So he was attempting to create
18:48
an alibi for himself, but he didn't do a very
18:51
good job because you could see the eraser marks. When
18:53
searching his car, police found a rope inside, and this
18:57
was very significant because Kara, it was found, and hadn't
19:00
actually died from being thrown over the bridge as originally thought.
19:04
And it was thought that because it did create a
19:06
lot of trauma to her body, including like crushed bones.
19:10
But what it was found is she had actually been
19:12
strangled to death with a ligature and when they investigated further,
19:17
they found that the ligature marks on her neck matched
19:20
the rope perfectly, so like the size and the spacing
19:24
of the rope matched the ligature marks on her neck.
19:27
They also found a bruise on her forehead as if
19:30
she'd been hit by something, which police later determined was
19:33
likely a police flashlight. Now going back to the uniform,
19:37
they also found fibers from Kara's sweatpants on Craig Pyre's uniform,
19:42
and when looking over Kara's clothing, they found a speck
19:45
of blood on her white boot. Now, while DNA testing
19:49
wasn't great back then, they were able to type the
19:51
blood and found that it was AB, which is the
19:54
rarest type of blood type in the United States and
19:58
was also Craig Pire's blood type. So even though they
20:01
didn't have like good DNA testing at the time, it
20:04
was about as damning as evidence of that nature could be. Lastly,
20:09
the skid marks found at the murder scene perfectly matched
20:12
the distance between the wheels of a police cruiser. So
20:16
there's a lot of evidence here, circumstantial, anecdotal and forensic,
20:19
that all pointed to Craig Pyre and threes twenty threes.
20:24
Twenty three days after the murder, he was arrested and charged.
20:31
Craigpyre went to trial in February of nineteen eighty eight,
20:36
and during the trial, witnesses were called forward who had
20:38
said they'd seen Kara that night and had also seen
20:41
a police officer following her. Apparently, Kara had stopped to
20:45
get gas just about a mile or so from where
20:47
she was killed, and the attendant there said they saw
20:49
her getting gas and also saw a CHP officer flip
20:53
a bitch and start following her as she left the station.
20:56
Police from that surmised that Pyre had seen Kara at
20:59
the station, turned around to follow her and planned to
21:02
do what he always did, which was pull her over,
21:04
harass her, and likely eventually let her go, they said
21:08
at some point, I guess prosecution said this at some
21:10
point after pulling her over to his favorite deserted off ramp,
21:15
Kara likely got scared, as many women before her had obviously,
21:19
but unlike the under the other women, she fought back,
21:22
and as a result, Pyr attacked her, likely knocking her
21:25
unconscious with his flashlight before getting rope from his car
21:28
and strangling her to death. The scratches on his face
21:31
were from her fighting back, either before or while he
21:34
was strangling her. Police said. He then tied her to
21:37
the hood of his car so that her hair and
21:40
other DNA would not get inside the car, and drove
21:43
her the short distance to the bridge, where he threw
21:45
her body over, then went on with his night as
21:48
if nothing happened. So pretty fucked up now, As I noted,
21:54
he went to trial just two years after the murder.
21:57
The prosecution called a ton of witnesses. Most of them
22:00
are pretty helpful to the case, though a few had
22:02
their time wrong, like the timing of things wrong, or
22:04
would like, oh, I think it was eight thirty, maybe
22:06
it was nine fifteen, and they kind of said as
22:09
such when examined by a cross examined by the defense.
22:13
This was particularly important because the defense mostly relied on
22:16
the timeline to prove that Pyre wasn't actually the killer.
22:20
They thought that if they could prove he was elsewhere
22:22
during like doing cop stuff, when she died, they can
22:25
cold mince the journey that he didn't do it. Forensic
22:28
science at the time, like the scientists didn't really give
22:31
a good time of death for whatever reason, so they
22:33
had to use her liver temperature to determine when she died,
22:36
and unfortunately that's very much not an exact science, so
22:39
it showed she could have died as early as one
22:41
PM that afternoon, which gave a really wide time frame
22:46
for her death and made it really hard to prove
22:49
that it was him, that he was there, because it's like, well,
22:51
if it could have happened anytime within like twelve hours,
22:54
it could have been anyone. Obviously, there were ways to
22:57
show this wasn't true, like time stamps on the phone
22:59
call to her parents from her boyfriend's house. But you know,
23:01
nobody could prove any of this. Like even if Wayne
23:04
called her parents, her parents could be saying, oh, yeah,
23:06
it was her, but it really wasn't. You know. I'm
23:08
saying like there was just there were some inconsistencies and
23:10
it was difficult to really really prove it. Also, like
23:13
I said, when the gas attendant gas station attendant changed
23:18
the time he saw her from around eight thirty to
23:21
nine fifteen, it made the case look really shaky. Also,
23:25
there were multiple charges Pirate could be found guilty of,
23:28
ranging from like first degree murder to like I don't know,
23:31
there was second degree, there was something else that was
23:33
like another option. I feel like the options were a
23:35
little bit different back then, so I don't really recognize
23:38
all of the charges. But in any case, you know,
23:41
there were multiple things he could be found guilty of,
23:43
but prosecutors were going for first degree murder. They argued
23:47
that even though he killed Carot in the heat of
23:48
the moment, it was still first degree in nature because
23:51
of what he was doing that put them in the
23:53
situation in the first place. Essentially, the prosecution was saying, like,
23:56
don't start, none, won't be none, which is fair I think. Unfortunately,
24:00
the trial came off as disorganized and despite their being
24:03
forensic evidence, jurors really ultimately didn't understand the weight of
24:07
that as far as it being proof, because it's not
24:09
how it is now where everybody knows about DNA, and
24:12
the witness testimony being wishy washy really threw a wrench
24:15
into things. In the end, the jury deadlocked seven to
24:20
five in favor of conviction for first degree murder, and
24:23
the judge declared a mistrial. Craigpyre was free on bail
24:27
before his second trial, which took place in June nineteen
24:30
eighty eight, so not a long time, but the fact
24:32
that he was free is kind of crazy. He had
24:35
definitely been fired, he was no longer a highway patrol officer.
24:39
I don't even know that he had a job. Maybe
24:40
he took on like some part time work. But he
24:42
was free during this time and like probably murdered somebody.
24:46
It's kind of crazy that they just like set his
24:48
bail and were like have a nice day. So whatever. Anyway,
24:51
The trial goes back in June nineteen eighty eight, and
24:54
this time the DA appointed a younger prosecutor who brought
24:57
in new witnesses and really drove home the science part
25:00
of the case really focused on the DNA, really focused
25:05
on well, maybe not DNA, but the forensic evidence, the
25:08
fiber evidence, the blood evidence, like kind of what they
25:10
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,
25:17
there's too much transfer between their clothing types for that
25:20
to not for that to be ignored. Craig Pire refused
25:25
to testify in either of his trials and maintained his
25:28
innocence throughout. So he was like, I'm innocent, but I'm
25:31
not going to testify now. This trial wasn't without its
25:34
own little bit of drama. Halfway through the trial, a
25:37
juror was dismissed because he had been so his coworker
25:41
called the courts and was like, hey, just so you know,
25:45
we were watching the first trial and when Craigpire got off,
25:50
he told me he agreed with that because he thought
25:53
that he didn't do it. He was getting a bad
25:55
rap because people don't like cops et cetera, et cetera.
25:58
So when this was found out, they interviewed the juror.
26:00
At first they weren't going to dismiss him, and obviously
26:03
the defense didn't want him dismissed, but in the end
26:06
they dismissed him and replaced him about halfway through the trial.
26:09
So there was always like there's always these little bits
26:12
of drama in this case, and like it's just crazy
26:15
to me, like reading about it, researching it, how it
26:17
seems so clear that he's guilty, but there's all of
26:20
this back and forth and all of these different opinions,
26:24
which always gives me pause because it's like, maybe we
26:27
don't know, you know, after the fact, it can be
26:29
presented however, but in that moment, it's very obvious that
26:33
it wasn't clear what it happened. However, finally, in late
26:37
June nineteen eighty eight, Craig Pyre was found guilty of
26:40
first degree murder. To this day, he proclaims his innocence
26:45
and has actually been denied bail two or three times
26:48
now because of his refusal to take responsibility for the murder. Now,
26:52
where I just said, oh, maybe it wasn't obvious one
26:54
way or the other. Here's where to me, this case
26:58
is like open and shut. He very tellingly refused to
27:03
submit his DNA to clear his name back in two
27:05
thousand and four when the prosecutor's office, who was working
27:08
with some sort of innocence project, offered to do that
27:11
for him. So what does that tell you? So he's
27:14
like still saying he's innocent, but he's got an opportunity
27:17
to prove it and he's not taking it. So I'm
27:19
gonna just call him not only a murderer but also
27:22
a big fat liar. Now we could end the story here,
27:25
but again, I have an opportunity to talk about something
27:27
really amazing that came out of all this terribleness. And
27:30
that amazing thing is the endless work done by Sam,
27:33
not Kara's father, after her death. And I don't know
27:36
that I want to say that it's like good because
27:38
I believe the reason Sam did everything he did was
27:41
sort of to find a way to cope and to
27:43
keep Kara alive in a way. And I know that
27:46
Kara's death tortured and haunted him for the rest of
27:48
his life, but regardless, he made sure to turn his
27:52
pain into something good for other families. So after Kara's death,
27:55
and I mean like the week of her death, Sam
27:58
started his crusade to get laws changed, multiple laws which
28:01
he thought were wrong and contributed to her death. So
28:04
the first thing he did is find the captain of
28:06
the police unit that he and his family called when
28:08
Kara was missing and complained about their handling of things.
28:12
He said that not only did they refuse to take
28:14
a report, they said dismissive and hurtful things to him
28:17
at like if I had a dollar for every time
28:20
someone called in a missing person, I'd be rich. So
28:23
really dismissive, really shitty, and ultimately very unprofessional things for
28:27
anyone to say, and definitely a public servant quote unquote
28:31
like this is not the type of thing people should
28:33
be saying. He also said that forty eight hours is
28:37
far too long to wait to look into a missing person,
28:39
even if they're over the age of eighteen. At first,
28:42
the captain agreed, you know, I'll talk to my staff
28:45
make sure they handle things differently. But eventually this department,
28:48
along with many others, as we probably know, shortened the
28:51
time for reports to twenty four hours after a person
28:54
goes missing, which many people still believe is too long,
28:57
but it's a lot better than forty eight. Sam also
29:01
went to Caltrans and demanded they close the off ramp
29:04
where Kara was killed, saying it had no purpose except
29:07
to hide rapists, murderers, and drug users, which is what
29:11
that off ramp was basically full of. Within a few weeks,
29:15
it was closed. On February fifth, nineteen eighty seven, Sam
29:19
picked up his local newspaper to see the full details
29:24
of Kara's autopsy splashed across the pages. I cannot even
29:29
imagine what that's like. He was enraged, and it's fair
29:35
to be rightly so, and wrote a letter to chairman
29:38
of the county Board of Supervisors, a guy named Bill
29:41
I think, or Brian. Anyway, the policy surrounding the release
29:44
of this information was promptly changed because his family wasn't
29:48
even notified this was going to happen, so they changed
29:51
the policies, thank god, all based on Sam, and he
29:55
didn't stop there. After the mistrial, he was so upset
29:59
that he and I did seven jurors to his home,
30:02
presumably the ones who voted guilty, and got information from
30:05
them regarding what went wrong with the case. He then
30:08
contacted the DA. And remember how he said they used
30:10
like a new prosecutor. What I didn't mention is that
30:13
Sam was directly responsible for that. He demanded that they
30:16
have somebody else prosecute the second time. He was angry
30:20
that they bungled the case. He wanted a fresh start,
30:23
and even got the DA's office to agree to open
30:25
sort of like an information pipeline between them and the
30:28
Not family, and the Knot family gave them all of
30:30
the information they got from the previous jurors to help
30:33
the prosecution have a more rock solid case the second
30:36
time around, and as we know, that worked. He also
30:39
spearheaded the nation's first federal grant for a university forensics
30:43
lab specializing in DNA analysis. He worked with the Washington
30:48
bureaucracy until he found who he needed, the person responsible
30:52
for the grants, and he told the man, quote, I
30:54
need this technology for the blood evidence against the monster
30:57
that murdered my daughter. Let me bring my family to
31:01
Washington to plead my case. After speaking with this person,
31:04
he ultimately did not have to go to Washington because
31:08
the grant for the sexual assault center was approved October first,
31:12
nineteen eighty seven. That is how influential and how much
31:17
he got done. Sam was not going to take no
31:19
for an answer. He tried to get a tracking system
31:21
in place for police officers. Ultimately, this didn't really happen
31:24
until a lot later. I don't even know that it's
31:26
official now, but we are all tracked all the time
31:28
at this point, so they can pretty much do it.
31:31
But that was like a really big thing for him
31:33
because he's like, if there was tracking of this officer,
31:35
we could have immediately proved that he was there. There
31:37
would have been no question. It wouldn't have been a
31:40
penciled in logbook that we're using as proof of his,
31:43
you know, location, which is a completely fair point. The
31:46
other thing that he did that was of a more
31:48
personal nature was he had the area where Kara was
31:51
murdered dedicated to her memory, and he and his family
31:54
turned it into a memorial garden. Sam tended this garden weekly,
31:59
sometimes multiple full times per week, and including November thirtieth,
32:03
two thousand. We know he was there that day because
32:07
very unfortunately, he was found in his car, slumped over
32:10
his steering wheel. He had died of a heart attack
32:14
just feet from where Kara had died fourteen years earlier.
32:19
Many people say that Sam died of a broken heart.
32:23
It's really sad and tragic. You know, it's a terrible
32:26
ending to this overall terrible story. But I did want
32:28
to call it out because this man dedicated every breath
32:31
he took to his daughter after her death, and his
32:34
work is really inspirational and long lasting, like he made
32:37
a permanent change in the world based on you know,
32:40
what happened to his daughter. His wife, his widow, Joyce,
32:44
continued his legacy and also make sure to attend every
32:47
parole hearing for Craigpyre. Although it's painful, she and her family,
32:51
you know, they read their impact statements in the hopes
32:53
that it's going to keep him in jail, and so
32:56
far it's worked. Joyce, I believe at this point is
32:58
well into her eighties. I looked, I can't really find her,
33:02
but there's no obituary either, so I think she's still alive,
33:05
you know, hopefully will be for his next parole hearing,
33:08
which is in twenty twenty seven, when he will be
33:10
seventy seven years old. If he doesn't die before then,
33:13
I do not feel confident he will be released because
33:15
he's still never admitted to the murder which he clearly committed.
33:19
So you know, hopefully he stays in prison until the
33:22
day he dies, fooling absolutely nobody about his guilt and
33:26
wasting away as he deserves. So that is the slightly shorter,
33:32
but definitely very interesting and sad case of the murder
33:36
of Kara not and the trial of Craig Pyre. I
33:39
did want to also note he was the first officer
33:43
ever convicted of a murder while on duty, which is
33:47
crazy if you know anything about the police, police brutality, murders,
33:52
things of that nature. The fact that this took place
33:54
in nineteen eighty six and was the first one is crazy.
33:57
It's also crazy that he was convicted, because it's pretty
34:00
hard to get a cop convicted. But I think in
34:03
a case like this, especially she's like a young white
34:06
woman from a good family with money, it's gonna be
34:09
viewed in a different way than a lot of other
34:11
cases that may come up where a cop murders an
34:14
innocent person. Also, this wasn't like an altercation in the
34:17
line of duty. This is just straight up like sexual
34:20
harassment gone wrong. So pretty interesting in any case, Thanks
34:25
everybody for listening. Once again, I know this is a
34:27
little bit of a shorter episode, but this case has
34:30
always interested me, so I wanted to cover it because
34:32
I found it compelling and strange and notable for a
34:37
number of reasons. So I hope you guys all enjoyed.
34:39
Please like, rate, review, share with all your friends and family,
34:43
Let everybody know. It's very sad. Twisted Listeners doesn't exist anymore,
34:47
but we have True Crime California. I'll be back next
34:49
week with a new episode, and until then, everybody's stay safe.