A Checklist for Murder (10 page)

Peernock was convicted.

Unbowed, he appealed the conviction. He insisted that both the charge and his conviction had been engineered by Deputy District Attorney Myron Jenkins as retaliation against Peernock for his efforts against the corrupt state system. This theory entails the proposition that the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, the largest law office in the world with over a thousand prosecutors in its service, operates at the behest of the state government to frame and convict anyone who dares to come forward and speak out against organized corruption in state government. Robert Peernock has no trouble visualizing and describing the countless connections on this giant circuit board of corruption.

In his appeal, he claimed that the victim’s story had been, in Peernock’s words, “impeached by his own testimony.” But the court noted that Peernock himself had only two witnesses, and that their testimony broke down completely. It was filled with inconsistencies and recountings of events they could not possibly have been in a position to witness.

By contrast, the victim’s story was borne out by the hard physical evidence as well as the witnesses for the victim. So the Court of Appeal refused Peernock’s assertion of self-defense, given that Peernock’s victim was eight years older, four inches shorter, nearly seventy pounds lighter, and was in poor physical condition.

Peernock also argued in his appeal that he had not been permitted to outline his long list of grievances against the DWR at the trial. But the court ruled that even if that story was true, it would do nothing to explain his innocence with respect to the battery charge.

He was left to try to frame an appeal by presenting accusations of bias on the part of the trial court as being part of a plot against him by “the state, his supervisory employees, the sheriff’s office, the office of the district attorney, the prosecutor, and the trial judge.”

In the end the three appellate judges found that these claims were also unsupported and that his trial had been a fair one. His request for a new trial was denied.

If Robert had accepted the small defeat of the hundred-dollar fine, he could have walked away. But the obsession had nailed him. The sting burned deeply. He could not,
was not
, going to let it go. He could see how it was all connected. As it happened, one of the connections turned out to be true, in a turn of coincidence that Peernock would never see as being anything other than a further example of conspiracy among the lawyers trying to hound him into prison. At the time of Peernock’s battery trial Myron Jenkins was slightly acquainted with a law clerk over in the public defender’s office in the suburb of Newhall.

The law clerk’s name was Victoria Doom. She hoped one day to become a sole practitioner, but for now, she and Myron Jenkins were on opposite sides of the fence in a relatively small judicial district. Their business sometimes brought them into contact, but Victoria Doom had no way of knowing how much she and Jenkins would one day have in common via the strange legal history of Robert John Peernock.

Claire tried to ride out the situation for the first few years after Robert’s whistleblowing campaign began. In an age where elaborate rip-off schemes on the part of government
contractors are constantly coming to light on major news programs like
60 Minutes
, his campaign, to her, initially seemed to have the ring of truth.

She hoped that Robert’s plan might actually succeed, that he could sue the state agencies and the managers involved until the kickback scheme was brought to light. Her husband talked long and often about the need to save taxpayers’ money, how deeply and bitterly he resented the waste of good tax revenues on the complex scheme of bribes involving a staggering number of state officials.

But their problems at home only grew, aggravated by his devotion to his work. By the time Claire and Robert’s second daughter was born in 1977, he was spending less and less time with his family. The distance between him and Claire was growing relentlessly.

His fixation on his cause célèbre grew because in rare instances a few of Robert’s countless letters, complaints, and lawsuits were actually starting to get results. He claimed that these victories proved that his overall premise of massive corruption was the truth, but his opponents grumbled that he was simply learning how to overwhelm the legal system by bombarding it with self-filed lawsuits. Nevertheless, concessions were sometimes made at work, with bosses agreeing to alter procedures to Robert’s specifications.

Ground had been given. Robert began to feel that he was finally proving his point in a way that the state and eventually the feds would not be able to ignore. He stepped up his efforts, filing more complaints accusing fellow inspectors of taking bribes and filing more grievances against his bosses for allegedly condoning such behavior.

Natasha recalls that it was at this time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that her position as Daddy’s little girl was lost. She was developing a will of her own, no longer the malleable child she once had been. And so the rift between
Robert and most everyone else now included his former princess child.

Natasha found herself replaced in his affections by her new little sister, who was still a toddler young enough to be completely controlled by Robert whenever he had time to spend with her.

Claire Peernock was spending most of her time at home alone, or in violent arguments with Robert when he was at the house.

Natasha says that by then, because of Robert’s repeated outbursts against Claire and because of the violence Natasha witnessed him repeatedly inflict on her mother, she had already concluded that her father was evil.

Claire simply worried that no concession, no settlement, would ever be enough as Robert’s campaign against the state dragged on. She knew that for Robert, intellectual battle with organizations was easier than emotional rapport on a one-to-one basis. She confided to friends that she feared he had found his true niche.

Maybe he had. He could see the connections of the conspiracy, countless connections laid out on a circuit board the size of a state of thirty million taxpayers. And the taxpayers weren’t going to take a beating while Peernock was on the prowl. As the 1980s dawned, Robert began keeping detailed notes of complex strategies, taping conversations with fellow workers. He hired attorneys and won cash settlements. No victory was ever enough to suit him; he stuffed the settlement cash in bank accounts and kept right on shooting trouble.

Despite the limited formal schooling that caused him sometimes to falter at spelling and grammar when he operated outside his technical arena, Robert nevertheless grew so adept at legal tactics through his constant use of lawyers that he was eventually able to save money by running lawsuits himself. This freed up funds to file more motions to take on still more of his growing list of opponents. He found corruption
everywhere. In some cases Robert offered documentation; in others he only had his gift for visualizing circuits, connections. The judges were on the take, the state water agencies were on the take, the private contractors hired to do the work were on the take, the cops were on the take. The most populous state in the nation was riddled with corruption, bleeding its citizenry dry, and nobody was yelling except Robert Peernock.

Robert’s cause on behalf of the taxpayer might have been tolerable to Claire, taken by itself, but his obsession gradually took control of him. He seemed to resent her unwillingness to hang in there with him on what he perceived as the battle of his life.

The battle wore on his health. He had terrible trouble trying to sleep. He became touchy.
Very
touchy. Robert started coming home angrier and angrier, constantly protesting outrageous retaliations that the state was taking against him for trying to derail their fat scheme of corruption at the public expense.

He was indignant that no one appreciated his public-spirited efforts, not even his wife, whom he wanted at his side in this monumental struggle. His nerves were often frazzled after a long day battling corrupt officials; Claire had shown family friends her bruises to demonstrate how dangerous it was to anger him when his tensions were high.

He filed several claims alleging injuries from physical attacks, supposed attempts on his life by co-workers who were in actuality operatives of the Department of Water Resources, eager to silence his relentless gadfly activities. He finally succeeded in having a disability pension awarded for a back injury that he claimed to have suffered when fellow workers deliberately caused heavy equipment to fall on him. In this way Robert secured an income that would be guaranteed even if he never found work again owing to the statewide blackballing that he now claimed had been set up
against him. But he took small satisfaction in the pension. It was little enough thanks for his civic-minded work on the public behalf.

In recent years the problems between Claire and Robert had grown like cancer. Claire had no more patience for Robert’s campaign against the state and Robert felt utterly betrayed by her refusal to support his efforts. The hostility infected their communication on every level, down to conversations about the most mundane things in their daily lives.

By 1983, the pain and anger inside the marriage was repeatedly spreading outside the relationship. Claire intervened as often as she could to keep Robert from taking his outrage out on Natasha when the headstrong girl would be foolish enough to defy her father. In May of 1983 Claire and Robert were having one of their typical arguments in the kitchen area when the confrontation turned violent. Natasha tells how she saw Robert grab Claire and begin to manhandle her. Natasha leapt in front of her mother and demanded that Robert leave her alone. The next thing she knew, Robert had thrown her bodily against the kitchen wall.

She slid to the floor with a searing pain running down her side.

Robert drove her to the emergency room. On the way he made sure that Natasha understood that she was to tell the doctors that she had slipped and fallen while playing in the house.

She spent the next twenty-one days in traction for a shattered collarbone.

Claire came to visit her and told her daughter that she agreed with Robert; Natasha should keep up a good front for the hospital staff. Claire was afraid of what Robert might do once he was alone with them again. Natasha did not have the strength to speak out against her father publicly, alone.

She did, however, give a different story to everyone who asked at the hospital, hoping that someone would notice that
the lies didn’t add up. Either nobody put it all together or no one bothered to come forward with their suspicions. The violence in the Peernock home was still a secret and would remain a secret for another four years.

Shortly afterward, Claire made one tentative visit to a lawyer to see about getting a divorce from this man she had come to fear, but she later told friends that Robert had threatened to kill her if she went through with it. She claimed that he’d promised to hunt her down if she fled with the children. After years of watching Robert’s skill in dealing with investigators and with the courts, Claire had no doubt that he could find her anywhere she might go.

Her first tentative attempts to flee the marriage were abandoned.

But permanent damage to the marriage had been done. Robert later claimed that it was about this time that he and Claire “announced” their separation to friends and acquaintances. What little socializing Robert did, he now did on his own.

At one of the parties that he attended as a single, he met a pretty divorced woman named Sonia Siegel. Robert had no constraints against pursuing another woman and Claire had no interest in him whatsoever, so Sonia became the object of his affections. By the next year Robert was sleeping at Sonia’s place nearly every night, even though he continued to keep all of his belongings at his family house.

That suited Claire and Natasha just fine. Claire was glad to have the place to herself, and Natasha says she finally felt safe at home for the first time in years. Claire found a good secretarial job and began considering the possibility of a real life on her own. A fresh start.

By the time the traditional marriage had ended, the checks were rolling in every month on his real estate holdings, even though Robert was no longer employed. Settlements on a few of his many lawsuits left Robert enough spare cash to have
stuffed well over a quarter of a million dollars into a series of bank accounts. And to have paid Claire’s house mortgage down to a few thousand dollars. And to own several other houses as income properties.

Despite the fact that he had moved out and set up house with his girlfriend, Sonia, he still visited Claire and Natasha weekly, delivering small sums of money for living expenses to augment Claire’s salary as a secretary. He wanted Claire’s emotional support in return.

But darker problems arose. He began to voice strong suspicions that the company Claire worked for was also involved in the government’s scheme of selling construction contracts. Robert began to wonder aloud, over and over, whether someone there had managed to pay Claire off to get her to cooperate in the scheme. Robert feared Claire had personal reasons to punish him, to pay him back for moving out and finding a girlfriend who believed in him the way Claire wouldn’t. Or if not, he feared that at the very least Claire was, in her naiveté, being manipulated by her company and slowly turned against him.

By the end of 1986 Claire Peernock finally came to the end. Nobody knows exactly what triggered her determination, whether it was a particularly bad fight that the daughters were not around to witness, or just the accumulated weight of years spent trapped inside an empty marriage. But something finally drove her to action.

And so in early November of 1986, despite her sweet nature and despite her patience and despite her years of inability to break away from the hold of a man she remembered loving dearly, her time as an enabler of her husband’s violence toward his family was over at last.

Claire Peernock left the house to hunt down a divorce lawyer.