48 Hours - Peter Chadwick: Caught

Episode Date: August 11, 2019

A “48 Hours” report helps trip up a wanted fugitive who spent more than four-and-a-half years on the run for allegedly killing his wife and staging a kidnapping. Correspondent Tracy Smith reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. It was so unusual for something like this to happen right outside your door. Behind the gates of a beautiful community. Well, as they say, a lot of things go on behind closed doors. The Chadwicks lived a very suburban life.

The Chadwicks lived a very suburban life. Peter was very quiet, very soft-spoken. QC, she was bubbly and vivacious. When you say bubbly and vivacious, did she have a sense of humor? She was very funny, yes. And so smart and talented, she could do anything. Our kids started the same school as her children. They were all friends. You see, she came from Malaysia, not speaking English, and she met Peter in school, she told us. Peter would work out of the home, managing the family investments.

You know, they lived well. So from the outside, did it seem like the Chadwicks had this idyllic life? Yes, from the outside, it definitely seemed that way. I work out of my house, so my office just faces the street here. Between 4 and 5 p.m., I saw cop cars in front of her house. And I'm thinking, what's going on? One of our other friends, she came right up to me and said,

Karen, where's QC? Where's Peter? At that point, we just knew that she didn't pick up the kids. It was kind of talk of the neighborhood and that Peter and her were missing. We send a patrol officer out there, so they go inside. It just looks like a typical Newport resident where there was lunch being prepared, the house is immaculate, there's still vacuum lines in the carpet, everything's made, it looks good. And then when they go upstairs and they walk into the master bath, they realize there's a broken vase and a little bit of blood splattered around. Now we're actually starting to get worried about it. blood splattered around. Now we're actually starting to get worried about it.

We had no idea this manhunt was going to become the logistical monster that it has. On the beep, you're going to draw on fire. In the martial servicers, you know, everybody loves that Hemingway quote, you know, there's no hunting like the hunting of men. Two, Three. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in a Chicago housing project. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. Candyman. Candyman?

Now, we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. We're going to talk to the people who were there. And we're also going to uncover the larger story. My architect was shocked when he saw how this was created. Literally shocked. And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America.

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Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before they mysteriously disappeared, Peter and QC Chadwick had been raising their family in posh Newport Beach, California. Their oldest son was away at boarding school on October 10, 2012. That's the day his two brothers found their world turned upside down. So these boys got out of school, and what happened?

So they get out of school, and a bus drops them off at a bus stop near their house. Sergeant Ryan Peters remembers that day. And a neighbor saw them sitting at the bus stop past the time that they typically get picked up by either Peter or QC. So she stopped and asked, have you reached your mom and dad? And they said no, they haven't been able to reach them. They were calling them,. Nobody was answering. It was very unusual for the Chadwicks not to be punctual. Lieutenant Brian Moore was called in later.

Dad should be here to pick them up. Dad is always here. Normal protocol during a missing persons case is we're checking with friends, we're checking with relatives. And checking the hospitals, checking with family, neighbors, anybody have any idea where they are? All attempts to locate them were a dead end. That same night, with their parents still missing, the boys slept at a friend's house. Investigators combed the Chadwick home for clues. And then when they go upstairs and they walk into the master bath,

that's when patrol realizes there's more to the story. In the master bathroom, they initially saw the broken glass, decorative glass that was around the bathroom tub, the edging. We had blood at the bottom of the bathtub. As you continue through the downstairs, the safe is clearly ajar. So it's starting to look like more than just a welfare check situation. Obviously, whoever left, left in haste. It looked quite suspicious. We were all in shock, like, where is she? What's going on? Why is she missing?

Word that the Chadwicks were gone spread quickly through the neighborhood. Heidi lived just across the street. What were they like? Well, QC was the one with all the personality. She was always looking forward to my annual Christmas party because she came over, she got to dress up, and she looked like a million dollars, and she had fun. My first impression of her was that she was a completely devoted mother. Karen Thorpe had known QC for years. Their children went to school together. She was very determined to make sure they were getting good grades and they were completing their assignments and they were taking music and they were doing a sport and she wanted them to be the best at everything. And how were they?

They were the best at everything. And how were they? They were the best at everything. Their father, Peter, came from a wealthy family. He was born in Britain and had dual citizenship. QC's family was also affluent. They met at Arizona State University. Did you get the sense that she was very in love with him? Yes, that she was in love with him and that she depended on him also. What do you mean depended on him?

QC found our country to be a bit new and strange, different from where she had come from. And she was learning about how to do things here. Did you get the sense that Peter liked her depending on him? Yes. Yeah. We definitely all felt that he was completely comfortable with that. She was definitely less independent than many of her friends. QC and Peter married in 1991. When he grew more successful, the couple moved to that home in Newport Beach. They eventually had three sons. Art Scott taught the two older boys piano.

They were great students. They did everything I asked. I would teach him. Then after a few months, after he got more advanced, I would teach him. And it would expand beyond that as he got committed and did more work. Every hour bright kids. I really enjoy being in their home.

She always had a beverage for me and something to eat every single time. And that doesn't happen every day for all the clients that I see. And so she's very congenial, very much making me feel warm in her house. And what was Peter like? He almost seemed painfully shy when we first met him. I felt like I never really knew him very well. What did Peter do? At first we didn't really know. We thought he ran his own business,

and then we learned he managed some apartment buildings. Was Peter kind of a mystery? Yes, Peter was a mystery. But Karen says she did sense that the couple's dynamic had been evolving over the past few years. QC was really beginning to come into her own and be her own person. I'd say she was less insecure about what to wear and what to do, and she was able to follow more of her way of doing things. So you could see the self-confidence? I could see the self-confidence, yes. I felt at the time like I really knew the family,

but I have to say, with so many things in life, you never really know about people's inside lives and what's really going on. Now, police were left with two missing parents and those disturbing clues in the master bathroom. And what were the boys saying? Boys had no idea where mom and dad were. Anybody have any clue? No, at that point, nobody had any clue at all. But that wouldn't last long. The first big break came here, near the Mexican border in San Diego.

It was just before dawn the day after when someone here, a hundred miles from Newport Beach, called 911 with an emergency. It was Peter Chadwick. I have an emergency. This is Crystal. They took her. They took her. Who took her? The guy broke into my house. He drove me here. He had a friend. I think they're going, they might be going to Mexico or somewhere.

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and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. In these surveillance pictures taken at a gas station near the Mexican border, you can see Peter Chadwick. He's about to make that 911 call. Chadwick tells the operator QC had been murdered. My wife's dead. They've gone in the pickup truck.

So your wife's dead? She's dead. Hold on. Let me give him a toothbrush on the phone. This is the gas station where Chadwick called 911? Yeah, this is where he chose to kick off our investigation. And this was a huge break. This was huge. Sergeant Ryan Peters,

just to get a sense of where we are, how close are we to the border? Is that... It's right there. What are we looking at? We're looking at Tijuana. We're that close? We're that close.

What did Chadwick tell 911? Chadwick calls 911 and says he was kidnapped. And he was kidnapped by a guy named Juan who had killed his wife in Newport Beach. How do you know Juan? I picked him up to look at some painting work at the house. I brought him to the house. So Peter and Juan go back to his home. And then what did Peter say happened?

At some point, Peter and Juan separated. Juan continued upstairs, and Peter went down to his office. Peter said within seconds he heard his wife QC screaming. He hears QC scream, Peter, Peter. And as he runs upstairs, he sees Juan strangling QC, who's in the bath in their master bedroom, and he's drowning her. in their master bedroom, and he's drowning her. How do you know she's dead? She drowned. She drowned.

Her body was stiff, even. As he goes up and sees this, witnesses this, he's held at bay by Juan with a two-inch pocket knife. Chadwick told police he was helpless to save QC. Instead of being able to rescue his wife, he's held at bay by Juan, and Juan proceeds to finish killing his wife. Then, Chadwick said,

Juan ordered him to help get QC's body out of the tub and wrap it in a blanket. And Peter says he walks over and grabs a green blanket and wraps her up in it, and that's the blanket they used to take her downstairs. With Juan at his side, Chadwick said he was forced to drive all through the night with his wife's body in the back of his SUV. I've been driving with him. I think they might be going to Mexico or somewhere. I want you to get him. Chadwick says that's how they ended up here, at this border town gas station, where they met up with another man named Chi.

And they took the body out of Chadwick's car, put it in a truck, and took it to Mexico. Chadwick says Juan and Chi drove away, leaving him alone with his vehicle in this dreary parking lot. Now we're in an emergency. This is Crystal. That's when Peter made his 911 call. Okay, and where is she now? They have her body. They said they're going to cut her up. What color car did Juan leave in? What, what, what? What color car did Juan leave in? Dark green,

dark green, like a pickup van call it? And Chevy, Chevy. Within a few minutes, police arrived and took him to the station. Lieutenant Brian Moore says his detectives found holes in Chadwick's story. Any signs of Juan at all? No. Any signs of Juan at all? No. Chadwick told 911 that QC was killed at about 11 o'clock the previous morning.

But surveillance footage shows Chadwick's SUV leaving his gated community in Newport Beach about two and a half hours after that. Police say there's no Juan in the vehicle. And later, Chadwick's at a toll. Again, no sign of Juan. Everyone we talked to and described this Juan individual, no one had any idea who that was or could give us any information related to this person. What about Chi? No. Some of the video surveillance we picked up

in the area where Peter said he met this cheap person, there was no other vehicles involved that we could see. What's more, Chadwick's own body had some incriminating injuries. He had scratches on his neck and arms. He had a bite mark on his forearm. Did he try to explain that as these came from Juan? He explained some sort of a struggle between him and Juan, but there was never any specifics on how he obtained those injuries. And then there was this, a packed suitcase in Chadwick's car.

We had a suitcase, all male clothing inside, that was just kind of thrown in there, as if somebody kind of packed hastily. I'm sorry, there was a bag in the car of men's clothes? What kind of kidnapper says, hey, go ahead and pack yourself an overnight bag? Which is part of the problem. That's not normally the thing that happens, no. QC's friend Karen says nothing Peter said made any sense.

When you first heard that story, did you buy it? QC's friend Karen says nothing Peter said made any sense. Okay, what? Are you on any kind of medication, sir? Not that heavy one. Okay, but this happened yesterday at 11. You're now calling us at 5.30 in the morning. Detectives weren't buying any of it either. During the initial contact, Peter was kind of all over the map. His story was very disjointed. He'd go through the range of emotions, crying, however, the officer never saw a tear, to moments of anxiety and just complete quiet.

So he went from great displays of being distraught to nothing. And the most interesting thing was during the entire contact with law enforcement and with our detectives, he never once asked about his kids. He never asked about the boys? No. And we're talking he hasn't seen them since the morning prior when he dropped them off for school. What did that say to you? To me, it means that he's more concerned with his story creating an alibi. Than he is about his own sons. It appeared so, yes. It appeared so, yes.

People's first feeling was that there had been a takeover robbery, and they had both been kidnapped, and I don't even know if there was speculation in the media about that, but I never for a moment thought that it happened. I somehow knew he had killed her. I remember calling him. I said, he's killed her, hasn't he? I can't tell you why I knew. My friend said, are you okay? Are you at work?

And I said, I am, but I'm going home now. On October 11th, 2012, just six hours after that 911 call, Peter Chadwick was arrested for murder. He wasn't defensive, angry, sad, emotional in any way, as if somebody that was being placed under arrest that was innocent would have acted. Almost like he wasn't surprised that we were putting handcuffs on him. Chadwick quickly lawyered up and stopped talking to detectives. The community was shocked. Just unthinkable that he would do that, that someone would do that, that she would be gone.

Karen Thorpe could only guess what led to her friend's murder. I think over time, knowing QC, it seemed that she wanted to become more independent and she would start doing more things for herself. And I wondered then if maybe some of her reservations and insecurities were because of Peter. Why do you think she didn't confide in you? I think she was very proud, and I think everyone was shocked. Brian Moore believes QC had uncovered a dark side of her husband.

Probably the most telling things that we discovered was a handwritten piece of paper that had Peter's computer search history on it. It looked like it was written out by QC. And what did that say? How to torture, Chinese sex massage, abortion costs in Orange County. These were all in his search history? Yes.

So as we dug into it further, we started to get the real account that there was some turmoil in their marriage. There was some talk of divorce. He visited prostitutes? Based on his search history, we have to assume so. This isn't that happy Newport Beach family that it appeared to be from the outside. Absolutely not. In court, Peter Chadwick pleaded not guilty.

His two sons, who had lived at home, were now with their mother's brother more than 50 miles away in the Los Angeles area. Their mother was missing and presumably dead. Did the boys have any idea about what happened to their mother, what their dad was doing? None whatsoever. Then, seven days after Peter Chadwick called 911, detectives got another big break. This time, a tip they say they can't discuss.

That led them to a location in the mountains, more than 100 miles from Newport Beach. This is remote. It's extremely remote. Kind of south San Diego County in the middle of nowhere. So where are we headed? So we're going to crime scene number two. Detectives found themselves on this barren mountainside in rural San Diego County, Wildcat Canyon.

They believe Peter Chadwick came here that night. What do you think he's thinking as he's driving up this road? If you kind of put yourself in his position, he's been driving around for hours, over 10 hours with QC's body in the car. He needs to find a place to drop the body. He needs to find a place to drop the body where he's not going to be seen, or it's dark and it's not going to be seen anytime soon after he drops it. seen or it's dark and it's not going to be seen anytime soon after he drops it. The first place he comes to is this little road. Yeah, it's right here. That's it? That's it.

So this is where he stopped. We were not sure if we're ever going to find her. The chances were slim to none. When we lifted up, it was full. So what did you see? We started finding QC's items. We found nice bags. We found a really nice purse. So we set those aside. When we opened up the bag, that's when we found QC's ID, her permanent residency card, $10,000 cash. And all of this stuff is the stuff that he described Juan taking with QC's body into Mexico. And wrapped in that green blanket, QC's body. It was a huge break for us. The dumpster was scheduled to be picked up the Thursday morning, which was the next morning after we believe Peter disposed of QC's body. The issue with that was there was some kind of billing dispute.

So they were supposed to pick up the dumpster, but they didn't. Once detectives finally found QC, the medical examiner was able to determine how she died. There was a pretty violent struggle, which resulted in strangulation and possible drowning. As the state built its case against Peter Chadwick, he sat in jail, that is, for two months, until December, when bail was set at $1 million. No sweat for the multimillionaire businessman.

I heard he got out on bail, and I remember being absolutely infuriated and disgusted. He should not be out on bail. Prosecutor Matt Murphy says the court really had no choice. Chadwick was entitled to bail. We had a guy that had no criminal background. He had roots in the community. Chadwick also had that multi-million dollar home and three sons, and he surrendered his U.S. and U.K. passports. We can keep him on a short leash. We can keep him,

you know, engaged in the process. We can keep, you know, we can keep eyes on him. Peter came back and got her van, which was really creepy. He returned to get her van because his car was impounded. So he drove off with her van and I was just happened to be out in the street and he gave me a nod and I'm just like, turned my head in disgust. Even before Chadwick could face trial, Even before Chadwick could face trial, Karen's mind was made up. He was shameless. Talk about chutzpah. He sent out an email inviting people to a 100-day vigil, candlelight vigil, at the home where he murdered her.

How can you kill your wife, throw her in a dumpster, and hold a candlelight vigil at the home where you killed her? Two years passed. Chadwick moved into his father's home in Santa Barbara, a swanky town up the coast. All three sons ended up in boarding school. How solid did you think your case was as you headed for trial? Extremely solid. I mean, with all the circumstantial evidence, the body, the injuries, and the lack of plausibility on behalf of Peter's story.

So overall, we thought we had this thing wrapped up. So as you're looking down the road, you're thinking Peter Chadwick is going to end up where? In prison. But Peter Chadwick had other plans. Breaking news to tell you about an accused murderer on the run from California. Peter Chadwick was awaiting trial and making his court appearances for hearings, doing what he was supposed to do until he wasn't anymore.

Yeah, we got word from his attorney that I don't know where he is. After two years out on bail, Peter Chadwick disappeared. This is one of the most wanted suspects in the entire United States. What do you mean he's gone? You know, didn't somebody keep an eye on this guy? Nobody thought that he would flee from his sons. Prosecutor Matt Murphy was left holding the bag. Why didn't he have an ankle bracelet? That's actually a great question.

Only under certain circumstances is there a monitoring system set up. Believe it or not, we don't typically do that on bail situations. A million dollars bail really wasn't enough to keep someone as cold-hearted and narcissistic as him to stay around. At first, investigators heard that Peter Chadwick might be dead. Initially, Michael Chadwick started relaying information that he was suicidal. So Michael Chadwick, Peter's dad, said he was going to kill himself, that Peter was going to kill himself. He alluded to the fact that he was suicidal.

I don't know if it was his attorney or his father had said he had been despondent and suicidal. No. By the time investigators realized that he'd flown the coop, Chadwick was long gone. He had a three-week lead on them, and he'd been studying up. They discovered books in Chadwick's home on how to disappear and how to change identities and leave false trails. Investigators learned from a taxi company that someone who police now believe was Peter Chadwick

took a cab from his dad's house to this airport here in Santa Barbara. And get this, the cab driver says that the person he picked up that day was a woman. So was Peter Chadwick in disguise? When he got here, he went inside with his suitcase, and then he must have changed clothes because surveillance cameras have pictures of Chadwick dressed as himself hanging out at the Santa Barbara airport. Hours ticked by, but he never got on a plane. Instead, he went back outside, got into another cab, and drove away. And that's the last anyone here saw of Peter Chadwick. away. And that's the last anyone here saw of Peter Chadwick. The search for Chadwick has now become an international manhunt, with the U.S. Marshals leading the way. Here they are training in the

mountains above Los Angeles. Peter Chadwick's on their most wanted list. And there's a $100,000 reward. We're going to catch him. Marshall Craig McCluskey leads the team. He's going to make a mistake. We're going to choke him off and grab him. Disappearing is a tough thing to do. But this man, Evan Ratliff,

is one of the few who did it successfully and is willing to talk about it. I disappeared by leaving everything in my life behind, selling my car, ceasing any contact with my family, and adopting a new identity and trying to start a new life. How many phones did you go through? I probably went through seven or eight. Ratliff isn't some kind of sketchy criminal.

He's an author. His book, The Mastermind, is about an accused drug and arms dealer who relied on disappearing techniques to cover his tracks. A few years ago, as a kind of test, Ratliff staged his own disappearance while researching an article for Wired magazine.

I was trying to sort of get inside that experience and understand what it felt like. The only way to really know was to try and experiment, a short-term experiment, leaving my life behind, adopting a new identity, and trying to live with that identity as a new person. And then you said to the world, come find me. That was the second part of it. trying to live with that identity as a new person. And then you said to the world, come find me.

That was the second part of it. The Find Devin Ratliff challenge became a bit of an online phenomenon, especially when the magazine put up a $5,000 reward. How many people were looking for you? Thousands and thousands of people all over the country. They were online, you know, on Twitter, in groups, private groups, in public groups. They were on Facebook. It was in the media in different places.

Did you feel hunted? I did. Within days, tech wizards and regular folks were able to find out a shocking amount about Evan's life. Every address I'd ever lived at, all my family members publicly exposed, my social security number, my signature, that's when it really hit me, oh, these people are, they're taking it very seriously.

Ratliff had studied up on tactics, and he had a plan. I had a thing like this, basically a GPS device. It actually gives your GPS location. So there are ways like this to throw people off? Sure. I would leak this and then leave it somewhere, or put it in someone's bag so that it would keep going without me. Buying plane tickets all over the place that I knew people would find. They would discover that I had made those purchases and that would lead them away from where I was actually going, you know, on a bus or on a train.

And at one point you even hopped on with a rock band on their tour bus? I did. I did. They were kind of just out of college. They were touring around the Southwest and through Texas. I was also paying for gas, so they had no complaints. You were connected through email. You were logging onto social media. How do you do that and not leave a digital footprint that investigators can see? There are ways to do it. Even if someone got through my initial layer of security, they would then end up in Las Vegas. In fact, it was just an empty room with a couple of computers in it. Then the disguises. Then the physical disguises. You know, shaved head, beard, goatee work, grow beard, dye my hair, dye the beard,

shave the beard into various, you know, mustache, goatee. I shaved the top of my head sort of in the manner of male pattern baldness. This is basically what I did. What you're trying to prevent is someone who's seen some image of you very briefly recognizing you. What do you think ultimately was your undoing? is someone who's seen some image of you very briefly, recognizing you.

What do you think ultimately was your undoing? I think it was probably, it always felt like laziness more than anything else. It took a group of techies nearly a month to find Ratliff and collect that $5,000 reward. He'd carelessly used his new identity to visit a Facebook page about the hunt, accidentally revealing just a little too much information. Then it was a matter of taking that identity and tracing it to my

actual location. As soon as they saw me, I was sunk. So with all that in mind, how could Peter Chadwick be gone for so long? Well, it is kind of extraordinary, I have to say, for that period of time. Peter Chadwick has been missing for more than four years. I think it gets more and more exhausting over time. I think it's harder and harder to keep up the level of paranoia that's necessary to really maintain all of your security systems that you've set up for yourself. That's just a very difficult thing to do. Ratliff says it's money that makes the biggest difference, and Chadwick had plenty. After he disappeared, the marshals discovered these surveillance shots.

It's Chadwick taking money from his bank accounts. Little by little, he withdrew a million dollars in cash. I try to do the math on this. If Peter Chadwick has been gone since 2015, he took about a million dollars with him. What do you think? Could he burn through close to a million dollars? I guess it depends on what's his taste for living conditions and where is he in the world. He could make it go a long way. I mean, you can find very cheap places to live all over the world.

If he's willing to rough it. He just doesn't strike me as the type of guy that would be roughing it. Peter likes red wine. He likes nice hotels. He likes room service. McCluskey thinks somebody, maybe a tourist, is bound to run into Chadwick. I think the public is going to be key in the capture for Peter Chadwick.

I think somebody's going to encounter him in a restaurant or a busy street, and it's going to be that tip that comes in that's really going to put us right on his trail. Learn more about how Evan Ratliff was caught at 48hours.com. Craig McCluskey, here training his men, is still leading the hunt for Peter Chadwick. This is definitely one of the toughest cases. We didn't expect it to become the monster, fugitive manhunt that it has become today.

Chadwick has one big advantage over the average fugitive. What makes him so difficult to find is the fact that he fled with a decent amount of money. So it was about a million dollars that he had in cash when he left? Approximately a million dollars, yes. Yet the marshals have been getting lots of leads. Once you find a string, you've got to start pulling on it. And we found a couple strings. They've come from everywhere.

The countries that we've had active leads in that we've pursued include Japan. They include Canada, Mexico, Belize, Panama, the Ukraine. So you're basically chasing this guy all over the world? Yes. There have also been misfires, like one lead from the Canadian Rockies. A man claimed to have spotted Chadwick on a train just last year. He fell back in his chair when he saw the photo and said, I just spent four days with this guy on a train. But that man, according to authorities, was a known scammer looking to cash

in on that $100,000 reward. This case isn't a rapid hunt. It's more like fishing. You know, you set your bait and you row out to your spot and you wait and you hope that somebody bites on it. For the last four years, Chadwick hasn't taken the bait. Even though he gave up his passports when he was arrested, he's gone international and made himself invisible. For the first two to three years, I believed that he went north. And in fact, we learned that he did. He intentionally threw us off his trail. He wanted us to believe that he was going north to Canada, when in fact, he doubled back and went down south. We learned that in 2017, he was in a bus accident in Mexico. So we know at least as recently as 2017, he was down in the country of Mexico.

And the marshals have been zeroing in on Mexico. They say it's easier for a fugitive to get a phony passport there. The last two top 15s on the U.S. Marshals list were both caught having Mexican passports. So it seems like that's a first stop on the fugitive train. Do you think could Peter Chadwick be a fugitive forever?

I don't think so. Nobody can survive on their own for this long without some type of contact. And I believe that's coming from inside the family somewhere. Inside the family. McCluskey doesn't think it's the Chadwick kids. He doesn't believe Chadwick has even contacted the boys since he vanished.

What does it say to you about him as a person? That he doesn't care. I mean, he's perfectly comfortable leaving everything behind, and he's more about self-preservation than he is about taking care of his kids. Peter Chadwick's father, Michael, now lives in Pennsylvania. The U.S. Marshals captured surveillance video of a shadowy figure entering his home in 2017. That person remains unidentified. We asked Michael Chadwick to talk with us. He declined to comment.

I didn't think this case was going to turn into what it did. But I think one reason that it did is not because Peter's smart. It's not because he was savvy. It's not because he was savvy. It's not because he outsmarted us. It's because he's getting help. And I think once we cut him off from his source of help, that he's going to make a mistake and we're going to catch him. I think he has to be getting help from somebody.

The question is who? And that's a big question. Because if we identify that, we find Peter. Could you narrow it down to one hand? I could. Will you? I can't disclose that at this time. Authorities say Peter Chadwick has gotten away with murder for more than six years now.

He abandoned his family. He made his attorney look terrible. And he thumbed his nose at the court and the justice system. Is part of this just that rich guys can get away with an awful lot? You know, it's just, it's frustrating. You shouldn't be able to take advantage of the system because you have money. And, you know, that's what happened here. Most people can't afford this bail. You shouldn't be able to do this because you got money. He took full advantage, and he used his financial resources to do it. Do you feel like he slipped through your fingers? Yeah, I honestly wish, you know,

we could have wrapped this case up a lot sooner. He got the better of us at this point. Karen Thorpe hopes whoever is helping Peter Chadwick will have a change of heart. Someone needs to come forward, someone with a conscience, someone who cares about those kids and who cares about what has happened to this lovely woman, this lovely devoted mother who has no justice. So selfish, so cold, so, I'm sorry, sociopathic. And those poor boys.

It makes me incredibly angry to see that he could abandon his children and that he could, well, that he did what he did to her. Instead of staying around for his children, he left to save himself. Do you have a sense of how the boys are doing? They're really, really strong, really, really supported by QC's family. There's so much love around them and so much love for them. They've really, they've continued to flourish in spite of this tragedy. And that is a fitting tribute to a dedicated mom whose life was cut so short.

whose life was cut so short. We lost in QC a mother who cared for her children deeply and who loved life and loved vibrancy and loved to give her children all that she possibly could. The man accused of taking her life is still out there, somewhere. If he's watching, what do you want to say to him? Peter, it's a matter of time. We're going to get you, you know. Become a man, step up, own a little responsibility in your life.

And if you don't, we're going to get you anyway. Have you seen Peter Chadwick? Please call 1-800-336-0102 or submit a tip online at www.usmarshalls.gov slash tips. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.