Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - HEAR IT: Millionaire's Crazy 911 Call After Wife Vanishes

Episode Date: June 14, 2019

Millionaire Peter Chadwick, makes a bizarre 911 call claiming his wife of 21 years is drowned by a house painter named Juan and he was forced to drive her body around all night. That is just the beginning of the mystery of what happened to Q.C. Chadwick.Nancy's Expert Panel Weighs In:Wendy Patrick:  Trial Attorney Dr. Kris Sperry:  Retired Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Georgia  Caryn Stark:   PsychologistSteven Lampley:   Former detectiveDavid Mack:  Syndicated Radio Host Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Is there a woman emergency? This is Crystal. Yeah, my wife's dead. Okay, so where exactly is she? They took her. They took her. Who took her? The guy broke into my house. He drove me here. He had a friend.

They've just gone in the pickup truck. Okay, so your wife is dead she's dead yeah they they killed killed her uh yesterday we killed her yesterday yeah we we we've been driving in New Park Beach. Okay. Hold on. Let me get my two friends on the phone. Okay, you're hearing one of the most bizarre 911 calls I have ever heard, and that's a lot of 911 calls. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Let's hear the rest of that 911 call. He said that his wife is dead, but someone broke into the house and stole and took her. Yeah, he...

Okay, what? He found her. Who is he? Juan, Juan. Juan? How do you know Juan? I picked him up to look at some painting work at the house. I brought him to the house. And when did this happen? Yesterday, middle of the day.

Yesterday in the middle of the day? When did she die? Yesterday, middle of the day. Okay. And where is she now? She's Like 11. They have her body. They said they're going to cut her up. Who has her body? Juan and Chi.

Okay, so when she died at 11 o'clock, they took her? Yeah, yeah. They maybe put her in the car. We... How do you know she's dead? She drowned. Yeah, yeah. They maybe put her in the car. Now you know she's dead. She drowned. She drowned. What?

Her body was dead, even. I've been driving with them. They say they're going to cut her up. What's your name? Peter Chadwick. Wow. Peter Chadwick calling 911. Multi-millionaire married 21 years to his sweetheart, his college sweetheart. And now these 911 calls. Straight out to Wendy Patrick joining me.

California prosecutor, author of Red Flags on Amazon. Sounds like he doesn't know the time or the date his wife was murdered and that he hired these two guys he's referring to as Juan and Che. And somehow they've taken his wife's body. How did that happen? I got a lot of problems with the 911 call, Wendy Patrick. Oh, yeah. And that 911 operator is asking a lot of great cross-examination questions.

You know, you talk about a picture being worth a thousand words and a video is even more priceless. Sometimes you can even hear in somebody's voice what they are thinking, what they're feeling feeling and the credibility and all the rest of it. This is one of the reasons we have to hear these types of 911 calls instead of just having somebody recite what somebody said on the phone. Everything about the voice intonation, the hesitation, the lack of what you might expect somebody to be feeling after just witnessing the death of a spouse after all of those years that is one of the things that makes this type of a call so valuable for a jury okay well put on your seat belts here's some more are you on any kind of medication sir not heavy one okay it's not bad okay because i think they're going uh they might be going to

mexico or somewhere okay but this happened yesterday at 11 you're now calling us at 5 30 in the morning i know i want you to get him yeah they're here okay go talk to him okay thank goodness the cops got there so how many hours uh passed joining Joining me, an all-star panel, Dave Max, syndicated talk show host, detective at StephenLampley.com. Stephen Lamplery, and California Prosecutor, author of Red Flags on Amazon, Wendy Patrick. Dave Mack, let me just start with the facts. What happened that we know of? Who's dead? Where did the incident occur? Who is Juan and Che?

And who's this guy calling 911? All right. The guy on the phone with 911 is Peter Chadwick. He and his wife, QC, were married for almost 21 years. They were college sweethearts, and they had three children. One child was away at boarding school. The other two children were all happening because they came home from school and were at the bus stop, and nobody picked them up. Okay, wait right there. Hold on. I heard you say children come home from school waiting at the bus stop and nobody shows up.

Listen. 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 him. They were calling him. 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 person's 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. Our friends at CBS, but that's not all. What about the scene of the crime? Investigators comb the Chadwick home for clues. And then when they go upstairs and they walk into the master bath, then 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. Okay, everything about the scene is very disturbing. We find out that there was broken glass. There was blood. A safe was open. Everything looks wrong.

Guys, you are hearing a 911 call in San Diego. What happened? Nobody can make any sense of it. But when the cops arrived to the scene, they find a very, very disturbing scenario. A big problem for me is that nobody was tipped off, Stephen Lampley, detective at StephenLampley.com, until the little boys were stranded at the bus stop. Nobody ever picked them up.

And that is how they find out that things have gone sideways. I mean, according to this guy, this millionaire realtor, he's been in the car with these two men who he hired to paint as painters, Juan and Che, for many, many hours. Why are we just hearing about the wife being dead? Nancy, he doesn't have his story straight. And the lackadaisical tone on the 911 call, even actually, Nancy, sounds like he's making the story up as he goes. And of course, I don't know that to be fact, but that was my impression. This story seems like something that was just crudely made up from the get go. You know, Dave Mack, you can learn so much from the 911 calls. And here's the kicker. If the state, i.e. the cops, investigators, detectives are questioning you and you're a suspect, you have a right to remain silent. But you don't have a right to remain silent. And everything can come into evidence when you voluntarily call 911 and the 911 dispatch is asking you questions.

Well, you know, Nancy, you heard on that 911 call that he was kind of reaching for the answers. The 911 operator was brilliant in asking questions because his story wasn't making any sense. He, in his head, thought he had it figured out before he called. But it's 530 in the morning. He's in San Diego. He's calling 911 with a story that doesn't make sense. And the 911 operator keeps asking. She's nice about it. She just keeps asking questions that you want to know. And he doesn't seem to be able to answer them with

truthfulness because he's making it up as he's going along. All of this will come up later on. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Chadwick claimed that he took a house painter named Juan, no last name given, to his home, and Juan attacked his wife, drowning her in their bathtub. He then threatened Chadwick with a two-inch pocket knife. And Juan orders Peter to help him get QC's body out of the tub. With Juan at his side, Chadwick claimed he was forced to drive all through the night with his wife's body in the back of his SUV. He said that Juan then drove off with QC's body, leaving Chadwick alone at that gas station. Police picked up Peter Chadwick and immediately found holes in his story. Any signs of Juan at all? No. Police say Chadwick is seen at a toll shortly after he left his home

with no sign of Juan in the vehicle. No one had any idea who that was or could give us any information related to this person. 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. To Dr. Chris Berry, retired chief medical examiner. Dr. Chris Berry, when I see scratches on arms and neck, that screams out one thing, Chris. Yes, he did it himself. And I've seen the photographs, and those are what we call factitious, meaning that he did this to himself to try to make it look like he was attacked.

But those do not have any of the features that I would associate with someone attacking someone else. They're very superficial. They look like they were done with either the point of a knife or even the edge of the knife just scraping the skin. How can you tell this was self-inflicted versus possibly the wife QC doing it to him? Well, you have to look at the injuries to start with. Most often, facial injuries are going to come from fingernails, that is someone grabbing the face and scraping the face. And those leave very distinctive marks behind, little semi-circular or slightly curved

abrasions from the fingernail edge or broad scrapes from the fingernails themselves. These are actually cuts. They're incised wounds, meaning they came from the sharp edge of something. And also, all of them are very superficial. Your child falling on the driveway and scraping his knee is going to get deeper injury in his knee than what those injuries are on his face. They're typically done for dramatic effect, but also something like this, it's done without understanding that experts could look at injuries like this and really tell how they are made,

what kind of instrument, whether it's a knife or fingernails. These just don't add up. Immediately, they look like they were self-inflicted to me. Well, he claims that these two, Juan and Shea, had taken him on a long, long car ride with his wife's body in the car, but take a listen to what technology uncovers. Peter stated that he had been driving with Juan from Anaheim to Newport Coast. During that trip, he was stopped by a police officer. We told him to move along from the side of the road.

We were able to contact that police officer who remembered the stop, had recorded the license plate, and remembered telling Peter to move along. He also remembered that for sure Peter was the only person in the vehicle. Juan or anyone else, there was no one else inside that vehicle. And for us, that was the first open shut lie that he had told us that I was sure about. They tried to confirm everything that he was saying and at point by point, every aspect of it, whether they were able to locate a video camera or they were able to find a cell phone record or, in this case, interview a California Highway Patrol officer who had contacted them, his story kept falling apart. Wow. Okay, explain to me, Stephen Lampley, detective, you can find him at StephenLampley.com, how technology is used to destroy his story,

that these two guys had him on the run essentially, and him, I guess, as a hostage with his wife's dead body in the car. Yeah, technology's come a long way, even since when I first started as a police officer in the late 80s. DNA, I mean, technology and forensics has just blown open investigations to a new level. You know, with the tolls that you pass, you can retrieve the video. There is a camera on you when you go through a toll, even if you've got E-ZPass. there are tag grabbers on the side of the road that can grab your license tags. There are cameras everywhere.

If you're like me, I couldn't care less if a camera catches me zooming by in my minivan, as long as I'm not running red light, of course. But for people that have a dead body in the trunk, it's a whole nother can of worms. And there is one other problem, a suitcase. And then there was this, a packed suitcase in Chadwick's car. We had a suitcase, all male clothing inside that was 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.

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. 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 him 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. Our friends at CBS, Karen Stark, we need to shrink big time. I mean, the first thing I think of in the morning is where are the twins? What are the twins doing? Are the twins asleep all during the day? Are they okay? How did their tests go? How did this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If I'm remotely in the area, I swing by to, you know, just very innocently spy on them. Why would the, I mean, if my wife had been murdered, my spouse had been murdered, my paramount concern would be, what about my children? Are they okay? But Nancy, you have authentic feelings. So of course,

you would be thinking about the twins. You'd be concerned about your mother. This is somebody who can't feel that way. He has no empathy. So all he's concerned about is can he stick to his story? If you hear the way he sounded on the 911 call. His voice was totally flat. There's no emotion. He didn't even fake emotion.

So he cannot feel. Therefore, he's not worried about his children at all. You know what? Speaking of the 911 call, let's take a little listen to that again. I have an emergency. This is Crystal. Yeah, my wife. My wife's dead.

Okay. So where exactly is she? They took her. They took her. Who took her? The guy broke into my house. He drove me here. He had a friend.

They've just gone in the pickup truck. Okay, so your wife is dead then? She's dead. Yeah, they killed her yesterday. They killed her yesterday? Yeah, we've been driving in Newport Beach. Okay. Hold on. Let me get my surprise on the phone. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. He said that his wife is dead, but someone broke into the house and stole and, uh, he sent her.

Yeah, he... Okay, what? He found her. I... Who is he? Um, um, Juan. Juan. Juan.

How do you know Juan? Uh, I picked him up to look at some painting work at the house. I brought him to the house. And when did this happen? Yesterday, middle of the day. Yesterday in the middle the house. And when did this happen? Yesterday, middle of the day. Yesterday in the middle of the day. When did she die? Yesterday, middle of the day. Okay. And where is she now? Like 11. They have her body. They said they're going to cut her up. Who has her body? Juan and Chi. Okay. So when she died at 11 o'clock, they took her?

Yeah, yeah. They maybe put her in the car. How do you know she's dead? She drowned. She drowned. What? Her body was stiff, even. I've been driving with them. They said they're going to cut her up.

What's your name? Peter Chadwick. You know, you are hearing a 911 call placed by a multimillionaire, a real estate investor. You know, with all that education, all that acumen, all that money, you'd think he could do a little bit better on the 911 call. And sitting here in the studio with me, Jackie Howard saying he thinks he's so smart. You know, Dave Mack joining me, syndicated talk show host. There's so many problems with his story. What glares out at you? Every bit of it. Because when the 911 operator

is asking him specific questions if he was telling a truthful story the answers would come right away it would be it would be concise it would be in order it wouldn't be an issue but he's even adding names it's like uh yeah it was one um you know and at first if you actually listen to it you know at first uh uh the guy broke into his house but then it's like well no he's a handyman and i brought him into my house to look at some painting. And, you know, it's like the story just keeps compounding itself. So, yeah, he thinks he's so smart, but he can't tell this basic story that makes any sense at all. So what do we know about their relationship? Listen. 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. You're hearing our friend Tracy Smith at CBS and there's more. 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. You're hearing our friend Tracy Smith over at CBS. That was the family dynamic. But right now, there's a big problem, Dave Mack. Nobody knows where QC Chadwick is or her body. After the 911 call with Peter Chadwick,

the police showed up. And that's when you can actually hear on the 911 call as police show up and he begins talking to them. And they then tried to decipher exactly what's going on with his story and where his wife's body is. Cops do it all. They check cell phone records. They check everything regarding social media, computers, cameras in the neighborhood, everything. And it takes an annun—and they still can't find QC or her body. What, she just disappears off the face of the earth? Until a tip. 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. Wow. So how could they determine from that to Dr. Chris Sperry, chief medical examiner, that there had been a possible drowning? I think that's based on the scene evidence back at the house where there's a deep bathtub, a hot tub, and with a broken vase and some blood and the evidence of a struggle around that area. Drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion. It's very difficult from a pathology view to actually establish that someone has truly drowned.

But strangulation injuries should be very straightforward and fairly easy to detect with a good autopsy. So I think the medical examiner was basically covering all bases, knowing that there was a struggle in and around a tub at the home with a broken vase and other evidence. So that was added on as, I would say, a backup in a sense to indicate that drowning may have occurred. And if so, that would place probably QC back at the house. So let me understand. Dave Mack, syndicated talk show host, her body is found wrapped inside of a green blanket. Do we know where the blanket came from and where exactly was her body found? The blanket apparently came from inside the home, Nancy, and her body was actually found in that dumpster, as was described a little while ago, that was supposed to have already been taken to the dump.

But due to a filling dispute, it was actually still there with the body intact. If you think the 911 call was bizarre, listen to this. Peter Chadwick's explanation of QC's death has always been problematic. The story changes often and the details are bizarre. For example, when asked to describe the knife that Juan used to threaten him during their 16-hour long ordeal, Peter describes a small Swiss Army utility knife with a blade two inches long, and he points out that the knife blade was very dull. His demeanor is also peculiar, as recorded in a detective's report.

I noticed that Peter appeared unemotional and almost sleepy throughout our contact. He spoke very quietly and with a British accent. Peter was very slow to answer my questions and would take frequent long pauses during his answers. He frequently put his hands over his face as if he was going to cry, Peter was very slow to answer my questions and would take frequent long pauses during his answers. He frequently put his hands over his face as if he was going to cry. But when he removed his hands, he did not appear emotional.

His eyes were not red and or watery. In one version of the Juan story, the killer sits on Peter's chest for a solid five minutes so that he can't attempt CPR on his dying wife. In another, Juan forces Peter to disrobe after QC is dead. Peter then tries to charge at Juan, but Juan grabs his testicles and squeezes them to subdue him. Okay, that's from our friends at Countdown to Capture. Karen Stark with a guy's story. How does it always boil down to his testicles? Something to do with his testicles, his penis, his sex life. Here we go. First of all, the guy sits on him. Okay. While his wife is dying, he's subdued because Juan sits on him. Then he grabs his testicles. You know, it never ends with this guy, Karen Stark. What is this telling you? And also,

Karen, while I've got you, what about the fact that he appears like he's about to fall asleep while cops are trying to talk to him about his wife's murder? Well, there's that lack of emotion again, Nancy, where, you know, he could care less. So he's trying to act as though this is important to him, that it killed him, that he's putting his hands over his face but meanwhile he's falling asleep he's boring himself and his story is unusual for a psychopath the reason i'm saying that is that they're usually very planned and exact and they know exactly what they're going to say even if you and i don't think it'll make sense they've worked it. This guy hasn't worked it out at all. So his story becomes very involved. And all of a sudden, his manhood comes to question and they're restraining him.

And what's the worst way? We're having testicles, right, to a man. And he's just revealing so much about who he is, rather than any truthful story. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Police believe Cui may have also suspected Peter was cheating on her. And Orange County D.A. Tony Rakaka says her suspicions were confirmed in the most shocking way just days before she was murdered. Peter brought home some sexually transmitted diseases. And so that was creating a tremendous hardship with her. But police still don't have enough evidence to prove Chadwick killed his wife

until Quee's body is found in a dumpster in suburban San Diego. And the coroner determines she had been strangled. The evidence is really pretty clear. It includes pictures of Chadwick with scratches on his neck, blood spatter in the couple's bathroom, evidence of a fight there, and that surveillance video of the family SUV leaving their home with no sign of Juan in the car. Okay, you know, Dave Max, syndicated talk show host, don't you think that's a major piece of this puzzle. He waltzes in the front door with an STD, an STD, sexually transmitted disease. And then a couple of days after that, she goes missing. You don't think that's connected,

Dave Mack? Well, it has to be, Nancy. You can't come home and tell your wife she needs to take penicillin for your kidney infection. So what else is she going to think? Where did he possibly get it? And of course, now the jig is up. She knows everything. She has the proof. And as you heard in the report, she's thinking about this and talking to others about possibly ending the marriage. They've got money and property at stake, plus three children. So in addition to waltzing in and announcing, guess what, honey? I have an STD. Here's the penicillin for you. Are there any other motives?

We just knew and understood the fact that they did not have the money people believed that they had. And she blew a lot of their financial issues on Peter. Investigators say the Chadwicks were having frequent arguments and that Kwee was even thinking about ending the marriage. We found out she did talk about divorce a few times, but nothing was finalized and she didn't submit any paperwork to the courts or anything and friend Karen Thorpe noticed we was increasingly distancing herself from her husband the last year or two we was very much more independent than she had been she lost some weight she was learning to do her makeup she was spending more money on herself on clothing and she

would go on trips with her girlfriends at times. And I don't know if Peter liked that very well. When you look at the facts in the totality of the circumstances, it's no surprise the Orange County District Attorney, Tony Rakakis, came up with this. Now, police formally charged Peter Chadwick with the first degree murder of his wife. He strangled her. He took her to San Diego, close to the border. Dumped her body in a dumpster. Called the police. Told a crazy story. One that was not very believable about having been kidnapped by somebody named Juan. But believe it or not, D.A. Rakakis can't bring Chadwick to trial.

Because after being freed on a million dollars bail, Chadwick disappeared nearly a year ago, never to be seen or heard from since. OK, wait a minute. Explain this to me. Dave Max, syndicated talk show host. After all of this, he gets charged with murder. He gets a million dollar bail. That's nothing for a millionaire. A million dollar bail, that's $100,000. That's like you or I coming up, digging up $1,000 on a $10,000 bail. For him, that's nothing. But that's what the judge came up with, and that's what he was released to. There were some restrictions applied to that as usual. They pulled his passport for the U.K. and the U.S., and he had to live with his father in Santa Barbara, which is north of where they were in Newport Beach.

Back to the bail, a million-dollar bail. Why did the court allow a million-dollar bail? I'll tell you why I think the bond was lowered, because in December, the homicide prosecutor, Matt Murphy, told the judge he didn't believe there was enough evidence to make special circumstances stick, special circumstances, i.e. seeking the death penalty. And that is when the court lowered the bail to a million dollars. And Chadwick bails out. Let me tell you, his neighbors were horrified that his three little children would now be living with him. And now he's on the run. How do you think he did it, Steve Lampley?

If you're talking about how he got away, well, maybe why he got away, obviously he's running from the charge. But there are any number of ways to disappear. And most of the better ways is to go to central and not go to mexico mexico is not a point to go to but a lot of people you'll find to be going to central or south america and one of the first things you do is gradually take your money out uh little by little because you need money uh he's apparently from what i understand a very master very good master of disguises i've seen him in several different photos with a goatee, a beard, without beard, glasses, head, but hairstyle.

So he's obviously on the run and he could be on the run for some time. So Dave Mack, Chadwick has now been on the lam over four years. How much longer can he make it? Is he getting help? You know, Nancy, whether he's getting help or not, they know that he actually cleared out bank accounts, okay, of up to a million dollars, maybe even more. He did it over a period of time. They know that while that 911 call was so scattered and bad that over the last several years as he planned his escape, you think about it, this guy went to court 13 different times to kind of lull everybody into a place of complacency, believing

he was going to follow through with everything, all the while getting money out of the bank, all the while studying books about getting a new identity, about disappearing in South America. This is a guy who plotted and planned. And then when it was just time, a couple of days before his 14th court appearance, he goes to the Santa Barbara airport. They got him on video cameras and everything else. He goes in and hangs out in the airport for six hours and then apparently leaves the airport in another taxi. And that's the last sign we have of him. So while that 911 call was horrible and showed he didn't have a clue,

the next couple of years he plotted and planned. So yeah, he could stay gone for a long, long time. When you say he plotted and planned for the next four years, what do you mean by that? Well, he actually, okay, when you look at it, he got out on bail and he did everything he was supposed to do. He moved in with his dad and he made 13 straight court appearances. So he was making them believe he's going to show up in court. But right before the 14th court appearance, that's when he goes missing. And in that time

period, during those 13 court appearances, he was slowly taking money out of the bank so that there were, there were no red flags for them. All of a sudden, he's got books that they found after he left. He left behind two books in particular, How to Change Your Identity and How to Live on the Run Successfully and Surviving in Mexico. So when I say that he plotted and planned is that he was very thorough. This is a smart guy. He knows the real estate world. He knows the business world.

And by the way, this is a guy that had dual citizenship. He became a naturalized citizen in 91 here in the U.S., I think. But he's a U.K. citizen, U.S. citizen, and he's got international connections through his real estate world. And that means he's got the opportunity to have access to real estate that he knows how to flip and cash that he carried with him. We all know that a million dollars goes further in other places than it does in the U.S. How much money do you think you took with him, Dave Mack? I think at least a million because that's what the police are admitting to. I'm guessing he had a lot more than that.

Wow, so cops can trace that much. And to you, Stephen Lampley, detective at StephenLampley.com, why do you say he was a master of disguise? Well, into the pictures that I saw, like I said, there was one, he's got a dark-colored goatee with eyeglasses, dark-colored hair. There's another, he's clean-shaven. And the pictures are hard to distinguish. He's very good at it.

And he could go off, like they were saying, he could go off, say, in South American country where the money does last seemingly forever. And even to the point of perhaps having plastic surgery, Nancy, this man has the money and he has the wherewithal to do that. It depends on how bad he wants to stay gone. And if he finds a little village somewhere, which is what most of the books will tell you, if you're running and you're on the lam, go to a small village somewhere, be nondescript and just hang out, change your identity. When you say a small village, what do you mean by that? Where? Well, anywhere, in any country, particularly South America, Central or South America. For instance, Costa Rica, anywhere, as you're saying, in South or Central America.

And also, it must be noted that not all of those countries cooperate with the U.S. very well in extradition matters. For right now, this is what we know. Peter Chadwick has been named one of the U.S. Marshals' 15 most wanted fugitives. If you have information about this killer that murdered his wife and abandoned his children, please call 800-336-0102. 800-336-0102. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Peter Chadwick, you can run, but you can't hide. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.