Going West: True Crime - Cara Knott // 154

Episode Date: December 4, 2021

In December of 1986, a 20-year-old women left her boyfriends house and headed home to be with family after the holiday, but she never arrived. After her family searched for her all night, her car was found in a secluded area off the I-15 freeway. And with the discovery of her body, an incredibly rare and specific fiber was found on her sweatshirt that lead police to one particular suspect. This is the story of Cara Knott. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15891113/cara-evelyn-knott https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19540111/john-samuel-knott https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/25-years-after-cara-knotts-murder/1914534/ https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Cara_Knott https://loriajohnston.medium.com/the-murder-of-cara-knott-at-the-hands-of-a-chp-officer-6a382867996b https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.42a9f7a2-8963-aa9a-d930-3f3cf0c2c2ac?ref=imdb_web&autoplay=1&ref_=imdbref_tt_wbr_fdv&tag=imdbtag_tt_wbr_fdv-20 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans, I'm your host Tee. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Thank you so much everybody for tuning in today to yet another Friday episode. The holidays are coming up pretty soon, so we hope everybody's staying nice and warm and cozy inside. Yes, and thank you so much everybody who bought some merch from us from our Cyber Monday Sale.

Thank you guys so much, we love seeing you guys wrapping our merch on social media, so if you do buy something, you know we have hats, sweatshirts, tote bags, phone cases, so much stuff. If you do get something, make sure to tag us so we can see because we just love it. Also, we're thinking about coming out with a new winter collection of going west stuff. We don't know when that's going to happen, but we'll keep you guys posted on that. Yeah, it's about time for that. I keep forgetting. So stay tuned. And today we have a California case for you from the 1980s. It is insane. So I feel like we haven't done a California case

in a minute anyway, so let's go. All right, guys, this is episode 154 of Going West. So let's get into it. In December of 1986, a 20-year-old woman left her boyfriend's house and headed home to be with family after the holiday, but she never arrived. After her family searched for her all night, her car was found in a secluded area off the I-15 freeway in San Diego, and with the discovery of her body, an incredibly rare and specific fiber was found on her sweatshirt and it led police to one particular suspect. This is the story of Cara Not.

Cara Evelyn Not was born on February 11th, 1966, to parents Joyce and Sam Not in Vent Ventura, California, which for those who don't know is a coastal city just one county north from Los Angeles. But Cara actually grew up in a more southern city of El Cajón, California, which is located in San Diego County, alongside her older sister's Cindy and Cheryl and her younger brother, John. In the city of El Cajón, Cara attended Valhalla High School where she ran track and graduated in 1984, and she then went on to attend at San Diego State, so super close by I'm talking like 15 minutes away from her house.

And at San Diego State, Cara began studying to become an elementary school teacher. Cara was described as an artist who loved to draw, an environmentalist who cared about endangered animals, and she even worked at the zoo, and quote, someone who always had time for everybody. She had a sunny, bubbly disposition. She was incredibly outgoing and well-liked, and she had a super tight relationship

with her parents and her siblings. In late 1986, 20-year-old Kara was in her second year of college at San Diego State, and she was dating a young man named Wayne Batista. They were an absolutely gorgeous couple, and were described as the kind of couple who could stop traffic. I mean, they were just great together, and they really cared for one another. So it's no shock that when Wayne came down with the flu in December, Kara was right by a side.

On the night of December 27, 1986, so just two days after Christmas, Kara ended her two days stay at Wayne's home in Escondito, which is in Northern San Diego County, and even called her mom during those two days asking advice about using thermometers and such. And she did this because she knew that her mom would have some sort of knowledge after taking care of four kids. At around 8pm that evening, Kara, who lived with her parents, called her dad Sam, telling him that she was on her way home from Escondito. And just for reference, this drive would have only taken care about 40 minutes, so at about 9.45pm, nearly two hours later, she still hadn't arrived home and this was obviously

very strange. In what Sam later described as a call to his soul, he had the deepest feeling that something just wasn't right, so he headed out the door and told his wife Joyce that he was going to go out looking for their daughter. Joyce spoke with 20-year-old Kara's boyfriend, Wayne, who said that he hadn't spoken to her since she left his house at 8 p.m., so they were all just incredibly confused. Joyce called various hospitals and police departments in the area, just wondering if something had happened, but she was nowhere. And although it was a Saturday, and maybe one could wonder if Kara had gone out with friends,

she did say that she was on her way home. And on top of this, her older sister Cindy and Cindy's husband Bill were temporarily living at the Nautomne. And then her other sister Cheryl was also home, and their youngest brother, John, was there because he was spending the holidays at home after being gone at his first year of college.

So like everybody was home and she really wanted to spend time with them because she'd been gone for a couple of days. So you would assume that if she said, hey, I'm on my way home, I'm coming home, she's probably not going to not come home, right? Well, exactly. And that's why her parents were like,

why isn't she here yet? Like she wouldn't have just gone off somewhere else. Yeah, and if she was gonna go somewhere else, she probably would have told them. Well, exactly. She definitely would have called them according to her parents. So, because of this,

and because it had been a couple hours, Kira's family went out searching for her all night. And they decided to search the various roads and freeways that Kira could have taken back from Escondito. And they checked every exit, every nearby park and minimall, but there was just no sign of her. As the sun started to rise that Sunday morning, Kara's oldest sister Cindy, and her husband Bill, headed back out searching and decided to exit off of Interstate 15 when they reached

just north of the Mero Mesa neighborhood of San Diego, which is known at least today to be an incredibly nice and safe area. The couple had already briefly checked this exit, which was Mercy Road, but they didn't go far because all the roads immediately off the exit were under construction. But they decided to give it another look in the light, and there, in a small dirt cul-de-sac, away from the busy freeway, was Cara's white Volkswagen Bug. Cara wasn't in or near the vehicle at all, and it didn't make sense to them why her car would be there because it was so abandoned and unconstruction-like it just was a very

eerie spot that actually sometimes was referred to as the tombs, because of how desolate the area looked under the freeways bridge. And we did post photos, but to kind of give you a bit of a visual of what it looked like back in 1986. So there's multiple lanes in each direction, obviously like a freeway is. But instead of a barrier between the separate directions, there's this space in the middle of them, which essentially makes two separate highways. Both are situated parallel on numerous

tall pillars that look down at the canyons. And this isn't as severe of a drop as you might be picturing, but they are canyons. And then amongst them are also dirt roads with construction. And then, Karris Carr, hidden from the views of the freeway. So Cindy and Bill immediately called the San Diego Police Department to come out and investigate, and then they called Dad Sam Not. Sam sped to the scene while police allegedly took about 40 minutes to arrive. But when they did get there, they immediately began looking at Cara's vehicle. Cara's driver's side window was halfway down.

Her keys were in the ignition and her purse was placed on the front passenger's seat. And this was pretty alarming, especially since Cara was nowhere in sight and there really was nowhere for her to go from there at all. Police then fanned out and checked this entire area, but it wasn't until an officer went up to the middle of the bridge above and looked down.

Sixty-five feet below, he noticed something, and he immediately called for other officers to look. It was clear even from up there that a woman's body lay down in the canyon, just a ways from where Kara's car was found. Other officers rushed to their patrol cars for gloves, and Sam not Kara's dad knew immediately that they had found his daughter, and she was dead. She was lying on the dirt fully cloth, and her cause of death wasn't immediately clear. But when her autopsy was conducted, a medical examiner determined that she had not been sexually

assaulted. But the ligature marks appearing on her neck made it clear that she had died by strangulation via a rope. There was also a strange bruise on her upper right eyebrow, and part of her forehead above. This led the examiner to believe that someone had hit her in the head, causing her to lose consciousness.

And an officer said that she looked like a frozen milky way that had been slammed against a table, which is oh my god That's such a brutal way to describe someone. I know, but like a frozen Milky Way like that's kind of hard to pick I don't know what that would look like, you know It kind of just leaves me to believe that maybe there wasn't too much damage from the fall itself since they believe that she was Indeed dumped off the freeway's, which leads me to a bunch of other questions because, you know, highways and busy cities like San Diego, which this time it hosted over two million people, this time, meaning in 1986, you know, freeways like that have cars

at all hours of the day and night. So, how this would have been done without anyone seeing is kind of interesting. Yeah, very interesting to me. Yeah, because busy freeways like that, I mean, you really can't get away with something like that. No, that's why this is very weird. But anyway, so obviously now investigators needed to figure out how this could have happened and what carous exact steps were that evening.

Luckily, in her car, there was a chevron gas receipt. And this gas station was located around two miles from where Cara's body and car were found. So investigators headed to that chevron to question employees and see if anyone remembered seeing her there since it was just the previous evening that she'd been in. But the employee stated that Cara had come in alone and that she paid to fill up her gas tank and that she paid to Philip or Gas Tank and that she left by herself.

So this didn't provide much help to what happened to her later, but they carried on with their investigation. So, back at the crime scene, they noticed tire marks on the freeway near where Kara's body would have been dumped. And they couldn't immediately be sure if the marks were from a car breaking or accelerating, but they photographed and measured the tracks hoping that they would bring some kind of lead later on. The distance between one wheel's tire track to the other was about 53 inches, which indicated

that the car that left the tracks was larger and not carous. Actually went out this morning to measure the distance between both of our jeeps and they were actually both 53 inches, but, you know, between the wheels, but they didn't have like a small car to test. I know. I saw you come in earlier. I was like, what are you doing with the tape measure? So yeah, I didn't really help, but yeah, definitely a larger vehicle.

So investigators believe that Cara had willingly gotten off the freeway exit, versus someone moving her car there. Which is interesting because when I originally read this, when we were doing research, I had felt like, oh, somebody obviously planted her car there, but that's not what they were thinking. Right, like they were trying to just hide it down there. I mean, that's what seems to make sense, because why would she do that? But we'll get into it now.

Yeah. So they started thinking about why she would have done that, and their first thought was that it had something to do with her boyfriend, Wayne. But as they knew, she had been at the chevron station alone. And on top of this, when police questioned Wayne again as well as his sister, their stories matched up, that Wayne had been sick and bed all night after Kara had left their house. And this story was absolutely huge in the area. It was big in the papers as well as TV and even crime stoppers did a TV program about

her. Then they actually re-enacted the evening's events that they took place. And they just hope that people would call in with tips. At this time in the area, women were terrified to drive the freeways alone because there was just this huge question marks surrounding what happened to Kara and who would kill her. And that made women feel very vulnerable. So for another segment on Cara Not, this time for the news, Highway Safety was highlighted. And on this segment, the San Diego News Station had a California Highway Patrol officer named Craig Pire

give this particular safety lesson. Craig had been on the force for about 13 years and was typically the department's media rep, and he was the officer who worked that area of the freeway, so it was a familiar location for him, making him the perfect person to give these tips to local women. In the video, Officer Craig Pire states, stay in your vehicle and lock all doors, even if you have to wait all night, it's better to be in the safety of your vehicle than to try to walk and get assistance. Anything can happen. Being a female, you can be raped, robbed, if you're a male, all the way where you can be killed. He also stated that if someone comes

up to your car like, you know, if your car is broken down, have that person call the California highway patrol to help instead of getting their help because you don't know who this person is. And he also mentioned that it's important not to go walking up the highway looking for help. And no matter what, do not get into someone's vehicle because when you do, you're at their mercy. Before the break we discussed tips from officer Craig Pire and how he mentioned not to get

into someone's vehicle when you're looking for help on the road, because then you're at their mercy. And weirdly enough, as women saved this advice for a rainy day, so to speak, crime stoppers and even cares father Sam Not began getting calls from local women who had some pretty strange encounters. They all stated that they had been stopped by a CHP officer, which is a California Highway Patrol officer, who instructed them to exit at Mercy Road, the same exit where Cara's car and body had been found.

Many of these women reported that the CHP officer got into the passenger seat of their cars and asked them questions, many of which were highly inappropriate sexual questions. Now this is really, really, really fucking weird. Some were detained in their cars for up to an hour and a half as random questioning and even what was described as general chit chat went on. And almost all the women who reported this drove small cars and many of them even reportedly resembled Cara some driving her exact same vehicle of Volkswagen Bug.

This is such a disturbing thing to happen because you think you know you're getting pulled over something's wrong you know what was speeding my tail lights out whatever and then this officer instructs you to get off the highway to this extremely desolate area and then gets into your car and starts asking you super inappropriate questions. And you know, this is the police. So what are you supposed to do? You can't just be like, get out of my car. I gotta go, you know?

Yeah, exactly. And you would assume that this officer would be patrolling that particular area and that these women would be able to identify that officer. Well, luckily some of them were. And everybody who did said that the officer was Craig Pire, the 36 year old officer who had been in a local news station safety video. Because of the similarities in these women's stories and carers, investigators checked him out.

Also, remember, they already believe that Kara had exited the freeway on her own, and this would make sense if she was being pulled over. And as we know, this area of the highway was patrolled by Craig Pire. So investigators were able to find that Craig had indeed been working the evening that Kara was killed. But when they looked at his log book, which basically just includes all the shifts, pullovers, and citations, it showed that at the time Cara was believed to have been killed, Craig was multiple miles away, writing someone a speeding ticket for going 25 miles over the speed limit.

So this was at 9.30 pm. And the most recent stop he made before that was 8.47 pm. So like 45 minutes earlier, and then 8.21 pm, so about 25 minutes earlier, that one was regarding a tail light, then 7.47 pm for speeding, etc. And his first ticket of this shift was around 6 pm. The one written down after the 9.30 speeding ticket was just after 10 pm. So all the tickets for the evening are super consistent, like within 20 to 45 minutes apart, or at least according to the times that he wrote down.

We did post a photo of this logbook, apologies for the poor quality. And it's really strange because every citation is written in pencil. There's different categories like where this took place. You usually just put to the street name, what the citation is written in pencil. There's different categories like where this took place. You usually just put to the street name, what the citation is for, what the person's license plate is, what the make of their car is, and one other thing. And there were no errors or erases for any of the log, except the one at 9.30 pm.

It looks like Craig erased the location and the citation reasoning, which was also apparently for speeding, and then he wrote something else. And then, the two after this, the last of the night, weren't erased, they were just like all the others. Also, the spot that her car was found was pretty much exactly 20 minutes and 20 miles from her house, and about exactly the same distance to Wains. So this stop is in the middle of her trip. And as we know, she left around 8pm, so it's interesting to see In Craig's log books that he made a stop, you know, he stopped someone on East 17th Avenue, but no exact location

is stated at 8.21 pm for a tail light. And then 25 minutes later, he stopped someone else, you know, allegedly again, according to this log book, and we do know that Karristot for gas. So this could have added a bit of time to her drive. I know that was a lot of times in going back and forth, but it's really interesting to look at the log and think about if this could have been done by him.

Essentially, the main thing you want to take away from this logbook is that every entry into the logbook looks, you know, clean. Clean, yeah, totally. Yeah, and then there's just this one line that looks like it was erased and then rewritten. It's like a very clear, messy eraser, you know, that dark mark and then it's written over. So that was really suspicious, you know, especially because that is the one citation that he supposedly gave that was around the time they believe Kara was killed. Exactly. In stories like this, they just are so terrifying to me because, you know, these are the people who are supposed to protect and serve the public of the

community, keep people safe, and then to have someone out there patrolling and antagonizing people, it's just so, it's just so scary. Oh my God. And we're gonna get into more of that later as this story unfolds. But again, if you do wanna look at photos, if you wanna see beautiful Kara,

if you wanna see this logbook, it's a lot easier to look at, then me describing it to you as I just was, which was a super turned around way of saying it. I'm sorry about that. Just go check out our social medias. So even though this log book stated that officer Craig Pyer was in particular places giving citations at certain times, they wanted to verify all of this and make sure that he could be ruled out.

And within a week of Karaarris murder, he was questioned, and detectives noticed multiple scratches on his face that seemed pretty suspicious. He also had an injury to his arm, and these injuries were pointing to Craig having been in a fight recently. But Craig's reasoning was that on the previous Saturdays, so the night of Karris murder, he had fallen into a fence at the police station by mistake. But when investigators looked into this, they noticed the fence was up to about 10 feet from where his car typically was, and falling into this fence just didn't add up at all.

And what a weird thing to say, like, I fell into a fence and I hit my face and then I hurt my arm. And then they look at it, they're like, how could you fall into this fence? Like, what are you talking about? Yeah, I wonder what Craig was doing. Was he drunk? I don't know. Or, you know, he's lying. Yeah, I'm going to go with that. Yeah. So they were all very skeptical about that eraser mark for the 930 PM citation. It was suddenly looking even worse for his case, but Craig turned over his uniform voluntarily

and it was inspected. And crazy enough, as a criminalist examined his uniform, he tested various fibers from it, including a gold fiber from the circular CHP upper arm patch, you know how police officers have that, and he recognized this immediately. So this fiber was extremely particular, and when the criminalist, whose name is John Sims, examined it in a microscope, he remembered seeing this same fiber on a piece of carousel sweatshirt just days earlier. And when he compared the two to be sure, he was able to make a microscopic match and confirm that they looked to be the very same fiber.

But you know, they can just look the same, so they needed to confirm that they had to be the very same fiber. But you know, they can just look the same. So they needed to confirm that they had the same makeup. So the fibers were sent off to a lab where a forensic microscopic noticed that both fibers were made of rayon. And both were colored with a pigment versus a dye, which even in 1986 was extremely outdated like nobody used pigments, everybody used dyes.

So, as, so that, you know, that comparison is huge, but then as they were studied even deeper, these fibers were an exact match. So again, a fiber found on Keras sweatshirt and the fiber within the patch that is on Kreg's uniform. So obviously since this was a uniform that was in question, this didn't mean that it was Craig Pire's specific uniform necessarily, but it could have been anyone's. So they decided to test various other CHP officers' patches, but they were all different. Confirming that the fiber found on Karrus' clothes

had to have come from Krag's uniform. And this is obviously huge, you know, because they can't match it to anybody else at this point. There was also Purple Fiber's found on Krag's work boots, as well as his gun, and these were tested in the same way as the gold fibers, and they proved to be an exact match to the fibers that made up Karranox sweatpants. So what does that tell us? This means that there was definitely cross-contact between Craig and Cara. But the fibers were extremely few and far between,

which indicated to the criminalist John Sims that their encounter was very, very quick and brief. So investigators looked further into Craig and began inspecting his police cruiser. And after spraying Luminol in the trunk, nothing showed up. But then they noticed a piece of yellow rope amongst other items in the car, which stood out to them knowing that Kara had been strangled by a rope. So this distance between the rope's coils was measured against the ligature marks on Kara's neck, and it was a match. Both showed the coils were 7-16 of an inch.

And things just get crazier. So when Cara was found, she was wearing boots, and on one of her boots was a teeny tiny drop of blood. You know, it being 1986, they didn't have all the DNA testing capabilities that would come years later, so all they could tell about this blood was that it was type A, B. The rarest blood type in the US, making it the most desirable blood for plasma donation since less than 1% of the population has AB blood. And guess who had a type AB blood?

Craig Pire. So it's safe to say that at this point, it was more than clear that Craig had something to do with Cara's death. Also some fellow officers who worked alongside Craig told investigators about his behavior after Cara's murder. For example, he continuously asked the status of the investigation, and he also stated his supposed beliefs that whoever killed her had done it by mistake. And with that, on Thursday, January 15, 1987, so nearly three weeks after Kara was killed,

36-year-old Craig Pire was charged with the first-degree murder of 20-year-old Cara Nott. And let's take a little second to talk about Craig Pire. Craig Allen Pire was born on March 16, 1950, and he was allegedly known to be a very reliable officer. He was always the first to answer to a call, and he was that cop that wrote tickets very often, which earned him the tag Hot Pencil, so he's a dick.

Anyway, he took his job very seriously. It was known to be the biggest part of who he was, and this was considered a massive shock to his fellow officers. He was married to a woman named Karen, who was his third wife, and after his arrest, she was convinced that her husband was innocent. Karen had also previously been married and between them, they had three kids, one of which was Karen's, one who was Craig's and together a six-month-old daughter. So, at this, I mean, by this time, you know, maybe by the time that Kara was killed, his daughter was five months old,

and he's just out there, like pulling women over off of Mercy Road, and just sitting with them in their cars, like harassing them. Yeah, he's a out there pulling women over off of Mercy Road and just sitting with them in their cars harassing them. Yeah, he's a complete turd. And you have your third wife at home with your two kids and then your newborn. Yeah, your infant child. But to investigators, there was no doubt that Craig was the one involved in Care's murder. And remember earlier when we had mentioned that there were 53-inch wide tire tracks found

on the I-15 by the Mercy Road exit? Well the distance between the wheels of Craig's police cruiser were the exact same width. And also referencing back to the blow to Cara's upper eyebrow and her forehead, it was very similar to what a police flashlight would do if you were hit with it. So the injuries looked as if she had been hit with this flashlight. Investigators surmised that Craig drew his flashlight and hit her above the eye with an outward swing and then continued to kill her. So we read reports that an employee at the Chevron station saw a CHP officer make a U-turn

out of the gas station to go the same direction that Kara went after she exited. And this lines up with police's theories on what happened. They believe that Craig saw Kara pumping gas at the Chevron that night sometime after 8 p.m. And then followed her onto the highway. And knowing that his favorite interrogation spot was off the very secluded mercy road exit, investigators believe that Craig then used his loudspeaker to tell Cara

to pull off the next exit, and she did, because he's a cop and she's obviously going to listen. Yeah, she's very trusting as, you know, most people are. Right. So at some point, both Cara and Craig could have been outside the vehicle when a fight ensued, and this is when Kara hit his face and then Craig hit Kara in the head with his flashlight. After Kara was unconscious, Craig potentially panicked, knowing that this would destroy his life in career if she later identified him, and it's thought that he then strangled her with the rope that was in his car, put her body on the front hood of his him, and it's thought that he then strangled her with the rope that was in

his car, put her body on the front hood of his vehicle, and this would avoid, you know, her hair or clothing fibers getting inside his vehicle, then drove to the bridge and dropped her off it, plummeting 65 feet below into the canyon. And I wonder why he would have driven back up, you know, to the highway, risking being seen with a woman apparently allegedly possibly on his hood. You know, and then dropped her off the bridge if she was already dead. I'm assuming just because, you know, he's thinking,

well, I am in a police car. So, you know, regular people don't often question what police officers are doing on the highway. They're just like, oh, a police officer. If a woman's on your hood? Well, was she on his hood, particularly specifically, or what? I don't know why they think this.

I think they think this because she wasn't in the car. I mean, they don't think she was in the car because they sprayed luminal and there was no evidence of her being inside the car, right? So, they're like, the investigators are surmising that, okay, well then he must have put her on the hood. I see, I see, that totally makes sense, yeah. If they didn't find any, I mean,

that doesn't mean that she wasn't in there. It just means that they didn't find anything to indicate that she was in there. Right, but it's just interesting to me that they are surmising that she was on top of the hood, and it's like, I don't know, maybe she would have stayed on top of the hood to me, I'm like not really getting that.

Yeah, that seems a little bit off to me. Especially because it's so risky, if he drives up onto the highway, what if someone's driving next you and they see a woman on your hood? Right, exactly. So, I mean, unless he knew that there weren't really any cars up there and he wanted to try to hide her body, which is why he dropped it off the bridge, but I don't know, just super weird. I can't really make sense of this. But also remember, this isn't particularly that late.

I mean, this is 9.30 p.m. That's true. This is not like, not late at all. That's not like, it's 2 a.m. Exactly. And kind of what I'm taking away from this is that Craig had done this to multiple women previously. Yeah, it was like a game to them.

It was like a game, yeah. Each time he was kind of pushing the envelope, seeing what he could get away with. And then I think maybe Cara just was not having any of his shit and he panicked. I have to agree with you. And none of the women that came forward reported that he had sexually assaulted them.

So I really do think that this was some kind of game. Get these young women alone in a secluded area., they can't leave because you're the police officer, and you just ask them questions, and some of them are sexual, and you're just having fun, which is not okay at all. But I think to him, this was just a fun little game he played, you know, and with Kara, it went too far. But you know, it's interesting to me, because, you know, if he had gotten away with this, would he have done it again? Like, would that be enough for him or would he need to push it even further and continue to kill women?

Well, it seems like he did it fairly often. It seems like this was kind of a thing for him, so very disturbing. And this is obviously not to downplay his actions at all because this is a very disturbed man who used his power and law enforcement for his own desires. And we'll get a little bit more into his character in a bit, but first we'll discuss the trials. Yes, there's a couple of them. So after his arrest, he denied having anything to do with Karris murder, but allegedly asked one of the investigators, if I did do it, what will happen to me?

The first trial took place in early 1988, just over a year after his arrest, but it resulted in a hung jury, so another trial was scheduled for June of 1988. And Craig's wife Karen actually spoke. She read a four-page letter that included, quote, "'Cara Nott was a gorgeous, vivacious, well-loved young lady.' During the trial, I felt the pain her families had to endure, and I'm deeply sorry that she was killed. But my husband was a friendly, vibrant, and well-loved person, too,

and in my heart, I know that you have the wrong man. Craig didn't testify at his own trial, and never made a public statement about the case. But he did break down and cry while his wife spoke. And again, I mean, not to downplay his actions or make him out to be innocent, but we just wanted to give you an idea of what both sides looked like here. Because I thought it was really interesting that his wife is like defending him till the end and even speaking during the trial saying, you've got the wrong man after all of this evidence is being presented. Like what do you mean they have the wrong man?

Yeah, and I mean, sometimes you just really don't know somebody. Exactly. And we briefly mentioned earlier how, you know, it seemed odd that no one would have seen this pullover happen if Craig did pull Kara over and that's how it all occurred. But a milkman, named Robert Calderwood, was called to the stand where he testified that on the night Kara was killed, he saw a CHP patrol car stop a light-colored Volkswagen bug on the Mercy Road off-ramp. Then a woman named Michelle Martin, who was a former security guard, testified saying

she saw Craig Pire specifically stop a light blue Volkswagen at that same off-ramp. So she directly placed Craig himself at the scene. I couldn't find if they knew each other or she just knew him from TV, but either way, she felt confident that it was him. But Craig's defense attorney, of course, tried to poke holes in both these stories and called the witnesses' liars. And unfortunately, we really don't know,

you know, if they are lying or if they're telling the truth, I mean, we have no way to back up their claims because it's just what they saw, it's just their word. But if what they said was true, it would make a huge difference in this case. A man outside the courthouse stated that he drove there every day from Riverside, California, and that he was Craig's cousin. He told a reporter that Craig used to kill animals when he was a kid. Obviously, this doesn't mean that he's a killer, but that's definitely a tendency

of serial killers. Not that he's a serial killer, but also this can't be confirmed and it's unknown why this man would say that, but either way, it seemed like he was trying to get attention. 23 women testified regarding being stopped by Craig, explaining in detail the questions that he would ask them and how uncomfortable and frightened they were by this entire situation. Which I'm so glad that they were there to tell their side of the story because that really 23 women saying, this man stopped me, he sat in the passenger seat of my car, he asked me sexual questions, this is a big piece of the case, it kind of really, I mean really shows this character.

Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, this just proves without a doubt. And just a little side note, I didn't know where to piece this in, so I'm just gonna say it now, it's just a really sweet little add-on. So one of Kara's good friends, she had a baby in 1988, so just before this trial occurred. And by the time this trial did occur, her baby was seven weeks old, and she brought her to the courthouse, and she named her Kara after Kara Knot. So I thought that was really sweet, that she was like carrying Kara's name forward. That is seriously incredibly sweet. So let's get back to the trial here. And of course, all the physical evidence that we discussed in this episode was presented in court. And this time around in June of 1988, a year and a half after

Karr's murder, 38-year-old Craig Pire was found guilty of Karr's first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. And what's really crazy is that shortly after this trial, there were numerous reports of incidents where female drivers wouldn't pull over when a police officer had their lights on behind them. So this case actually really scared people. Cara's entire family was horrified by the entire series of events. And of course, you know, the fact that Cara was killed by someone who was supposed to be a trusted and responsible member of society. And Sam, not in particular, really saw the flaws of the system here and how they led to his daughter's murder, and then, you know, the two agonizing trials.

So he began to write letters to various police chiefs, as well as the president, advocating for crime victims, and trying to get law enforcement to devise a plan that would monitor the locations of their officers at all times. After Cara's death, the knots created a memorial garden that flourished with flowers and oak trees in honor of Cara under the bridge where she died. And later, this bridge was renamed the Cara Not Memorial Highway. Her father Sam would visit the memorial pretty often to attend to the garden as well as just visit his daughter.

But on December 2, 2000, to almost exactly 14 years after Cara's murder, while he was visiting the site, Sam suffered a fatal heart attack and passed away just a short distance away from where Cara's body was found. Craig Pire continued to claim his innocence and attempted to appeal his conviction, which was denied. In 2004, so about 16 years after his sentencing, new DNA testing was available that could identify the person behind the blood droplet that was found on Kara's shoe. So Craig was asked if he would give up his DNA so it could be tested against the blood

found on the shoe, which could help exonerate him if it weren't a match. And Craig declined the offer and refused to give his DNA, and he wouldn't explain why, and this helped in the case against him regarding parole in 2008. Like he was denied parole because of his lack of remorse for the crime, and the fact that he maintained his innocence, but wouldn't explain why he didn't want to give up his DNA. Craig was denied Pearl once again in 2012, and his next eligibility will be in January of 2027, so that'll be when he's like in his late 70s. I just, I mean, that says it all. Like, I don't care what anybody says.

That says it for it can all. If you have a chance to exonerate yourself by giving your DNA and you're like, nah, I don't want to do it, it's because you know that that's your blood. Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with you, but just, you know, on top besides that. I mean, already just with the evidence.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're talking about all the evidence that was compiled through this entire thing. Like, you've got, you know, the 23 women, you've got the fibers from his patch. Yeah, the patch from his uniform, like just all of these things adding up. And then you actually have witnesses saying that they saw him there. It's there's no doubt in my mind that he did it. But I think just the whole thing of his wife saying, you've got the wrong man, like he's amazing basically. And then for him to say, nah, I don't want to give my DNA, even though this could literally get me out of prison very soon, it's because you're guilty.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, I understand where Karen Piers coming from. This is her husband. She's been with him for a while. Like, but at the same time, like, you have to look at all the evidence. I mean, it's just so clear. It's undeniable. But there was a big scare in August of 2020 that due to COVID-19 concerns, Craig Pyer would be released early. So throughout his time in prison, he hasn't been known to cause any trouble and he's worked as an electrician at the California men's colony,

which is amongst the beautiful rolling hills of San Luis Obispo. Other than this though, he falls under the category of high-risk medical. And because his sentencing includes the possibility of parole, and the fact that he was assessed as a low risk for violence, they were considering releasing him. So obviously, Karr's family fought this hard, and up to this episode of Going West.

Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this Friday episode of Going West, and next week we'll have a case for you guys on Tuesday, and then another one for Yon Friday. We definitely encourage you guys to go look at all the photos of this case, go look at Kara, she was just absolutely beautiful, she seemed truly amazing, and it's really sad because she was just going home from helping her boyfriend who was sick, and this is what happens to her. So sad and especially terrifying,

that it was done to her by someone who you're supposed to trust, and man, it's just such a scary situation. Yeah, somebody's job that is to protect and to serve. So thank you guys so much for listening, and if you're all caught up on going less and you want more content, head on over to patreon.com slash going west podcast. Last week we released our 54th full-length ad free bonus episode, and so we have 54 for you guys to binge. They're up there as soon as you join, you get access to all of them, and more as they

come out, including the two that are coming this month. Alright guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh

1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh Thank you. you