Law&Crime Sidebar - Teen Who Allegedly Raped, Murdered His 10-Year-Old Cousin Will Be Tried as an Adult
Episode Date: January 31, 2024A teenager, known for now only as CPB, will face a judge in adult court in Wisconsin after investigators say he murdered his 10-year-old cousin and sexually assaulted her body. Lily Peters wa...s found dead in a wooded area after she didn’t return from a trip to her aunt’s house in April 2022. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the disturbing case with homicide detective Fil Waters.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: This episode of Sidebar is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/sidebar and get on your way to being your best self!HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee 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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Audible. Listen now on Audible. The suspect was not a stranger. The suspect was known to the victim.
A 10-year-old little girl is found sexually assaulted and murdered, and her own teenage cousin,
is the suspect. Now, a judge has ruled that the teenager's case will remain in adult court
as he faces charges of intentional homicide and sexual assault. We're covering everything you need
to know about this brutal case with legendary former homicide detective, Phil Waters.
Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.
A judge in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, ruled last week that a teen boy charged with sexually assaulting
and killing 10-year-old Ileana Lily Peters will have his case remain in adult court.
This means instead of moving it to the juvenile system.
Now, this suspect who's been identified as CPB in court documents, this guy was 14 years old,
14 when he allegedly lured his cousin, yes, his cousin, into a wooded area on April 24th,
22. Now that night, Lily's father reported her missing, saying that she hadn't returned from a
trip on her bike to her aunt's place. The bike was eventually found later that night in the woods,
less than a mile from where Lily's aunt's home was located, and then Lily's body was found
the next day in those woods. And evidence suggested that she had been strangled, that she had been
sexually assaulted, and that she had been beaten with a large stick. This is according to investigators.
There was a lot of blunt force trauma.
Now, according to the criminal complaint, the suspect told law enforcement.
He killed Lily.
Then he confessed that he sexually assaulted her body.
He reportedly said that he intended to kill and rape her, quote, from the get-go after they left her aunt's home.
That's called premeditation.
And when he realized that people were looking for his cousin Lily, he allegedly went back to the crime scene, moved her body, and covered it with leaves.
He's been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree sexual assault,
and first-degree sexual assault of a child under 13 resulting in great bodily harm.
Now, what makes this case, aside from it being horrific, interesting from a legal point of view,
is that there was a reverse waiver hearing, and it was held over several days last August.
And that is when the suspect's defense team argued that he should be in juvenile court.
They cited his diagnosed psychological disorders, his tough upbringing,
as some of the reasons why.
According to court documents,
the defendant's father went to prison for three years
for possession of child pornography
and was also found in possession of several crack pipes.
The boy's parents divorced when the defendant was two.
They had joint custody.
The judge took all of this under advisement
and released his ruling this month
and in this ruling, Judge Stephen Gibbs said,
quote, the court disagrees that a possible 10-year confinement
in the juvenile system registering as a sex offender
and that the defendant would be vulnerable.
to the adult system would be punishment enough for the defendant.
Yeah, so when we talk about the difference between adult court or juvenile court,
it is mostly centered around the punishment.
And my understanding is that this defendant, he would age out of the juvenile system at 25.
So clearly you're seeing the judge is saying this case deserves to remain in adult court.
See, the judge seemed to also be concerned about trying this case in a juvenile court
that that would take away from the seriousness of this crime.
Now, it's our understanding that under Wisconsin law, anyone who is at
At least 10 years old and is accused of first or second degree homicide is considered an adult in Wisconsin's court system.
This defendant will turn 16 in March.
The teen is being held on a $1 million bond and could face life in prison if he's convicted on the intentional homicide charge.
By the way, one of my favorite things about being a host on law and crime is how passionate our audiences.
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Let's talk about this more with legendary former homicide detective, Phil Waters, a good friend of the show.
Phil, good to see you.
What is your overall reaction to this case?
Again, just to tell everyone now, you have a young boy accused of murdering his cousin.
Well, good morning, Jesse.
Always good to be with you.
My initial gut response to this is it's an act of evil.
And this 14-year-old, while he may be chronologically a juvenile, he certainly made an adult decision to use your words to have a premeditation about slaughtering his cousin and then sexually assaulting her.
So in an act of necrophilia, and it sounds like that was the order of things that he was going to perform.
And that takes some thought. That takes some planning. That takes some sort of, again, premeditation. This was not something that happened in the moment. So when you've got a juvenile that's making adult decisions, I think the judge is right on. He needs to be held accountable in that courtroom.
Have you ever seen, in your experience, an alleged familial crime like this between such young people?
Well, I have. I didn't work the cases, but I have seen in my tenure at the, in homicide at HPD, we did see cases like this where we had family members that were killing other family members. And it's it's almost inconceivable when you think about families. But the way our culture and our society has developed over the last 60 years or so, I mean, the destruction of the family. I think family ties, because.
have become less important. And it is, it's greatly disturbing when we see an act of violence
like this take place within a family unit. I guess going back to the juvenile adult question,
you know, people would look at this and would disagree because they would look at his age.
And, you know, I'm not surprised that he is being tried as an adult, also because this is happening
in Wisconsin. And we covered the slender man stabbing on law and crime. That's when two 12-year-old girls,
they were tried in adult court for stabbing their classmate.
Thankfully, she's survived.
But there's also this effort, you know, of deterrence, too.
So it's not just the seriousness of the crime, but you have to deter this kind of behavior.
Having said that, you know, other judges, maybe in other jurisdictions would suggest or say that he's too young, that the juvenile system is the appropriate place.
Ten years in a juvenile system is a punishment, would go on the registry, but you disagree.
you feel that the judge made the right decision?
Oh, I do disagree with that.
I think the judge is spot on.
It's good to see.
We've got a jurist that's sitting there and is looking at the real world,
not be a pretend world of people that think,
oh, he's a child and this and that.
You know, the problem here is is that the decision that he made,
again, to slaughter his cousin, Lily,
and, you know, it's almost incomprehensible to me,
but these are problems that go much deeper than just it's a kid that went and did something bad.
These are problems, and I've said it repeatedly, these are problems of the head and the heart.
And, you know, this kid, it's unfortunate.
It's just that there has to be, look, everybody's redeemable.
And this 14-year-old that's committed this act has got to be held accountable for the severity of the act that he committed.
he made an adult decision. I know he's 14 years old, but he made an adult decision. And it doesn't
sound like he had any hesitation in it when you, as you've said, this is what he was going to do
from the get go. And that's a quote. So yeah, I've got no problem with it. He's got to be held
accountable. We're going to get into that confession in a minute. And we're going to get into
maybe some of the evidence. But I do want to just take a second to talk about his father because I
think this is an interesting aspect of it. So as I mentioned, the father of this suspect, he's
identified as Adam Burger. Burger was convicted, served three years in prison for possession of
child pornography. He's now on supervised probation. He's on the Sex Offendistry Registry.
The Daily Mail reported that there were all of these letters that were submitted to the court
years ago, in support of him, before the killing of Lily Peters, in support of him getting
unsupervised contact with his son. And they said that this suspect, he looked unhappy when he was
with his mother. He was really sad when his dad went away. I just find what his father was convicted of
and having this relationship with his son. It's not like the father was convicted of male fraud,
convicted of a crime regarding children. And now we are talking about a crime in relation to a child.
From your investigative perspective, is there anything there that you would like to know more?
Would you like to explore a little bit? Well, sure. Anything like this. Well, anyhow.
homicide that I work, any murder that I work, always did a psychological autopsy on the suspect.
And that gives me the ability to go in and conduct a productive interview in most cases.
I will tell you that all of those circumstances, whatever these environmental circumstances were with this kid growing up and so forth and so on, you know, that's tragic, it's horrible.
You know, the Bible talks about sins of the father being passed down.
Now, all I can say is, is that he knew what he was doing was wrong.
this is the whole point of child going out committing something like this and then we're trying
to give them a little bit of a pass because of the way they were raised or their environmental
conditions as they were growing up to me it's not a viable argument but you know he knew what he did
was wrong he knew before he did it that it was wrong and then when he finds out if they're out
looking for lily what does he do he goes back to the body and tries to hide it tries to cover it up
It's just the same thing, you know, Kane Killing Abel.
I mean, it's the same scenario.
I know I say this a lot, but unfortunately, in the stories that we cover like Lily Peters,
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All right, let's get back into the Lilly Peters case.
I think you're going to agree with me that if defense counsel moves forward
with kind of an insanity defense and tying that to the Slender Man case where mental health was an issue
there, I don't see that working necessarily given the facts of this case because, right,
if he realized what he did was wrong, he realized the police were after him, tried to cover up the body,
that very different than the Slender Man case where there was an argument there.
They acted in furtherance of this spiritual creature that they thought they were trying to appease,
this creature they thought was going to harm them or their families.
and I know he has, and the defense has submitted evidence that he has psychological disorders,
but you could always make the argument that anybody who commits a horrific crime probably has
something wrong with them.
It's the question of whether or not that mental disease or defect.
They couldn't appreciate the wrongfulness of their crime.
They couldn't conform their behavior to the law.
I don't see that kind of mental health defense working here based on the limited facts we have.
No, I agree.
insanity is a pretty high bar.
I know it is in Texas.
And you have to understand that the questions about insanity defense is,
did you know the planning of it was wrong?
Did you know the commission of it was wrong?
And if both of those things are yes,
then that insanity defense goes right out the window.
This was a calculated, this wasn't an in-the-moment type of thing
that all of a sudden something manifested itself and he went crazy. He went insane and did
something. This was a planned event that he was going to carry out regardless. She happened to be
the easy target and she was the soft target. He's the one that he went for, but you've got to go
back. He went back and he covered her up. Yeah. So that act in and of itself indicates that he knew
what he did was wrong, you know, planning it was wrong, and then he had to go back and cover it up.
Let's talk about the confession, because aside from the fact that defense would argue maybe,
let's say a mental health defense, they may say that confession should be thrown out, right?
I mean, the idea of when you're interviewing such a young suspect, I think we have to understand
the terms of that confession.
So what would you be looking out for?
Because not only did he admit, I just want everybody know, this is where he admitted to killing
and sexually assaulting his cousin.
I'll give everybody a little portion of this.
in the filings, it says, quote, suspect stated he and victim walked into the woods
up the hill, carried his hoverboard, and victim carried her bike.
He stated once off the trail, he punched victim in the stomach, knocking her to the
ground, stated that he then struck her in the head approximately three times with a large
stick, stated that he straddled the victim while the victim was laying on her back
and strangled her until he believed she was deceased.
and then regarding the sexual assault, it consisted of him allegedly fighting her.
So those words are going to be what I think are the strongest piece of evidence against
this young person, but is there a way defense attorneys could strike that and say maybe
this confession was coerced?
We have such a young suspect here being questioned by law enforcement.
What are you going to be looking out for there?
Well, in Texas, you know, there is a process by which it would determine on, it would depend
on how this interview is conducted.
Was he in custody? Was he under arrest?
Was it a custodial interview of some kind?
Or was it a non-custodial?
Or was it a Reyes Justi statement?
You know, there's a lot of circumstances here that we don't know at this point.
So in Texas, there would be a process if this suspect has been charged and so forth.
You take him before magistrate.
The magistrate would read him his rights and not in the presence of law enforcement.
So this is a very, it's between suspect and the judge.
And once that is done, then the juvenile is asked, which you want to talk to us.
And, of course, if they say yes, then we go in and we conduct an interview with them.
So there's a procedure, a process to go through in interviewing a juvenile.
So I don't know what the law is there.
And I would imagine the circumstances under which this interview was conducted is going to be within the parameters of that law.
and so it's going to be a good interview.
Now, they're going to try to suppress it.
Sure.
That's just a matter of drill.
But I don't...
If he takes it to trial and doesn't plead guilty and try to seek some sort of leniency in a way,
you know, look, Phil, I don't want to take too much of your time.
I do want to ask you real quick about one final thing that stood out to me.
Curious if it stood out to you.
Obviously, they're going to have more evidence than we probably know right now, you know,
in terms of DNA.
But I just think the crime scene shows that a young person did this in the sense that the spot
where her body was found was kind of in the open. It was very close to a brewing company.
It's within view of the row of houses on the other side of this large lake. And it seems to me
that the ability of him to carry her body or move her body, given his age, given his
lack of resources, that signals to me that perhaps a young person committed this crime.
Am I totally off there? I mean, doesn't have a car, doesn't have the strength of an adult,
does it right out in the open, allegedly.
That's just that that stood out to me.
Well, I think it may show the,
it may show a lack of maturity
and trying to cover up what he had done
in those terms.
But, you know, obviously he can't put her body
on his hoverboard and get her out of there.
You know what I mean?
So, so sure.
But those, but you've got to understand,
you've got a kid who's making a plot.
he's plotting this out and that's the way he's thinking he's made an adult decision to do what he's
going to do but you're right i think i agree with you that in the mechanics of it uh he he didn't
really think through the end of this thing that's why he went back and and he picked a spot that
he thought was going to be isolated he probably picked a spot where she and he may have been before
so that's why she was comfortable going with him to the woods this wooded area so we there's a lot of
things we don't know here about why they ended up, where they ended up. I think the fact that
he went back when he finds out there looking for, I mean, what did he think that nobody was going
to be looking for her, missing her? And then he goes back and he tries to cover this thing up. So
a lot of it, while some of it, he had a plan in place that he was going to do, but the execution
of it was like you said, it was kind of not terribly masterful. And it looks like that he did
plan for some things that he wasn't sure of at the end of it.
And so I think there's some of that is valid to say that it was a, you know, a young person
that I see putting my.
Yeah, putting my investigator cap on a little bit.
That's what I thought of.
I mean, I covered enough of these cases to say.
I'm not in fact of out of you yet, Jeff.
Phil Waters, thanks so much.
Again, great to have your perspective on this case.
I just wish, as I always say, it was under better circumstances that we're talking.
But good to see you, Phil.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, brother.
All right, everybody.
What a case.
Thank you so much for joining us here on Sidebar.
We very much appreciate it.
Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Jesse Weber.
I'll speak to you next time.
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