Introduction
The following three murderers are not included in Chapter 2 because the homicides do not result from some personality defect, as is the case for serial killers . The sex-related murders described occur when the victim is killed to eliminate a witness, reduce the chances of the sexual aggressor being identified, or the victim resists the sexual aggression. They are situational or instrumental murders (James and Prouix 2016; Stefanska et al. 2017). The murderers are best described as a “rape plus murder” killer who kills to avoid detection (Healey et al. 2014). The murder was not a source of sexual stimulation as in the case of serial murderers. Killing is an integral source of sexual stimulation for serial sexual killers. However, sexual abuse by an armed police sexual aggressor always involves the possibility of murder as an outcome (Higgs et al. 2015). These murders are rare and not supported by the police peer group.
The sexual aggressor’s status as a law enforcement officer with ties to respectability exacerbates the likelihood of murder . We expect a certain way of behavior—a way of life—from those who carry a badge. They have a lot to lose by exposure as a sexual predator—a stake in conformity. Furthermore, the person who becomes a law enforcement officer is forever defined as a former or ex-law enforcement officer. Their behavior will always be judged by the expected behavior for law enforcement officers. Rightly or wrongly, law enforcement officers on or off duty retired or former will still be accepted, rejected, or judged by the pattern of behavior deemed appropriate for the policework occupation . Because of this Master Status, a rape-murder that follows a sexual assault by police officers or former police officers receives extensive media attention whenever or wherever they occur. What follows are illustrative examples of police rape plus murderers.
California Highway Patrolman—George M. Gwaltney—1982
The first California Highway Patrol Officer charged with an on-duty murder was George M. Gwaltney . He is also the first California police officer to be tried federally for the violation of a person’s civil rights under the color of law. Outwardly, he was an unlikely candidate for these sordid firsts. Gwaltney, a ten year highly respected California Highway Patrolman, was at one time the agency’s Officer of the Year. Well known in the community for his good deeds and helpfulness, the jovial “officer friendly” had a secret. On duty, alone and unsupervised, he was a sexual predator stopping women and young girls to bargain leniency for sex. Give it up or get a ticket or go to jail—a Sexual Shakedown to be described later. His first known murder victim was hunted and stopped on a deserted road.
On January 11, 1982, an attractive 23-year-old aspiring actress, Robin Bishop , was driving alone from Los Angeles to her home in Las Vegas (U.S. v. George M. Gwaltney 1986; The FBI Files 2008). It was slightly past 8:30 p.m. on a pitch-dark evening. Unknown to Bishop, Gwaltney spotted her coming out of a fast-food establishment and noticed her Nevada license plate. The inclination to commit a sexual offense plus the opportunity intersects with a perceived low-risk setting. However, the rational decision would turn out to be flawed.
Gwaltney guessed the route she would take. He began hunting for her. In the high desert area northeast of Barstow, California, he saw her car and made his move.
Gwaltney stopped Bishop in a desolate area on Interstate 15 some 30 miles northeast of Barstow. As described in the court testimony, he encountered an agitated young woman with a problem. Robin Bishop had a terrible driving record. One more speeding ticket would cause her to lose her driver’s license. She is now a vulnerable victim with credibility problem, adding to the low risk of a sexual attack. According to the theory of her murder , Robin argued with him to no avail. “The speed limit is what it is for a reason,” he sternly countered according to The FBI Files (2008). Gwaltney in his twisted logic had hit the “jackpot.”—A vulnerable victim he could bargain with—sex or a citation or arrest. “Maybe, we can work this out,” he allegedly said.
Gwaltney took the young victim out of her car, handcuffed her, and put her in the back seat of his police vehicle. He drove to an isolated frontage road just off the interstate and parked and started taking off his uniform. The investigation revealed that Gwaltney used this same frontage road for other sexual liaisons with other victims—his safe place. Secluded from the interstate by brush and darkness, the officer took the handcuffs off the 23-year-old sexually assaulted her. Again, the theory of the case describes what happened next (U.S. v. George M. Gwaltney 1986). The sexual violation over the distraught victim sat on the ground putting her boots on. At that very moment, a San Bernardino County Deputy Sheriff drove by on the interstate and flashed his spotlight on the California Highway Patrol car. It was a signal of recognition from a fellow law enforcement officer. This unplanned event disrupted the seemingly rational choice actions of Gwaltney. The theory of the murder is that Miss Bishop probably sensed help would come and said something to the effect of “see they saw you, and now you are going to pay for what you’ve done to me.” The rattled rapist, fearing job loss and possibly prison, walked up behind the distraught victim and shot her in the back of the head with his .357 caliber service revolver. Gwaltney, voice quivering and short of breath, called in and reported a body, possibly a suicide at the location.
Speculation is that he had intended to let the young girl go, but the passing deputy sheriff caused him to “lose his cool” and murder , Robin Bishop —sexual assault plus murder. Finding himself in a desperate situation, the veteran officer continued his attempt to conceal the crime. Moving the body and turning it over to locate the bullet, he disturbed the crime scene. The veteran law enforcement officer knew a ballistic examination would reveal the bullet was fired from his service revolver. He could not find the bullet. The bullet did not exit Robin’s head; instead, it lodged in her jaw. His House of Cards would soon implode.
The detectives called to the scene discovered troubling details. Miss Bishop’s car was found about 200 feet from the location of her body. The car was in gear with the keys in the ignition and no evidence of any malfunctions that would cause her to stop where she did. There were visible handcuff marks on her wrist. The autopsy revealed the recovered bullet came from a .357 caliber weapon, a common police weapon and the required weapon for the California Highway Patrol . These facts suggested that a police officer or someone pretending to be a police officer was the murderer. Robin Bishop trusted whoever got her to stop. Still, the focus was not on Gwaltney; after all, he found the body and no one believed he would murder someone. His peer group knew he would hit on a pretty girl like Robin, but kill her absolutely not. Not George M. Gwaltney whose brother was also a CHP officer.
The next move was clear to the investigators. To eliminate officers working the night of the murder , the officers were ordered to turn in their service weapons for ballistic examination. They all did except one—Gwaltney. Investigators and a California Highway Patrol Captain went to his house to retrieve his service revolver. He didn’t have it; he told them. Incredibly, he explained, it had been stolen in an unreported burglary sometime after his shift ended. According to the trial documents and documentary, the stunned officers now considered Gwaltney a suspect. With his consent, a search was conducted of his home and surrounding area. The stripped-down frame of his service weapon was found in his truck with the barrel missing. Gwaltney made no attempt to explain the missing barrel or how the stolen stripped-down weapon was in his truck. Later, he would claim that someone was trying to frame him.
Investigators canvassed gun shops in the area asking if Gwaltney had attempted to buy a new barrel for the weapon. Why else would he keep the frame? None of the gun shops reported an order for a new barrel. Then three women came forward saying that Gwaltney had stopped them and made sexual advances toward them. Gwaltney was fired, arrested, and based on the overwhelming circumstantial evidence arrested for Robin Bishop’s murder .
George M. Gwaltney was tried twice by the state of California, and both trials ended in hung juries: 8-4 for acquittal the first time and 7-5 for acquittal the second time (U.S. v. George M. Gwaltney 1986; The FBI Files 2008). A third trial by the state was ruled out, and the charges were dismissed. He was home free, at least that is what he thought. In the early 1980s, there were not many police-involved shootings drawing the media’s attention. There were no 24-hour 7-day TV news shows repeating the same stories as they filled in the time. However, one agency noticed the murder and the two state hung juries. The Los Angeles FBI office monitored the case from the beginning, primarily because it was an alleged murder committed by an on-duty police officer, a clear civil rights violation if true. Federal authorities decided to try the “clearly” guilty police officer for a civil rights violation on the theory that he had murdered Robin Bishop on duty and in uniform, thereby depriving her of her civil rights under cover of law. Under the federal microscope, it was not long before the series of lies told in his first trials started falling apart.
His alibi for the time of the murder was shown to be off by at least 30 minutes, giving him ample time to commit the murder and establish an alibi. Semen found on the victim was determined to come from a person who had a reversed vasectomy. Gwaltney had a vasectomy and then had it reversed. A forensic serologist testified that rare anti-sperm antibodies found in the sperm of men who have vasectomies reversed were found on Bishop’s clothing and on the back seat of Gwaltney’s patrol car. The FBI lab made a match on one of the tools in his garage and the marks on the gun frame, showing the tool had been used to remove the barrel.
When investigating crimes, it is always smart law enforcement tactics to knock on the same doors more than once (personal experience). FBI agents re-interviewed the gun shop owners. The agents reminded the gun shop owner that it was a felony to lie to a federal agent conducting an investigation. One admitted he lied at both state trials. Gwaltney had asked him to order a new gun barrel for his service weapon. The FBI agents pulled all of Gwaltney’s citations for the last year of his employment and interviewed all the females who received tickets. No rape victims were found, but dozens of women revealed that he had solicited sex from them in return for no ticket, thus demonstrating a pattern of sexual coercion during traffic stops. The trial in Federal District Court in Los Angeles lasted six-weeks, and the jury was out for one and a half days. George M. Gwaltney was found guilty of the murder of Robin Bishop , thereby depriving her of her civil rights under cover of law. He was sentenced to 90 years in prison and died twelve years later of a heart attack. At his sentencing, the unruffled Gwaltney said, “I have been thinking of what I should say for the last 40-some odd days. I will stand by my plea of innocence. I killed nobody” (Anonymous, June 28, 1994). Four years later, another California Highway Patrolman would murder another young woman during a sexual encounter.
California Highway Patrolman—Craig Peyer—1986
The arrest of a veteran California Highway Patrol Officer for murder created a shockwave in the San Diego area. The neighbors and friends of Craig Peyer , the 13-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol (CHP ) and Vietnam veteran, were stunned by his arrest for the murder of Cara Knott , a 20-year-old college student.
The investigation, testimony, and court documents painted a much different picture of Peyer and his murder of twenty-year-old Cara Knott (Leaf, December 27, 2014; Wikipedia, May 7, 2019). He was a known sex offender by his peer group who refused to report him. The events as alleged by the court documents and newspaper accounts describe the intersection of inclination, opportunity and a perceived low-risk setting leading to a sexual assault plus murder Type 1-Police Sexual Homicide . The events also describe the results of a seemingly flawed rational choice decision.
The young women were driving home from her fiancé’s house in Escondido to her parent’s home in El Cajon on a foggy night December 27, 1986. Her fiancé had the flu, and she acted as an angel of mercy to see about him. The attractive University of San Diego honors student never completed the 33–35 mile trip down Interstate 15, because Craig Peyer , the husband, father, son, and neighbor revered by his friends, was also a calloused sexual predator with a badge who often trolled for female drivers on the lonely road Cara traveled—inclination. He often stopped his prey and ordered them to pull off the road in deserted dark spaces—opportunity and perceived low risk. He would then detain them for long periods of time engaging in personal “flirting” conversations.
Court testimonies indicate that the feisty young victim was not intimidated by the bullying police office and wanted to continue home. She rebuffed his advances, fought back, and threatened to report him. Her righteous outburst and rage were met by overwhelming force as the lecherous murderer with a badge smashed a flashlight against her skull and strangled her to death—sexual assault plus murder.
Facing the problem all murderers encounter—what to do with the body—the CHP’s officer put the lifeless body on the hood of his car like a slaughtered deer. It was speculated that he didn’t want any trace evidence to be found in his patrol car. His police training kicked in, but it was too late, trace evidence was on him and his victim. Prosecutors alleged that Peyer calmly drove to a familiar remote area and threw the body over an abandoned bridge near the isolated Mercy Road off-ramp into the bushes of a dry creek bed 65 feet below. Frantically driving to a nearby service station, he cleaned up and resumed his routine police duties, even writing a traffic ticket to a young man hoping to establish an alibi. The time he wrote on the ticket put Peyer miles away when Cara Knott was murdered.
Cara’s sister and brother-in-law found Cara Knott’s car at dawn the next day. The passenger door was locked, and the driver’s window was half down, the keys still in the ignition. They drove to a pay phone and called the San Diego police who found Cara’s body in their search of the area. Cara’s father, who was also searching for her, came on the scene about the same time as the police. He said when he saw Cara’s car with the keys still in the ignition he started crying. “I slowed down my car,” Knott said, “I knew. I knew” (Warren, May 31, 1987).
The discovery set off a wave of terror among women living in the region. In an attempt to ally women’s fears, CHP’s Officer Craig Peyer appeared on local television giving safety tips to women who traveled alone. He told the women watching, “You never know whom you may meet along the road” and added emphatically, “You could even get killed.” The calloused murderer appeared on TV complete with fresh scratch marks on his face. His TV appearance prompted a number of women to call in with unexpected comments. The concerned women reported that the same security conscious CHP officer on TV had stopped them and kept them for long periods of time engaging in bizarre behavior such as gently stroking their hair and shoulders, making them feel uncomfortable. As is common in police agencies, his fellow officers were aware of his bizarre antics.
Peyer’s known reputation for stopping young female drivers raised the hackles of suspicion among his peers. At roll call several mornings after the murder , one of his fellow officers “jokingly” asked if he had killed Cara Knott , all eyes turned to Peyer, and the room went silent. He did not say a word. Prior complaints against Peyer were dismissed. He was considered a good officer. Known as “hot pencil,” he averaged 250 tickets a month. His silly sex peccadillos were overlooked.
Peyer’s feeble attempt at an alibi blew up. Investigators checking tickets written on that road the night of the murder discovered a ticket Peyer wrote that had 9:20 p.m. on top of a scratched out 10:30 p.m. The seventeen-year-old young man said Peyer stopped him at a 10 p.m. and wrote 10:30 p.m. on the ticket before changing the time to 9:20 p.m. Investigators sensed a deliberate attempt to create an alibi—the Knott’s girl was killed between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. The 9 to 10 p.m. period for her time of death was established through the habits of a usually cautious young girl who kept her family informed of her whereabouts. Cara Knott had called her family to let them know she was heading home and she stopped at a gas station at 8:27 p.m. to purchase gas and was never seen again.
Two witnesses reported they saw Knott’s empty white Volkswagen in the Mercy Road area at 9:45 p.m., 3 tenths of a mile from where her body was found. It was painfully obvious who was the “likely” for the murder of Cara Knott —a cop. Evidence gathering began. Investigators took Peyer’s uniform to the police laboratory and searched his home and locker.
Circumstantial evidence mounted. Tire marks found at the scene came from a law enforcement vehicle. The television footage showing the scratch marks on his face required an explanation. Peyer said the scratch marks resulted from slipping on a gas spill and falling against a CHP parking lot chain-link fence. However, a service station attendant reported that Peyer stopped the night of the murder to get gas and he “seemed nervous, disheveled and he had scratches on his face.” She said he had come to the station between 9:30 and 9:45 p.m. The scratches were bright and red as if recent. This was hours before he claimed to fall into the fence. California Highway Patrol Officer Craig Peyer was arrested for the murder of Cara Knott and placed in the San Diego County Jail on January 17, 1987.
Following his arrest, bond was set at $1 million. Close friends and family mortgaged their homes and other valuable property to raise the minimum $100,000 cash bond. Although stripped of his law enforcement officer powers, he collected his $33,000 a year salary and continued to pay his bills. That ended when he was fired in June 1987. A trial date was set for September 1987. Friends rallied to help him in his time of need.
Even before the murder tail began, Knott’s father filed suit against the California Highway Patrol saying that the law enforcement agency knew that Craig Peyer had the habit of stopping women motorists and had a known drinking problem. In support of the allegations, the complaint cited evidence presented at the April preliminary hearing where several women testified that Peyer had pulled them over and detained them for excessive lengths engaging in uncomfortable conversations and inappropriate touching. His drinking problems supposedly led to outbursts of ungovernable temper (Frammolino, August 14, 1987). This civil suit would not be resolved until after Peyer’s trial on criminal charges, resulting in a settlement for $2.7 million settlement.
Expert witness testimony at the April 1987 preliminary hearing revealed fibers recovered from one of Knott’s hands matched fibers from Craig Peyer’s California Highway Patrol jacket. Fibers from Knott’s sweat suit were found on his gun belt. Spots of blood matching Peyer’s blood type were found on the young victim’s sweatshirt. A slam-dunk case for sure.
The trial began on January 18, 1988, with a jury of nine men and three women before a packed courtroom of Peyer supporters. The prosecution called to the stand nearly two-dozen women who testified that Peyer had pulled them over for a variety of minor “chicken crap” violations , including faulty lights. All the stops occurred on or near the isolated Mercy Road off-ramp in 1986 where the body was found. The trace evidence—fibers, blood spots, etc.—was introduced. The abundance of circumstantial evidence was immense. Witnesses who had seen the scratch marks the night of the murder took the stand. Then, reasonable doubt raised its ugly head. The first signal that the case was not a slam dunk came when a San Diego police criminalist testifying for the prosecution said he did not find any traces of blood or skin under Knott’s fingernails, calling into question the origin of the scratches on Peyer’s face. Further clouding the source of the scratches was testimony from an off-duty San Diego police officer who said he was in the service station when Peyer pulled up and did not see any scratch marks on the CHP officer’s face.
On February 17, 1988, the trial ended with closing arguments. Van Orshoven, the prosecutor, often with his voice quivering, described Cara Knott’s stop by CHP Officer Craig Peyer . The impassioned prosecutor emphasized that the extremely cautious young woman trained in self-defense would not stop for just anyone, but she would stop for a policeman in uniform driving a marked police car. That policeman, he said, was Craig Peyer , a rogue cop with a history of stopping young women on deserted roads. He detained the young woman, the prosecutor continued, until she became anxious and exploded, scratching the face of her assailant in an attempt to get away. Threatening to report and expose her abductor, the young girl struggled until the assailant in blue, fearing exposure and job loss silenced her. The prosecutor, pointing at Peyer, roared: “He silenced Cara Knott by basing her skull with his flashlight and then strangling her.”
Defense attorney, Robert Grimes, countered by calmly informing the jury there was room for doubt in the state’s case. He reminded the jury that reasonable doubt dictated that his client should be acquitted. The defense attorney did not challenge the blood and fiber evidence. He dismissed the supposed evidence as all circumstantial, again reminding the jurors of reasonable doubt. Jurors began their deliberations.
The prosecution team expected a quick conviction, but it was not forthcoming. The jury became hopelessly deadlocked. Five jurors were unshaken in the belief that the prosecution did not show a clear motive or sufficient evidence that Craig Peyer killed Cara Knott . One juror went so far as to say that even though the CHP officer had a propensity to stop good-looking gals that didn’t prove anything. He discounted the twenty-something women who testified Peyer stopped them. Fear of exposure was discounted as a motive because some jurors believed a veteran police officer could certainly handle that. He would have just put handcuffs on someone who had an outburst like the prosecutor suggested several jurors put forth. One juror did not give much weight to the blood and fiber evidence because it was not conclusive. After seven days of deliberation, the trial ended with a 7-5 deadlock for conviction. A mistrial was declared. Round two began when the state decided on a retrial.
Former California Highway Patrol Officer Craig Peyer was free on bail for almost a year when his second trial began before a six-man, six-women jury in May 1988. More than 277 prospective jurors were quizzed over three weeks before arriving at the 12-member jury. Excessive publicity and strong opinions of guilt and innocence complicated the selection. Deputy District Attorney, Paul Plingst, the prosecutor for the state, replaced Deputy DA Joseph Van Orshoven. Defense attorney Grimes was satisfied that the jury looked like “a group of reasonable people,” and he was comfortable with their selection. Grimes did suffer a setback when the trial judge limited the defense’s fiber expert in the second trial. His testimony had contradicted the prosecution’s fiber expert, but his credentials and techniques were criticized.
The second trial had a new and damaging witness. Women came forward after the first trial ended in a deadlock and said she and her fiancé had seen a CHP car pull over a light-colored Volkswagen occupied by a lone female between 8 and 9 p.m. on I-15 the night Cara Knott’s disappeared. The defense could not shake the witnesses’ resolve. She saw what she saw. The service station attendant who had seen Peyer with fresh “claw marks oozing blood” on his face when he pulled in to clean up added that Peyer retrieved a flashlight and nightstick from the trunk of his cruiser and cleaned them off with a red grease rag. A supervisor had written an injury report on Peyer’s alleged fall against the chain-link fence and said it was inconsistent with a person falling against it. This was not allowed into evidence because the judge ruled it to be hearsay evidence. The judge ruled that if the chain-link fence testimony were to come in Peyer would have to take the stand and give testimony. The defense called 27 witnesses to the stand, including Peyer’s wife to rebut the prosecution’s witnesses. Craig Peyer did not take the stand. No chain-link fence testimony. No deadlocked jury.
After 16 hours of deliberation, Craig Peyer was convicted of the on-duty murder of Cara Knott , with the presiding judge stating he was “absolutely convinced to a moral certainty” that “Mr. Peyer killed Cara Knott ” (Reza, August 4, 1989). He was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murder . At Peyer’s sentencing hearing, the judge heaped scorn on the CHP officials who had not acted on prior complaints about Peyer’s conduct in stopping female drivers. Newspaper accounts quote the judge as rebuking the California Highway Patrol agency for allowing the rogue officer “to continue taking young women to the off-ramp, even after receiving complaints” about his bizarre behavior. He emphasized his point by saying if they had acted on the complaints instead of dismissing them “Cara Knott would be alive and Craig Peyer would not be on his way to state prison” (Reza, August 4, 1989).
The graying grandfather, Inmate number D93018, sits in his prison cell at California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, proclaiming his innocence. Peyer lives in the medium-security prison among the general population still maintaining there was nothing wrong with his forced personal chats with young women. He has been denied parole three times, each time telling the parole board “I have no idea how it happened.” He will have another parole hearing in 2027 if he lives that long. He did tell one parole board that he had read the self-help book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, twice. In 2007, Peyer was given a chance to prove his innocence when the District Attorney’s Office requested a DNA sample (DNA testing was not available at the time of his trial) for the Innocence Project. At the time, the D.A.’s office was reexamining old cases to ensure that justice had been served. Peyer declined to provide a sample without explanation.
Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Timothy Scott Harris—1990
You don’t want to have to go to your six-year-old daughter and say Mom’s never coming home again, because Officer Friendly killed her.
Rick Hendricks, husband of the murdered woman on ABC 20/20 , October 24, 1997.
Florida State Highway Patrol Trooper Timothy Scott Harris is the first Florida State Trooper to be arrested for murder committed while on duty. The eight-year veteran worked for two small Florida police agencies, Sebastian and Melbourne Village, before becoming a trooper. The television crew of ABC 20/20 discovered what the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) should have in their background investigation—if one was done. While employed with the Melbourne Village PD (MVPD), the future trooper had been suspended once. When he resigned in 1982, Harris had three serious allegations of misconduct pending against him. Timothy Scott Harris was a “Gypsy Cop” allowed to resign in lieu of charges being filed and then moved on to another law enforcement agency. The Melbourne Village director of public safety described his former employee to 20/20 as “totally incompetent” and “not fit to be a policeman.” The MVPD wanted to get rid of their problem employee and send him on his way, so he left, as too often happens with a glowing recommendation stating “He is trustworthy, intelligent, and has a high sense of responsibility toward his profession as a police officer.” He would be some other agency’s problem.
The Florida Highway Patrol would not learn until it was too late that Harris had come to them with a well-developed habit of stopping women, taking down their personal information and then pursuing them. He had the inclination for sexual misconduct . He also perfected the technique of sitting along the highways with his car pointed in the direction of oncoming traffic to pick out attractive women to stop—hunting victims. Harris had other disgusting habits, described by his lawyer as referring to women as “sluts” and yelling sexual comments as he drove by them. He flicked his tongue at women, often with other police officers in the car with him. He was a known problem officer. He wrote lewd comments on traffic tickets and hung obscene cartoons in his patrol car. In keeping with the sexual machismo attitude of his colleagues in blue, no one turned him in. This provided a low-risk setting for his sexual misconduct . A captain with Vero Beach Police Department became disturbed by Trooper Harris’s off-duty behavior following the breakup of his marriage, such as appearing in public unkempt, and living in parking lots and rest stops and wrote a letter to the Florida Highway Patrol. Nothing happened. The inevitable and predictable sad culmination of Harris’s bizarre behavior came to an end on March 4, 1990.
A woman traveling south on Interstate 95 in Indian River County at approximately 10:00 a.m. looked up to see an FHP vehicle behind her with his blue lights flashing (Sellers, April 16, 1990). She wondered why she was being stopped—she was not speeding—as she pulled onto the shoulder of the road. The woman sat still as Trooper Tim Harris, age 32, approached her driver’s window. The trooper peered in the window and asked to see her license. The woman later recounted that the officer had stared at her very pregnant stomach. The trooper wrote the woman a warning ticket for going 6 miles over the speed limit and sent her on her way. The unborn child in her womb had, in all probability, saved her life. The next woman Harris stopped that day would not be so lucky.
According to court documents, an hour later Lorraine Hendricks , an extremely attractive former model, age 43, a devout Catholic, and mother of a six-year-old daughter, was driving the same Interstate 95 in Indian River County. In a note of irony, Lorraine Hendricks had once appeared as a model in the Florida Highway Patrol’s Arrive Alive publicity campaign. The hapless victim would soon be raped, tortured and strangled by a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper. She would not arrive alive. Speculation is that she saw the FHP vehicle with his lights flashing in her rearview mirror and pulled to the side of the road. The burly 6 foot three inch 200-pound dark-haired trooper came to her window.
Lorraine Hendricks disappeared and was never seen again until her badly decomposed nude remains were discovered five days later covered with pine needles in a thick stand of trees and palmettos. Her silver Honda Accord had been found earlier less than a mile away from where the body was found. The car, when found, had no indicators of car trouble or a struggle. Her possessions, minus her driver’s license, and car registration were in the abandoned car. Investigators immediately sensed she had stopped for someone she trusted like a police officer or someone pretending to be a police officer.
Trooper Harris brought in for questioning admitted running radar in the area where the abandoned car was found. After sustained questioning, he admitted he stopped Lorraine Hendricks and took her to a secluded stand of pines where they had consensual sex —a common defense. The questioning continued, and finally, a calm but teary-eyed Timothy Harris admitted he had raped, tortured, and slowly strangled the resisting woman as she pleaded for her life. He blamed the murder on his mental breakdown from being estranged from his wife. Harris pleaded no contest to the charge of first-degree murder in exchange for a life sentence carrying a mandatory term of 25 years. Technically, he will be eligible for parole after serving 25 years, but there is little chance of parole.