I'm Craig Melvin,
and this is "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I dropped to my knees. I screamed.
I couldn't believe it.
My friend is dead. Kasi is dead.
A woman has been found in a condo.
There had been a gunshot, and the gentleman
who found her is her husband John.
It was like a punch in the gut.
Did we miss something?
And if we did, would Kasi still be alive?
Now we have three victims.
Three women are dead, and you could be next.
I was petrified.
It was so unbelievable
that there is that kind of evil out there.
You both decided
that you were going to record a conversation.
I wired her up.
What was the strategy?
Get him to talk.
I looked right at him and I thought,
oh, this is on.
Hello, and welcome to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
John and Kasi Peek clicked instantly,
and within months, they were married.
But they only had a few years together
before Kasi was murdered.
When investigators discovered John had ties
to a double homicide almost a decade earlier,
they wondered, was it just bad luck, or...
was John Peek having a terrible secret?
Here's Andrea Canning with "Deadly Omission."
I don't think there was a day that went by
I didn't think about him or what he was doing.
He was the suspect who slipped away.
I felt like...
Lord, I hope that there's not anything I missed.
A man who had everyone fooled.
He's gonna trick you into thinking he loves you
and he doesn't.
A master manipulator
disguised as the perfect catch.
Just one woman to the next.
He's a narcissist.
He's not gonna stop until the day he dies.
He's a dangerous-- a dangerous person.
Our story begins here on a Saturday night
in October 2005.
Everyone tucked away in their quiet homes, asleep.
Ronnie Myers was just getting home to his condo complex
outside of Atlanta after a night at the dog track,
when he saw it.
I was backing into this space here,
and as I was backing in,
I noticed something shiny sitting on the curb.
So when I got out of the car,
I walked back toward the object,
and I noticed it was a purse.
I yelled to see if anybody was out here.
Was the stuff out of the purse or in the purse?
No, everything was contained in the purse.
Okay. Odd to see a purse just sitting there.
Usually you notice if you've lost your purse.
I thought-- I thought it was very suspicious.
So, first I didn't want to touch it.
And I was like, well, maybe...
somebody came home intoxicated and just set it down, and--
Presumably you'd think
that the person would live in this complex.
Exactly.
Inside the purse was a note with the words,
"I love you, John," and an ID with a name,
Kasi Peek.
There was also a cell phone.
Ronnie scrolled through it and found a number
for a John Peek.
And I said, well, maybe this is a brother,
or husband. - Right.
He decided to wait until the sun was up to call.
And so when I got him on the phone, I said,
"I'm trying to reach... Kasi."
And he said, "Who is this?"
I said, "Well, I found her purse in my complex."
And he said, "You did?"
Ronnie gave him the address,
and John picked up Kasi's purse.
Then, soon after,
at a different complex down the road...
Within minutes, officers were at the scene.
John was waiting outside and directed them
to the back door.
The condo had been ransacked.
Cabinet doors were open.
Things were strewn across the floor.
In the bedroom was Kasi, lying in a pool of blood.
She'd been shot.
An officer spoke to John outside.
John told the officer he last spoke to his wife, Kasi,
at 4pm the day before.
To get something of this magnitude
was pretty unusual for that complex.
Detective Ron Waddell from the Smyrna Police Department
got the call.
As I got there, I met with another detective,
and we're directed around to the back of the condo.
They're doing a crime scene log in the back.
And it's just time for us to go in and see exactly
what we believe may have happened inside the condo.
So you go in pretty much right away?
Yes.
And as you walk into this condominium,
what are you seeing?
All the blinds are shut. It's dark inside.
Our victim is laying in the bed
and she's got her glasses on.
The TV's on, and her glasses are a little askew on her face.
And there in the mattress, a big clue.
A bullet from a .30 caliber rifle.
You could tell that there had been a gunshot
that went through her back.
It exited through the front and through her forearm
before getting stuck in the mattress.
What do you see in the condo?
Is there anything out of place?
Is there a murder weapon?
Unfortunately, there's no murder weapon there,
but the rest of the condo has been completely gone through.
Kasi's sister Jaquidon and brother-in-law David Krueger
were driving home from a wedding in Texas
when the phone rang.
I got a call on my cell phone,
and it was Smyrna Police Department
who told me that my sister was dead.
I was in shock.
- He said she'd been found... - Shot.
- Dead of a gunshot wound. - Dead of a gunshot wound.
It was just horrendous.
Word spread quickly to Kasi's friends,
Jan Taylor and Kim Shepner.
I dropped to my knees, I screamed.
I couldn't believe it.
And I felt like, "Oh, my gosh,
"She was just at my house. She was just here."
Kim is the friend John mentioned to the officer.
She and Kasi had talked late into the night.
Kim didn't want Kasi to go home.
And I said to her, "Why don't you stay, Kasi?
"It's about 45 to 50 minutes to drive home.
"Why don't you stay tonight?
"Come on, girl, stay here."
And she just said, "No,
"I've got things to do tomorrow."
What happened to Kasi Peek?
Horror! Am I in a nightmare?
You know, it's just absolute... gut punch.
A question that unraveled another mystery...
You worried he could kill again.
- Yes. - It just made my skin crawl.
And turned families desperate for answers
into amateur detectives.
Detective Ron Waddell has worked hundreds of crime scenes
in his career,
but Kasi Peek's murder is seared into his memory.
That has always kind of stuck with me,
the expression on her face.
I realize she's deceased, but did it look like
an expression of fear?
Yes, ma'am. Fear for sure.
Eyes were open.
It actually looked like she was still
looking at somebody that was in the room.
While the detective launched his investigation,
Casey's sister, Jaquidon, and brother-in-law, David,
flew to Atlanta.
It was where Kasi, a computer programmer,
had built a life for herself miles away from her family
and friends in Texas.
She was doing really well.
She was surrounded by a Lot of great girlfriends.
Oh, yeah.
Friends like Kim and Jan.
They met Kasi at the Atlanta Ski Club,
The club to be in, in Atlanta.
I don't think of skiing when I think of Atlanta.
- No. And people say that-- - No, most people don't.
No, but, um, believe me,
half of the members were just there for the socials.
So Kasi loved the social element.
Yes.
The ladies would go out often.
All three were single, open to finding a partner,
especially Kasi.
- She was very intelligent. - Oh my gosh.
She was very good at what she did.
She didn't need to rely on a man.
Exactly.
She just really wanted a companion.
- Okay. - I mean, she wanted
to have it all, to have the career,
have the love, have all the things
that that entails. - The house.
And the house.
Then one day, John Peek walked through her door.
You know how-- the old saying,
you gotta leave your house if you wanna meet somebody?
- Get off your couch. - Get off your couch.
- She is-- - That's what I always say.
She is the one case where...
the man came to her. - The man came to her.
Kasi had a party at her condo,
and one of her guests brought John as their plus one.
He was a 46-year-old software engineer
who worked as a consultant at an electronic payment company.
John ended up hitting it off with the party host.
Then she sent a picture of him and a brief little blurb
and says, "I'm gonna call you about him.
"He's really great." - Oh, my God.
She went nuts. - Oh, yeah.
Good-looking man.
They became a couple instantly.
Was she in love with him? - Oh, my God, yes.
- Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. - Like, lost in love.
Yes.
And they got married very quickly, and...
- How quickly? - Like, within...
I-- was it-- was it maybe four or five months?
It was quick.
John and Kasi both had been married before.
This time things felt different.
He was one of those really romantic people,
and flowers and notes
and... scavenger hunt things,
and taking her out and stuff like that.
So she was really bowled over by him.
And she hadn't had anything like that before.
She felt like she hit the jackpot.
- Absolutely. - Yeah.
They bought a new home in an upscale community
just outside of Atlanta.
It was a sprawling, huge mansion.
- Oh my gosh, a gorgeous house. - Perfect place to have--
And the neighborhood, like, had this beautiful entrance
and rolling hills... - Oh it did, it was beautiful.
...and it was beautiful.
It was definitely a dream come true for her.
John fit right in with Kasi's circle of friends.
We did a lot together and, just, he was very nice.
Nice to all of us.
But after a few years, Jan and Kim noticed a shift.
It was when John took a consulting job
with Habitat for Humanity over 100 miles away
in Americus, Georgia.
And he was down there all the time,
and he wouldn't come home on the weekends, and...
So you're thinking there might be something up?
We were just thinking, what's up?
Why isn't he coming home?
- Yes. - Exactly.
Is there another woman, possibly?
- Yes. - Exactly.
Even though Kasi was one of the smartest women they knew,
her friends say she didn't see what they saw.
She, you know, didn't really see the forest
for the trees, really.
And I was just like, look, please open your eyes, you know?
Then she found a charge on her credit card.
She did.
It was a hotel charge not far from where she and John lived.
Odd, because John was supposed to be away
on a weekend trip with the guys.
Kasi got in her car and went looking for him.
So she drives out there,
and she went up to the front desk,
and she was like, "My husband is here.
"I just saw the charge."
And they're like, "Sorry, ma'am, we can't give you
"his room number." She demanded...
that they give-- and they gave her the room number.
Kasi stormed up to his room and banged on the door.
No one answered.
And then security escorted her out.
Oh, my gosh. - Oh, my God.
She was devastated.
Even though she didn't see John,
she suspected the worst.
He tried to deny it, but it was--
It was obviously and patently a lie.
John's denying it. Kasi's not buying it.
What does she do?
So Kasi, uh,
moved out of the house and moved back to her condo.
That was April 2005, almost two months
before their fifth wedding anniversary.
But the estrangement didn't last long.
Kasi and John decided to work on the marriage,
and it was going well.
She talked about it with Kim the night they saw each other
for the very last time.
Everything was really upbeat and positive.
I mean, she was glowing. She was so happy.
We had a great conversation. - She's a Christian person.
She just believes in forgiveness.
And she believed in her marriage.
To death to us part.
Back at the crime scene,
Detective Waddell finished his walkthrough
and met with John, who was still waiting
outside with the officer.
At that point, uh, we call him over, uh,
to, you know, see exactly what's going on with him
and what had happened.
Does he agree to go with you willingly?
Absolutely, yes. Yes, mm-hmm.
And what a story they were about to hear.
From the beginning, John Peek was candid with police
about the status of his marriage with Kasi.
Even though they were still living apart,
he told the officer they were seeing each other again.
Now Kasi was gone,
and John was eager to help detectives find her killer.
John spoke to Detective Waddell
and his partner at the police station.
He told them about the call from Ronnie about the purse
that led him to check on Kasi.
Detectives filled him in on their investigative process.
The detective asked John
if he thought Kasi might have been seeing someone else.
Detectives had more questions
about his relationship with Kasi.
He said they had dinner and watched a movie,
and were getting along.
Did you buy his story
that they were working on the marriage,
that things were getting better?
I didn't have any evidence to refute it
one way or the other.
That initial interview, you tend to take for face value
and, you know, see where it goes from there.
John told them Kasi was excited to make it work.
John told detectives that Kasi wanted reassurance
that there was no one but her.
Lied, because he was seeing another woman.
Her name was Liza Kent.
He'd met her in Americus, Georgia,
on that Habitat for Humanity job.
The detectives had a love triangle on their hands.
He's playing both of 'em against one another.
He told us that Liza believes that he is
going to divorce his wife.
And he's leading her to believe that.
But then also, he is taking his estranged wife
down this road where he's taking her out for dinner
and movies a couple of nights a week.
He wants to have his cake and eat it too.
100%, yes. Every slice.
John said that after Kasi moved out earlier that year,
Liza moved in.
But he fessed up to investigators
that things weren't any better with Liza.
It was clear to detectives that John was not a good husband
or a good boyfriend.
John says something about his girlfriend
in this interview that is very eye-opening.
Well, as it turns out, she's got a gun.
And according to John, Liza knew where Kasi lived.
Jealousy, or worried he's going to get back together with Kasi?
Maybe the divorce isn't happening as fast,
and she can speed it up a little bit,
is kind of the way it sounded.
Then John revealed that not only did Liza have a gun,
she threatened to use it,
on him.
But he said Liza had more than one.
Detectives had to find Liza.
John let the police search his home and his car,
and he agreed to take a gunshot residue test
before he left the station.
While the detectives waited for the results to come back,
they went out looking for Liza, and found her.
Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin.
Kasi Peek had been murdered,
and her husband John had just revealed a secret.
He was seeing another woman named Liza.
John told police Liza had a gun
and was not afraid to use it.
Now, Liza was about to give detectives
intriguing information about an ultimatum
she had recently given John.
Back to Andrea Canning with "Deadly Omission."
Officers arriving at Kasi Peek's condo
first thought they were looking at a burglary gone bad.
But as technicians took a closer look at the scene,
it became clear that nothing was taken.
The dresser is-- all the drawers are pulled open.
But when you look into any of those,
nothing has been touched inside the drawers.
All of the electronics that would have had
any kind of street value are all still there.
So this appeared to you to be staged?
Yes, that's exactly what it looked like.
It was just Staged Crime Scene 101.
Plus, there was no forced entry.
So either she didn't lock her door,
or the person who came in presumably had a key?
There was one screen that was off of a window up front,
but it had been off for weeks, uh,
and they just hadn't come out to fix it yet.
But the front door was locked, but the back door was open.
And there was an important element that stood out.
When she died, they covered her up.
Oh, so this feels personal.
Right. Didn't cover her face, but covered her up to the--
to her neck, yeah.
Waddell believed Kasi was likely killed
by someone who knew her.
We had that entire complex canvassed
for anyone who had been there over the weekend at all,
and not one person heard that gunshot.
You would think if this happened in a condo complex
that someone would have seen something, heard something.
Zero.
It's just amazing to us that we--
we didn't get one witness out of the complex at all.
They did have one lead, courtesy of John Peek.
Detectives found his girlfriend Liza
and brought her into the station.
The detective redirected the interview
and asked Liza about her relationship with John.
Liza told detectives that when she met John,
he said he was divorced.
She learned that was a lie.
As they approached their one-year anniversary,
Liza gave him an ultimatum.
Detectives asked where she was the weekend Kasi was killed.
She said she was celebrating a birthday
with a friend over 100 miles away.
They would have to check that out, of course.
Detectives also wanted to know about the guns John mentioned,
including the one in her car.
And they probed her about John's story
that she threatened him with a gun.
Disassociate?
Was she saying she might be capable of murder?
Do you confront her with this idea
that she might have killed Kasi?
Yes. And she said as she has never met the woman before,
never has had any kind of inclination to do anything
like that, and never really had the motive
to do it anyway because John was divorcing her,
so it wasn't an issue.
But of course, John had been lying to Liza.
Perhaps Liza found out John was reconciling
with his wife and lost it.
Liza was allowed to leave, but detectives told her
they needed to know her whereabouts.
But something else was brewing.
Detectives learned that while John had been going
on and on about his love life...
He'd failed to mention one very important detail.
Can you believe it? - It was a head-shaker.
You've been talking to us for hours.
How is it that you've never mentioned this to us?
Smyrna detectives were talking to John Peek
about his dead wife Kasi, when they asked a question
that should have been routine.
His answer?
Detectives had never heard anything quite like it.
Can you believe it? - It was a head-shaker.
You've been talking to us for hours.
How is it that you've never mentioned this to us,
that you had a previous spouse murdered?
How can you go through an interview
and not have told us this yet?
It is the ultimate omission.
Yes, ma'am, 100%.
100% the biggest omission I've ever had
in any investigation I've ever done.
Turned out it was not something John had kept secret
from other people in his life.
The only thing we knew is that she had been killed.
His wife had been murdered and it was devastating.
And because he'd met Kasi, this was a closure thing.
Did you talk to him about her, and about the murder?
No. The only things I knew were
anything that Kasi had told me, and that it was horrible.
Now Detective Waddell needed to find out
all about that previous murder case.
He got on the phone with Detective Eddie Herman
from the Cobb County Police Department.
It's like, "Hey, uh, does the name John Peek
"mean anything to you?"
And just as dead silent as that.
I was like, I thought maybe we dropped the phone.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
That phone call brought Detective Herman back in time
nearly a decade to June 14, 1996.
He was working the night shift.
I got a call from a Precinct 3 uniform officer,
and an individual by the name of John Peek
was reporting his wife missing.
Her name was Carol Marlin.
Carol was a 46-year-old engineer at aircraft maker
Lockheed Martin.
John said she'd gone to dinner with a friend
and was expected back at their home in Marietta, Georgia
around 8:30.
But it was getting late and he hadn't heard from her.
He worried she'd been in an accident.
Was there any weather that night?
You know, rainstorm, something that could have
caused an accident or delayed her?
No, it was a clear night.
Still, the detective checked for any car accidents
involving Carol's dark blue Camry,
but there were none.
A couple of hours later, John called back to say
his wife still hadn't returned.
He wanted to file a missing person report.
At that time,
I just felt like I needed to go down there.
The fact that it was made so early, the report was, uh--
giving you a weird feeling?
Yes. Not because...
of the report itself. It was the time frame.
I knocked on the door, he opened the door.
He invited me in, sat down in the living room.
And I just went into the basic background
on him and Carol, what she...
was doing that evening.
John told the detective he and Carol had been together
for 11 years.
They weren't technically married.
They were common law husband and wife.
They both worked at Lockheed Martin.
When did John say he last spoke to Carol... that day?
He had a voicemail from her at about 4:30.
"I'm going to pick Maggie up."
Maggie Ginn was her friend.
She was 64, and by then retired.
She'd also worked at Lockheed Martin.
The two women had stayed close, often had dinner together.
Did you think about that this could just be
two girlfriends, time gets away from you...
Well, that's one of the things I did think about.
You know, maybe-- maybe, uh,
Carol or-- and Maggie are sitting somewhere,
just talking.
The detective drove by the restaurant
where John said the women liked to go.
It was closed, and no sign of Carol's car in the parking lot.
He also wanted to go by Maggie Ginn's house,
but John said he didn't know her address.
He did have her phone number, which he gave to me.
If I had a phone number today, obviously we'd be able
to get an address just like that.
As Detective Herman was looking for Carol,
John called her sister, Susie Sutton, in Ohio.
He says she's missing.
And we were concerned, too, because that wasn't like Carol.
I mean, she could have just stayed out a little longer,
um, but that would not be like Carol
to stay out all night.
So you're just waiting for information?
Yes.
I did think that maybe somebody had kidnapped Carol,
so that did pass through my mind.
It was now morning.
Detective Herman drove over to Lockheed Martin,
where a security guard gave him Maggie's address.
He and another investigator headed right over
to her house at the end of Whippoorwill Drive.
I came in at this stop sign right here.
When I stopped and looked,
you could see the blue Camry in the driveway,
Carol Marlin's blue Camry.
And you knew that's the kind of car she drove
because you'd been looking for her all night.
In fact, we dialed the phone number, uh,
from outside, and you could hear the phone ringing
inside the house, uh, but nobody was answering.
So-- oh, that's-- that's almost sort of eerie
that you can hear the phone ringing.
Right. I didn't have a good feeling at all.
The detectives banged on the door.
You'd think that one of them would wake up,
though, hearing the...
the knocking and the-- the phone ringing.
Right. I mean, we're banging on the windows
and the doors, and...
not getting anything. No response from inside.
Very likely, these two women are inside this house.
Correct.
Before he went inside, he wanted permission
from someone in Maggie's family.
The next door neighbor had the phone number
for one of her children.
Maggie's granddaughter, Layla Bryant,
remembers that day.
The police had called and said that they needed
to get into grandmother's house, and that the door was locked,
and wanted to go ahead and break in.
The detectives kicked the door down
and entered the house. It was dark inside.
First thing I noticed were a bag of groceries.
And of course, then we're on high alert
because we don't know what we're walking into.
And I shine a flashlight into the dining room area
and I see the body of a female on the floor
by the dining room table.
Oh, my gosh.
And I immediately hollered the team behind me.
I said, "We got one down!"
Um, I checked her. There was no vitals.
It was Carol.
She appeared to have been beaten to death.
You know there's two women missing.
Correct.
So now you're expecting...
possibly another body in this house.
Correct. So...
we moved on from that area, went into the other bedrooms.
That's when Detective Herman made another grim discovery.
Maggie Ginn had also been beaten to death.
You now have a double homicide.
Correct.
At that moment, the murders were a complete mystery.
But the detective was about to talk to John Peek
and he had a curious lead.
There was a direct threat in that letter.
There was. Yeah, there was.
Detectives working Kasi Peek's murder
were learning all they could about a different case.
The 1996 double murder of Carol Marlin
and her friend Maggie Ginn.
The connection, John Peek.
You have his deceased common law wife.
- Right. - Her friend.
- Mm-hmm. - And now his current wife.
Less than 10 years apart.
Back in the '80s, Carol and Maggie met
when they both worked at Lockheed Martin.
Maggie was a secretary, Carol an engineer.
They had a pretty big age difference.
There was a big age difference.
It felt like maybe Carol thought of grandmother
more as a mom, you know, and it felt good that
there was somebody there to kind of take care of her.
Carol just loved Maggie,
and I think Maggie really loved Carol, too.
It's funny too, even with the 20-year age gap,
sometimes people just click with each other.
Right, I think they did.
I saw the warmth and the caring
and the love between them, definitely.
Maggie's family rushed over to the house
that was now a crime scene.
My dad and my aunt and uncle just sat on the steps
at the house across the road and just watched
their childhood home with police in and out,
knowing that their mom was there.
John Peek showed up, too.
He was pacing back and forth
and was holding his hands...
in his face.
Richard Peluso was also at the scene.
He was a rookie detective back then.
It was awful.
It was definitely a lot of trauma.
Was there any sign of a break in?
Was anything stolen,
that this maybe was interrupted
when they came home from dinner?
there were a couple of drawers that were pulled out,
and there were a few things
that had been moved about, disheveled.
She had a lot of nice jewelry and things like that
in the house, and none of that was taken.
It did not have the appearance as your typical burglary
where it's ransacked, and somebody is looking
for something in particular.
If not a robbery, then it looked like
some kind of planned attack.
So one of these two women...
was targeted, it appeared.
That's correct.
I remember asking Eddie, could--
could it have been more than one person?
Because it was so savage and it was so much.
But they were in two different rooms.
Eddie's response was like, somebody moved fast,
and they knew what-- they knew what they wanted to do.
It made sense to detectives that Maggie might be the target
since she lived there.
Maybe her friend Carol was in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
Did Maggie's kids have any idea
of who would want to hurt the ladies?
No, they were in disbelief.
It just didn't make sense that something like that
would happen. - Who would murder Maggie?
- Right. - I'm assuming no enemies?
No. No. I mean, never. Never.
She was humble and quiet and--
and... just living her life.
And, you know, it was unthinkable.
Maggie's family insisted the police shouldn't
waste their time digging into her life.
One of them was extremely upset and said,
my mother is not responsible for any of this.
Whatever this was-- is about, it's not about my mother.
I was a new detective, and I was learning
how to be a detective.
But my gut was telling me then
that Maggie had nothing to do with this.
And a big clue told him his gut might be right.
As detectives got a closer look at the crime scene,
they noticed a stark contrast with the bodies.
Looking at the injuries,
particularly after the medical examiner got on the scene
and we got a better look at Carol Marlin.
She was a focus. Whoever did this,
it was overkill with Carol Marlin.
Because her injuries were so much worse.
Yes, it was overkill,
and, um, that was huge to me.
For Carol's sister Susie, the brutality made it
all the more difficult to understand.
Carol was always so full of life.
She was bubbly.
She had this oversized personality.
She just was a joy to be around.
And smart, too.
Carol met John at Lockheed Martin,
where she handled military contracts.
So she was dealing with some high level...
security stuff in her job.
Yes, she was. She was, yeah.
I mean, I love hearing about how she's in this,
you know, sort of a man's world,
really making it in aerospace technology.
Right, right.
Carol could really hold her own,
and she was very gifted and very talented.
Carol had been married before,
she wasn't looking for a husband.
But then she met John at work.
John could be very charming.
I think they had a lot of romance.
I was happy that she'd found somebody
that it seemed like she loved a lot.
Detectives wanted to get as much information
from John as possible.
He went with them to the police station
for an interview.
She was a friend to everybody, um,
and he could not think of anybody or any reason
why she would be murdered.
The detective had to ask him where he'd been
the night she didn't come home.
John said he left work at 5:00 and went to pick up
some filtered water, and then he grabbed dinner.
Even though John couldn't think of anyone who would
want to hurt Carol, he did want police to know this.
A few days earlier,
Carol received a threatening letter at the office.
What is this threatening letter about?
It went to her and it went to four other employees,
and it had to do with personnel stuff
that Carol Marlin and none of the other employees,
as it turns out, had anything to do with.
What was the threat in the letter?
The threat was essentially "You're going to do right,
"or you're going to pay the consequences."
According to John, Carol blew it off
and didn't think anything about it, laughed about it.
But he insisted that Lockheed Security be notified.
And back at the crime scene, detectives found another clue
pointing in the direction of the company.
Something in Maggie's hand.
She's laying slumped in the chair.
and in her hand was a torn piece of paper.
It was a invoice from Lockheed Martin.
So now you have a threatening letter
that Carol received regarding Lockheed Martin.
And now Maggie has a piece of paper in her hand
that says Lockheed Martin.
That's a common denominator.
The name Barry Webb was signed on the invoice.
But before detectives could track him down,
he called them.
Barry Webb says to me in the phone call.
"Hey, I just saw the news. I know these people.
Barry claimed to have information relevant
to the case, so investigators brought him in for questioning.
Detective Herman didn't know if he was sitting
across from the killer or someone who could provide them
with a break in the case.
Who is Barry Webb?
He's a Lockheed employee.
Got to be very good friends
with John Peek and Carol Marlin.
Detective Herman cut to the chase and asked Barry
about the invoice found at the crime scene.
But Barry was more interested in telling them
why he called in the first place.
You know, you can't make this up.
I mean, this is like... straight out of a movie.
Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin.
John Peek had lost not one, but two wives to murder.
In 1996, his wife, Carol Marlin,
and her co-worker, Maggie Ginn,
were both found beaten to death.
A clue at the scene pointed police
to their colleague Barry Webb.
Well, now Barry was about to tell detectives
an astonishing story about a break-in at his home.
Back to Andrea Canning with Deadly Omission.
Layla Bryant's teenage years were shattered
by her grandmother's murder.
Her sense of safety and security, gone.
And I can remember constantly walking around
to make sure that the doors were locked.
It brings an awareness
that there is that kind of evil out there
that you just kind of lived not knowing about before.
It's stealing your innocence.
Yeah. Yeah, it really is.
At the time, Cobb County police detectives
were doing everything they could to catch the killer
of Maggie Ginn and her friend Carol Marlin.
They received a call from a man named Barry Webb.
Curious timing, because they'd also found that name
on an invoice at the crime scene.
When they brought him in for questioning, Barry launched
right into a story about a break in at his house.
He said he shoved the door open and confronted an intruder.
But he told detectives he heard something.
The bag had something in there,
like a metallic clinking type sound.
Barry hadn't called the police just to report the break in.
He wanted them to know who had broken in.
The intruder was John Peek.
And if this guy was telling the truth,
it happened the night of the murders,
the same night John reported Carol missing.
Barry Webb then told investigators
John called him soon after and apologized.
But why would John be looking for Carol at Barry's house?
They took a hair sample from Barry and let him go.
They certainly wanted to talk to John Peek again.
Do you not think it's important
to tell the investigating detective
that you got caught breaking into a co-worker's house
during this time frame?
You confronted him about Barry Webb,
but by that point, he had an attorney.
- Yeah. - And he wouldn't talk about it.
No, he would not.
Investigators went over what they knew
and had a bad feeling about John Peek.
Back at the crime scene,
his behavior had seemed like an act.
And I looked at him and was amazed on what I was seeing
because he was not acting at all like somebody
that just learned something like this had occurred.
He was, like, trying to-- trying to create emotion
that really wasn't there.
But the fact that John showed up at all
was even more suspicious.
Every conversation I'd had with John Peek
leading up to him showing up at the scene was
he did not know where Maggie Ginn lived.
John claimed he'd gotten the address
from Lockheed Martin that morning, but...
John had installed a VCR for Maggie,
so he knew perfectly well where she lived.
And everybody knew that John had been to the house before.
In fact, he had made some little repairs around the house.
It's very sad looking back, because in her journal,
she had written how nice it was that John would take the time
to come over there and fix something.
That single lie was enough to convince Maggie's family
that John was the killer and Carol was the real target.
Once they knew for a fact that he had told the police
that he didn't know where Grandmother lived,
that took all the other options off the table for them.
Detective Herman agreed.
But building a case against John would be harder
than anyone could have imagined.
I don't think there was a day that went by
I didn't think about him or what he was doing.
He was about to find out.
Two wives, two murders.
Just no.
And Kasi's family would try whatever it took
to get answers.
Did you fear that John Peek could kill again?
Absolutely. Without a doubt.
Back in 1996, almost a decade before Kasi Peek was killed,
detectives were trying to unravel the mystery
of what happened to Carol Marlin
and her friend Maggie Ginn.
John Peek had stopped talking to investigators,
but his wife Carol's family had lots to say.
Detective Herman said,
"Do you think John would have done something like this?"
And my mom said, "Oh, John wouldn't hurt a fly,"
you know, and I said,
"I'm not sure about that."
Why did you think that?
John liked to be secretive about things.
Susie described how the ever so charming man Carol first met
eventually started acting like a creep.
And he was sort of...
slightly sleazy, even with me.
Susie recalled something that happened
during a wilderness canoe trip.
He kept teasing me about taking a shower,
and I wouldn't do it, and it made me uncomfortable.
Like, did he want you to, like, take your clothes off
and take a shower?
Well, that was sort of the implication.
John had been married and divorced twice
before he met Carol.
Susie told investigators she suspected
John had cheated on her sister.
He definitely seemed like a big womanizer
or at least loved the attention of women.
And, you know, moving from one woman to the next.
Yes. I think he had affairs that Carol didn't know about.
I think they fed his ego.
He needed to be, like, pumped up.
He liked that affection, that attention?
Yes, very much.
Susie also told investigators that
in the year leading up to the murders,
Carol and John weren't getting along.
They were arguing a lot,
and also that their sexual relationship had ended,
that John had ended it.
Investigators had no physical evidence
tying John to the scene,
but they knew he lied about not knowing where Maggie lived
and could not explain that odd break-in at Barry Webb's house.
I just felt like he was our guy.
It was just going to be a question of
how do we prove it? How do we get there?
They went to talk to the Cobb County DA.
How did the DA feel about the case you had put together?
The DA felt good about the case.
Circumstantial, but did not want to move forward
with an arrest at that time.
What he was saying to us, keep working it,
maybe something will come up,
but we don't want to take a chance in charging him,
arresting him, and he's tried and he's acquitted,
and then he can never be charged again.
- Frustrating. - Very frustrating.
They kept digging,
but the double murder investigation hit a wall.
Months ticked by. Then years.
Did the family just think that this is what
we have to live with, that we'll never know?
I think that they had come to terms with the fact
that there may never be an arrest.
I know I was disappointed. I was kind of hard on myself.
I mean, what did we miss? What did we miss?
And so every two weeks or so,
we'd pull that file out and go over it.
I don't know if there's anything
we could have done differently.
We just didn't have any physical evidence
or eyewitnesses.
All we needed was one person. One person.
In those frustrating years, John moved on.
He met Kasi and started a new life.
He had a $700,000 windfall from Carol's life insurance
and was living in that huge house.
Kasi's friends heard about John's previous wife, too.
He set the record straight with her very early.
Oh, yes.
Look, I need to let you know this, Kasi.
I was a suspect in a murder case in 1996.
I didn't do it.
Of course, he downplayed it. He never mentioned
that he was still the one and only suspect.
It never went cold.
Why do you say it never went cold?
I was intentionally going down to Peek's house,
knocking on his door.
Detective Herman hoped that he'd get John
to say something, anything.
But nothing ever came of Herman's unannounced visits.
Sometimes he'd run into John Peek randomly.
One time I was jogging down at the River Trail,
and I saw him.
Did you try to talk to him?
- I did. I ran up behind him. - Oh, what did he--
- Nothing. He just-- - How did he react?
He didn't even comment.
You know, he just kind of went off to the side.
That can't feel good when you see him out jogging.
- No. No. - And you believe
he's responsible for a double homicide.
- No, and-- - What we're feeling
ain't nothing compared to what the families are feeling.
Remember, we had to go back to the families
and say, look, we can't make it happen,
and they got to live with it.
You're working more cases, but guess what?
That's their only case.
Hard enough to lose somebody,
but to know that there's no justice
and that a killer's walking around free.
Did you fear that John Peek could kill again?
Absolutely. Without a doubt.
And then after almost a decade of trying,
his worst fear was realized when he got that call
from Detective Ron Waddell in the next town over.
What were you feeling? - I was kind of numb.
I had a knot in my stomach.
When Ron said, "Does the name John Peek mean anything to you?"
I'm like, what's he done now?
I felt like, lord, I hope that there's not anything
I missed or we missed.
Because now Kasi Peek's dead.
Now investigators from two murder cases
were joining forces, and they were about to learn
a lot more about the real John Peek.
Beforehand, he was a nice guy.
After, he was a monster.
The investigation into Kasi Peek's murder
was only hours old when Detective Ron Waddell discovered
that Kasi wasn't John Peek's only dead wife.
This changes the total trajectory
of all of our investigation.
He'd become their main person of interest.
But Detective Waddell still had other leads to check out,
including John's girlfriend, Liza.
She admitted to police that she had a gun
and she'd been frustrated with how slowly
John's divorce was moving.
But she seemed genuinely surprised when investigators
told her John was getting back together with Kasi.
That's when she learned John was lying to her about his wife
and figured out he was pointing the finger at her.
So he's throwing you under the bus
in that interview room? - Yes. Yes.
It didn't work.
Liza told us what the detectives told her.
They're like, we know that you didn't kill anybody.
We can tell that you're not that kind of person.
Actually, John Peek is trying to manipulate
our detectives as we speak.
Trying to take the focus off of him
and put it on someone else.
That's a far cry from where their relationship started.
She said they met when John was working that out of town job
in Americus, Georgia, where she lived.
It was a romance story that sounded familiar.
He was good looking, he was intelligent,
and he knew how to treat a lady.
You open the door, you take them to dinner.
He did all the right things.
He did and said all the right things.
Made me feel like a queen.
Just as John had done with Kasi,
he showered her with attention
and over the top romantic gestures.
He insisted on having a party at my house.
He said, "Don't worry about a thing.
"I'm going to do all the cooking."
I didn't have to lift a finger.
I didn't have to pay for anything.
Just had to invite the right people.
Sounds like you found the perfect guy.
That's kind of what I thought.
John also opened up about what happened to Carol.
He put his hand over mine and took a deep breath
and said, "About 10 years ago,
"my wife was murdered.
"You actually remind me a little bit of her."
- Ooh... - Yeah.
What's going through your mind when you hear this?
I felt sorry for him.
I felt sympathy that, you know, he had lost his wife.
He seemed to have really loved her
and thought a lot about her.
And said that they-they never caught the person.
Liza and John spent time together
whenever he was in town for work.
But on one occasion, Liza met him in Atlanta.
That was the night Kasi showed up
banging on their hotel room door.
This woman was yelling, "John? John? Are you in there?"
All along, he told me he was divorced.
He told me that she was very insecure
and didn't like herself very much
and kind of alluded that she was a little,
you know, nuts.
Liza continued seeing him after that.
They were even talking marriage.
But after a while, she says John's charm started to fade.
I started to feel like he was
controlling some things.
She says John started demanding
to know who she was with
and tracking her mileage to confirm where she'd been.
She also suspected he'd hacked into her email.
The things that he was saying,
only things that I had put in email.
So I said, "You've hacked into my email."
And he goes, "No, no, no, I didn't do anything like that."
Liza said when she started pulling away,
John's behavior became frightening.
He told me that he wanted to take me to dinner.
And as we were driving, I said, "Oh, where are we going?"
He said, "Anywhere I want to take you."
- Like controlling. - Yes.
Anywhere I want to take you.
- I'm in charge. - It was, "I'm in charge,
"I'm gonna take you wherever I want to,
"and you have no choice."
Kasi's friends had heard stories
about the not so charming side of John Peek.
He was the definition of a love bomber.
Overly romantic and doting at first,
but over time, he became manipulative,
controlling, and sometimes cruel.
He told Kasi she needs to lose weight.
Yes.
And so Kasi actually got liposuction
- Because of what John said? - Because of what John said.
He told her she was gaining a little too much weight.
Oh...
And she did what she needed to do.
She would do anything to keep that marriage.
She was focused. She was focused on that.
When Kasi told them she was giving John a second chance,
they didn't approve.
Kim talked to Kasi about it over dinner
the last night she was alive.
I said, "Kasi,
"you're such an amazing friend, person,
"and you just don't need to go back to him.
"You need to be on your own, and you need to enjoy
"because you have so much to offer."
A week after Kasi's murder, her friends and family
gathered in Georgia for a memorial service.
Her friends brought pictures, you know,
and put them all against the wall and everything.
The service was held at the same funeral home
as Carol's service nearly a decade earlier.
Police were keeping tabs on John.
He drove by the funeral home five or six times
before he would even go in.
John must have known all eyes would be on him.
We both assumed, with good reason,
that he was guilty of the murder,
because, I mean, this is a matter of probabilities.
One guy, two wives, two murders.
Just no.
We never had not one doubt. Not one doubt.
- Not one doubt. - That--
- It was John. - That it was John.
Even before you found out how she died,
you felt it was John?
We were on the phone together, remember? And--
Yeah. We knew.
And she said, "He did it. He did it."
And I said, "Yeah, because how could this happen?"
At the funeral, John finally showed his face.
What was his behavior like?
He came in, sat in the back, left.
We didn't really talk to him.
When Kasi's friend Kim got up to speak,
she concluded with a message for Kasi's killer.
I just looked right out and I said,
"We're gonna find the person that did this."
And I looked right at him and I felt the coldest--
I mean, like, there's nothing there.
And I thought, oh, this is on.
This guy is scary.
To police, John Peek was the obvious suspect.
Problem was, just like in the double homicide years before,
they had no physical evidence tying him to the crime.
As the detectives continued their investigation,
Kasi's sister and brother in law
were starting their own.
Welcome back. Detectives were convinced
John Peek murdered three women in less than 10 years.
Kasi Peek, Carol Marlin, and Maggie Ginn.
But suspicion wasn't proof,
and they needed evidence to charge him.
Now police were about to get help from an unlikely source:
A husband and wife team willing to go undercover
to unmask a killer.
Back to Andrea Canning with Deadly Omission.
As Smyrna police conducted their investigation
into Kasi Peek's murder,
John's girlfriend Liza was on edge.
She'd been a wreck ever since she spoke to police.
They said that they didn't have enough evidence to hold him
and that they advised I leave town.
- How scared were you? - I was petrified.
I didn't want to stay with anybody that he knew I knew.
So it's like you're on the run, sort of.
Because you don't know for sure that he's after you,
but you feel like you're on the run?
Yeah. Oh, yes.
And I slept with a knife under my pillow.
Did you just look at her and say, "Honey,
"you absolutely could be the next target of John?"
Oh, 100%.
Investigators were well aware John had been the prime suspect
in his previous wife Carol's murder.
And they were struggling to find direct evidence
linking him to Kasi's murder.
The gunshot residue test they'd given him
while he was at the police station came back negative.
They'd also searched Kasi's condo,
but they didn't find anything useful.
They kept looking.
You get a search warrant? - Yes.
For John-- all of John's properties or--
All of them, yes.
In addition to the house John lived in,
investigators searched his lake house
and investment properties looking for a weapon
that matched the .30 caliber bullet
found in Kasi's mattress.
Did John own a .30 caliber rifle?
Not that we were able to find. Investigating this,
I was able to find a couple of different people
who he had actually asked to buy
a hunting rifle from,
but we were never able to find the rifle that was used.
In a storm drain outside John's house,
investigators did discover an unfired .30 caliber bullet.
Inside the house, they noticed John had a fascination
with true crime.
He had quite the library
of all of the different murder shows.
There must have been 50 or 60 different tapes
of multiple different shows that--
similar to the one that we're doing here.
Police had eyes on John again as he traveled
to Kasi's home state of Texas for her burial service.
While there, he asked Kasi's sister and brother in law
to meet for coffee to clear the air.
They agreed, but only after consulting with Smyrna PD.
Jaquidon and David were asked if they would
actually do a wire to get John on tape.
And we went and bought a recorder and I wired her up.
- What was the strategy? - Get him to talk.
Get him to talk, gauge his demeanor,
how he answered questions.
See if he divulged anything that we didn't know
that might help.
On their way to coffee, David coached Jaquidon
on how to handle John.
When they arrived, John was already waiting for them.
We talked about the relationship
and what was going on
and why he was cheating on her
and whether or not he really wanted to get back together
and stuff like that.
He spent a lot of the conversation as it developed
basically painting Kasi in a very negative light.
Very hard to live with, very demanding, unforgiving.
He's trying to paint a picture of a person
that we certainly didn't know.
After she's died, he's going after her character?
Correct.
And yet John insisted he still wanted to be with Kasi.
In fact, he said he and Kasi had been planning
to recommit to their marriage.
John told them it was under one condition.
We were rather surprised, to say the least,
about some of the things that he was saying.
He's working to both assassinate in character
and paint himself in a sympathetic light.
He's painting himself as unlucky.
- That's correct. - And a victim.
"Poor me."
As she listened,
Kasi's sister could not keep her skepticism quiet.
After nearly three hours of back and forth,
Jaquidon and David had heard enough.
As they left the coffee shop and walked to their cars,
Jaquidon worried that John might have been on to them.
There had been a mishap with the recorder.
They went home sure of one thing.
There's that old saying, what you can know
and then what you can prove are two different things.
But there was no doubt after that conversation.
We knew. We knew.
You knew he killed Kasi?
- Absolutely. - No doubt.
In the end, their undercover work didn't provide much
to move the investigation forward.
But Jaquidon and David were not done sleuthing.
They were about to find something
that might be just what the detectives needed.
This really shows, I would imagine,
for the police, premeditation.
It shows premeditation and clear intent.
I don't care how long you're in this business,
man, if anybody's in it
and says they don't take the cases personal,
that's BS.
The double murder of Carol Marlin and Maggie Ginn
had remained unsolved for almost a decade.
But after Kasi Peek was murdered,
the detectives were looking back through their files.
Both fell under the Cobb County DA's office.
Now, detectives in both cases were meeting with
Assistant District Attorney Jason Saliba.
We reopened the case with Detective Herman,
which was the first set of murders,
and started going back through it
to see if there was anything else that needed to be done,
if there was any testing.
At the same time, the Smyrna detectives
were working their case.
So all your minds have to come together
to create a game plan.
It's not just one agency we're talking about.
- Correct. - It's prosecutors, police.
The two detectives, both of them agreed
to work any parts of their cases that overlapped
and to help the other one.
As we sit down and start going over our similarities,
I think we wound up with two and a half pages
off of a legal pad of different similarities
to the cases that really tied them together.
Of course, in both cases,
John Peek's wives were the victims,
and John was the one to alert police.
The scenes were amateurishly staged as robberies.
And in both cases, he lied
about having access to the crime scenes.
In the murders of Maggie and Carol,
he told detectives he didn't know where Maggie lived,
something the family knew wasn't true.
And with Kasi, he told police this about her condo.
Out at the scene, he told us
that he did not have a key.
And he told us that a couple of different times
that he did not have a key to her condo.
But Kasi's friends knew that John had just
gotten a key from Kasi.
He says to her, "Kasi,
"let's really try to get back together."
He says, "I'm looking for a job.
"I don't have a computer. Let's trade house keys."
And so they traded house keys.
And there was this.
The detectives felt evidence was planted
to throw the investigation off track in both crimes.
Kasi's purse seemed to have been left
in that parking lot for a reason.
It has always been our belief he didn't expect
to get a phone call the next morning
that her purse had been found.
He thought somebody would pick up the credit cards,
take them, use them.
In Carol and Maggie's case,
detectives suspected John wrote that threatening letter
to the Lockheed Martin employees as a red herring
and placed that invoice in Maggie's hand,
the one with Barry Webb's name on it.
We thought John picked him
and he was absolutely going to frame him for murder.
The prosecutor developed a theory
of what happened that night.
When the women returned to Maggie's house after dinner,
John either followed them inside
or he knocked on the door.
They recognize who it is. They say, "Yeah, come on in."
Yes, that certainly was a possibility.
Once inside, John bludgeoned the women,
possibly with a hammer.
While Carol was John's target, the prosecutor believes
he killed Maggie to make it look like a random crime.
Then he took the murder weapon and went to Barry Webb's house.
We have always been convinced that the reason
he was going into Barry Webb's was to plant the murder weapon.
He had a bag full of something metal clanging in it,
breaking in the night of the murder.
The prosecutor pored over what he had
and decided that Carol and Maggie's case,
as old as it was, was the stronger of the two.
So two weeks after Kasi was killed,
the DA was ready to charge John Peek with murder.
How does that work?
Because the District Attorney's office with Carol and Maggie
initially did not want to charge
because there just wasn't enough evidence.
Circumstantial case.
We have another murder,
but nothing has really changed, per se,
with Maggie and Carol's murders.
Nothing really changed.
You've got a different set of eyes looking at it.
Those of us that were looking at it decided we did have enough
and that it wasn't going to get any better.
Eddie Herman had contacted me and asked,
could he be the one that actually cuffed John Peek.
And to this day, I can still remember Eddie's expression
on his face when John came to the door that morning.
I looked at him when he opened that door.
I said, "It's been a long time."
- Ooh. - "Been a long time."
Oh, that gave me chills.
And I said, "You're under arrest.
"You're under arrest for the murders of Carol Marlin
"and Maggie Ginn."
I felt a huge sense of relief,
although I also felt scared because it was circumstantial.
Maggie's family had been hungry for justice, too.
The senselessness of her murder
was hard to wrap their heads around.
There's pictures along those walls
of all of Grandmother's kids and her grandkids.
And all I could think was, how could a person do that?
How could a person look in somebody's house
and see their life on the walls
and see the people that are going to miss them
and not even care?
You call it collateral damage.
She was collateral damage for him.
With John behind bars,
detectives kept working Kasi's murder.
They knew that after the first murders,
John received $700,000 in life insurance from Carol.
Now detectives wanted to know if he was expecting
another financial windfall from Kasi's death.
Her sister had just talked to her about her life insurance.
I suggested that she did not need to have life insurance
because she didn't have anybody
that needed to be supported, like children,
to be supported for life insurance.
Kasi's family didn't know if she kept the policy or not,
but they wanted to make sure John didn't get a dime of it.
We filed a civil lawsuit
for the purpose of tying up all of his assets
so that he could not spend them.
He was not going to profit from anything
that had to do with my sister.
As part of that, they got a lot of financial documents
that had been relatively well hidden from the police
and from our office, and they shared those with us.
One of the things they found out,
not only did Kasi still have the life insurance policy,
but John had secretly been making extra payments
leading up to the murder.
In the event that she, you know,
just stopped paying the policy,
he wanted to make sure that the policy was intact,
even if she stopped payment and didn't tell him.
Because I had advised it and he knew it.
That is sneaky-sneaky.
If you're planning a murder to gain insurance proceeds,
makes sense to do whatever is necessary
to keep that insurance policy intact, doesn't it?
It wasn't just the insurance.
There was a lot of personal property, belongings, cars,
joint bank accounts, retirement accounts.
There was a lot, a lot of money at stake.
The prosecutor believed that's why John
was leading Kasi on.
He needed to get this money
before this divorce went through.
That's what we've always believed.
Do you think that John Peek got a taste
of maybe how easy it was to get rid of Carol,
get the life insurance money, whatever assets they had,
and then, you know, maybe he needs money again.
I'll just do the same thing. It worked the first time.
I think so. And I think it's greed.
It's easy money.
And Liza, the girlfriend John was talking about marrying,
turns out she was going to inherit some family money.
Liza's about to get a bunch of money.
Exactly.
Do you think he would have killed Liza,
if given the opportunity, for her money?
Well, he'd already done it twice.
Absolutely. I believe he 100% would have done it again.
Did you feel like he was capable of killing you?
Yes. Yes, I did, or sending somebody to kill me.
I really would not have put anything past him at that point.
I didn't know how far he would go.
To investigators, there was a clear pattern,
and the financial documents Jaquidon and David discovered
helped to bolster their case.
You're getting more and more
incriminating evidence against John Peek.
Absolutely.
The DA decided he had enough
and charged John Peek with Kasi's murder.
But then...
You and your team were prepared to go to trial.
And then something unexpected happened in the last hours.
And we were absolutely stunned.
John Peek sat behind bars denying he had anything to do
with the murders of three women.
Then, assistant DA Jason Saliba got word of a confession,
but not from John.
Another man is saying he killed Maggie and Carol.
There had been a prison confession
to the murders of Maggie and Carol.
We had one gentleman who came forward
and actually told us that he had been in jail with a gentleman
who admitted to him, jailhouse confession,
that he had killed two women over by Cobb General Hospital,
and he killed them with a hammer.
The alleged killer knew how the women were killed
and that Maggie's house was near a hospital.
Investigators confronted him with the story
they'd heard from that other inmate.
He was adamant he didn't know Carol or Maggie
and had nothing to do with their murders.
And investigators couldn't find any connection either.
Someone wasn't telling the truth.
What we were able to do is to go back
and see that our tipster
that said this gentleman had confessed to him in prison
had actually been John Peek's cellmate.
So he was manipulating this person in jail.
Right. Trying his best to manipulate
people in the investigation as best he could.
And he kept at it.
There was a long list of inmates
that he attempted to pay to spread false information.
He was asking that they go out and give false narratives
of the evidence to news outlets,
to his attorneys, to make up alibis.
To investigators,
it seemed John Peek thought he was in control
even of their investigation, manipulating it
just like he'd done with the women in his life.
He has no empathy. He has no caring.
He's going to trick you into thinking he loves you
and he doesn't.
It's all about how can you benefit him.
He is the most dangerous kind of con man, really.
That's true.
From behind bars, John was still trying to control Liza.
Here he is talking to his brother about her
on a recorded call.
Investigators gave Liza the green light
to meet with the brother, see what they were up to.
What he had to give me from John
was a rose and a card.
Inside the card, John professed his love.
John says he's still in love with you.
How does that make you feel?
Sick.
I felt creeped out.
I don't-I don't care what he thinks or feels.
And he's a psychopath.
They don't really feel these things.
For what he'd been doing in jail, the DA tacked on
additional charges of criminal solicitation.
But there were still two very circumstantial
murder cases to prove.
We were in touch with the prosecutors
and the detectives, and they were scared.
They weren't sure if they had the evidence
to get a conviction.
Although John had initially been arrested
for the murders of Carol and Maggie,
prosecutors decided to try Kasi's murder first.
Did you feel you had more evidence in Kasi's murder
or was it fresher?
You know, time wise? - It was fresher.
It was fresher.
Investigators prepared to tell the jury
their theory of the crime,
that John arrived at Kasi's condo
while she was still at her friend's house
and let himself in using the key she'd recently given him.
Then he hid in the coat closet.
He lets her come home, he lets her get in bed,
and he gives it enough time to be able to go in quietly,
ambush her in her sleep.
And then he went and staged the apartment
to make it look like a theft. Took her purse,
went to the other apartment complex,
laid her purse out.
If they got a conviction in Kasi's case,
the DA planned to seek the death penalty
for Carol and Maggie's case.
Because now you can show he clearly is going to kill again.
He's done it.
Nine years later, he did exactly what we're going to allege
he would do if he was not on death row.
A few weeks before trial,
John's attorney approached the DA.
And he said, "I believe he will plea
"if you offer him a life sentence."
The prosecutors talked to the victims' families.
Carol's mother was very elderly,
and the potential of a trial
and then the appeals that go behind that,
that she might not ever see this case completed
before she passed on if we didn't take a plea.
So the DA made an offer. Life in prison.
And on Friday, April 13, 2007,
John appeared in court.
I figured there was a 50/50 chance that, knowing him,
he could take that last ditch, no, you know what?
I've changed my mind. I don't want to do this.
And down another rabbit hole we go.
How do you plead to the charge?
Guilty or not guilty? - Guilty, sir.
- But he did. - But he did. He pled guilty.
And they sent him off to the Georgia State Penitentiary.
It was a good day.
John was in his 70s when we last spoke
to Assistant DA Saliba.
Still, the prosecutor said John was not done.
We are the better part of 20 years later,
and he's still trying to manufacture evidence in prison
of other people who committed the crime.
Periodically, we have people come forward
and give us evidence of what he's doing.
You just feel it's more of his lies,
more of his manipulation? - Absolutely.
He is a manipulator. He's a narcissist.
He's not going to stop until the day he dies.
For the family and friends of his victims,
they want what happened to serve as a wake up call
for anyone in a similar situation.
If this could be a sort of a beacon
for women to see that
it's easy to get manipulated
even if you are the smartest person in the room.
How do you want Kasi to be remembered?
For being such a wonderful friend
and an excellent person.
She was someone who dreamed big,
had a huge heart,
and she was a joy to be around.
Carol was so cheerful and so full of life.
I look at pictures of her and I think about her.
I wish Carol were here.
My grandmother was a wonderful role model for me.
I got her for 16 years, and I have the memories, and--
that I can share those with my kids,
and I'm just grateful.
That's all for this edition of "Dateline Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin. Thank you for watching.