It’s an irony that in Los Angeles, a city with no lack of crime, one of the most compelling crime stories recently reported by the Los Angeles Times takes place in the tony city of Irvine, in neighboring Orange County. But that’s part of what makes it so fascinating.
It may be the flip side of what George W. Bush once dubbed, “The soft bigotry of low expectations,” the idea that we expect people in upscale areas to act better than those in disadvantaged areas. That, however, is frequently not the case. Many of the crimes that take place in L.A. are horrific but comprehensible — a drug-related robbery, a sexual assault, a domestic-violence incident, a mugging or a gang shooting. They’re about sex and money and addiction and desperation and power and alcohol, all things even the most law-abiding among us can understand.
But what the L.A. Times uncovered is a case that is nearly incomprehensible, in which a high-living, professional couple — the husband is apparently a Catholic — with three children and everything to lose proceeds to lose everything because of a cockeyed scheme to ruin the life of a school volunteer over the smallest of slights.
Told in serial fashion, with embedded audio and video, “Framed” is a blend of old-fashioned and modern digital reporting, a story worthy of a TV-movie, the veracity of which might be doubted if it hadn’t actually happened.
And at the heart of it are four children — the victim’s one, and the perpetrators’ three — whose lives will never be repaired, no matter what the legal system does.
So, settle in, get a cup of coffee and follow this long and strange tale, remembering this:
“We are still a long way from the time when our conscience can be certain of having done everything possible to prevent crime and to control it effectively so that it no longer does harm and, at the same time, to offer to those who commit crimes a way of redeeming themselves and making a positive return to society. If all those in some way involved in the problem tried to . . . develop this line of thought, perhaps humanity as a whole could take a great step forward in creating a more serene and peaceful society.”
Pope John Paul II, July 9, 2000
Here’s how “Framed” begins:
The cop wanted her car keys. Kelli Peters handed them over. She told herself she had nothing to fear, that all he’d find inside her PT Cruiser was beach sand, dog hair, maybe one of her daughter’s toys.
They were outside Plaza Vista School in Irvine, where she had watched her daughter go from kindergarten to fifth grade, where any minute now the girl would be getting out of class to look for her. Parents had entrusted their own kids to Peters for years; she was the school’s PTA president and the heart of its after-school program.
Now she watched as her ruin seemed to unfold before her. Watched as the cop emerged from her car holding a Ziploc bag of marijuana, 17 grams worth, plus a ceramic pot pipe, plus two smaller EZY Dose Pill Pouch baggies, one with 11 Percocet pills, another with 29 Vicodin. It was enough to send her to jail, and more than enough to destroy her name.
Her legs buckled and she was on her knees, shaking violently and sobbing and insisting the drugs were not hers.
The cop, a 22-year veteran, had found drugs on many people, in many settings. When caught, they always lied.
Click here to read the rest.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
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