FUN IN METRO EAST: PEELING IT AND EATING IT

This is from today's Post-Dispatch. The defendant's conduct is so strange it deserves to be set out in full. Throw in the Sniper and the Cobra and you have a real knee-slapper.

Link and comments in a minute.


By Nicholas J.C. Pistor
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/29/2007
Gary Peel EAST ST. LOUIS — After a federal judge told Gary Peel that he must report to jail by noon on Friday, his wife erupted — first with a flow of tears, then with a fury of words. "I hope that every day your son is going to hear that his grandfather is a child pornographer," Deborah Pontious, Peel's second wife, yelled at his daughter after a detention hearing Wednesday involving her husband's child pornography conviction last week.But Pontious, a former teacher, was not done lashing out at the people she holds responsible for her husband's downfall. She then fired a question at the man who successfully prosecuted her husband, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Burke."Thank you, Mr. Burke. Would you please try to find the person who tried to kill me?" she said.
Advertisement

Burke did not respond.Pontious said afterward that someone tried to kill her in early 2004 shortly after she married Peel. The first time, she says, a sniper tried to shoot her. A few months later, she says, someone planted a black cobra in her bedroom. She also produced a police report involving an incident where her pickup's windows were shattered while traveling along Interstate 57 near Effingham. She speculated that the events had something to do with her marriage to Gary Peel. Burke was not immediately available on Wednesday for comment.Peel was found guilty on charges of bankruptcy fraud, obstruction of justice and child pornography, by a jury last week in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis. The trial quickly became a family feud, with Peel's ex-wife, also named Deborah, and his son testifying against him. In early 2006, an indictment states that Gary Peel called his ex-wife and told her that he had an affair with her teenage sister more than three decades earlier — and that he took nude pictures of the sister, which he would send to their elderly parents unless the ex-wife agreed to a settlement involving their divorce. Authorities say the girl in the photos was 16 years old at the time. Peel continues to deny knowing her age. Because the charges involved child pornography, federal prosecutors sought to jail Peel immediately after the verdict. A judge reserved ruling. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge William Stiehl sided with the prosecution, ordering Peel to surrender to federal authorities on Friday. A judge will sentence him in June. He could receive up to 40 years in prison. Peel rose to a level of prominence as a litigator among lawyers in the Metro East area. When he was indicted last year, he was working for the powerful Lakin Law Firm. The firm's founder, Tom Lakin, is being sued in a civil court over allegations of sex and drug abuse. Federal authorities have declined to say whether they are conducting a criminal investigation.But in October, an FBI agent testified in a hearing that investigators had questioned Peel about potential corruption involving judges or lawyers, including Lakin, in Madison or St. Clair counties.