In the autumn of 1972, there was a disturbing massacre of an entire family in the Midwestern United States for which a motive has never been determined.
Retired Army colonel Bill Peak had formerly served as a military attaché to Russia and Hungary, but by the time 1972 rolled around, he had decided to retire from the service. Accompanied by his wife Bernice and the couple’s fourteen-year-old daughter Barbara, he moved to Grand Island, Nebraska, with plans to open a new branch of Allen’s Grocery Store, a chain owned by Bernice’s family.
The Peaks’ had already purchased a plot of land for their new store, and on September 11th had plans to meet with the governing authorities who would grant them all the necessary permits. But two days before that meeting, the entire family would be wiped out in one fell swoop.
On September 9th, 1972, Bernice’s father Ron came over to the Peaks’ Grand Island home to watch TV. Upon entering the silent house, however, he made a terrible discovery in the master bedroom: all three of the Peaks had been shot in the head with a .22 caliber firearm.
Bill and Barbara were dead at the scene, but Bernice was still alive, despite having been shot in the face. She was rushed to the hospital, where all she could tell police was that there had been multiple assailants. She succumbed to her injuries two months later, turning the case into a triple homicide.
From the very beginning of the investigation, leads were extremely difficult to come by. It was clear that robbery had not been the primary motive for the attack, as Bill’s wallet was found outside in the street with credit cards still inside, and the home had not been ransacked. Further, neither Barbara nor Bernice had been sexually assaulted. In fact, it didn’t even appear that there had been a struggle, for Bill’s body was found with a lighter in one hand and a cigarette beneath him, as though he was just lighting up when the shooting started.
Though possible scenarios involving Russian hit men and illicit drug deals were explored, no evidence could be found to support them. One retired investigator even theorized in the media that the crime might have been a murder-suicide, though no evidence existed to back up that sequence of events either, and the extended family vehemently denied it.
In later years, Bernice’s brother Bob Allen and his wife Georgene have been very active in keeping the investigation alive, and have offered generous rewards for information in the case. Bob Allen suspects that the Peak family was murdered by a Peeping Tom type character who was targeting fourteen-year-old Barbara, while Mrs. Allen lays blame at the feet of some “long-haired” college kids who were allegedly friends with the Peaks’ older daughter.
As of this writing, the slaying of the Peak family remains unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 