Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Santiago and girlfriend met after hitting low
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The person who might know the most about Esteban Santiago’s final troubled months in Alaska is Gina Marie Peterson, the 40-year-old mother of his child and the woman he once beat.
Accused of murdering five travelers during last week’s bloody rampage at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Santiago, 26, was due to have a domestic assault conviction dismissed in March — if he kept his record clean.
He could now face the death penalty.
An Alaskan native 14 years older than her boyfriend, Peterson met Santiago when both had reached low points in their lives, neighbors, friends and relatives say.
Santiago was struggling to get mental health care in Anchorage after a combat tour in Iraq that ended in 2011, according to his relatives.
Peterson was reeling from the collapse of a decade-long marriage — struggling with alcohol abuse, in and out of jail and one step ahead of rent collectors, according to court records and neighbors in the tiny town of Bird Creek, where she had lived before moving 25 miles north to Anchorage.
A hamlet of about 300 residents in the shadows of the Chugach Mountains, Bird Creek is best known for three businesses: The Brown Bear Saloon, its ceiling decorated with dollar bills from travelers worldwide; Diamond Jim’s Liquor Store and its cobalt and pink flashing neon sign; and the Birdhouse Garage that’s owned by mechanic Bill Peterson, her ex-husband.
A gas station attendant when Bill Peterson met her, Gina Peterson gave birth in 1998 to the first of their four children, according to court documents.
She was 22 and he was 24. Sixteen years later, the state Domestic Violence Court in Anchorage ordered her to stay away from her husband.
During a Feb. 4, 2014, court hearing, Bill Peterson reported that the “cops have been called a dozen times” because she threw his clothes across a highway, damaged their home and screamed across the garage parking lot that she was going to kill him.
He feared his wife might run him down in a car and he was concerned about the company she kept: “At any time she could put me in physical danger. She has in the past. I can’t have her in the house while she and her friends are drinking and she is recklessly endangering our children,” according to court transcripts.
Saying she would never harm him, Gina Peterson countered that she broke down a door to free an infant inside and complained that her husband was embellishing their interactions to get her in trouble.
She had just spent five nights behind bars for unlawfully contacting him through text messages on her cellphone. The court had mailed her hearing notice to the Highland Mountain Correctional Facility.
Extending the restraining order, the court ruled that she suffered from “major mood swings” and was “abusing alcohol and may be abusing prescription drugs.”
She arrived for the June 24, 2014, final divorce proceedings but vanished before the Superior Court hearing began.
Her husband’s attorney told the judge that someone smelled alcohol on her breath.
Gina Peterson never contested the divorce and was not there to challenge her husband when he accused her of having “an alcohol problem” and being “hateful, violent, abusive.”
The judge granted the divorce on July 9, 2014.
Interviewed this week, Bill Peterson, 42, said that tensions between them had tempered over the years “because we have to get along when we have kids together.”
Less than four months after the divorce became final, Gina Peterson had been evicted from her home along Lake Otis Parkway for failing to pay rent. She was jobless, broke and owed child support to her ex-husband, according to court papers.
Arriving in Alaska from Puerto Rico in the midst of her divorce proceedings, Santiago began living with her in an apartment along Mockingbird Drive by early 2015, according to court documents.
Bill Peterson said that he “didn’t want to let my kids around” Santiago, but he never learned much about the young man’s relationship with his ex-wife.
“I stay out of her private life. That’s hers,” he said.
FBI agents have told the gaggle of national journalists circling her Medfra Street home not to knock on the door. The cameramen catch sporadic sightings of her, in between visits from federal agents.
Her 18-year-old daughter, Robyn Peterson, read a brief statement on her behalf and those of other relatives to the scrum of reporters gathered at the home on Monday evening.
“My deepest condolences to the innocent people who lost their lives and/or were injured,” she read, adding that the family “all hope that the victims see justice.”
She then asked for privacy while the entire family mourned.
In November, Santiago brought their newborn baby with him to the Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Anchorage. He told authorities that the government was trying to control his mind and forced him to watch Islamic State terrorist videos — an interview that triggered a call to the Anchorage Police Department, the confiscation of his 9mm semiautomatic handgun and the return of the baby boy to Peterson.
He told law enforcement interrogators in Florida that doctors told him during an involuntary but brief November stay in an Anchorage mental health facility that he may have schizophrenia, sources told the Sun Sentinel.
On Feb. 23, 2015, Gina Peterson and Santiago were evicted from the Mockingbird Drive apartment and ordered to pay $929 in back rent, court documents state.
Ticketed for a broken taillight and driving without insurance, he also had been fined $1,060 but struggled to repay the bill. In mid-2015, it was sent to collections.
According to his brother Bryan, Santiago was working at an Anchorage McDonald’s and supplemented his wages one weekend per month drilling with the Alaska Army National Guard.
He had enlisted in August 2014 and was assigned to the Guard’s 1st Squadron of the 297th Cavalry Regiment, according to Guard spokeswoman Lt. Col. Candis Olmstead.
Santiago was not a cavalry scout by training. He joined the Puerto Rico Army National Guard in late 2007 and became a combat engineer. He deployed to Iraq for a 10-month tour that straddled 2010 and 2011.
Although the Alaska reconnaissance squadron was headquartered in Fairbanks, it maintained a company of soldiers at the sprawling Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.
Guard officials refused on Monday to say whether Santiago was supposed to attend drill weekends in Anchorage or travel as far as 250 miles north to Fairbanks.
In October, the cavalry squadron was converted into an infantry battalion and placed under the command of a brigade in Hawaii.
After their 2015 eviction, Santiago and Peterson settled into the squat Medfra Street home in the Fairview section of Anchorage.
On Jan. 10, 2016, Santiago began yelling at her when she was on the toilet. Breaking through the door and smashing the frame, he ordered her to get out “while strangling her and smacking her in the side of the head,” according to the criminal complaint filed in the wake of the assault.
The officer saw “no physical injuries” on Peterson.
Arrest logs showed that he was 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 140 pounds. Peterson was eight inches shorter and 20 pounds heavier, according to her previous Domestic Violence Court documents.
Arraigned before a magistrate two days later, Santiago was barred from having any contact with Peterson. The arraignment judge specifically allowed Santiago to possess weapons.
Free on a $1,000 unsecured bond, Santiago took up temporary residence at a trailer park along Dimond Boulevard in Anchorage.
On March 24, 2016, Santiago pleaded to both assault and criminal mischief charges as part of a deferred sentencing agreement.
Although ordered to complete a 12-week anger management program, there is no indication in the court documents that he finished the course.
He was granted unlimited contact with Peterson if she allowed it. She apparently did, according to neighbors, but the couple kept to themselves and Santiago seemed distant but polite. He spent much of his time working on his car. On New Year’s Eve, the couple threw a party.
“He wouldn’t look me in the eyes usually,” said Perette Carter. “He’d usually say, ‘How you doing, ma’am,’ and then just, like, look away.”
Carter and other Fairview neighbors said that he never mentioned Florida.
“That’s the puzzle. Why Florida? He was just here on New Year’s Eve, talking.”
It’s unclear when Santiago left their Medfra Street home, but he was living in a discount motel in an Anchorage neighborhood known for drug trafficking, prostitution and panhandling shortly before he bought the airline tickets that would take him to Florida.
In August, shortly before his son was born, Santiago was involuntarily separated from the Guard under a “general” discharge for “unsatisfactory performance,” according to military spokeswoman Olmstead.
He was transferred to the Inactive Reserve as a private first class. That’s one or two ranks below where he should have been after nearly a decade in the Guard, but both Olmstead and Pentagon officials have declined to comment on Santiago’s final months in the Alaska squadron.
His military awards included the combat action badge, Army commendation medal and the good conduct medal, suggesting eight years of unblemished service before he joined the Alaska Guard.
When asked if he had frequently been absent without leave on drill dates or committed any other infraction that would terminate his military contract, Guard officials referred all questions to the Pentagon.
Officials there said that they needed to research the issues and have yet to respond to questions.