COLD HEARTED
Peggy Pettis was in pain, but that was all about to end…
After spending over 20 years as a school bus driver, Peggy Pettis had been looking forward to her retirement years.
Peggy, 64, loved gardening and enjoyed planting flowers at her home that she shared with her husband, David Pettis, in Cheney, Spokane County, Washington.
But frustratingly, Peggy was in physical pain after an unusual freak accident.
In 2016, Peggy had been gored by a boar while working on their family farm.
Its sharp tooth had sunk deep into her leg and the injury had left her with a limp, as well as suffering with persistent pain.
Peggy took the opioid painkiller, hydrocodone, and her caring husband helped her to manage her discomfort levels.
Peggy and
David had been married for 33 years, and they shared an adult son and daughter.
But while Peggy was proud of her three-decade marriage, David was distracted.
In November 2017, David had gone to New York to attend a funeral. While there, he reconnected with an old childhood friend, and highschool girlfriend, Robin.
An infatuation was reignited. Robin was separated from her husband, and David made it very clear he wanted to be with her.
Over the next seven months, David messaged her constantly. David told her that he was no longer intimate with Peggy and he even referred to Robin as his ‘New York wife’ or ‘East Coast wife’.
He spoke about Robin coming to Cheney during the summer of 2018 and talked about proposing to her and moving to New York so they could be together.
David even put a picture of him and Robin together on social media, with the caption: feeling in love.
When family members saw the cosy snap, they were concerned that David was having an affair.
Robin was confused about the situation, and even more so when she received a message from a woman claiming to be Peggy, saying it was ‘OK’ if she was intimate with her husband.
David said he would visit Robin soon, but then tragedy struck.
On 25 June, David called 911 to say that his wife had turned blue, and she wasn’t breathing.
Emergency services rushed to their home.
David said that he’d fallen asleep on the sofa around 8.30pm and when he woke up two hours later, he found Peggy lying face down on the bedroom floor.
He’d attempted CPR and the paramedics took over, but they were unable to revive her.
Peggy was pronounced dead around 11.10pm.
An autopsy was arranged to determine what had caused Peggy’s sudden and tragic death – it was a huge shock, and her loved ones wanted some answers.
But widow David surprised everyone by calling the medical examiner around 10 times, to pester her to produce the autopsy report faster.
The toxicology results were taking longer than usual, and David was seemingly getting
Family were concerned David was cheating
very frustrated. He even called the toxicology department to try and hurry them along.
His reason? David said he needed to make a claim on the life insurance policy, in order to pay for Peggy’s funeral.
It was unusual behaviour for a grieving husband and when the report was revealed, it raised more questions. It turned out Peggy had a lethal level of the painkiller hydrocodone in her system.
How had she managed to overdose? David had recently been telling people he thought that Peggy was suffering from early onset dementia. Had that led to the deadly mistake? When David was interviewed by police, he admitted that he
would help Peggy take her medication as she had difficulty swallowing, and that he’d done it the night she’d died.
He described how the night of his wife’s death, he had crushed up hydrocodone into a powder and mixed it with ice cream – which he then put in alcohol, like an ice cream float.
It had been David who had dosed his wife that night – and there was no evidence Peggy had dementia.
In fact, she had been given a medical for a life insurance policy that had been taken out just weeks before her death, and had passed without issue.
There was no sign Peggy had memory problems and suspiciously, David was the beneficiary of the policy.
As well as hounding the medical team involved in Peggy’s autopsy, David was harassing the life insurance policy agents and complaining about how long it was taking.
Police also discovered that David has contacted a real estate agent in New York before Peggy had died.
He’d said that he was looking to move there and when they had spoken about the time scale, he allegedly said: ‘Hoping to be there next month, wish I could be there sooner’.
While investigators pieced together all the evidence, David went to New York to see Robin.
Peggy had been dead just four days when he started making arrangements to go.
David had downplayed his relationship with his high school sweetheart to police, but he was still insisting to Robin that he wanted to be with her.
Robin was concerned about Peggy’s sudden death, and it started to cause tension between the pair when she questioned him.
David decided to leave and snapped at Robin: ‘The next thing out of your mouth will be that I killed my wife.’
Investigators certainly thought he had.
They concluded that David had ground up more than the recommended dose of Peggy’s painkillers – and then spiked her ice cream.
He had deliberately created the deadly cocktail that poor Peggy had unwittingly, and willingly, drank.
David was arrested in October 2018, but months later the charge was dropped.
At the time, he told the local media that he would never hurt his wife and that claims that he was in love with another woman were a lie.
David said that him and Robin were ‘like family’.
But he was arrested again in spring 2019 and finally faced first-degree murder charges.
After delays, due to covid, David’s trial started in December 2021.
The prosecution said that David had killed his wife – the motive was money, and his desire to start a new life with his former girlfriend.
Experts couldn’t say how many pills that David had potentially ground up and stirred into the alcoholic ice cream float, but they said it was 10 times what is considered a ‘therapeutic amount’.
When witnesses testified, it was clear that Peggy’s death had divided her family.
When her son David Jr. took the stand, he said he thought his dad did have something to do with her death.
While their daughter Elizabeth testified that Peggy had even crushed her own pain medication into ice creams, puddings, or soft food in the past, to make them easier to swallow.
Elizabeth described her mum having ‘coughing fits’ from something as simple as sipping water and insisted that her father’s actions that night were completely normal.
Robin took the stand and admitted that she had been intimate with David.
The defence argued that wasn’t what she had told police at the time.
‘Not once did she mention what she testified to in court,’ David’s laywer said in closing arguments. ‘I’m not going to sugar coat it. He was acting inappropriately with [Robin], but this trial is not about an affair. He’s not on trial for having an emotional affair.’
The defence said that Peggy’s death was accidental, or even hinted at suicide – although her heartbroken family disputed that.
But the jury also heard from the prosecution that David had taken out three life insurance policies on his wife – one that came into effect just days before Peggy’s death.
The jury found David, 60 guilty of first-degree murder.
He bowed his head when he heard the verdict.
In January this year, he faced sentencing. Peggy’s family shared their heartbreak. Her sister read victim impact statements from her loved ones.
‘Peggy was the sweetest, loving, most accepting person,’ she said. ‘We will spend the rest of our days missing her.’ She spoke about David’s lack of remorse. ‘He’s only sorry he didn’t get away with murdering Peggy,’ she said. The judge addressed David. ‘Frankly sir, you were selfish and uncaring,’ he said. ‘You killed her because you wanted a new life without Peggy in it. You were greedy. And you killed Peggy for this reason. Because you wanted it all. This took planning. This took thought. This took scheming.’ David was jailed for 25 years. He’d wanted his wife out the way – and his cold-hearted plan had been served up in an ice-cold dish.