Killer infatuated with an old flame poisoned his wife’s ice cream
Peggy Pettis was looking forward to retirement with husband David – but he wanted her gone so he could pursue his high school sweetheart
After driving a school bus for more than 20 years, Peggy Pettis had been looking forward to retiring. The 64-yearold loved gardening at the home she shared with her husband David Pettis in Cheney, Washington, although her life was made difficult by the pain she had lived with since a freak accident.
In 2016, Peggy had been gored by a boar while working on their family farm. The sharp tooth had sunk deep into her leg and the injury left her with a limp as well as persistent pain.
She took the opioid painkiller hydrocodone and her husband helped her to manage her ongoing discomfort.
Peggy and Pettis had been married 33 years and had an adult son and daughter. But while Peggy was proud of her three-decade marriage, Pettis had become distracted.
In November 2017, he had gone to New York to attend a funeral and while he was there, he reconnected with Robin – an old childhood friend and high school girlfriend.
It sparked an infatuation. Robin was separated from her husband and Pettis made it very clear he wanted to be with her.
Over the next seven months, he messaged her constantly, telling her that he was no longer intimate with Peggy and referring 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. Astonishingly, Pettis even put a picture of him and Robin on social media with the caption “feeling in love”.
When family members saw it, they were
concerned he was having an affair.
Robin was confused about the situation – and even more so when she got a message from a woman claiming to be Peggy, saying that it was OK if she was intimate with her husband.
Pettis said he would visit Robin soon – but then tragedy struck.
On 25 June 2018, he called 911 to say his wife had turned blue and wasn’t breathing. Emergency services rushed to their home.
Pettis said he’d fallen asleep on the sofa at around 8.30pm and woke up two hours later to find Peggy lying face-down on the bedroom floor. He said he’d attempted CPR. Paramedics took over but they were sadly unable to revive her and Peggy was pronounced dead at around 11.10pm.
Her sudden and tragic death was a huge shock and her loved ones wanted answers.
An autopsy was arranged but Pettis surprised everyone by calling the medical examiner around 10 times to pester her to produce the report faster.
The toxicology results were taking longer than usual and Pettis was seemingly frustrated. He even called the toxicology department in an attempt to hurry things up.
His reason? Pettis said he needed to claim on the life insurance policy to pay for Peggy’s funeral.
It was unusual behaviour for a grieving husband and when the report was finally revealed, it raised even more questions. Peggy had a lethal level of hydrocodone in her system. How had she managed to overdose?
Pettis had recently been telling people he thought Peggy was suffering from early onset dementia. Had that led to the deadly mistake?
Life insurance claims
When interviewed by police, he admitted that he would help Peggy take her medication because she had difficulty swallowing, and that he’d done it the night she’d died.
He described how he had crushed some hydrocodone into a powder and mixed it with ice cream – which he then put in alcohol, like an ice cream float. It had been Pettis who had dosed his wife that night and there was no evidence that Peggy had suffered from dementia. In fact, she had been given a medical for a life insurance policy that was taken out just weeks before her death and passed without any issues.
And as well as hounding the medical team involved in the autopsy, Pettis was harassing the life insurance policy agents and complaining about how long his claim was taking.
Police also discovered that Pettis had contacted an estate agent in New York before Peggy died. He’d said that he was looking to move there and when they had spoken about the timescale, he’d allegedly said, “Hoping to be there next month, wish I could be there sooner.”
While investigators pieced together all the evidence, Pettis went to New York to see Robin. Peggy had only been dead four days when he started making the arrangements to go.
Pettis 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 caused tension between the pair when she started to question him. Pettis decided to leave and snapped at her, “The next thing out of your mouth will be that I killed my wife.”
Investigators certainly thought he had. They concluded that Pettis had ground up more than the recommended dose of Peggy’s painkillers and used them to spike her ice cream. He had created a deadly cocktail that Peggy had unwittingly drank.
Pettis 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 the claim that he was in love with another woman was a lie. He said that he and Robin were “like family”.
But he was arrested again in spring 2019 and finally faced a first-degree murder rap. After delays caused by the pandemic, Pettis’ trial started in December last year.
The prosecution said he had killed his wife and the motive was money – plus his desire to start a new life with his former girlfriend.
Experts couldn’t say how many pills Pettis had ground up and stirred into the ice cream – but it must have been around 10 times what is considered a “therapeutic amount”.
It was clear when witnesses were called to testify 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 his mum’s death.
But their daughter Elizabeth testified that Peggy would crush her own pain medication into ice cream, puddings or soft food to make them easier to swallow.
She also described her mum as having “coughing fits” from something as simple as sipping water and insisted that her father’s actions that night were completely normal.
‘Greedy and uncaring’
The “other woman”, Robin, took the stand and admitted that she had been intimate with Pettis.
The defence said that wasn’t what she had told police at the time.
“Not once did she mention what she testified to in court,” Pettis’ lawyer 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 Peggy’s death was accidental and even hinted at suicide, although her family disputed that.
But the jury also heard from the prosecution that Pettis had taken out three life insurance policies on his wife – one that came into effect just days before her death.
The jury found Pettis, 60, guilty of first-degree murder and he bowed his head when he heard the verdict. He was sentenced last month.
Peggy’s family were given the chance to share their heartbreak and her sister read several victim impact statements from loved ones.
“Peggy was the sweetest, loving, most accepting person I knew…” she said. “We will spend the rest of our days missing her.”
She also spoke about the lack of remorse shown by Pettis, adding, “He’s only sorry he didn’t get away with murdering Peggy.”
The judge told Pettis, “Frankly, sir, you were selfish and uncaring. You killed her because you wanted a new life without Peggy Pettis in it.
“Mr Pettis, you were greedy.
And you killed Peggy for exactly this reason. Because you wanted it all.
This took planning. This took thought. This took scheming.”
Pettis was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
He had wanted his unsuspecting wife out of his life just as she thought they were about to begin a new chapter in their life together – and his cold-hearted plan had been served up hidden in an ice-cold dish.
He’d created a deadly cocktail using strong opioids