How cops caught Paul Peters
A new picture has emerged of how police nabbed hoax collar-bomber Paul Peters, and it offers a fascinating insight into detective work.
From tracing a credit card used to buy a baseball bat, to tracking down the person checking email from a public library computer, Peters left plenty of clues for police.
Pictures also reveal how authorities got him.
The investment banker turned rookie extortionist was caught buying the baseball bat he'd use to threaten Maddie Pulver.
"From our point of view it wasn't clumsy, it was detailed and lot of planning went into this," father Bill Pulver said.
On August 3 last year, Paul Peters entered the Pulver home, attached the collar bomb device and fled.
Peters' first mistake was that he left a Gmail address with the device, which left a trail from the attack at Maddie's Mosman home, to Kincumber where just after 4 o’clock he checked his email at the public library.
Then to Avoca Beach Video, where he checked it again at 5:25 and 5:51.
It took just two weeks before police had him collared, in Kentucky, USA.
But of all the mistakes Paul Peters made, none was perhaps as big as his very first.
Police and prosecution still believe he targeted the wrong house. He meant to raid the home next door to Maddie's.
The 52-year-old claimed he was victim to a triple collapse of career, marriage and mental health, and that he'd simply been caught up acting out the novel he was trying to write.
Peters has plenty of time to finish it now.
