Five days before Christmas, Tamara Lyerla Pickarts will travel to speak on her uncle’s behalf — 30 years after his murder in Lompoc — in a bid to stop his killer from being paroled.
It’s a trip she and her relatives have made several times already, and one they dread. But they do it for Harold “Skeeter” Lyerla, killed in November 1988 at age 29 at his Lompoc home.
“We’re his voice,” Pickarts said, including her mom, Lyerla’s sister, who also will make the trip.
Lyerla’s aging mother is unable to make the journey.
“If we don’t go, no one else is going to speak for him,” Pickarts explained.
For months, she has rallied friends and strangers to sign a petition opposing parole for Victor Perea, now 69, who was convicted of the murder. She recently reached 1,000 signatures.
The family fears that this time the parole board won’t deliver the decision his relatives seek — that Perea remain incarcerated.
“I’m really worried they’re going to let him out this time,” Pickarts said. “I’m trying to do everything I can to stop that from happening.”
Perea first became eligible for parole in 2007 and has been denied several times, according to state records. Pickarts said the denials occured because Perea didn’t express remorse.
“I know he’s not remorseful,” she said. “They’re just looking for a reason to let him out. That’s what’s scaring me.”
Lyerla grew up in Santa Barbara and attended Santa Barbara High School. An avid motocross rider, he was known as a fun-loving guy with a lot of friends, according to his niece.
He married Cynthia Knox, and they settled in Lompoc and had a daughter.
But the married woman allegedly had an affair with an Agoura Hills investor and rancher, John Litchfield, leading to the accusations that he, or they, hired Perea to kill Lyerla, according to a 2017 story in the Houston Chronicle. Perea reportedly worked for Litchfield and lived in a house on his property until the day of the killing, the newspaper reported.
Evidence included the discovery of the defendant’s fingerprint at the murder scene, the Chronicle reported. Authorities don’t believe that Perea knew Lyerla.
For years, Perea remained mostly mum about what led to the killing.
“They couldn’t prove murder-for-hire because he wouldn’t confess,” Pickarts said.
Six years ago during a parole suitability hearing, Perea admitted receiving money for the killing, she said.
“He took money to kill my uncle, and I want him to stay in prison,” Pickarts said. “A guy like that shouldn’t be walking the streets. He’s dangerous.”
The allegations of murder-for-hire recently received new attention because of an arrest in Texas for identity theft and other charges seemingly unrelated to the Lompoc homicide. Living under a false identity, Lyerla’s widow, Cynthia Lynn Knox, was working as a Galveston-area dinner cruise ship captain, along with her partner — John Litchfield — when she was arrested.
At the federal hearing, prosecutors alleged that Knox stole the identity of an infant, Christina White, who died the same day she was born in 1965.
In 1992, Knox used a certified copy of the birth certificate to obtain a Social Security number in the name of the dead infant, according to federal court documents. Knox was born in Los Angeles; the real Christina White was born in Santa Ana.
In the years following Lyerla’s murder, Knox allegedly used the stolen identity to obtain driver’s licenses, passports, merchant mariner licenses and transit worker identification credentials. She also purchased a firearm using the stolen identity, according to federal court documents.
After reaching a plea deal for two charges in federal court, Knox was ordered to spend three years in prison for false statements in a passport application as well as for aggravated identity theft, federal court records state.
Authorities discovered Knox’s true identity when her fingerprints were taken in connection with a mariner license application and were compared to those taken in 1988 and 1989 during the investigation into the murder of her husband, according to State Department representatives.
Additionally, retired Lompoc police Detective Harry Heidt identified the defendant as the woman known as Cynthia Knox Lyerla, widow of the Lompoc murder victim, according to federal court documents.
Ironically, Knox, now 54, is back in California, where she is serving her sentence at Dublin Federal Correctional Institution. She is to be released in February 2020.
Adding more intrigue to the case, Lyerla’s isn’t the only death to which the family believes Knox is connected. Knox and Lyerla’s young daughter drowned in a fish pond after two other suspicious events nearly caused the toddler’s death.
During the federal hearing, Knox’s attorney denied she had any role in the deaths of her former husband or their 13-month-old daughter, the Chronicle reported in its story on her July 2017 sentencing.
Unresolved questions about the death of Lyerla and his daughter have left his surviving family frustrated three decades later.
“We don’t even have a feeling of justice,” Pickarts said.
Through the years, Lompoc police detectives have logged hundreds of hours investigating Lyerla’s death, according to Sgt. Kevin Martin, who has read the files.
“It’s a challenge because the case is so old, but it is still being worked,” he said, adding that LPD considers it an active case.
However, any case against Litchfield regarding the murder-for-hire allegation ended with his death several months ago.
Martin said he has no doubt that insurance money served as the motive for Lyerla’s and later the daughter’s deaths. But commonplace tools that investigators use today— such as cellphone tracking and digital evidence — weren’t available three decades ago.
“A lot of the techniques we use today that quickly solve cases just weren’t available back then,” Martin said.
The veteran police officer said the widow’s actions raised questions. While most wives attend the trial of the person accused of killing a spouse, Knox was noticeably absent when Perea’s case went to trial.
“She did not show up for one second of the trial, and was missing, and they had no idea where she was,” Martin said.
Decades later, Lompoc police learned the whereabouts of Lyerla’s widow only upon her arrest for federal identify-theft charges.
The case with its many twists and turns has sparked several newspaper articles upon Knox’s arrest, and recently was the focus of an April television magazine show, 20/20 Homicide on ID: A Trail of Death.
“There is so much in this case, it’s just unbelievable,” Martin said.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.