KIM PETERSON

On Saturday, November 8, 1980, 11-year-old Kim Peterson met Bishop at a Salt Lake City roller-skating rink. They talked about skates, Kim mentioning that he would like to sell his and buy a new pair. Bishop feigned interest, telling Peterson he would pay $35 for the skates. It is unclear whether Bishop agreed to meet Kim on Sunday, or what name he used, but Peterson left home with the skates on November 9, telling his parent he had found a buyer. No names were mentioned, but he promised to come straight home after the transaction was concluded.

He never made it.

Police were called to the Peterson home near sundown, when Kim failed to return in time for dinner. Another fruitless search began, including a canvass of skaters from the rink where Kim had met his presumed abductor on Saturday. Several witnesses recalled a youth of Peterson's description, talking to a man aged 25 to 35, full-faced with glasses, wearing blue jeans and an army-style jacket or parka. Two of the witnesses agreed to be hypnotized, the session producing further details: dark hair and bushy eyebrows, weight around 200 pounds. One skater claimed the man had driven away in a silver Chevy Camaro with out-of-state license tags, perhaps from Nevada.

The leads were useless.

Police saw no similarity to their suspect in "Roger Downs," living in an apartment several blocks from Kim Peterson's home. Again, they questioned him routinely, making no connection to the Daniels case. Nothing in the bland 29-year-old's demeanor let them know that he had bludgeoned Kim Peterson to death and buried his corpse near Alonzo's, outside Cedar Fort.

There was plenty of room in the desert, and murder was easier the second time around. Bishop still feared arrest, still spared his victims if they promised not to talk, but he was learning that murder provided a rush all its own.

In time, he would begin to crave it like a drug.

In the year after he killed Alonzo Daniels, Bishop sought a less dangerous outlet for his deadly urges. Instead of children, he decided to kill puppies, adopting 15 or 20 from Salt Lake City animal shelters over the next 13 months, using them as surrogates for children. "It was so stimulating," he later told Detective Don Bell (quoted in the Deseret News). "A puppy whines just like Alonzo did. I would get frustrated at the whining. I would hit them with hammers or drown them or strangle them."

Bishop's neighbors never seemed to notice, and if they had, cruelty to animals was a cut-rate misdemeanor, nothing to compare with kidnapping and murdering a child. Still, puppies only went so far toward satisfying Bishop's urges. He continued to molest children sporadically, using charm or threats to prevent them from carrying tales. Only resistance or the threat of prison seemed to spark his killer instinct and push Bishop over the edge.

Inasmuch as a couple of these are closed cases some of the victims story is here to indicate the severity of the problem, the importance for us to never take for granted the preciousness of our children, their safety, and the impotence we take a stand. I am not talking about making excuses for adults actions when they rape and kill a child, in my opinion there is no excuse. But the question I have addressed with Congress is how many do we have to loose before enough is enough. I have encourage people like Operah Whinfrey, John Walsh, to make a stand to help us change an injustice to our children and young people. I have often said, the old cliché “The only thing that will allow evil to prevail; is for good men and woman to stand and do nothing.” It is very true, when we refuse to take action, we have made a choice as to where we stand.

If you have any information on any crimes having to do with Crimes Against Children Please Do Not Hesitate to call the FBI if you wish you do not have to report your name just please call if you know any information concerning a child.
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