[NY] From the diary of Juliet Alexander before NYPD Sgt Peters murdered her

"The fear in me is so strong

that I feel something is going to happen

and happen real soon...

When I met Martin Peters darkness took over my life...

I guess that I was not quite mature enough to deal with an older man. Although I was a woman who was physically, mentally and verbally abused, I was not strong enough to talk to somebody about it...

I want to rise above all my downfalls...

I want to be free of Martin Peters. I want to be able to go on with my life, without living in fear.

I want a miracle.

I want to wake up one day and all this harassment and this abuse is all over...

As Martin once said to me,

'If I can't have you, no one will.'

Now you see why

I keep looking over my shoulders.

If this is the way it has to end,

I am prepared to meet my maker.

The end."

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Detention Enforcement Officer Juliet "Wendy" Alexander was murdered by the father of her 2 children, ex-boyfriend New York Police Sgt. Martin Peters on January 16, 2001.

NOTES FROM THE NEWS:

1/17/2001

NYPD POLICE SGT. MARTIN PETERS QUESTIONED IN DEATH OF JULIET PETERS - Cops were questioning a police sergeant last night in connection with the murder of his ex-girlfriend - the mother of his two children. A man was also shot... The wounded man, Nigel Callender, 32, was hit by gunshots in the neck and back... Callender was expected to survive, but he will be left paralyzed, police officials said. "His story had changed a number of times," said one high-ranking police source... Neighbors told detectives they saw two men climbing in a window of Alexander's apartment before the shooting... Officers said Peters had gone to Alexander's apartment in the morning to pick up their two children, an 8-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl, and take them to school... "His record is unremarkable," said the high-ranking official. "There is no history of domestic violence that we know of"... Alexander worked as a guard for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Manhattan. She carried a gun on the job, but wasn't supposed to take it home. Cops found the weapon in the apartment, but said it did not appear it had been fired... Peters is regarded as a hard-working cop who often took on outside security work. He worked the midnight to 8 a.m. shift and had been studying for a nursing degree.

1/18/2001

SGT. PETERS STRIPPED OF GUN AND BADGE - Officials stripped a police sergeant of his gun and badge yesterday as cops worked to solve the mysterious murder of his ex-girlfriend - the mother of his two children... Sgt. Martin Peters, 36, was put on modified assignment and placed on desk duty after investigators questioned him about the Tuesday-morning murder of 29-year-old Juliet Alexander. Alexander was shot three times in the face and neck with two different guns... One of the weapons was a .32-caliber handgun, and the other was a .380 automatic, cops said... Cops were called to Alexander's Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment by Nigel Callender, 32, who was shot in the hand and neck in the attack and left paralyzed below the shoulders. Callender first told cops that Peters was the shooter - then he changed his story to say he didn't know who the attacker was...

4/30/2001

JULIET'S MOM AND KIDS MISS HER SO - ...In front of the open coffin, Juliet Alexander's 9-year-old son, Randall, and daughter, Reneshia, 5, stood rigidly, too stunned by their mother's sudden death to even cry. "Why is my mommy so cold?" the little girl asked. Just then, mourners heard a commotion outside. "You have no right to keep me out!" Alexander's estranged companion, Martin Peters, yelled at two patrol cops refusing him entrance. "I'm a sergeant. I'm your boss. You can't do this." There was good reason Peters was kept out of Alexander's wake, and eventually escorted from the area. In the minds of Alexander's family, and even among his NYPD colleagues, Peters was the prime suspect in her slaying... Peters, 36, the father of Raneshia and Randall, was questioned and placed on modified duty. He has denied any wrongdoing... The day Alexander was slain, she had planned to apply for additional child support for the children's Catholic schooling, said her mother, Sylvia Garcia... She had a new boyfriend, Robert Allen, who adored her. She enjoyed her job and hoped to become a Secret Service agent. Her children were flourishing. "It is hard for me to talk about my daughter," said Garcia, who is now raising her grandchildren. "Her children ask me every day where their mother is. I brought my kids here for a better life. It's the last thing you expect, that her life would be taken... She should have called the police so many times," Garcia said. Anne Marie Thomas, 30, who has known Alexander for 17 years, said she, too, had urged her friend to get help. "She used to come to me with bruises and crying, but she was scared calling the cops because he was a cop." Thomas said...

Apr 13, 2005
[NY] FEDS ARREST SGT PETERS - GF JULIET ALEXANDER MURDERED - ... Peters had been on desk duty since the Jan. 16, 2001, murder of his ex-girlfriend, Juliet Alexander, 29, the mother of his two children. Police believe Peters got a friend, Nigel Callender, to kill Alexander and then shot him, but they haven't been able to prove it... Peters could be seen trembling as Fox discussed his case...

Apr 13, 2005
[NY] WHO KILLED JULIET ALEXANDER?
...Anne Marie Thomas, 30, who has known Alexander for 17 years, said she, too, had urged her friend to get help. "She used to come to me with bruises and crying, but she was scared calling the cops because he was a cop," Thomas said. The problems escalated last year when Alexander successfully took Peters to Family Court to force him to pay child support...

Apr 14, 2005
[NY] NEWS ON MURDERED JULIET ALEXANDER FROM 2001 - ... Alexander was shot three times in the face and neck with two different guns, police determined yesterday - leading them to believe there may have been two gunmen involved...

5/15/05
[NY] NYPD SGT. PETERS ARRESTED FOR KILLING MOTHER OF HIS CHILDREN - ...Detectives from the department's Cold Case Squad and the Internal Affairs Bureau, along with federal agents, arrested Sgt. Martin C. Peters early yesterday outside his Harlem home, where he tried to run and was tackled by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, one investigator said... After dropping off their two kids at school Jan. 16, 2001, Peters allegedly returned to the Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment of his estranged wife, Juliet Alexander, and shot her three times in the head and face. Peters then shot his best friend, Nigel Callender, now 36, who was also in the apartment, in the head, neck and hand, paralyzing him, according to an indictment... Callender now says Peters killed Alexander, then shot him. Spanakos said Callender declined to identify Peters as the assailant in the past because Peters threatened to kill Callender and his family... In court yesterday, prosecutor Mike Spanakos said Peters was upset that Alexander, 29, a guard at a Manhattan immigration detention center, had started dating another man and was also seeking additional child support. "Mr. Peters told Ms. Alexander he would not give her any more money and he repeatedly punched her," he said. "When she attempted to flee, he shot her several times in the head."... Months after the killing, Sergeant Peters won custody of the children, and the 13-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl have since lived with him and his wife, according to the authorities, who said that Ms. Alexander's mother, Sylvia Garcia, was expected to seek custody soon... Ms. Garcia rejoiced at the charges yesterday. "Now I feel on top of this world," she said, "because after four years I had hopes that one day justice would be served, and, thank God, it was... I will never see my daughter again... The only thing I can look forward to is him in jail for the rest of his life. He has to pay for what he has done."

8/26/2006
EX-NYPD SGT PETERS FOUND GUILTY OF KILLING JULIET ALEXANDER - An ex-cop who almost got away with his ex-girlfriend's murder by threatening to kill the only witness was convicted. His friend Nigel Callender, who was left paralyzed by the attack, said Peters had been complaining about Alexander's demands for money for months. The day of the murder, he said, the couple got into a physical fight at her apartment. When she fled for the door, Peters pulled out a gun from his waistband... Prosecutors charged that Peters killed Alexander, 29, in her Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment after she refused to back down from pursuing child support payments for their son and daughter. Last week, the ex-cop took the witness stand and told jurors he "never" would have harmed the mother of his two children. He noted he even gained custody of the kids after her death... Callender finally cooperated with prosecutors when he was charged with immigration fraud. Prosecutors cut him a deal in return for his help with the case...

'GHOST' HAUNTS MURDERER: GAL PAL'S WORDS PUT KILLER COP IN JAIL FOR LIFE

New York Post
By Alex Ginsberg
October 26, 2006

A federal immigration agent, coldly gunned down by her cop boyfriend, spoke from beyond the grave yesterday, her words of fear and anguish - written shortly before her violent death - given voice by the prosecutor at her killer's sentencing.

"I feel something is going to happen and happen real soon," Juliet "Wendy" Alexander wrote on Jan. 3, 2001 - 13 days before she was shot three times in the head in her Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, home.

In the roughly 400-word personal essay, found on a computer disk by cold-case detectives hunting her killer, the 29-year-old Alexander wrote with chilling prescience of ex-beau Martin Peters, an NYPD sergeant with whom she was embroiled in a nasty child-support battle.

"Martin once said to me, 'If I can't have you, no one will,' " she wrote in the essay, read in court by Assistant DA Michel Spanakos. "Now you see why I keep looking over my shoulders. If this is the way it has to end, I am prepared to meet my maker."

Peters, 43, was convicted in September of shooting Alexander and putting his own best friend, Nigel Callender, in a wheelchair for life. At trial, jurors heard evidence that Peters had a six-figure debt and was struggling to make hefty child-support payments.

Callender insisted to investigators that the shooter was a stranger, but in 2005, under pressure, he flipped and agreed to testify, braving death threats from his former buddy.

Alexander's heart-rending essay wasn't admissible as evidence at the trial, but proved useful at sentencing yesterday in sealing Peters' fate: 43 years to life in state prison for murder, attempted murder and witness intimidation.

In the essay, Alexander revisited the tortured landscape of their 15 years together, much of which came out at trial before Justice Priscilla Hall - but never in her own words.

"When I met Martin Peters darkness took over my life," she wrote. "I always thought that everyone had a mind of their own. I guess that I was not quite mature enough to deal with an older man. Although I was a woman who was physically, mentally and verbally abused, I was not strong enough to talk to somebody about it."

Investigators found a card bearing an 800 number for domestic-violence support in the dead woman's wallet, but no evidence she ever used it.

Peters, who has maintained his innocence throughout and even testified in his own defense, remained defiant.

"I would like to let the court know that I did not kill Wendy," said Peters. "I did not shoot Nigel. These are things I would not think of doing and I am not responsible for any of these crimes."

Mingled with the foreboding in Alexander's writing was the sense that she was on the verge of moving past Peters and leading a normal, happy life.

"I want to rise above all my downfalls," she wrote. "I want to be free of Martin Peters. I want to be able to go on with my life, without living in fear. I want a miracle. I want to wake up one day and all this harassment and this abuse is all over."

SAW HER OWN DEATH: COP IN GRIM DIARY ENTRY GETS 43 YRS.
New York Daily News
BY NANCIE L. KATZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
October 26, 2006

Juliet Alexander and police officer Martin Peters had a stormy relationship - and in her diary, she predicted he'd kill her.

Peters was sentenced yesterday to 43 years to life in her murder.

Juliet Alexander knew she was going to be killed.

And her prophetic words - written just days before her ex-lover, an NYPD sergeant, pumped three bullets into her head - resounded yesterday at his sentencing in a courtroom packed with her weeping relatives and friends.

"When I met Martin Peters, darkness took over my life," Alexander, 29, typed on Jan. 3, 2001, into the personal diary she kept on her computer.

"The fear in me is so strong that I feel something is going to happen and happen real soon," Brooklyn prosecutor Michael Spanakos read, quoting from her entry.

"As Martin once said to me, 'If I can't have you, no one will.' Now you see why I keep looking over my shoulders. If this is the way it has to end, I am prepared to meet my maker.

"The end."

Peters, 43, who joined the NYPD in 1996, had bragged that his status as an officer would shield him from suspicion.

But last month he was convicted of killing Alexander and shooting and paralyzing his friend, Nigel Callender, who witnessed the Jan. 16, 2001, murder.

Yesterday, a judge slammed him with a prison term of 43 years to life, as he continued to profess his innocence.

"I did not kill Wendy," he told Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Hall, referring to Alexander's nickname. "These are things I would not think of doing."

But prosecutors said Peters killed Alexander, a federal immigration officer, because she had been demanding he pay child support for their two children.

Dubbed Marty the Murderer by fellow cops, Peters evaded arrest for four years by threatening to kill Callender if he ever ratted - and even gained custody of his children.

Then savvy NYPD Cold Case detectives finally threatened to press immigration charges against Callender if he did not testify.

He relented and told jurors how Peters attacked Alexander - then shot him when he refused to help.

Yesterday, Alexander's mother, Sylvia Garcia, said Peters used his position in the NYPD to intimidate her family and keep them from reporting years of physical and verbal abuse against her daughter.

In the diary, discovered by detectives in 2004, Alexander wrote, "What do I want out of my life? I want to be free of Martin Peters. I want to go on with my life without living in fear. I wanted to reach the top. ... I want a miracle."

Hall's sentence may not have been that. But for Garcia, it brought justice.

"He deserved what he got," she said. "Finally, I can put my daughter to rest."
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