Tearful daughter pleads for her father's freedom

"It wasn't my dad,'' the Clemency Board hears from one of three daughters who once said he molested them.

By JULIE HAUSERMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 15, 2000

TALLAHASSEE -- While Norman Peterson sat behind bars in the Glades Correctional Institution on Thursday, his family begged Gov. Jeb Bush to set him free.

His 23-year-old daughter made a tearful appeal, saying the 46-year-old Peterson, convicted 10 years ago for molesting her and two of her sisters in Clewiston, is innocent.

But the family went home without an answer: Gov. Bush and the Cabinet, sitting as the Board of Executive Clemency, decided to take the case under advisement.

"There's still some information outstanding," Bush said. "I'll be making a decision based on that information pretty quick."

Peterson's three daughters, now grown, have signed affidavits saying that their mother told them to accuse their father 15 years ago in Clewiston. The parents were in the midst of a nasty split. The girls were ages 5, 6 and 8 at the time.

In the affidavits, the girls say they were not abused by their father but by another man, Walter Krieg, who was having an affair with their mother in Clewiston and later married her.

The family moved to Pennsylvania, where Krieg pleaded guilty to molesting and raping his stepdaughters. He was convicted and is serving a long sentence in Pennsylvania.

Shaking and crying in a cavernous Capitol meeting room Thursday, Peterson's daughter, Jennifer, approached the podium. "My stepfather, Walter Krieg, raped and abused me and threatened to kill me for 10 years," she said. "It wasn't my dad."

The other two daughters involved with the case, Rosemarie, 19, and Chavonne, 21, did not attend the hearing.

In telephone interviews with the St. Petersburg Times, Rosemarie was adamant about her father's innocence. Chavonne said she's having flashbacks and she's "not sure who the guy is."

Like her sisters, Chavonne signed the affidavit absolving her father and naming Krieg. Earlier this year, she also sent a letter to Bush, saying her father is innocent. Since then, she has broken with the family and moved away with a man she met on the Internet.

The rest of the family has turned its attention to freeing Peterson, who has been in Glades Correctional Institution since 1990. "It's hard for our family to understand how two people can be convicted for the same crime," said Dorothy Johnson, Peterson's cousin, who attended the hearing.

The girls' mother, Joyce Woodruff, denies coercing her daughters years ago. But in a telephone interview, she said she now believes Peterson is innocent.

The state attorney who oversees Hendry County, where the conviction occurred, did not come to Tallahassee on Thursday to oppose Peterson's release.

Tony Schall, a spokesman for State Attorney Joseph D'Alessandro, said Peterson is taking a lie detector test in prison. D'Alessandro also wants Chavonne, Rosemarie and Jennifer to take lie detector tests, Schall said.

"We don't know if the recantation is the truth or if the original testimony is the truth," Schall said. "Obviously, one of them is not true. It's just figuring out which one."

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