California Mom Accused Of Planting Drugs In Volunteer's Car Wrote Novel About 'Perfect Crime'
June 22, 2012— -- Jill Easter, the California mom who, along with her husband, was accused of planting drugs in a school volunteer's car in an apparent act of revenge, wrote a novel about how to commit the perfect crime in 2011.
"The crime, shockingly simple and 100 percent possible. No one will get hurt and there's no way they can get caught," says a narrator in a YouTube trailer for Easter's 2011 novel "Holding House," which she wrote under the pen name Ava Bjork.
But the Easters' alleged crime didn't go down as smoothly.
Kent and Jill Easter, both 38, lawyers and parents of an elementary school student in Irvine, Calif., were arrested on Tuesday, allegedly for planting drugs in the car of Kelli Peters, a volunteer at their child's school.
Two years ago the couple accused Peters of locking their son out of school, leaving him alone and crying. The parents claimed Peters told them their son couldn't "keep up with the other kids."
Jill Easter attempted to file a restraining order under the pretense that Peters threatened to kill her. A judge denied it.
Peters' attorney, Alex Angulo, called the accusations a "joke" and said they were completely false.
"The Easters will have an opportunity to explain their conduct to a jury of their peers," Angulo told ABC News. He said that his client was trying to heal after the "life-changing and dramatic" experience.
The Easters were angry, and according to police, they hatched a plan to exact revenge on Peters.
"It is an absolute, over-the-top, irrational response to what would ordinarily be a minor dispute," Lt. Julia Engen of the Irvine Police said. "It's inexplicable."
Kent Easter drove to the home of the school volunteer, Kelli Peters, early on the morning of Feb. 16, 2011, and placed a bag of marijuana, Percocet and Vicodin on the driver's seat of her unlocked car, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office.
Later that afternoon, he allegedly called the Irvine Police Department's non-emergency number and, using a false name and phone number, told the dispatcher that he had seen Peters driving erratically and that she had parked at the elementary school, police said.
He also allegedly told police that he'd seen the woman hide a bag of drugs behind the driver's seat, and provided them with her full name and license plate number.
Police were able to see the bag of drugs from outside the vehicle, and they contacted Peters, who allowed them to search her car and her home. She was emphatic that the drugs weren't hers and that she had been in a classroom at the time Kent Easter claimed to have seen her put the drugs there, police said.
She was detained for felony drug possession, but Engen said the responding police officer could tell that something wasn't adding up based on the volunteer's adamant reaction and the fact that she'd been at school when the tipster claimed to have seen her.
"The caller couldn't have seen what he said he saw when he saw it," Engen said. "He [the officer] knew something was wrong with that call."
After police couldn't find any evidence to support drug use or possession, they began investigating whether the drugs had been planted in her car.
