Accused killer of 8-year-old to be tried in District Court
Man charged with raping, killing Christin Lamb, waives preliminary hearing in Park County
By MICHAEL MILSTEIN
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
CODY, Wyo. - The Powell man accused in the July rape and murder of 8-year-old Christin Lamb on Monday waived his right to a preliminary hearing in Park County Court, sending his case to Wyoming District Court for trial.

James Eric Peterson, 22, had been scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Park County Court on Tuesday, when Judge John Housel would have had to decide whether there was probable cause to believe Peterson had committed a crime. If Housel had found probable cause, he would have sent Peterson on to District Court for trial.

PETERSON
waives hearing
By waiving his right to a preliminary hearing, Peterson does not admit guilt. But the move could be seen as tacit recognition that there is sufficient evidence to meet the probable cause requirement.

Peterson and his public defender, Wyatt Skaggs of Laramie, both signed the waiver of Peterson's preliminary hearing and faxed the document to Housel on Monday, Housel said.

The judge said Skaggs had offered no explanation for the move and added that the court does not require any explanation.

Skaggs declined to discuss the case when reached at his office in Laramie on Monday. He is also the public defender appointed to represent the suspects in the beating death of University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.

Gov. Jim Geringer linked the two cases during a press conference on Monday, when he wondered aloud why Lamb's July 19 death did not attract the nationwide attention Shepard's has.

"Wyoming is what America was," Geringer said. "Perhaps a lot of the national reaction is that Wyoming epitomizes what should be going on in America, not what is going on in America. How else could we recall the horror of Christin Lamb, an 8-year-old who was abducted out of her grandparents' yard, taken away, brutally raped and then murdered and dumped into a landfill, and it didn't even make a blip on the national press?

"Yet this one did," Geringer said of Shepard's death, "so we have to ask why. I think it has had a way of galvanizing America's conscience - that we're in danger of losing a conscience collectively in America."

Peterson was arrested Aug. 7 and charged with the rape and murder of Lamb, who lived in Laramie but was visiting Powell when she died.

Lamb's grandparents lived across the street from the trailer home of Peterson's estranged wife, where Peterson spent much of his time. Lamb disappeared July 19 after riding her scooter to a garden her grandfather maintained at a nearby home.

According to court documents, Peterson told investigators that Lamb came to his wife's trailer that night. He said he had sex with Lamb and that she then stopped breathing. Peterson then put her body in a duffel bag and put it in a Dumpster, which was subsequently emptied and its contents hauled to the county landfill outside Powell.

He then "volunteered to assist with the search (for Lamb) in an effort to keep the focus off himself," court documents said.

Volunteer searchers found Lamb's body in the landfill more than two weeks later.

Peterson also was charged with the rape of another, unidentified child sometime between June 1 and Aug. 5. He is being held in the Park County Jail without bond on the murder charge. His bond was set at $20,000 for each of the sexual assault charges.

Peterson had already waived his right to a speedy preliminary hearing before waiving his right to a preliminary hearing this week.

Upon receipt of the original waiver signed by both Peterson and Skaggs, Peterson's file will be transferred to Wyoming District Court in Cody, where a date will be set for Peterson's arraignment. At his arraignment, Peterson will be advised of the charges against him and his legal rights, and he can enter a plea, but is not required to.