Rice/Poindexter Case - Duane Peak

Duane Peak

After hiding out for nearly a week, Duane Peak was arrested for the crime on August 28. In his first statement to police, he said that there was an envelope for him at NCCF headquarters. Inside, a note told him to go in back of the Lothrop Drug store and pick up a suitcase. He was instructed to take the suitcase to an address near 28th and Ohio that night and leave it on the field side of a fence. It also said for him to go to a particular payphone before 2 a.m. and wait for a phone call. The phone rang and a woman's voice told him to call 911 and report a woman dragged into 2867 Ohio. The police report indicates that he admitted to placing the 911 call. Peak mentioned neither Rice nor Poindexter. There are no police reports for August 29 or August 30, so it is unknown what transpired over that weekend. On August 31, Peak told the County Attorney in a deposition that Rice and Poindexter had made the bomb, told him to plant it, and then lure the police to the vacant house with an anonymous phone call. ATF Agent Tom Sledge, brother of the Omaha police officer assigned to the call, was present during Peak's deposition.

Subsequently, Rice and Poindexter were charged with Larry Minard's murder and convicted.

In an interview with the Washington Post on January 8, 1978, County Prosecutor Art O'Leary admitted that he had made a deal with Duane Peak to prosecute him as a juvenile in return for his testimony. O'Leary acknowledged that without Peak's testimony, the pair would not have been convicted.