Peter and Quee Choo Chadwick.Photo: Courtesy
The Chadwicksseemed like the perfect pair. Married for 21 years, the couple were raising three sons in a $2.5-million mansion in the tony California community of Newport Beach.
While Peter worked,Quee Choo, a Malaysia native affectionately known as “Q.C.,” was a stay-at-home mom who doted on her children.
But everything changed on Oct. 10, 2012. Police werealerted to the couple’s homewhen neither parent picked up two of their three sons from their private school in Huntington Beach.
At the home, police found an open safe in the downstairs office. In an upstairs bathroom was a broken red vase and blood spatter. And Q.C. was nowhere to be found.
“That’s when it looked like something was suspicious,” retired Lt. Ryan Peters of the Newport Beach Police Department said in an interview with20/20, for a two-hour episode on the case airing Friday, Oct. 21 on ABC. (An exclusive clip of the episode is shown below.)
“Before I took a step, I realized that this did not look like the rest of the house. I could see a broken vase along the edge of the bathtub. Soon as I saw the blood, you knew there was a story there,” Peters says.
Things took a grim turn the following day when San Diego police received a 911 call from Chadwick from a pay phone at a local gas station. He claimed that a house painter he hired — who he said was named “Juan” — killed Q. C. in the couple’s bathroom.
Peter Chadwick.
He was arrested on Oct. 11 at the Mexico border in San Diego and charged with the murder of Q.C.
He took authorities to a dumpster in San Diego County where she was found wrapped in a blanket.
the Chadwick’s home.Newport Beach Police Department
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He posted $1 million bail after two months in jail and surrendered his passports. He was living with his father in Santa Barbara in 2015 when he vanished without a trace.
U.S. Marshals, who were tasked with finding him, learned that Chadwick had been reading books on how to change his identity and “live off the grid.”
Finally, on Aug. 4, 2019, he wasfinally caughtnear Puebla, Mexico, after authorities learned that he was receiving assistance from people close to his family.
In Feb. 2022, Chadwick pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of his wife. He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
The two-hour20/20episode airs on Friday, Oct. 21 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and the next day on Hulu.
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go tothehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
source: people.com
