Brian Peixoto’s Final Appeal

When Peixoto was arrested in 1996, he was sent to Bridgewater State Hospital for a 20-day evaluation. First opened as an almshouse for paupers in the mid-1800s, the hospital played host to a Dickensian madhouse of drooling Thorazine dopers beating their heads against the walls and suicidal inmates with bandages on their arms. It was here, among this society, that Peixoto discovered he was on the lowest rung: He was a “baby killer.”

Only 30 minutes from Fall River, Bridgewater was staffed by corrections officers who drank at Oasis and knew about Peixoto’s case. Prison guards clipped newspaper articles about the investigation, Peixoto said, and handed them out to mentally ill inmates. “On the phone, we’d hear them yelling, ‘Baby killer, we’re going to get you,’” says his sister Brenda Peixoto. Brian would hang up quickly to spare his family. He learned to literally keep his back against a wall at all times, and refused to enter the unguarded showers where he had seen another inmate attacked, using the sink in his cell instead.

Peixoto wasn’t always successful. “Something happened to me that, to be honest with you, I would really rather not talk about,” Peixoto said of his time at Bridgewater, his usual tumbling cadence quiet and low. He will freely discuss an attack at another facility that left him with a fractured arm, or the times he was forced to drink out of his cell toilet and scrape saliva off the baloney sandwiches he was given, but the incident at Bridgewater is the only topic he flatly refuses to discuss, explaining that it is too difficult to relive and that it would make him vulnerable at his current facility. Peixoto’s family says he has also not been willing to speak to them about what happened.

Peixoto now lives in a cell at MCI-Concord. In December, he was seated in an empty visitors’ room, two prison officials and a guard a few chairs down, listening in. He has spent the past two decades coming to terms with the fact that nobody—outside of his family, some friends, and Munger—believes that he did not kill Christopher. Before Fitzgerald took his case, Peixoto said, “I never had an attorney who asked me questions coming from a place where she knew that I was innocent and she wanted to help me.” He has that twinkle of hope back, which he acknowledged is scary—he’s seen hope in prison, when dashed, lead to suicide—“but I’ve got it under control.”

The 46-year-old, first jailed 20 years ago, now has graying hair. He’s a little pudgy around the middle and dresses like the dad that he is—though he does his parenting in a visiting room and through collect calls—in a dark-gray V-neck sweater, slacks, and New Balance sneakers. He said he regrets treating Christopher and Tarisa like they were not his problem just because they were Sneed’s kids, and overlooking the neglect and possible abuse evident in the probate records his lawyer recently unearthed. “Although I never hurt Christopher—I did not murder Christopher—I had some culpability,” Peixoto said. “My culpability came in the form of I should have been more aware of what was going on.”

Since Peixoto’s conviction, Sneed—who told me that she became addicted to drugs following her son’s death “because it was the only way I knew how to deal with anything”—has been arrested frequently by the Fall River Police Department, on charges including check forgery, receiving stolen property, larceny, shoplifting, possession of drugs, possession of a hypodermic needle, and at least four counts of prostitution. She was convicted of felony breaking and entering and larceny in 2014. A police report in that case states that a “dope sick” Sneed and her boyfriend were caught after smashing the window of a Fall River home and stealing two flat-screen televisions and a women’s gold watch. She never did regain custody of Tarisa, who declined to comment through her father.

Peixoto realizes how stacked the odds are for a convicted murderer who has already burned through multiple appeals. He is reminded of that all-important Frontline episode, which had a bittersweet addendum: Ernie Lopez, the Texan accused of beating a child to death despite medical evidence to the contrary, successfully had his conviction overturned—but with a cruel twist. Facing a new trial, Lopez pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in order to be freed—having already served nine years in prison—rather than risk a new trial and another conviction. Asked if he would take the same deal, Peixoto didn’t hesitate: “No,” he said, mentioning his first defense attorney, who offered him a reduced charge and a shorter sentence. “If I took that plea bargain I’d be home already. The only thing I’ve ever had on my side all this time was that I told the truth.… So at this point I’m not going to stand up and say I did something I didn’t do.”

Unlike Lopez, Peixoto said, he isn’t wary of a new trial or facing another prosecution. “We know a lot more than we knew then,” Peixoto said. “They’re not going to be able to do to me what they did before.”