True crime podcasts often focus on the “who” and the “how” of a murder. But the most compelling stories force us to ask a far more difficult question: “Why?”
In a gripping and emotionally raw interview, the podcast “I Sat Down With A Killer” delves into one of the most complex cases imaginable. This isn’t a story of a random, senseless act of violence. It’s the story of Clark Fredericks, a man who killed his childhood abuser, and the decades of trauma that led to that fateful night.
The episode begins not with the crime, but with its aftermath. Detective Ryan arrives at a secluded home to a scene of horrific violence. A man lies dead in his living room, his throat nearly slit, surrounded by evidence of a brutal, prolonged attack. The cause of death is clear: murder by hunting knife. But nothing else is.
A single, out-of-place bloody footprint outside a bedroom door and a mysterious act—the killer spitting on the bed—suggest this was personal. The victim was hunted in his own home. It doesn’t take long for the investigation to lead to Clark Fredericks.
What follows is not a typical interrogation of a remorseless killer. It’s a conversation with a broken man, bleeding severely from a knife wound through his own hand, driven by a pain that is 33 years in the making.
The Monster in Plain Sight
The victim was Dennis Peg, a respected figure in the small town of Stillwater, New Jersey. A lieutenant in the sheriff’s department, a Boy Scout leader, a beloved family friend. To the outside world, he was a “giant of a human being.”
To Clark, he was a monster.
Clark recounts a childhood meticulously dismantled by a master manipulator. It began innocently enough: a family friend offering a dollar to touch the pronounced “zipper” scar on Clark’s chest from open-heart surgery. That single act was the first move in a predatory chess game that would last for years.
Dennis Peg’s grooming was methodical and insidious:
- Isolation and Trust: He won over the community, the family, and finally, the victim.
- Gradual Escalation: It started with “needy,” “meaty” fingers probing a surgical scar, then progressed to beers in his truck, showing pornographic Polaroids of young boys, and “wrestling” matches where his 265-pound body would pin Clark down.
- Psychological Terror: He would brutally kill “worthless” sunfish in front of the boys and even bite a goldfish in half, swallowing it with his beer lessons in dominance and violence.
The abuse culminated in a horrific “hunting ruse” when Clark was 12, involving blackberry brandy, a sweltering house, and a violent assault. The aftermath was even more chilling: to ensure Clark’s silence, Dennis savagely beat his own coonhound dog, Duke, likely to death, right in front of him.
The Breaking Point
For 33 years, Clark buried the trauma. He wore a mask for the world, all while being “completely broken and destroyed” inside. He descended into a life of drugs and alcohol, trying to numb the pain he could never articulate.
The mask finally shattered at a local QuickCheck convenience store. Clark looked up from his coffee to see Dennis Peg—with a young boy by his side. The boy called Dennis by the same special nickname Clark had been forced to use. The sight triggered a catastrophic panic attack and unleashed three decades of suppressed agony.
“That boy haunted me,” Clark says. He became obsessed with what stage of grooming the child was in. Was he being shown Polaroids? Was he having beers? The encounter unraveled Clark completely, leading him to confess the secret he’d held since childhood to a friend.
Read more: Why Humans Turn Into Monsters?
The Confrontation
Armed with a Boy Scout hunting knife—the very one Dennis had given him and taught him to sharpen—Clark and his friend drove to Dennis’s secluded home. Clark describes it as a “suicide mission” against an armed firearms instructor.
What happened next was a violent, bloody struggle lasting mere minutes. Clark, acting on a rage he didn’t know he possessed, slit Dennis Peg’s throat. Before leaving, he walked into the bedroom where he was raped as a child and spat on the bed—a final, symbolic act of defiance.
“Did this solve everything?” Clark asks rhetorically. “No… You don’t heal from trauma by adding more trauma.”
A Community Divided and a Shocking Admission
Arrested and facing life in prison, Clark expected hatred from the police. Instead, the lead investigator, Lieutenant Howie Ryan, apologized. “I’ve heard rumors about Dennis Peg for a long time,” he told Clark. “I want to apologize to you for never stopping him.”
This admission was a double-edged sword: a moment of validation, followed by the fury of realizing that many knew—and yet he was the one who had to destroy his own life to end the reign of terror.
The town was divided. Some saw Clark as a hero who stopped a predator; others saw him as a drugged-out murderer who killed a great man. The truth, as it emerged, was darker than anyone could imagine. A safety deposit box revealed creepy, pre-written letters from Dennis asking for forgiveness from unnamed recipients. The prosecutor estimated his victims numbered “well over a hundred.”
A Story Unfinished
This podcast episode is only Part One of Clark’s story. Part Two promises to delve into his fight for survival in prison, a hit placed on his life by other inmates, and the tragic, ripple-effect death of someone very close to him—his own brother, another of Dennis’s victims, who succumbed to the trauma Clark’s arrest unearthed.
This interview is a harrowing deep dive into the lifelong impact of sexual abuse, the failure of systems to protect children, and the extreme, tragic lengths a survivor might go to for a sense of justice. It is a difficult, essential listen that challenges simple definitions of victim and killer.
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