"I hope that every day your son is going to hear that his grandfather is a child pornographer," Deborah Pontious, Peel's second wife, yelled at his daughter after a detention hearing Wednesday involving her husband's child pornography conviction last week.

But Pontious, a former teacher, was not done lashing out at the people she holds responsible for her husband's downfall. She then fired a question at the man who successfully prosecuted her husband, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Burke.

The first time, she says, a sniper tried to shoot her. A few months later, she says, someone planted a black cobra in her bedroom. She also produced a police report involving an incident where her pickup's windows were shattered while traveling along Interstate 57 near Effingham. She speculated that the events had something to do with her marriage to Gary Peel.

Peel was found guilty on charges of bankruptcy fraud, obstruction of justice and child pornography, by a jury last week in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis.

In early 2006, an indictment states that Gary Peel called his ex-wife and told her that he had an affair with her teenage sister more than three decades earlier — and that he took nude pictures of the sister, which he would send to their elderly parents unless the ex-wife agreed to a settlement involving their divorce.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge William Stiehl sided with the prosecution, ordering Peel to surrender to federal authorities on Friday. A judge will sentence him in June. He could receive up to 40 years in prison.

Peel rose to a level of prominence as a litigator among lawyers in the Metro East area. When he was indicted last year, he was working for the powerful Lakin Law Firm. The firm's founder, Tom Lakin, is being sued in a civil court over allegations of sex and drug abuse.

But in October, an FBI agent testified in a hearing that investigators had questioned Peel about potential corruption involving judges or lawyers, including Lakin, in Madison or St. Clair counties.

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