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Cornbleet Family Plea: Help Us Get Suspect To U.S.

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Cornbleet Family Plea: Help Us Get Suspect To U.S.

CBS 2's Jay Levine and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
CHICAGO (CBS) ― The daughter of a Chicago dermatologist who was murdered in his Michigan Avenue office is speaking out for the first time, asking for the public to help return his suspected killer to the United States.

Hans Peterson is currently in the custody of French authorities on the Caribbean Island of St. Martin. Chicago Police on Tuesday announced that they had issued an arrest warrant for him back in June, and he turned himself in on Monday.

A spokesman for the French consul-general in Chicago put it simply, telling CBS 2, "We do not extradite French citizens" for death penalty cases or anything else.

And that has dampened the relief felt by Dr. Cornbleet's family.

"You're happy but at the same time we're exhausted having fought so long, and to know that here we have to fight again is so frustrating," said Jocelyn Cornbleet.

Jocelyn Cornbleet discovered her father's body Oct. 24, 2006, stabbed to death, on the floor of his Michigan Avenue office. For a while, she told CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine Wednesday night, she blocked out the memory. Then it started coming back.

"I'll open a door and I'll see it, or I will dream and I will see it, so unfortunately I don't really know if there's ever a way to get it out of your head," she said.

Police believe Peterson rented a car in New York where he was living last October, drove to Chicago, killed Dr. Cornbleet and drove right back. Two months later, he fled to St. Martin, where the lifelong U.S. resident claimed French citizenship.

In a letter e-mailed to cbs2chicago.com Wednesday afternoon, she says French authorities granted Peterson French citizenship in May, months after her father's murder.

Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Bob Milan says authorities are still looking into is whether the man acquired French citizenship in St. Martin.

If he did, extradition will be very difficult, because France does not extradite French citizens.

Jocelyn Cornbleet also says the maximum prison sentence Peterson could face would be 20 years. "This is absolutely unacceptable to my family who has endured this nightmare. I saw the horrible atrocities this monster did to my father first-hand, and my family and I are hoping you can help us achieve justice," she writes.

Now, she and her family are asking people to contact state senators, congressmen and presidential candidates to pressure them to help bring Peterson back to the United States to face charges and a trial. In her letter, Jocelyn Cornbleet provides links to their websites and a link to the family's MySpace Web page where there is a form letter for anyone who wants to help them.

Chicago Police say that Web page devoted to seeking information about his father's murder helped break the case.

The video of the killer covered in blood and walking through the lobby where the dermatologist had his office was widely seen on the Internet.

Someone who knew Peterson saw the pictures on the site, remembered his movements and actions, and led police to an apartment in New York. A law enforcement source says blood taken from Cornbleet's office where he died matched DNA taken from a cigarette found in Peterson's apartment.

The Cornbleet family says Peterson was a former patient who saw Dr. Cornbleet once in 2002. They say he murdered the doctor out of revenge because he believed the drug Accutane, which the doctor prescribed, left him impotent.

The Cornbleets are urging people to write their senators and congressman to put pressure on the French government to find some way to send Peterson back to the U.S. to stand trial.

The French government is investigating Peterson's claim to French citizenship, but its spokesman says that if he was born to a French mother, he was officially French at birth.

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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