Derald Peal's Motive For Murdering Anthony Pietrzak

In a horrific axis effort of malice and gutless cruelty, three men beat, strangled, and murdered an 18-year-old and left his body in a large field back in 2017. The case of Anthony Pietrzak and the three Tulsa, Oklahoma men that killed him is a difficult one to absorb as the grisly details pile up. According to News On 6, Tracy Price, Wesley White, and Derald Peal abducted Pietrzak and took him to a dark plot of land far removed from any potential witnesses. They then proceeded to savagely beat and choke him before binding him in a hogtie and leaving him alone to die. Pietrzak would later perish as a result of severe injury and prolonged isolation.

According to Big Country 99.5, it ultimately took just under a week for the police to locate Anthony Pietrzak's body. By then, his remains had significantly decomposed as a result of exposure to the elements. "The tortuous death of this victim was gruesome," Prosecutor Julie Doss shared in a public statement. "The body of Mr. Pietrzak was not found until six days after his death, by which time his body had decomposed considerably. 

Still, medical personnel determined that Mr. Pietrzak suffered a great deal prior to his eventual death."  Pietrzak died hours after being abandoned as a result of "self-strangulation." His assailants had bound his feet, hands, and neck. They also attached the rope around his neck to his foot constraints, keeping him in a state of perpetual strangulation. 

The inhumane reasoning behind such a crime seems totally devoid of reason in and of itself. How could someone — let alone three different individuals — so brutally and heinously assault an innocent person and leave him for dead in a state of inescapable torture for hours on end? In the spectrum of things, it makes no sense, but investigators were feverishly in pursuit of answers after the body of Anthony Pietrzak was discovered. As stories started to emerge, police discovered that one of the killers acted out of a vendetta and prompted his associates to help him carry out the murderous task.

According to News on 6, the men attacked the teen because they believed he was abusing Peal's daughter, whom he was dating and who was pregnant. Alternately, Pietrzak's family claimed that it was the daughter that was the abuser in the relationship. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, Derald Peal took it upon himself to interpret and deliver justice on his own terms, leaving a young man viciously slain and abandoned in the process. Wesley Price later stated in court that Peal asked him and Price to help him hurt Pietrzak and the three men held him against a fence and bound him in the hog-tie that would slowly kill him, as Metro 50 reports.

Shortly after Anthony Pietrzak was murdered in September of 2017, all three of his assailants were arrested and put behind bars to await trial. According to News On 6, Wesley White was the last one to be taken into custody. Per the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Tracy Price is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Dearle Peal was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree and is serving a 12-year sentence to be followed by one year of probation. Wesley White, who testified against Price, according to Tulsa World, was convicted of kidnapping and assault charges but died in January 2022.

ABC News 7 reports that it was Crime Stoppers who received an anonymous tip from a caller who claimed to have witnessed the crime firsthand. The caller revealed that they saw a man "hogtied and thrown in the back of a pick-up" after being brutally beaten by three men. In 2019, ABC aired an episode of The First 48 chronicling the atrocious murder of Anthony Pietrzak and all that followed in its wake.