A Las Vegas stage magician, whose stage name is “The Great Peter,” is in police custody this afternoon after making a crowd member in attendance for his show disappear, but failed to bring him back.
Reality started to hit that something was wrong when the wife of the missing audience member began to become frantic an hour after the show ended. Sydney Ray, 34, say that she wouldn’t have let her husband volunteer if she had known this would happen.
“At first I was having a blast at the show, and even when The Great Peter made my husband disappear I was applauding and cheering louder than anyone in the crowd. When an hour passed into the show and there was no sign of my husband, I began to freak out a bit,” said Ray
The event took place at The Magic Palace Theater in Las Vegas, and even local police are finding this case bizarre.
“You see so many things being a police officer in Vegas, but even this is a shock to the department,” said Officer Julian Brown. “We’ve searched the theater, talked to audience members. Of course we questioned the magician first, but he’s not talking. ‘Magician’s Code’ or some such nonsense.”
Police say audience members have been very cooperative, but most of them think that it’s all still part of the act, even though it’s been a full 12 hours since the show ended.
“I saw his wife. I’d still be gone for a while if I were him, too,” said Joe Goldsmith, a real estate investor on vacation in Vegas. “He’s probably taking in the sights at the Bunny Ranch or something.”
The Great Peter is behind bars, charged with intentionally blocking a police investigation and resisting arrest, after police tried multiple times to handcuff Peter and he’d continually slip out of them.
“He could make this whole ordeal a lot easier on everyone, but he won’t reveal his tricks. Officers believe that he does know more about what took place, and that somehow his disappearing trick has something to do with the gentlemen’s whereabouts.”
“A magician never reveals his secrets,” said The Great Peter in an interview with police. “It’s all part of the show.”