California police have defended their use of ‘psychological torture’ during a 17-hour long interrogation in which they got a son to confess to murdering his father – even though his dad was still alive.
Officers in Fontana used legal deception to get Thomas Perez Jr. to make the false confession in August 2018, claiming that they had recovered his missing father’s body, which they said was in the morgue, and said their family dog was ‘depressed’ by what it had witnessed and would need to be euthanized.
They also persuaded Perez to let them take photos of him to document any non-existent injuries he may have sustained in a struggle with his father, as they fed him suggestions on how he may have murdered the elder Perez, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Eventually Perez said in a 2022 deposition he ‘started to absorb this false belief that they put together, and I’m accepting it as a truth. I just allowed the belief of others to dominate me.’
He then confessed to killing his father, as the police had suggested, leading him to attempt suicide – though his father would be found alive preparing to border a plane at Los Angeles International Airport just a few hours later.
Police in Fontana, California subjected Thomas Perez Jr. to a 17 hour long interrogation in August 2018, as they suspected him of murdering his father
The ordeal began when Thomas Perez Sr. went missing on August 7, 2018, while out for an evening walk to pick up the mail with the family dog.
The pet came back alone, with no sign of his father, whom locals affectionately called Papa Tom, according to the LA Times.
At first, the younger Perez thought his father may have met up with a lady, but when there was still no word from him the next day, he called the Fontana Police Department to report that his then-71 year old father missing.
The dispatch officer who took the call later told her supervisor the exchange made her suspicious, saying Perez seemed distracted and not overly concerned with his father’s welfare – leading officers to show up to the house he shared with his father to talk to him in person.
Responding officers said they then noticed some signs of foul play, with Police Chief Michael Dorsey explaining in a recent social media post that the senior Perez’s cellphone, wallet and keys were still at the house.
He said the home was in disarray, particularly the father’s bedroom, and claimed that Perez told responding officers he removed his father’s mattress and some clothing and cleaned the room with bleach.
When a neighbor then described Perez as mentally unstable and described his other alleged activities, police obtained a search warrant as they brought him in for questioning.
They brought in a cadaver dog who officers said sniffed out human remains in the father’s bedroom – but the dog was not an official police canine and instead belonged to a volunteer with the sheriff’s department, the LA Times reports.
Officers also used a liquid known as Bluestar, which is designed to pick up blood stains.
It is known, however, to give false positive results on food fibers and minerals found in household goods, like paint. As it so happened, the Perez’s home was under construction at the time.
Still, police claimed that Bluestar conclusively found large amounts of blood inside the home.
That evidence was never confirmed by a lab and no officer would later testify to seeing any blood.
Perez Jr (pictured) had called the police department to report that his 71-year-old father had not returned home after going for an evening walk to get the mail
After intense questioning in which police claimed they already had his father’s body and threatened to euthanize his dog, Perez confessed to murdering his father
When officers first suggested Perez may have killed his father, he reacted with disbelief.
‘I’m shocked. I’m upset. I can’t understand. I’m at [a] loss for words,’ he recounted in his 2022 deposition.
Still, officers kept trying to coerce Perez to confess, bringing him to locations around town where he could have murdered his dad.
They then brought him back to the station when he failed to lead police to his father’s body – ignoring his pleas to be brought to a local hospital because he was starting to feel ill.
After a while, Perez said he ‘started losing it.’
‘I had been able to hold my own, and you know, go back at them and what have you,’ he said in his deposition, according to the LA Times.
‘But now they’re reassuring me that my father is dead and that I don’t remember, and because of my medications, I blanked it. And they’ve been trying to help me and they recovered a body already,’ he explained of his decision to confess.
He then tried to hang himself with his shoelace from the desk of the interrogation room, according to a civil suit he would later file.
Just a few hours later, officers would find the senior Perez at LAX. He then told police he had indeed gone to visit a friend without telling his son, and was on his way to visit his daughter.
Still, police recommended that the son be committed to a psychiatric hold, and he claimed in court documents that police told staff at the hospital he was not allowed to receive phone calls – leaving him unaware that his father and his dog were still alive.
He has since told CNN the endeavor left him so traumatized he could not work or answer a phone for a while.
‘I got to a point where I was afraid to even go get the mail anymore,’ he said. ‘I was afraid to come out. I said, “I don’t know who might be there.”‘
The senior Perez was later found boarding a plane at Los Angeles International Airport
California Judge Dolly Gee ultimately ruled in June 2023 that the evidence in the case would convince the jury that the questioning amounted to ‘unconstitutional psychological torture.’
She claimed officers left Perez ‘sleep deprived, mentally ill, and, significantly, undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications.’
‘Their tactics indisputably led to Perez’s subjective confusion and disorientation, to the point he falsely confessed to killing his father and tried to take his own life,’ the judge wrote at the time.
In May, the police department decided to a $900,000 settlement with Perez, calling it a ‘business decision which was recommended by a federal court mediator to save the city further time, effort and expense.’
The settlement did not include any admission of wrongdoing on the part of the police department, it noted, saying: ‘Had Mr. Perez requested an admission of wrongdoing, the case would have never settled.’
And in a post on social media on Thursday, Police Chief Dorsey defended the department’s actions.
‘In the moment, we were urgently searching for a missing man and there was good reason to suspect some harm might have come to him,’ he posted on X.
‘Sadly, situations like these can and often do end up as homicide investigations. We are so thankful this was not one of them,’ he said, telling the community he was opening up about what happened in the interest of ‘transparency, accountability, fairness and maintaining community trust.
Police Chief Michael Dorsey defended the department’s actions in a social media post on Thursday
Dorsey went on to explain why police believed there was evidence that the senior Perez was murdered, noting that at one point during the lengthy interrogation, Perez was brought to a local golf course, where he stared at a pond and allegedly asked, ‘Don’t bodies float?’
Dorsey also argued that a federal judge overseeing the suit declared that a reasonable juror would have concluded there was enough evidence to suggest a crime was committed.
As such, Dorsey said, it is ‘acceptable and perfectly legal to use different tactics and techniques, such as ruses, to elicit information from people suspected of potential criminal activity.’
‘Were we perfect in how we handled the situation? Nobody ever is,’ the police chief wrote.
‘We are sorry for what the son went through and we are grateful to learn that he and his father have reunited and their relationship has improved.’
Attorney Jerry Steering, who represented Perez in his suit, told the Orange County Register he found that post to be ‘unapologetic.’
‘I think they should be ashamed of themselves,’ he said of the police officers involved. ‘I think they have no moral compass.’