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On Wednesday August 8 2018, a call came through to the non-emergency number of the Fontana Police Department in Southern California. The caller was a 53-year-old local named Thomas Perez Jr., better known as Tom. He lived with his father, 71-year-old Thomas Perez Sr., or Papa Tom as he was affectionately called.
Tom explained that his father had left the house to check their mail sometime between 9:30 and 10 the previous evening of Tuesday, August 7. They lived in a cul-de-sac with a communal mailbox located at the end of the street, so it was only supposed to be a brief stroll there and back. Thomas Sr. took their beloved dog, a large husky border collie mix named Margo, with him. Minutes later, Margo returned to the Perez home alone.
Thomas Senior was nowhere to be seen. At first, Tom wasn't overly concerned about his father's abrupt disappearance. The pair lived relatively separate lives and Thomas Senior was fiercely independent, with a tendency to make plans and go places without telling his son. Tom assumed he'd gone to visit a close friend or family member and would return of his own accord.
But when the night passed without any word from Thomas Senior, and he still hadn't returned by the following afternoon, Tom became increasingly concerned. Although Thomas Senior was self-sufficient, he was nevertheless vulnerable due to his advanced age, limited English capabilities, and physical frailty.
Tom feared that his father, who was on a slow cognitive decline, might have mindlessly wandered off while getting the mail and could be walking the streets of Fontana disoriented and lost. Tom reached out to the Fontana police and his call was put through to community services officer Joana Pina, who began preparing a missing persons report. But as she spoke with Tom Perez, she sensed something was off.
Officer Joanna Pina was alarmed by Tom Perez's demeanour over the phone. She didn't get a sense that he was genuinely concerned about his father's wellbeing at all. Tom spoke in a nonchalant manner with no sense of urgency, simply requesting that police keep an eye out for a confused elderly man roaming around the neighbourhood. Let me know, he remarked. It may be my father. That's it.
Officer Pena thought that Tom was also strangely aloof and easily distracted. He kept rambling on about different topics that had no relevance to his father's missing persons report. Officer Pena spoke to her supervisor, Corporal Sheila Foley, and the two women decided to pay Tom a visit to complete the report face-to-face. At the very least, they figured they could gauge Tom's behaviour in person and determine if their suspicions were warranted.
Officer Pina and Corporal Foley arrived at the Perez's two-story, three-bedroom home in Fontana's North. It was one of many similarly designed homes built around a golf course and positioned almost wall-to-wall with its neighbors. A large black pickup truck was parked in the driveway, right up against the garage door.
Tom opened the front door dressed casually in a pair of white cargo shorts and a collared, short-sleeved blue shirt with its top buttons undone. He greeted the officers, who promptly entered the premises. The officers were immediately struck by the state of their house. There was barely space to move, with broken furniture, tools, and construction equipment strewn about while boxes of possessions were piled in every corner.
It was so chaotic that the officers felt the home was unlivable. When pressed about the mess, Tom sheepishly explained that he was separating from his wife and was carrying out renovations to the home in anticipation of selling it. As a contractor by trade, Tom was doing most of the work himself. He had eight projects on the go, which had left his home in disarray.
The officers conducted a rudimentary search of the premises, filming as they went on their body-worn cameras. They were unable to locate Thomas Sr or any evidence to indicate where he might have gone, though they did notice a few peculiar things. The mattress from Thomas Sr's bed appeared to be missing, as did a shower curtain from a bathroom.
Some of Thomas Senior's belongings had also been piled into a messy heap as though they were about to be discarded. Tom explained that both he and his father had been getting rid of some things in preparation of moving out, and that he'd recently dropped some of his father's clothing in a Goodwill donation box. One of the walls in Thomas Senior's bedroom featured noticeable damage.
Tom excused it as part of his renovation efforts, saying that he'd worked to remove the wall after his father left. To Corporal Foley, it didn't look like typical construction work. She was becoming increasingly suspicious of Tom, who had some scratches and bruises across his body. Tom claimed he'd sustained the injuries while working on the house, but when Corporal Foley asked him…
Are you sure you didn't argue with your dad? Tom stumbled over his words as he tried to explain himself. The officers also noted that he kept getting sidetracked, talking about irrelevant things like his dog's diet. Tom professed that he was just tired. But the chaos inside the home led the officers to believe that a struggle had taken place there.
Concerns were amplified when Thomas Sr's cellphone and wallet were discovered. If he had left on his own volition like Tom claimed, it seemed odd that he would have left behind these necessary items. In the eyes of the police, this was a sign that Thomas Sr was no longer alive. Bolstering this belief was the discovery of what appeared to be several smears and spatters of dried blood found on various surfaces throughout the Perez residence.
Some of it had crusted onto the cream carpet at the base of the stairs. Tom attributed the blood to his father's finger prick diabetes tests and other unrelated innocuous accidents. Whatever the truth, Officer Pena and Corporal Foley felt Tom was markedly indifferent to the serious matter unfolding. They summoned several more officers to the premises, who agreed that the situation warranted suspicion.
Tom was requested to go to the Fontana Police Department downtown to provide a statement. He was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed and voluntarily got into the back of a police car to be driven to the station. Tom was ushered into an interrogation room where he spoke with detectives Robert Miller and Jeremy Hale. A camera above filmed Tom's every word as he openly discussed the basic facts and timeline of his father's disappearance.
The conversation was mostly polite as Tom offered multiple explanations as to where his father might have wound up. He suggested that Thomas Sr could have taken the train to his brother's house or to see a close friend of his in the Los Angeles area. Maybe he was heading further north to visit his daughter, Tom's sister, in Oakland.
While Tom's assertions implied there was an innocent reason behind Thomas Sr's disappearance, an entirely different scenario was emerging at the Perez house. Police spoke with neighbors who described the father and son as having a volcanic relationship. They were known to have screaming matches on their front lawn. On the night Thomas Sr disappeared, Tom was also witnessed backing his truck into his garage at a very early hour.
Tom admitted that he'd bickered with his father right before he vanished, with the disordered state of their home being an ongoing source of contention between the pair. While the two got on each other's nerves at times, they remained living together as Thomas Senior had nowhere else to go. He was separated from his wife and not suited to the rules of a senior citizen community.
The two men did their best to coexist and there was love between them, but they mostly stayed out of each other's lives to keep the peace. The one thing that brought them together was their dog, Margo, who Tom referred to as their fur baby. Tom had raised Margo from when she was a puppy and both he and his father doted on her by cooking her special meals and sharing in her care.
With that in mind, there was no logical reason why Thomas Senior would abandon Margot mid-walk in the middle of the night. A search of the surrounding streets and parklands had failed to uncover any sign of the 71-year-old, and there had been no reported sightings of him. With concerns growing that Thomas Senior might have met with foul play, and his son acting increasingly dubious, police were granted a warrant to search the Perez home.
They also seized the men's cars, computers and cell phones, as well as Tom's tools. Special equipment was brought in that could reveal traces of blood not visible to the naked eye, even when strenuous efforts had been made to clean it up. It indicated that blood had been cleaned up throughout the home. But the most ominous find occurred in Thomas Senior's bedroom.
A highly trained cadaver dog was brought in and alerted to the recent presence of a human corpse. With that, the relatively benign missing persons case shifted into a full-scale homicide investigation. Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Tired of eating the same meals on repeat?
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With everything police had uncovered so far, they felt they had sufficient cause to believe that a serious crime had taken place involving Thomas Sr's son, Thomas Perez Jr. Further warrants were obtained to examine both men's phone and internet records, while investigators turned up the heat on their prime suspect.
Tom Perez was still answering questions at the Fontana Police Department when he was informed that police believed his father had come to harm. Before long, fingers were pointed directly at Tom himself. He appeared shocked, confused and upset, and was seemingly at a loss for words. He told the detectives that they were "nut".
As the interrogation continued into the night, Tom remained steadfast that his father was still alive somewhere. By the early morning of Thursday August 9, upwards of seven hours had passed since Tom was first brought in for questioning. While he hadn't revealed anything that implicated him in his father's disappearance, the police were certain he was feigning ignorance and that he knew exactly what had happened to Thomas Sr.
The first interviewing detectives finished their shift and were replaced by Detectives David Janusz and Kyle Guthrie. After being briefed on the case, they were told by a lieutenant that the feeling among the police was that Tom had killed his father. Not only did evidence support this theory, as far as they were concerned there was simply no other logical explanation. It was just a matter of getting Tom to fess up.
Detectives Janusz and Guthrie changed tact. They took Tom out for a drive to get coffee to lower his defenses. Afterwards, they told Tom they were taking him to a train station to check the surveillance videos for any sign of his father. Instead, they drove around Fontana on the lookout for any place that Tom might have used to dump his father's body.
If they came close to a key site, perhaps they could trigger him into talking. Referring to Thomas Sr as Daddy, the detectives asked Tom to show them where Daddy was. The detectives stopped at the Goodwill donation box where Tom said he had discarded some of his father's clothing. They circled around housing estates where Tom said he had been looking to buy before reaching the golf course near the Perez home.
Tom maintained that he had no knowledge of his father's whereabouts, but as they passed by a pond on the golf course, he randomly asked if bodies floated. The bizarre question piqued the detective's interest and they kept driving, waiting for Tom to say more. They eventually came to a remote dirt field near the edge of Fontana, where they stopped the car. Tom became visibly nervous and refused to get out.
This indicated to the detectives that the otherwise banal side held importance. Yet, no matter what, Tom refused to entertain the thought that his father was dead. Tom had already informed police that he suffered from various afflictions, including high blood pressure, asthma, depression, and stress. As the pressure mounted, he said that he was starting to feel unwell and asked for his medication from home.
The detectives assured Tom that he would receive his medication soon, but in their eyes, he was perfectly fine. While he was clearly tired and anguished, he was still fully functioning, cognizant and coherent. Despite this, Tom kept requesting medical attention. To the detectives, it seemed like he was trying to weasel his way out as they inched closer to uncovering the truth.
They told him that going to the hospital wasn't going to help him, as it was the easy way out. Tom muttered, "But I need… I needed attention." Detective Janusz put his foot down. "No you don't," he said, making it abundantly clear that Tom's attempts to derail the interrogation weren't going to work. After their long drive, the detectives took Tom back to the station and resumed their questioning.
As the hours passed, they relentlessly bombarded him with accusations while his emotions spiralled in all directions. One moment, Tom confidently professed his innocence and acted bewildered at the allegations against him. While the next, he sobbed into tissues, repeatedly asking, ''Where's Dad? Where's Dad? Where's Dad?''
The detectives remained convinced that the remote dirt field near the edge of Fontana held significance. They drove Tom back there in an attempt to elicit a reaction, but he gave them nothing. Back at the station, Tom's distress heightened as time wore on. Detectives sensed he was reaching a breaking point that could lead to a confession. They wondered if Tom would open up to someone he knew and trusted.
He'd asked to speak with a close friend and business partner of his named Carl Peraza, which gave detectives an idea. Carl was summoned to the station, where detectives revealed they had overwhelming evidence to indicate that Tom had killed Thomas Sr. They said blood was found everywhere throughout the Perez home and that they had video footage of Tom dumping bloodied clothing.
They told Carl they were zeroing in on a site where they believed Thomas Sr.'s body had been buried, but they needed Carl's help in getting a confession from Tom and determining the exact location of the grave. Carl was stunned. He couldn't believe that his friend was capable of murdering his own father.
As far as Carl was aware, the two had a loving relationship and he'd never had any indication that Tom was violent towards Thomas Sr. Nevertheless, Carl agreed to help the police. He was permitted to enter the interrogation room to be alone with Tom, while the pair were secretly monitored. Carl gave Tom a warm embrace and then sat across from him to discuss the predicament. "They got you on murder," Carl said.
Tom shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Impossible." Carl explained that the police had enough evidence to charge him and asked point blank, "Tom, could it have happened?" Tom outright rejected the suggestion. The detectives resumed their interrogation, warning Tom that if he didn't help locate his father, he would owe the city up to a million dollars in restitution.
They also warned that he risked going to jail for the rest of his life. Tom didn't budge. He maintained that his father was simply missing, to which Detective Guthrie remarked: "He's missing because you killed him." An emotional and exasperated Tom continued to deny it. On multiple occasions, Tom requested to terminate the interview and go home. The police were incredulous.
Did he honestly believe they would let him go back to an active crime scene where he could tamper with potential evidence? With their ploy involving Carl Peraza having failed, it was time for the detectives to come up with another plan. The Perez family's dog, Margo, was brought to the Fontana Police Department and led into Tom's interrogation room.
She entered eagerly, her black and white tail wagging with excitement as she rushed over to her owner. Tom immediately lit up in her presence. After he had showered Margot with affection, she came to rest quietly on the floor near his feet. Meanwhile, the interrogation continued. Detective Janusz put it bluntly to Tom: "You murdered your dad," he stated.
Tom's mood dropped again, his voice cracking as he responded, "No I did not." The detective pressed on, "Your daddy's dead because of you." Not only that, but poor Margot had witnessed it. At the mention of this, Tom leant back in his chair, a perplexed expression on his face. Finally he said, "No," before wiping his eyes with a tissue. "It did happen," the detective said.
You killed him and he's dead. You know you killed him. You're not being honest with yourself. How can you sit there and say you don't know what happened and your dog is sitting there looking at you knowing that you killed your dad? Look at your dog. She knows because she was walking through all the blood.
The detectives informed Tom that blood had been found on Margot's paws and she was so traumatised after witnessing the murder that she needed to be euthanised. Tom looked at Margot, who was lying contently on her belly. The detectives said they'd give him a moment alone with her to say goodbye. After they exited the room, Tom dropped to the floor and snuggled up against Margot, patting her gently while weeping.
Afterwards, Margot was taken to an animal shelter in a neighboring county to be put down. The detectives told Tom, "'Your dog's now gone. Forget about it.'" By this point, Tom snapped. He wailed loudly, punching himself in the head multiple times and began ripping out his hair. He tore his shirt open before falling back into his chair, utterly drained."
In the eyes of the police, his conduct was further proof of his guilt. Yet Tom remained in denial. Hoping it would compel him to start talking, detectives divulged a major development in the case. They told Tom that the police had found Tomasenia's body and it was in the morgue riddled with stab marks. Tom sat with his arms crossed over his chest and barely reacted.
Frustrated, Detective Guthrie said, We just told you we found your dead dad and you don't give a fuck. Tom kept his eyes cast down and continued to gently deny that he'd killed his father. You did, the detectives said. Tom stuttered, I don't have any idea, to which the detectives repeated, You do, you do, you do.
The detectives continuously reminded Tom that the police had evidence that he killed his father and he should therefore just admit it. They told him that the human mind often tries to suppress troubling memories and suggested that he might have attacked his father while under the influence of his prescription psychiatric medication. The longer Tom was questioned, the less resolute his protests of innocence became.
Eventually, he became despondent and lost in thought. The detectives asked Tom to explain what he thought could have happened between him and his father. They suggested possible scenarios in order to jog Tom's memory. Tom offered his own suggestions and provided insight into how they could have played out, but stopped short of confessing.
Detectives pressed on, building a narrative based on their interpretation of the crime scene. They wondered if there had been a fight involving a stick or broken beer bottles. Maybe it could have been a knife or scissors. "Did you stab him?" they asked Tom. Tom appeared contemplative as though he was trying to remember something he couldn't quite figure out. He then said coolly, "It's plausible. I think that I did."
The detectives pushed for more information, asking, Tom replied blankly, Eventually, after 17 hours of interrogation, police pieced together enough details to get a rough idea of what transpired. In his investigation report, Detective Janusz wrote,
Tom said he grabbed a pair of scissors and went over to the couch and stabbed his dad. He said if he was enraged, he probably stabbed him a lot. Tom said after his dad was stabbed, his dad went upstairs to the bathroom. Tom heard him fall, so he went up there and saw his dad lying on the ground of the bathroom, not waking up. He said he slapped him in the face a few times, but he still wouldn't wake.
Tom's dog came in the bathroom and so he tried getting the dog out of the bathroom because there was blood everywhere. Once he got the dog out, he then wrapped up his dad's body in the green shower curtain and transported his body down the stairs and into the garage. He then put his dad's body in the back of his truck. The detectives pried Tom to reveal more details about the murder, but he simply replied…
"I don't know" before vomiting into a trash can. Tom believed he must have killed his father while in a blackout-like state, which explained why he couldn't vividly remember the attack. Tom was clearly wracked with guilt, remarking: "I'm sorry dad, I had no idea. I love you." He had a message for his sister too, saying: "I didn't mean to take your daddy away. I have no idea.
I still don't understand. Tom was momentarily left alone in the interrogation room, at which point detectives noticed he'd removed a leather shoelace from his shoe and was trying to take his own life. They rushed in to rescue him before promptly restraining him and placing him under arrest. Given Tom's fragile state, he was placed on a 5150 hold.
This provision allows an adult experiencing a mental health crisis to be involuntarily detained for a 72-hour psychiatric evaluation. Tom was kept in a hospital over the weekend, where staff were given strict orders not to let him have any contact with any outsiders. Then, days after Tom's confession, a young nurse came to his bedside. She broke protocol to tell him:
I know it says in your file not to speak to anybody, but your dad's on the phone. Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Attention renters, if you haven't heard of Bilt, it's time to take note. You can now earn points just by paying rent through Bilt. No landlord approval needed. Here's how it works.
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Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Casefile to continue to deliver quality content. On the night of Tuesday August 7 2018, 71-year-old Thomas Perez Sr left his home to collect the mail at the end of his street. But his plans didn't stop there. He walked onwards to the Fontana train station where he boarded a train to visit his brother.
From there, he caught a bus to a friend's place to stay the night. The next day, Thomas Sr. travelled to Los Angeles International Airport as he'd booked a flight to visit his daughter in Oakland. Thomas Sr. hadn't mentioned any of this to his son Tom, as they didn't typically keep one another in the loop of their plans. Thomas Sr. had also absentmindedly left his cell phone at home, preventing him from contacting Tom while on his journey.
Unbeknown to the older man, as he went about his travels, police believed he'd been murdered and his son was being relentlessly interrogated as the prime suspect. Early on in the investigation, Tom Perez Jr had told the detectives that his father might have gone to Oakland. He even gave them his sister's details so they could check with her. Instead of doing so, the detectives remained fully focused on building a homicide case against Tom.
By 8:45pm on Thursday August 9, over 30 hours had passed since he'd reported his father to be missing. While Tom was still being interrogated, Detective Robert Miller finally spoke with Tom's sister over the phone. To his shock, she revealed that Thomas Senior was very much alive and well, waiting for a flight to Oakland at Los Angeles International Airport.
Officers rushed to the departure gate where they found Thomas Sr., perplexed by all the attention. Even though he wasn't suspected of any crime, the 71-year-old was promptly detained and read his rights. He was placed in the backseat of a police car and driven back to Fontana, unsure of what was going on.
By the time Tom Perez Jr. was attempting to take his own life at the Fontana Police Department, two hours had passed since detectives had confirmed that Thomas Sr. was alive. Instead of informing Tom, they placed him under arrest and sent him for psychiatric evaluation. In the meantime, Thomas Sr. was taken to the same interrogation room that his son had been held in.
A flimsy yellow blanket lay bunched on the floor, the same blanket that his son had used during breaks in questioning to try and get some rest on the ground. The police didn't give Thomas Sr any information about what had happened to his son, nor did they reveal the allegations that were being levelled against him. They simply told Thomas Sr that his house was being investigated as a crime scene.
Detectives quizzed him about his relationship with Tom and asked whether he'd ever gotten violent. Eventually, Thomas Sr. was permitted to return home. He broke through the crime scene tape that encircled the property and headed inside, finding the place to be trashed. In their search for evidence, the police had sliced open the Perez's leather sofa, emptied the contents of their drawers and closets, moved their hot tub and damaged its motor.
Even then, Thomas Senior had no idea where his son was or what he was being accused of. When Thomas Senior finally learned that his son was in hospital, he wasn't allowed in, as the police had placed Tom in lockdown. Thomas Senior tried to call instead, but he was consistently denied the opportunity to speak with Tom. Days passed before a nurse finally broke protocol and handed Tom the phone.
The moment Tom heard his father's voice on the other line, he dropped to the floor in tears. Tom was released from his 5150 hold later that day and allowed to return home. When the father and son were reunited for the first time since Thomas Sr had left home almost a week earlier, a bewildered Tom asked, "'Dad, is that really you?' Thomas Sr replied kindly, "'Yes, it's me.'"
"They told me you were dead," Tom explained. "No, no. I'm here," his father responded, as the pair embraced with tears in their eyes. Shortly after, the Perezas got a call from the animal shelter where their dog Margo had been taken. The police had erroneously classified Margo as a stray, which meant she was permitted to be euthanized.
Luckily, Tom had Margot implanted with a microchip which allowed staff at the shelter to identify her owners, thus halting her euthanization. When the Perez's went to collect Margot, they were pained to see that she couldn't walk properly. During her time in police custody, Margot had sustained an injury to the cruciate ligament in her right hind limb, which required corrective surgery.
Other possessions that had been seized from the Perez's home were also returned in a damaged and unusable state. Even though Thomas Sr had been found alive and well, the police remained convinced that Tom must have assaulted and killed someone at their home. They obtained a third warrant to search the premises and received permission to put a tracking device on Tom's truck.
Ultimately, their investigations led nowhere and the case was officially closed without Tom being charged with any crime. In hindsight, Tom felt his treatment went far beyond a misguided misunderstanding. When he'd reported his father missing, he spoke with a Fontana Police Lieutenant named Ronald Cavall. Tom had a poor relationship with Lieutenant Cavall due to previous interactions on a separate matter.
While it was apparent to Tom that Lieutenant Koval disliked him personally, he nevertheless went ahead with filing a missing persons report. At the time, Tom remained calm, clinging to the reasonable belief that his father was likely fine. When Officer Joanna Pina and Corporal Sheila Foley arrived at Tom's home to investigate the matter, Tom felt that they were immediately hostile towards him.
They said they'd been summoned to the house by Lieutenant Cavall, which sparked a degree of apprehension on Tom's part, as he sensed that the police were treating his father's case as suspicious from the outset. Tom was dismayed when the officers barged into his home and began pointing out purported evidence of foul play. He remained composed and cooperated while offering plausible and honest explanations to all of their suggestions.
The so-called evidence of homicide found at the Perez home was not as concrete as investigators accepted. The cadaver dog that had picked up a scent in Thomas Sr's bedroom wasn't an official police canine, but belonged to a volunteer within the Sheriff's Department. Then there was the matter of the dried blood. Police had an image of a door in the Perez home that appeared to have dried blood smeared on it.
Tom agreed that it looked like his door, but maintained there had been no red marks on it when police officers showed up. Footage taken from the body-worn cameras of the first responding officers confirmed this. In their search for evidence, police had used a liquid known as Bluestar, which is considered to be the first-line method of picking up bloodstains that aren't visible to the human eye.
Police claimed that Bluestar conclusively found large amounts of blood in the Perez home. However, Bluestar is known to give false positives for other substances, including minerals found in paint. Tom had been painting the house as part of his renovations and no lab ever confirmed what the substance was. Furthermore, no officer would later testify to seeing any visible blood in the Perez home.
Samples of the alleged blood were taken, but no positive identification was ever made. The Perez's were just told that they were identified as coming from a male. One police expert asserted: "No reasonably well-trained police officer would have believed that they had a probable cause to obtain a search warrant in these circumstances."
When Tom had first agreed to go to the police station, he was informed it was in his best interest to do so. He didn't want to submit to an interrogation as he felt he had nothing to prove, but he ultimately complied, albeit under protest. He was placed in a tiny interrogation room he referred to as the police's "little box of horrors".
During the lengthy interrogation sequences that followed, Tom repeatedly, specifically, and consistently denied all accusations levelled against him. He even voluntarily submitted a DNA swab and let officers take photographs of his naked body, despite his discomfort. On multiple occasions, Tom asked that the interrogation come to an end.
He also asked to speak with his lawyer, to be given his medication, to see his doctor and to be taken to the hospital. Detectives refused every request. Reflecting back on his experience with the police, Tom said: "I felt like they were my captors and I had nothing. There was nothing I could do.
When threatened with the possibility of going to jail for the rest of his life, Tom was terrified because under the circumstances, it seemed like a real possibility. He had refused to get out of the police car at the dirt field near the edge of Fontana because he felt the situation was getting out of control and he feared the detectives were about to either beat or kill him.
Tom had no idea the police were lying when they told him that his father's body had been found riddled with stab wounds or that blood had been found on Margot's paws. Tom was left devastated at the thought that his father was dead and Margot had been put down as a result.
By the early evening of Thursday August 9, almost 30 hours had passed since Tom Perez first called the police about his missing father and he'd been interrogated almost non-stop for 17 hours. During that time, he'd barely eaten or slept and had remained deprived of his medication. Exhausted, confused and grief-stricken, Tom reached his breaking point. He later told CNN…
"I no longer could see in color. I was seeing everybody in black and white, and then I felt physical pain, like an electric shock, and it went from head to toe." As detectives suggested possible scenarios in which Tom lashed out at his father, he started to absorb a false belief and accept it as truth. Unable to provide his own version of events, he simply went along with what the detectives told him.
If they said, "Well, you stabbed him," Tom would reply, "Okay, I stabbed him." In Detective David Yarnoosh's report, he stated that Tom had admitted to stabbing his father with a pair of scissors while he sat on the couch before wrapping his body in a shower curtain and putting it in the back of his truck. However, Tom never directly confessed to any of these things. They were Detective Yarnoosh's words.
Eventually, Tom became fully convinced that he had murdered his father and attempted to take his own life as a result. He later recalled to CNN, "'They attacked me right at the very thing that I loved most, my fur baby and my father. And it didn't seem like there's anything left. I couldn't see the reason to continue with more pain.'"
By the time Tom was placed under arrest and read his rights for the first time, including his right to remain silent, the police already knew that Thomas Senior was still alive. They admitted Tom to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation regardless, securing him in excessively tight handcuffs that caused extreme pain and discomfort. Tom asked for them to be loosened, but his requests were ignored.
He was subsequently kept in hospital for three days where he endured continual mental anguish. As Tom's attorney, Jerry Steering, explained: "They didn't have the nerve to look Tom in the face. They didn't have the nerve to tell him his dad was okay." A year after the events, Tom Perez Jr. sought accountability for what he endured.
He filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Fontana, naming a total of 15 Fontana Police Department employees that played a role. He accused the group of false imprisonment and due process violations, among other offences. As a direct result of his ordeal, Tom suffered substantial damages, including lost income, damage to his personal property, medical and psychological bills, and emotional and mental distress.
In the direct aftermath of his ordeal, Tom feared answering the phone or leaving his home, even to collect the mail at the end of the street. According to the lawsuit, the amount of damages amounted to in excess of $10 million. Additionally, Tom had paid approximately $12,000 towards Margot's ongoing medical needs as a result of the injuries she sustained while in police custody.
In their depositions, the police members involved maintained that they had reason to believe Tom was lying to them. In turn, they deceived him in order to get information. They maintained that they didn't cause Tom's emotional distress and rejected his assertions that the trained officers should have been able to detect his sincerity and swiftly terminate the interview. They regarded Tom as a, quote,
startlingly odd human being who lived a life filled with unexplainably bad decisions given he had a history with the police. They criticised his character, claiming, "...who admits to murdering their father when a murder never happened?" Tom was accused of creating a money-motivated falsehood and deemed undeserving of winning anything in the litigation.
Fontana's city officials were fiercely defensive of the police officers and vigorously denied that they had violated any state or federal law during the investigation. They maintained that the police had good legal cause to suspect Tom Perez of serious criminal activity.
They claimed that Tom voluntarily agreed to be questioned in relation to his father's disappearance and denied claims that he was interrogated for 17 hours straight or deprived of food and his medication. They asserted that Tom was voluntarily undergoing questioning and therefore free to leave at any time. A US District Court judge disagreed.
In a summary judgement, she wrote that "circumstances suggested to Tom Perez that he was not free to leave." She also maintained several claims on his behalf, stemming from allegations that the officers had falsely imprisoned Tom and inflicted emotional distress. However, after reviewing hours of the interrogation tapes, the judge sided with the police on some issues.
She also ruled in their favour when it came to Tom's claims that the police had unlawfully searched his home and used excessive force. The judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed, stating, "...a reasonable juror could conclude that the detectives inflicted unconstitutional psychological torture on Tom Perez."
Their tactics indisputedly led to Tom's subjective confusion and disorientation to the point he falsely confessed to killing his father and tried to take his own life. He was sleep-deprived, mentally ill, and significantly undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications.
There is no legitimate government interest that would justify treating Tom in this manner while he was in medical distress, since the Fontana Police Department already had two warrants to search his person and property, and he was already essentially in custody and unable to flee or tamper with any evidence. As soon as the case was permitted to go to trial, Fontana City officials entered settlement talks.
In 2024, Tom Perez agreed to settle the lawsuit rather than take the case to trial. He held concerns that a jury award could be overturned on appeal on grounds of qualified immunity. Qualified immunity protects law enforcement officers from lawsuits involving much of what they do in the scope of their jobs. In the US, it is legal for police to lie to adult suspects during questioning.
They are trained in how to use falsehoods to elicit confessions, a tactic that is broadly protected by the courts. The detectives who interrogated Tom asserted that they were only following their training. One explained: "We had been with Tom all day and we were running out of things to say to him to try to get the answer.
"We used a ruse to elicit certain information, and that is perfectly legal under the law, and it is perfectly legal under the policies and procedures of the Fontana Police Department." According to Tom's attorney, Jerry Steering, the decision to settle was based on the Court of Appeal's history of tossing out police misconduct lawsuits. As part of his settlement, Tom received $898,000 in damages.
A statement on the Fontana City website read: "The settlement in this case was a business decision which was recommended by a Federal Court mediator to save the city further time, effort, and expense. The party's written settlement agreement contains no admission of wrongdoing by anyone, and Tom Perez specifically agreed to settlement on these terms. Had he requested an admission of wrongdoing, the case would have never settled.
Tom Perez's case is an example of how lying to suspects during police interrogations can lead to false statements or, worse still, false confessions. Advocates are working to have detectives retrained with newer methods that will no longer allow them to lie or trick suspects into confessing. As one advocate explained:
The Fontana case is an extreme one, but it fundamentally begins with a mistaken belief about the use of deception in the interview room. A community caretaker doesn't lie or deceive the community it serves, at least not for very long, without the community questioning "Are you really my caretaker?" or something else.
Following Tom's ordeal, there were no indications that there was an internal review within Fontana Police, and those involved faced no internal repercussions or discipline. On the contrary, several detectives involved were promoted to the position of sergeant, while one was named 2019 Employee of the Year.
City officials have since claimed that law enforcement leaders have developed many service enhancements to deal with, quote, mentally challenged individuals, though they have not publicly elaborated on what those enhancements are or what they entail. Tom Perez's interrogation video has been described by those who've seen it as both fascinating and disturbing.
Although several media publications got a hold of it and showed snippets in news reports, they have since had to return it to the city of Fontana unaired, as it is subject to a protective order and cannot be published. Carl Peraza, Tom's close friend and business partner who had been recruited by police to elicit a confession, has expressed remorse for his involvement.
He was led to believe that Tom had killed Thomas Senior, but even after speaking with Tom face to face, he couldn't understand how the crime had allegedly occurred. It wasn't until after he participated in the interrogation that Carl learned the evidence he had originally been told was overwhelming was in fact circumstantial. Carl felt duped.
He wanted to go back into the interrogation room to inform Tom, but wasn't permitted to talk to him again. Since the ordeal, Carl could tell that Tom was struggling to cope. Carl wrote in court documents, There's sadness there. I can tell by the way Tom acts, even sometimes the way he walks or stands. He's not the same. No one involved in the case has apologised to Tom or Thomas Senior."
Feelings from the ordeal remain raw between the pair and they haven't reached the point where they're able to openly talk to one another about what happened. Tom wrote in court documents that while it was difficult to hold back, it was difficult to talk about anything because they didn't know what to do or say. The father and son still lived together, though Tom remained traumatised by his experience for a long time afterwards.
In an exclusive interview with CNN, Tom explained that his father helped him by making sure his necessities were met, which allowed him to work through his trauma. He still carries one lesson from his ordeal: don't call the cops. The pair's beloved dog Margo died in February 2023, leaving a permanent hole in both their lives.
Tom believes the reason he confessed to a murder he didn't commit was because he'd been brainwashed by the interviewing detectives. "I just allowed the belief of others to dominate me," he explained. "I never want to be in that kind of place again mentally. I didn't know anybody could be in that kind of place. I didn't know that such a place existed."
To this day, Tom feels he still doesn't have a clear explanation for why he was treated so badly. But the Perez's told CNN they are grateful to still have each other, as they have helped each other heal. Tom's attorney, Jerry Steering, called Tom's treatment "the worst act of deliberate cruelty that he had seen in his 40 years of suing the police." Quote:
Jerry said that Tom's ordeal laid bare the way in which police officers can force people to make false confessions, explaining:
This case shows that if the police are skilled enough and they grill you hard enough, they can get anybody to confess to anything. Hey, you know what would make your customer service help desk way better? Dumping it and then switching to Intercom. But you're not quite ready to make that change. We get it. That's why Finn, the world's leading AI customer service agent, is now available on every help desk.
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