It’s bad enough that police put on blinders when they first decide who “did it” and then direct all their energy to proving it, such that they fail to consider other evidence, other possible perpetrators. It’s even worse when they use interrogation techniques designed solely to coerce a confession, even if completely false, rather than accurate of voluntary. But what Fontana, California, detectives did to Tony Perez Jr. was even worse.
Within hours after Thomas Perez Jr. called police to report his father missing, he found himself in a tiny interrogation room confronted by Fontana detectives determined to extract a confession that he killed his dad.
Perez had told police that his father, 71-year-old Thomas Perez Sr., went out for a walk with the family dog at about 10 p.m. on Aug. 7, 2018. The dog returned within minutes without Perez’s father. Investigators didn’t believe his story, and over the next 17 hours they grilled him to try to get to the “truth.”
The cops pulled every trick in the book, telling Perez they found his father’s body and they had evidence he did it. They deprived him of his mental illness medication and even told him they were going to kill his dog.
Perez insisted he didn’t remember killing anyone, but detectives allegedly told him that the human mind often tries to suppress troubling memories.
Eventually, Perez broke and confessed to murdering his father.
Finally, after curling up with the dog on the floor, Perez broke down and confessed. He said he had stabbed his father multiple times with a pair of scissors during an altercation in which his father hit Perez over the head with a beer bottle.
After being left alone in the interrogation room, Perez tried to hang himself with the drawstring of his shorts, causing the police to take him to a mental hospital for a 72-hour hold. There was only one problem.
Later that day, the truth derailed the detectives’ theory and their prized confession.
Perez’s father wasn’t dead — or even missing. Thomas Sr. was at Los Angeles International Airport waiting for a flight to see his daughter in Northern California. But police didn’t immediately tell Perez.
It’s not that there was no cause for police to believe that harm had come to Perez’s father. There was evidence in the home of a struggle and blood. The problem was that none of it amounted to a crime, not because it lacked indicia, but because no crime had, in fact, occurred.
First, they noted he seemed “distracted” and “unconcerned” during the 911 call, according to court records. Officers responding to the call noted the father’s cellphone and wallet were still at the home, which was in disarray. Police saw the mess as a sign of a struggle, but [Perez’s lawyer, Jerry] Steering said Perez was renovating the house and had argued with his father about it.
Additionally, a police dog sniffed out the scent of a corpse in the father’s bedroom. And there were small blood stains in the house. Steering later would say the blood stains were caused by the father’s finger-prick diabetes tests.
But for the psychological torture the police inflicted on Perez in order to get him to confess to a murder that never happened, one that could have cost Perez his life had his suicide attempt worked, this might be described as a comedy of errors. But there was nothing funny about what the detectives did to Tony Perez Jr. to try to coerce a confession from him.
Perez became so distraught that he began pulling out his hair, hitting himself, making anguished noises and tearing off his shirt while police encouraged him to confess, according to a summary of the case written by U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee.
“He was sleep deprived, mentally ill and significantly undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications,” Gee wrote.
And the police excuse? That Perez was never under arrest, such that he was free to go, as if being held in an interrogation room suggested that he could have left any time he wanted.
Police, in court records, insisted Perez was voluntarily undergoing questioning and was free to go at any time. However, in her case summary, Gee wrote that the “circumstances suggested to Perez that he was not free to leave.”
But the kicker is that even after Perez’s father turned up, alive and well, the cops still couldn’t bring themselves to tell Perez the truth, to let Perez go.
Police picked up the father at the airport and brought him to the Fontana station.
But the investigation didn’t stop there. Detectives obtained a warrant to again search Perez’s house for evidence that he had assaulted an “unknown victim,” according to Gee’s summary.
It appears none was found.
As a result of his suicide attempt, Perez was detained for the remainder of the 72-hour hold.
Perez sued and the case was settled for “nearly” $900,000 for the psychological “torture” he endured at the hands of police for a crime that never happened.