Father charged with killing five kids
WOODLAND, Calif. — A California father has been arrested in the decades-old killings of five of his infant children — one found wrapped in a Winnie the Pooh blanket — in a case the sheriff said Monday has haunted his agency for years.
Paul Perez, 57, a convicted sex offender with a 20-year criminal history, was arrested at a state prison in Delano, days before he was expected to be released on unrelated charges. He is suspected in the deaths of the children born between 1992 and 2001.
Yolo County Sheriff Tom Lopez said the case reflects an “unspeakable evil” but said authorities do not know a motive.
“I cannot think of a case more disturbing than this one,” he said. “There can be no victim more vulnerable and innocent than an infant and unfortunately this case involves five of them.”
Authorities started investigating after the decomposed remains of the child recently identified as 3-month-old Nikko Lee Perez were found in 2007.
The child was wrapped in the Winnie the Pooh blanket and a layer of plastic and placed inside a metal cooler. It had been weighed down with metal objects before being submerged in an irrigation slough near Woodland, Calif., about 80 miles northeast of San Francisco.
An autopsy determined he died of blunt force trauma. He had a fractured skull and before death had sustained rib and other fractures that had started to heal by the time he was killed.
The remains were identified in October after authorities used an expanded DNA database for the first time in the case, though it had been used widely in other cases.
Perez was charged with five counts of premeditated murder with special circumstances of lying in wait, torture and multiple victims. He also faces charges of assault on a child under 8 and criminal enhancements for his prior convictions.
District Attorney Jeff Reisig said Perez is eligible for the death penalty but he has not yet decided whether to pursue it.