A California man has been convicted of murdering five of his infant children in crimes that went undetected for decades until a fisherman made a grim discovery in 2007. Paul Perez, 63, was found guilty Tuesday in Woodland, California, on multiple counts of murder and deadly assault on a child under eight for killing his babies born between 1992 and 2001. District Attorney Jeff Reisig said: “These crimes involved pure evil. The defendant should die in prison. May the souls of his murdered children rest in peace.”
The case broke open when fisherman Brian Roller accidentally struck a box with his bow and arrow while fishing in 2007, discovering the decomposed remains of a three-month-old boy later identified through DNA technology as Nikko Lee Perez. Investigators subsequently learned Perez had killed four other children, including two infants named Kato, another named Niko, and a child named Mika.
Perez’s wife Yolanda testified that she lived in fear of her husband and failed to report the murders because he threatened to kill her and their surviving daughter Brittany. She told the court: “He said he’d snap my neck, because he can.” Yolanda pleaded guilty to five counts of child endangerment for failing to report the crimes. Perez, who was already in custody on unrelated charges when arrested for the murders in 2020, faces life in prison without parole at his sentencing hearing scheduled for April 6.