Detectives coerced him into a false murder confession with lies. It’s perfectly legal
LOS ANGELES — Thomas Perez Jr. first felt anxious that something bad might have happened to his father, Papa Tom, on an August night in 2018.
Papa Tom — people called Thomas Perez Sr. that — had put their family dog, Margosha, on her leash for a quick walk to the mailbox in their Fontana neighborhood, though it was nearly 10 p.m. But now, here was Margo back alone, the leash hanging off her collar, and Papa Tom nowhere to be found. Not at the mailbox, not at the neighbors, not at the nearby park.
Though he was elderly and spoke limited English, Papa Tom was a bit of a romantic player, and a secretive one at that. At first, Perez thought maybe his dad had met up with a lady friend. But by the next day when there was still no word, Perez was worried enough to call the Fontana Police Department and report the septuagenarian as missing.
That simple call for help would leave Perez a broken man. By the end of the week, under intense pressure from police detectives, he had falsely confessed to killing his father and was locked inside a psychiatric ward — though Papa Tom was alive and unharmed.
The cause of his false confession, Perez claimed in a lawsuit that he recently settled with the city for $900,000, was a coercive interrogation by detectives that lasted more than 17 hours.
Detectives told Perez that they had his father’s dead body and hard evidence that Perez had killed him. They said there was blood all over
