A California man has been found guilty of killing several of his infant children during a nine-year spree more than two decades ago.
On Jan. 6, a jury convicted Paul Allen Perez, 63, on multiple counts of murder, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office announced in a news release.
These convictions consisted of one count of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder, according to the Sacramento Bee and Davis Enterprise. Jurors acquitted him on first-degree and second-degree murder charges in a fifth child’s death, the outlets reported, adding that they could not reach a unanimous verdict on an involuntary manslaughter charge.
Perez was also found guilty on one count of assault on a child under eight with force likely to produce great bodily injury resulting in death, per the district attorney’s office.
“This conviction stems from murders that occurred between 1992 and 2001,” the news release said, “throughout Central and Northern California.”
Perez’s crimes began to be uncovered in 2007, when a fisherman discovered the remains of an infant in a cooler weighed down and submerged in a waterway in Woodland, Calif., according to a Yolo County Sheriff’s Office news release.
It wasn’t until 2019 that the infant was identified by forensic DNA comparison as Nikko Lee Perez. Familial DNA found that Paul Allen Perez was the baby’s father, and that the baby had four siblings—one of whom was known to be dead, and three of which were believed to be dead, with their bodies never found.
In January 2020, authorities arrested Perez on suspicion of the murder of each child, saying all five had died under the age of six months.
“These crimes involved pure evil,” Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig said in a statement following the verdict. “The defendant should die in prison. May the souls of his murdered children rest in peace.”
Perez faces life in prison without parole, according to the news release. His sentencing is scheduled for April 6.
Oxygen.com has reached out to Perez’s public defender for comment.
