$900k Settlement After 17-Hour Interrogation Led to False Murder Confession of Man Still Alive

On August 8, 2018, Thomas Perez Jr. contacted the Fontana Police Department to report his father missing. He was subsequently taken in for questioning. While never arrested, he nevertheless endured 17 hours of interrogation by multiple detectives.

According to court records, as reported by The Orange County Register, detectives told Perez that his father was dead. Thomas Perez Sr. had been reported missing by his son after he'd gone out to take the family dog for a walk at 10 p.m. on August 7.

Detectives not only told Perez that his father was dead, they said they had evidence that he'd killed him. They even reportedly brought in the man's pet dog so he could say goodbye, saying she was going to be euthanized for "depression" after witnessing the murder.

"How can you sit there, how can you sit there and say you don’t know what happened, and your dog is sitting there looking at you, knowing that you killed your dad?" an investigator reportedly told Perez. "Look at your dog. She knows, because she was walking through all the blood."

Perez insisted he had no memory of killing anyone, but was allegedly told by detectives that the human brain can suppress difficult memories, so it's still possible he did it. They also told him they'd found his father's body with stab wounds.

Finally, while lying next to his dog on the floor, Perez confessed. He said he'd killed his father by stabbing him multiple times with scissors after a fight where his father hit him over the head with a beer bottle.

Even worse, Perez was so traumatized by the whole experience, he tried to hang himself in the interrogation room with the drawstring from his shorts when he was left alone.

There was just one problem with this whole story. His father wasn't dead. He wasn't even injured. His daughter called detectives the night of Perez' confession and attempted suicide to tell them their father was with a "lady friend."

"This case shows that if the police are skilled enough, and they grill you hard enough, they can get anybody to confess to anything," said Perez's attorney Jerry Steering, per The Telegraph.

By this point, Perez was in a mental hospital on a 72-hour hold after his suicide attempt. Authorities did not advise him immediately that they now knew his father was still alive.

They instead returned to the house with a new warrant to search for evidence he'd perhaps assaulted an "unknown victim" instead. Perez wasn't advised his father was alive until he was released from the three-day hold. He then retrieved his dog at county animal control after tracking her down through an implanted chip.

"Mentally torturing a false confession out of Tom Perez, concealing from him that his father was alive and well, and confining him in the psych ward because they made him suicidal, in my 40 years of suing the police I have never seen that level of deliberate cruelty by the police," said Steering.

The story made national news after Perez agreed to a $898,000 settlement after Steering filed a civil suit against the city of Fontana. According to the OC Register, Perez agreed to the settlement for fear "a jury award could be overturned on appeal on grounds of qualified immunity for police."

The Register explains, "generally, qualified immunity protects law enforcement officers unless they violate clearly established law arising from a case with nearly identical facts, according to the Legal Defense Fund."

According to Steering, as reported by The Huffington Post, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has been using this to throw out police misconduct lawsuits, calling it a "judge-created rule that protects government officials, including police officers, when they are sued."

As for why the police were suspicious enough of Perez to trigger such an aggressive interrogation, court documents say it has to do with Perez appearing "distracted" and "unconcerned" during his 911 call about his missing father.

Further, upon arrival they found the house in disarray and his father's cell phone and wallet still in the home. They thought it suggested a struggle. A police dog then reportedly sniffed the scent of a corpse in the father's bedroom, while they found small blood stains in the house.

Steering countered that the mess was the result of renovations, which the father and son had argued about, and the blood stains were from the father pricking his fingers for diabetes blood tests.

The lawsuit also claims detectives withheld Perez' medications for depression and stress, as well as high blood pressure and asthma. In her case summary, U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee wrote, "He was sleep deprived, mentally ill and significantly undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications."

Gee did concede that detectives had reasonable cause to believe something had happened at the Perez house, but she was still critical of their tactics. "A reasonable juror could conclude that the detectives inflicted unconstitutional psychological torture on Perez," she wrote in her summary judgment.

"Their tactics indisputably led to Perez’s subjective confusion and disorientation, to the point he falsely confessed to killing his father," she added, "and tried to take his own life."

One of the officers involved in Perez' interrogation has retired. The other three are still employed with the Fontana Police Department. The department did not respond to an email from the OC Register seeking comment.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.