More than thirty years after the first unexplained death, a California jury has convicted 63-year-old Paul Allen Perez of murdering five of his own infant children — crimes prosecutors say were concealed for nearly a decade and hidden in plain sight.
Between 1992 and 2001, five babies connected to Perez died before reaching six months old. At the time, the deaths did not immediately trigger a sweeping criminal investigation. The cases drifted into the background — tragic, but unanswered. It would take decades, a chance discovery, and cutting-edge forensic science to unravel what authorities now describe as a calculated and horrifying pattern.
The breakthrough came when a fisherman discovered the body of a baby sealed inside a weighted cooler in a California waterway. The grim discovery stunned the community and reopened questions long left dormant. Investigators preserved evidence from the scene, but it wasn’t until advances in familial DNA testing years later that the case took a dramatic turn.
Using modern genetic genealogy techniques, authorities were able to identify the infant — and trace biological connections that led directly to Perez. What followed, prosecutors said, was the exposure of a chilling timeline: five infant deaths over nearly a decade, each one allegedly linked to the same father.
In court, prosecutors argued the deaths were not tragic coincidences but deliberate acts, concealed through manipulation and silence. They described the crimes as “pure evil,” telling jurors that the pattern itself spoke volumes. Each baby died young. Each case faded without resolution. And for years, no one connected the dots.
Defense attorneys challenged the prosecution’s interpretation of the evidence, pointing to the age of the cases and the difficulty of reconstructing events from decades earlier. But the jury ultimately sided with the state.
After deliberation, jurors found Perez guilty of murdering all five infants.
He now faces life in prison without the possibility of parole — a sentence that ensures he will never walk free again.
For the victims, justice arrived decades late. There are no childhood photos beyond infancy. No graduations. No futures that unfolded. Just five lives that ended before they had truly begun — and a legal reckoning that required both persistence and scientific advancement to achieve.
The case stands as a sobering reminder of how cold cases can resurface, how technology can rewrite long-closed narratives, and how even the passage of decades does not erase accountability.
For investigators who never stopped asking questions — and for the jurors who listened carefully to evidence from another era — the verdict marks the end of a chapter that began more than thirty years ago.
For five infants whose stories were nearly forgotten, it marks something else: acknowledgment.