The Ruse

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Speaker 4 Tonight on date line.

Speaker 5 They had gone into the house. There was an obvious smell of bleach.
We discovered a lot of blood evidence. Maybe there was some foul play involved here.

Speaker 6 We believed that something violent happened in the house and that Mr. Perez was the one that did it to his father.

Speaker 7 Were you convinced that your friend had killed his dad?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 9 An officer indicated we have overwhelming evidence.

Speaker 10 How would blood get in those spots?

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 7 You think he's lying to you? Correct.

Speaker 7 You told him his dad was dead. Correct.
You told him you had the body. Yes.

Speaker 8 Correct.

Speaker 11 Thomas, that's not going to help anything.

Speaker 7 It was a really difficult thing to watch. We see you ripping at your clothes, ripping at your hair.

Speaker 12 They think I murdered my father.

Speaker 12 This can't be real. This can't be right.

Speaker 7 This was the moment that you thought maybe he was going to crack?

Speaker 13 We just looked at each other, shocked. Couldn't believe it.

Speaker 6 Still can't.

Speaker 14 A father missing.

Speaker 15 A son under suspicion, and an ending that will make your jaw drop. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 16 Tonight, the ruse.

Speaker 17 Hello, this is C.S.O.P.N. with Fontana Police.

Speaker 18 Yes. It began in August 2018, Fontana, California.

Speaker 20 Sometimes he takes a dog for a walk, but...

Speaker 22 The man on the phone, Tom Perez Jr., was describing how his father, Tom Perez Sr., went out for a walk and didn't come back.

Speaker 20 What happened was he went to the mailbox last night. Normal, no big deal.

Speaker 20 He went there with the dog and the dog came back and he wasn't around.

Speaker 8 Tom Jr.

Speaker 23 and his dad lived together here on this quiet street.

Speaker 25 Both were in real estate, though Tom Sr.

Speaker 19 was retired.

Speaker 23 Carl Peraza has known both men for more than 20 years.

Speaker 2 How would you describe the younger Tom?

Speaker 19 He's unique.

Speaker 9 He's extremely intelligent, very self-disciplined.

Speaker 1 Papa Tom, he's very quiet.

Speaker 9 He's very opposite from his son.

Speaker 9 I've known him for a long time. We would go to their house and, you know, have a little party, watch sports.

Speaker 18 And now Tom was asking police if anyone had reported seeing his dad.

Speaker 24 He told the officer he had wandered off before.

Speaker 17 You didn't hear any weird noises or anything like that?

Speaker 20 No, no type of reality, no type of struggle.

Speaker 4 What his story is.

Speaker 2 After speaking with Tom, Community Service Officer Joanna Pina paid him a visit.

Speaker 18 Hello. She took immediate note of his appearance.

Speaker 17 His pants are unbuckled. Dad.

Speaker 17 And he's just kind of like not concerned, just standing here like, oh hey.

Speaker 8 Tom told Pina he'd been awake all night packing to move.

Speaker 17 I noticed there was a bunch of boxes, a lot of, it was the house was in disarray.

Speaker 7 I'm like, what are you doing? And then as you get deeper inside, does this thing become more curious to you?

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 29 And he left his wallet and his phone here and his keys.

Speaker 29 Yeah, because he just went to the mailbox.

Speaker 2 The mailbox wasn't far, just a two-minute walk around the corner.

Speaker 29 Do you go check to see if he actually picked up the mail?

Speaker 29 Yes, sure.

Speaker 29 Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 29 We enter the mail.

Speaker 17 And this is the mailbox right here.

Speaker 7 The mailbox is here.

Speaker 29 The mail's here.

Speaker 17 The mail that from the day before was still there.

Speaker 29 Why he didn't get the mail? I don't know.

Speaker 7 Was he volunteering information or were you having to drag it out of him?

Speaker 17 I was asking him. And he wasn't very clear on his answers.
He was very vague.

Speaker 29 He might have just walked to the metro and headed LA.

Speaker 2 Pina isn't a detective, but her gut told her this case needed one.

Speaker 14 Recording started.

Speaker 4 More officers and detectives arrived.

Speaker 29 Can I kind of tell you where we're at?

Speaker 29 Obviously, we want to find your dad, so what I would like to do is I'd like for you to go back to the station with me so I can use all my resources and all that good stuff. Yeah.
Let's go.

Speaker 29 We'll find your duty.

Speaker 28 Tom left with police as Sergeant Brian McClain took charge of a now growing investigation.

Speaker 5 I noticed almost immediately when I started to go upstairs, there was an obvious smell of bleach.

Speaker 5 What was really telling to me was the shower curtain was missing. We discovered a lot of blood evidence.

Speaker 5 Blood evidence that you could see with the naked eye,

Speaker 5 and blood evidence that you could see using a mixture of spray that can show trace evidence of blood that had been cleaned up.

Speaker 28 Are you talking about smears or drops?

Speaker 5 All of the above.

Speaker 28 They brought in a cadaver dog.

Speaker 24 Was the dog successful in sniffing out human remains?

Speaker 5 It did have a positive alert to the odor of human remains within the room.

Speaker 2 And in the kitchen, investigators found a receipt from Lowe's timestamp the night Tom Sr. vanished.
Police checked surveillance footage. And there was Tom Jr.

Speaker 19 buying large trash bags.

Speaker 8 It feels like what you're describing is arrows all pointing roughly in the same direction. Definitely is.
What was that direction?

Speaker 5 That the father may have been killed and his son may have been responsible for it.

Speaker 18 That was only the beginning.

Speaker 23 The real surprises would come out later.

Speaker 9 Wow. I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 31 We haven't talked about the cruelest thing they did yet, which was.

Speaker 13 I don't think we did anything wrong.

Speaker 29 Yeah, it's got a little quite good.

Speaker 18 After reporting his father missing, Tom Perez willingly went to the police station where he was interviewed for hours overnight, the whole time insisting he had no idea where his dad was.

Speaker 30 The next morning, two new detectives, David Janice and Kyle Guthrie, took over.

Speaker 6 We were investigating a a possible homicide.

Speaker 29 Pop in, Tom, what's wrong?

Speaker 13 We got him out of the interview room, went and got him some coffee.

Speaker 25 Now, detectives asked Tom to take them through every moment from when his dad supposedly went to the mailbox to when he called police.

Speaker 29 How about we'll drive where you drove?

Speaker 23 Tom led them to a donation site

Speaker 8 where he said he'd gotten rid of some things that night while packing.

Speaker 29 What's all yours?

Speaker 29 Just that box. This?

Speaker 29 What about the bed frame that matches?

Speaker 5 We came here and we found three bags with the father's clothing that he had deposited.

Speaker 5 So thinking something nefarious may have happened between the time that he said his dad went missing and the time that he called us.

Speaker 4 He also led them to a golf course where his dad sometimes played.

Speaker 13 And immediately when we got out of the car, he started looking in the bushes kind of oddly.

Speaker 13 And then he he started to walk over to

Speaker 13 the water hazard. And then while standing next to the watered hazard, he asked me, don't bodies float?

Speaker 29 Don't bodies float?

Speaker 29 No?

Speaker 13 Is this where you think he's at? And which seemed to be extremely suspicious.

Speaker 18 Back in the car, Tom began to get emotional.

Speaker 29 You're the only one that can help daddy. If he is in trouble, that's all I want to do.

Speaker 13 We had a lot of circumstantial evidence. Because of what we had in front of us, we weren't weighing too much on his statement that he didn't do anything.

Speaker 4 They took Tom back to the station to ask him more questions.

Speaker 7 What was your first awareness that both father and son might be in trouble?

Speaker 9 I got a call. He identified himself as an officer from Pontana Police Department.
He says, I have Tom here, and we're looking for his father.

Speaker 9 He said, we'd like you to come to the police station because we believe he may have committed a homicide.

Speaker 6 I explained to Carl that, you know, we're trying to get Mr. Perez to tell us what happened at the house.
We believe that there was some type of struggle.

Speaker 9 An officer indicated to me, we have overwhelming evidence that there was a murder committed and he committed this murder.

Speaker 7 Were you convinced that your friend had killed his dad? Yes.

Speaker 2 Carl rushed to the station.

Speaker 32 The freaking evidence. Okay, I'm talking to them.
They said they they have enough evidence on murder. Yeah.
On murder on you two. Well, I don't care.
It's bull.

Speaker 32 It's all circumstantial. So you got a body.
Let's say you did.

Speaker 32 Because nah, dude,

Speaker 32 what else makes sense, man? I mean, based on the evidence. Then and then we're really, really blowing away.
They say it's his plot.

Speaker 32 Huh?

Speaker 9 He just ignored it. He says, yeah, you know what? It's the wrong, this and that.

Speaker 9 He was a little incoherent because he was extremely tired.

Speaker 2 The detectives tried something else.

Speaker 13 We brought the dog in so that he would maybe feel a little bit more comfortable and relaxed.

Speaker 22 What are you doing, right? Comfort for Tom.

Speaker 2 And detectives said more evidence against him.

Speaker 13 One of the crime scene investigators did find human blood in the paws of the dog.

Speaker 32 I know where she got. Where? From inside your house.
where all the other blood is that we found.

Speaker 24 Detective Janice told Tom a story about another dog.

Speaker 23 And it witnessed one who had been so disturbed by witnessing a murder, it had to be euthanized.

Speaker 10 And the dog was so distraught and depressed, like that dog is, that they ended up having to put it down because of what it witnessed.

Speaker 23 They told Tom they were sure Margo had seen a murder too.

Speaker 2 You killed him.

Speaker 32 When Margot was there, Margot saw it.

Speaker 7 You're watching this interplay.

Speaker 12 Yes, yes. And I said, wow.

Speaker 9 I don't know what tactic that is.

Speaker 10 How would blood get in those spots?

Speaker 2 I don't know. But soon, the detectives had something to tell Tom.
A bombshell that turned the case upside down.

Speaker 7 This was the moment that you thought maybe he was going to create. I thought that.

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Speaker 22 Tom Perez Jr.

Speaker 2 had been talking to police for more than 24 hours straight

Speaker 26 when the detectives dropped a bomb.

Speaker 2 News that finally shifted the interrogation.

Speaker 32 It's not circumstantial anymore.

Speaker 4 They told Tom they had found his father's body.

Speaker 5 What happened?

Speaker 32 Tell us.

Speaker 32 Or was he?

Speaker 11 We're not getting into that.

Speaker 32 Oh, he's gone.

Speaker 32 He's in heaven.

Speaker 4 Tom didn't cry. He didn't collapse.
To the detectives, that said everything.

Speaker 32 You know what's messed up, Tommy? We just told you we found your dead dad, and you don't give a f.

Speaker 32 Not a tear. Not a...

Speaker 32 I'm sorry, what? Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
You don't even care.

Speaker 32 You don't even care we found your dad. And he's dead.

Speaker 8 They left Tom alone in the room.

Speaker 2 He curled up on the floor, clutched his dog Margot and cried.

Speaker 32 Alright Thomas?

Speaker 32 Turn back up.

Speaker 10 How can you sit there

Speaker 32 and say you don't know what happened

Speaker 32 and your dog is sitting here looking at you knowing

Speaker 32 that you killed your dad.

Speaker 10 Look at your dog.

Speaker 18 That's when Tom started to unravel.

Speaker 32 Would it be easier to write it and say it out loud?

Speaker 32 Thomas, that's not going to help anything.

Speaker 32 Thomas.

Speaker 7 We see him literally pulling his hair out, pulling his buttons off. Did moments like that give you pause?

Speaker 13 Not completely. I've had other homicide suspects admit to murder in the past, and there is a lot of release of emotion.

Speaker 7 This was the moment that you thought maybe he was going to create a break. I thought that.

Speaker 26 After nearly two more hours of denials, Tom's story slowly began to change.

Speaker 26 Tom agreed that maybe he did fly into a rage.

Speaker 32 Is it plausible that you stabbed him?

Speaker 32 The scissors?

Speaker 32 Was it the scissors? So how many times do you think when you were in that rage you stabbed him with the scissors? If that were the case with scissors or some other knife

Speaker 13 i wouldn't have stopped he went through motive he talked about a fight they had in the kitchen him stabbing his dad did he fall down

Speaker 32 i don't know yes you do

Speaker 32 because

Speaker 32 He went upstairs to shower and he did fall down.

Speaker 13 He mentioned his dad going up to the bathroom and potentially bleeding out in the bathtub.

Speaker 32 Was he like just covered in blood and you couldn't see anything?

Speaker 32 Yeah, because the shower's on and it's just all splashing.

Speaker 32 There's blood everywhere. I pulled him out of the tub, I remember, yeah.

Speaker 32 How did you get him upstairs?

Speaker 32 What have been slid him on the carpet? And what is covering him, the carpet? Shower curtain?

Speaker 32 Maybe that's what that was. Shower curtain.

Speaker 26 It was a very detailed confession that he gave us minutes later tom sat alone in the interrogation room he removed his shoelaces tied them together and tried to hang himself from the table

Speaker 5 yeah you okay buddy brian mclain was monitoring it all outside of the room maybe he was now feeling the pressure of having to face something that he may have done to his dad.

Speaker 4 Case closed, not even close.

Speaker 23 You may not believe who I'm about to interview next.

Speaker 7 So Tom, who's sitting next to you?

Speaker 2 This is Tom Perez Jr.

Speaker 24 He agreed to sit down for an interview to tell his side of the story.

Speaker 25 He says what police called a detailed confession

Speaker 2 was really just a guided fantasy directed by them.

Speaker 12 I didn't say,

Speaker 12 yeah, I killed him. I didn't say that.

Speaker 32 Did you stab him?

Speaker 32 I think that I did.

Speaker 12 They said, if you were to kill him,

Speaker 12 how would you do it?

Speaker 32 But if you did, where would you have stabbed him?

Speaker 12 So then he says, did you wrap him in the shower curtain are you sure you didn't wrap him up in the shower curtain and then i mean i just kept going with their lead

Speaker 4 that's what they call a confession no i'm gonna let your dog out the table tom told us he was exhausted and hungry so i'm in the 30-something hour straight with no sleep tom says there were innocent explanations for everything police found suspicious explanations he'd offered to detectives where did the butt come from not certain, but I do know dad falls.

Speaker 25 He says his dad had a history of falling, and he offered another explanation.

Speaker 12 I had been telling them.

Speaker 12 I said there's no blood, and then if there were blood, it had to be probably from

Speaker 12 he checks his diabetic prick. He likes to prick the thing, and he walks around.
So if there's any blood, it could be from that. I tried to give answers along the way.

Speaker 7 And they rejected them?

Speaker 12 They rejected them, yes.

Speaker 7 There was some concern about your demeanor, your behavior.

Speaker 12 My demeanor being how.

Speaker 7 The way it was expressed to us from police is that you did not appear to have a great deal of concern for your father's whereabouts.

Speaker 12 That would probably be correct because he's done this thing before.

Speaker 2 Even though Tom called police, he says he never expected them to jump to the conclusion his dad was dead.

Speaker 24 He told us the pressure in that interview room was intense, bordering on psychological torture.

Speaker 12 I'm starting to go in a downward spiral because now we have

Speaker 12 my father's dead. My dog's going to die.
They think I murdered my father.

Speaker 7 And do you want it to end it?

Speaker 12 I want it to stop. Painful.

Speaker 23 And why should we believe Tom's story now?

Speaker 26 Well, he didn't come to our interview alone.

Speaker 7 So, Tom, who's this sitting next to you?

Speaker 12 My father.

Speaker 7 Tom Sr.

Speaker 12 Tom Sr.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I've heard a lot about you.

Speaker 26 I'm sure you have.

Speaker 25 That's right.

Speaker 4 Tom Sr.

Speaker 22 was not dead.

Speaker 19 There was no murder.

Speaker 22 There was no crime.

Speaker 32 You don't even care we found your dad. And he's dead.
You won't even care.

Speaker 22 Police had lied about finding his dad's body. It's a legal interrogation tactic that the Fontana investigators call a ruse.

Speaker 7 Prior to all this, did you have any idea that police can legally lie to a suspect?

Speaker 12 No, I had no idea.

Speaker 7 What was it like to hear police tell you that your father is dead?

Speaker 12 Heart suck.

Speaker 7 Shock.

Speaker 16 So, what really happened?

Speaker 7 I've got to ask you, where were you?

Speaker 33 When I started off

Speaker 33 my little journey to the mailbox, I said, well, it's a very nice evening. And I find myself close to the railroad tracks.
And I said, oh, it'd be kind of nice.

Speaker 33 It's still early enough to take a little train ride. So that I did.

Speaker 2 That exact theory was among the first his son had suggested.

Speaker 29 He might have just walked to the metro and head to LA.

Speaker 12 And that's what he did. That's exactly what he did.
Destination unknown.

Speaker 7 Have you seen any of the interrogation tape? Oh, no.

Speaker 33 A glimpse of it. It brings tears to your eyes.

Speaker 33 They're leaning by my son.

Speaker 32 Thomas.

Speaker 7 I said, what are they doing? When you finally found out that Papa Tom, as you know him, was alive and well.

Speaker 9 I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 32 What else makes sense, man? I mean, based on the evidence?

Speaker 9 I said, what did I just do? His father's alive. I trusted the officers.
I don't understand how they can deceive people like this.

Speaker 2 Have you ever seen a case like this one? No.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Civil rights attorney Jerry Stearing represents Tom. He spent four decades suing police for misconduct.

Speaker 2 He says lying to suspects isn't the exception.

Speaker 26 It's common.

Speaker 31 What's uncommon is that that doesn't happen until they know there's been a crime committed.

Speaker 7 What makes a difference is that there was no crime in this case. This one, you could argue that they had suspicion that a crime had been committed.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 And they had a suspicion that this was the guy that did it.

Speaker 26 Okay.

Speaker 7 So shouldn't they, as police, have the right to follow up on that, pursue? Absolutely. Ask them any question you want.

Speaker 31 But how about when you mentally torture them so badly that they attempt suicide in the police station? How about that? You think that's that's bad enough?

Speaker 31 We haven't talked about the cruelest thing they did yet.

Speaker 7 Which was

Speaker 31 after they found out that his father was okay,

Speaker 31 they put him in the mental hospital.

Speaker 2 After attempting suicide, Tom was involuntarily committed and put on a 72-hour hold. All that time, police chose not to tell him his father was alive.
saying they were still investigating.

Speaker 31 So for three additional days, he believed that his dad was dead and that he's going to prison for life and they're going to euthanize his dog for three additional days.

Speaker 31 I thought that those cops had no souls. I thought that they were cruel and vicious

Speaker 31 and creepy.

Speaker 25 What do the Fontana police have to say about that?

Speaker 7 Do either of you think you've done anything wrong?

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Speaker 28 Detectives David Janice and Kyle Guthrie believed they'd solved a murder.

Speaker 4 Only to learn there wasn't even a crime.

Speaker 7 Tell me when you found out that Mr. Perez was alive.

Speaker 31 We were shocked. I was shocked.

Speaker 6 Based on all of the evidence that we had, we believed that something violent happened in the house and that Mr. Perez was the one that did it to his father.

Speaker 6 Up until his father was found, I can honestly say that we thought his dad was dead based on that evidence.

Speaker 7 Knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently?

Speaker 13 I don't think we would have done anything differently. Maybe at the very tail end, if we were going to use a ruse again in the the future we would probably discuss it more in depth.

Speaker 7 You keep using the term ruse but I want to ask you about lying though. Do you still think it's a useful tool in extracting a confession?

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 32 Well he's gone.

Speaker 32 He's in heaven.

Speaker 7 Do either of you think you've done anything wrong?

Speaker 13 I don't think we did anything wrong.

Speaker 7 But to bring an individual to the point where they're trying suicide, to the point where they think their dog is going to be perhaps euthanized, to the point they're being told their father is dad has been murdered.

Speaker 7 Can you understand why people would use the word cruel to describe how you handle this?

Speaker 6 I could understand that. I could understand that.
But I do think that those are three things that are very

Speaker 6 small part of this large investigation.

Speaker 32 Good job, Don.

Speaker 27 In my view, police should never, ever, be allowed to lie in the interrogation room.

Speaker 2 Stephen Kleinman is a former military intelligence officer who has conducted interrogations around the world.

Speaker 2 He says lying to suspects can result in false confessions, while being honest with suspects builds trust, and trust leads to truth.

Speaker 27 Everything I tell you is going to be true. Now, am I going to tell you everything I know? No, I can't.
Just like I'm not going to share everything you tell me with everybody.

Speaker 27 But that creates a certain level of trust. And this is a judgment based on empirical research by behavioral scientists.

Speaker 4 We asked him to watch Tom Perez's interrogation.

Speaker 24 In all, Tom had been with police for more than 24 hours, in that room for 17.

Speaker 7 All three of us know that daddy's not coming back.

Speaker 27 The statement of fact that daddy's not coming back? I mean,

Speaker 27 that doesn't even border on the ridiculous. That exceeds it by a margin that

Speaker 27 should be an embarrassment.

Speaker 2 Kleinman says he's not surprised Tom broke down given the length of the interrogation and the lie.

Speaker 27 False confessions occur at a frequency that would alarm anybody. Tom felt so manipulated, so pressured, so confused that he said things that he knew wasn't true.

Speaker 7 Many people say they would never confess to something they didn't do.

Speaker 12 It happens. That type of interrogation and that pressure and that breakdown was that intense.

Speaker 12 I don't think anybody's exempt from falsely confessing.

Speaker 22 This year, Virginia became the 11th state to bar police from lying during interrogations, but only to juveniles.

Speaker 23 Just a handful of states have pending legislation to extend that to adults.

Speaker 36 Law enforcement has incredible challenges and Michael Dorsey is the current chief of police in Fontana. I think it is super important to understand that everything that the officers did is legal.

Speaker 7 I mean, there are some leading experts who believe that police should never use lying or ruses as a technique.

Speaker 36 I understand where they're coming from. We do not always lie to people, but it is a legally acceptable practice on occasion when needed, and sometimes it is needed.

Speaker 7 Some of the scenes that we see play out, I mean, did they make you wince?

Speaker 36 They did. I'll be honest.

Speaker 36 It's uncomfortable to watch Mr. Perez as he has

Speaker 36 an emotional response to the interrogation.

Speaker 2 He tries to kill himself.

Speaker 36 He does.

Speaker 7 You know, if you're sitting here with Tom Perez Jr. right now, what would you say to him?

Speaker 36 I would tell Mr. Perez that I apologize.
I apologize for what you went through. What I want you to know, Mr.
Perez, is that we are a better policing organization because of this incident.

Speaker 2 Tom Perez sued the city of Fontana.

Speaker 25 Last year, the case settled for $900,000.

Speaker 26 The city admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement.

Speaker 7 Would it surprise you to know that the police chief of Fontana, in an interview with us, apologized to you?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 12 Yeah, that would surprise me

Speaker 12 because they've held the position the whole time they did nothing wrong.

Speaker 7 How does this affect you even today?

Speaker 12 Today I'm more cautious.

Speaker 12 If Dad's going to go out to check the mail, I'm timing him now.

Speaker 14 That's all for this edition of Dateline, and don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, in which I'll go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Speaker 14 Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9-8 Central.
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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