A Central California man has been convicted of murdering five of his infant children within months of each of them being born over the course of a decade.
Paul Allen Perez, 63, was convicted Tuesday of multiple counts of murder and one count of assault of a child under 8 with force likely to produce great bodily injury resulting in death, according to a Yolo County district attorney’s office news release. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole and is scheduled to be sentenced April 6.
Perez killed all the children between 1992 and 2001 in Northern and Central California, according to the release. The remains of one of the infants were found submerged in a cooler in 2007 and familial DNA determined that Perez was the biological father.
“These crimes involved pure evil,” Yolo County Dist. Atty. Jeff Reisig said in the release. “The defendant should die in prison. May the souls of his murdered children rest in peace.”
On March 29, 2007, the body of an infant was found by a fisherman in a waterway east of Woodland, according to a Yolo County Sheriff’s Office news release. The baby was found in a sealed container and weighed down with heavy objects.
About 12 years later, in October 2019, authorities used DNA to identify the remains as Nikko Lee Perez, according to the Sheriff’s Office release. He was born on Nov. 8, 1996, in Fresno and had siblings.
One of the siblings, Kato Allen Perez, was born in Merced in 1992 and is also deceased, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The other three children are also believed to be dead. Their names are: Mika Alena Perez, born in Merced, in 1995; Nikko Lee Perez, born in Fresno in 1997; and Kato Krow Perez, born in Fresno in 2001.
During Perez’s trial, the children’s mother, Yolanda Perez, detailed abuse and threats of rape, according to the Davis Enterprise. She pleaded guilty to five counts of child endangerment in 2022 and faces up to 10 years in prison.
Yolanda and Paul Allen Perez had six children and only one child survived, according to the publication. Yolanda Perez said that the first killing occurred in 1992, when she heard Perez hitting Kato Allen. Authorities say Perez then proceeded to kill four of his other children within months of them being born. Yolanda Perez testified that he would hurt her if she told the police, according to the Davis Enterprise.
“He said he’d snap my neck, because he can,” Yolanda Perez told the jury, according to the Davis Enterprise. Only the remains of two of the five children have been found.
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